This isn't a rant about my ISP. I have been very satisfied with OpLink in the last year and a half. Unfortunately, we will be moving soon (end of lease, and some problems with our house) and several of the houses we are looking at are in areas not covered by Oplink.
Right now, we live just between Houston and Katy, Texas, in the no-man's-land of Harris County. However, we do get some "benefits" of Houston, since SBC (or "the new AT&T") provides our phone service. Oplink runs over the SBC phone system to provide DSL service.
Unfortunately, SBC doesn't provide phone service into the heart of Katy. That luxury is provided by Consolidated Communications. Which means my only choice for DSL service appears to be Consolidated Communications.
This wouldn't be so bad, except...
To get the same level of service that I have with Oplink, it would cost over $80 more per month. That is, I pay $65 a month right now for 1.5 Mbit/384 kbit plus a block of 6 static IP addresses. I am allowed to run servers (which is where this site, and several others, as well as email, are hosted). I have virtually unlimited bandwidth (which is nice when there are several thousands of people trying to download a malware fix file).
Consolidated requires a business account to host servers, at a cost of $59 a month, plus $20 a month for static IP addresses (I currently use three). And that only guarantees me 1 Mbit/384 kbit rates. So, for $110 a month, I can get less features than I currently have, with less customer service (I've had to deal with Consolidated's attempt at customer service for some clients). I don't even know if they have bandwidth caps; haven't checked on that yet.
So, what about cable modem service?
Well, since the only option for that seems to be RoadRunner (thanks, Time Warner....) I checked into their pricing and features. To get a single static IP address, I again have to have "business class service", and it would cost me at least $129 a month. For a block of 5 addresses, it's nearly $200 a month! Therefore, that becomes a non-option.
I just talked to Earthlink, who offers cable modem service in that area as well. Unfortunately, they don't even have an OPTION for static IP addresses.
So, it looks like I'm stuck. I know, I've got at least a month before this becomes a real issue, and we may find a different property that we like that falls into the SBC service area. Until then, I'll keep searching....
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