High speed internet access

I haven't been posting in a while, when I'm posting a lot it's kind of habit-forming, I think of new ideas all the time. When I haven't posted in a while, it seems like there's nothing to talk about. I know it's boring to read why someone hasn't been updating their site, but this is going somewhere.

One of the reasons I haven't been writing as much is that I don't have high-speed internet access at home anymore. I used to have DSL from MCI, and I had my local phone service there too. A couple of years ago, I had been screwed around a couple of times by Southwestern Bell, and the MCI service was cheaper, so I switched my local service and added DSL, I had been using dial-up from ev1.net. Well, MCI decided that they didn't want to do DSL anymore, and sent me a note saying that they were going to cut off my service on November 6th. No other option. So I was kind of in denial about it, and sure enough, on November 6th, it was cut off. So I started to look around at what else is available. No other company was willing to provide DSL unless I switched my local phone service to AT&T (aka SBC aka Southwestern Bell) and I didn't really want to do that. I don't have cable, I have DirecTV, so a cable modem would cost me $50/month plus $100 installation and some equipment costs. Satellite and cellular cost even more. DSL with AT&T was only $20/month, but they would only do it if you switched your local service. So, two weeks ago I broke down and signed up for AT&T DSL and switched my local service to AT&T. I still don't have working high-speed internet access. I got a call at work last week, and the lady said that for some reason I might have to pay a $99.95 installation fee for the phone service. When I told her that I had Southwestern Bell service before, and I couldn't understand why it would be difficult to reactivate the service, she said that she's never seen anyone actually charged the fee, but that she had to let me know just in case. Whoopey. Then, last Friday, a phone repairman called me to find out why he had been sent out there, since the phone appears to already be working. More whoopey. I installed the new software and tried to get it working today, but after about an hour of troubleshooting (the guy sounded like what I would imagine George to sound like), I found out that the account wasn't active because of some administrative thing, and it might be another week. Whoopey whoopey whoopey! When my MCI DSL didn't work, they ran through a bunch of tests, and when that didn't work, they sent a guy out the next day and he fixed it. AT&T said that someone might call me in a week. I'm reserving judgement, but it doesn't look like a good start. You'd think that you would have more choices nowdays for internet access.