The Who's Who of AT&T DSL

Written by: Patrick Oborn - Nov 20, 2008

So you want AT&T DSL but you're looking for a bit more information? Make sure you know the company to which people are referring when they try to answer your questions. AT&T is actually a group of several companies and they have as many differences as do completely separate companies.

AT&T traces its roots to the original Bell Company. It then broke off into the Southwestern Bell Company. Just a few years ago, AT&T acquired Ameritech which offers service in the mid west. It also acquired Pacific Bell on the West coast and a few locations on the east. The behemoth of a company offers a service called AT&T DSL however the service is provided by the underlying companies which still operate much like separate companies.

Recently Yahoo DSL was introduced which was simply a branding initiative. The underlying service is AT&T DSL. When signing up for the service, your experience may be quite different depending on which region you are in. When reading message boards or consumer group's comments on AT&T DSL, just make sure you know which region the person is talking about and don't take their comments too seriously if they're not in your region. Once again, these divisions are as different as separate companies because not too long ago they were separate companies. Also remember when reading chat boards and consumer groups that DSL service is highly dependant on your distance from the phone company so complaint people have about bandwidth may not apply to you as they could be farther from the phone company than you and therefore have a weaker signal.