On Friday I was excited to be able to finally turn on my new Internet service. I had signed up for AT&T’s new service Dryloop. It is the stand alone service provided when you do not wish to purchase their service package provided by U-verse. The price was way better than what I was paying for Time Warner Cable and the avail bile speed was much better. I had a friend who used U-verse who spoke very highly of it and another who used the Dryloop and also spoke very well of the service provider itself. His only complaint was that he could not get through to them to find out what was going on with his bill, as he had yet to receive one after three months. At the time I didn’t figure that it was a big deal to not get billed. What I didn’t hear was the part about having difficulty reaching a customer service rep.

I plugged in the modem, following their very clear and concise instructions. I had no difficulties what so ever setting the system up. I gleefully yanked the Time Warner Cable apparatus out of the wall and commenced with my Internet blazing at top speed. After about an hour of trolling the Internet it suddenly crapped out on me. *POOF* Gone in a flash. Grumbling I did what I automatically do when there is a computer problem. Shut up and reboot. Still no Internet. Next reboot would be the modem itself. I grabbed a hold of it to unplug the power on the back and received a little burn for my efforts. The modem was so hot that it left red marks on my hand and fingers, nothing serious, or needing medical attention mind you, but not what you want from your electronics.

Sure enough after I unplugged the modem and let it cool down I had Internet again, for about a half an hour prior to beginning to overheat again. I sighed, looked over at the tangle of Time Warner Cable equipment lying haphazardly on the floor, and decided I didn’t want to plug the garbage back in. It was the weekend so I gave up having steady Internet for the weekend and decided to call Tech Support on Monday to fix the problem.

Enter Monday, as soon as I got home from work I was on the phone with AT&T. First off there automated voice prompt was frustrating to say the least. It asks open ended questions such as: