PacBell to Offer Consumers a Do-It-Yourself DSL Installation Kit
Pacific Bell this week will begin offering customers a self-install kit for its high-speed Internet access service, a move the phone company hopes will significantly reduce installation delays and logistics headaches for consumers who order the company’s digital subscriber line, or DSL, service.
Under current procedures, the phone company must make at least one trip to a customer’s home to check the condition of the lines, install the equipment and set up the DSL service on the customer’s computer.
DSL technology lets customers connect to the Internet using their existing copper phone line without interrupting usage of household phones. Download speeds vary by the customer’s location, but the technology can provide download speeds as much as 200 times faster than a dial-up modem handling 28.8 kilobits of data per second.
About 1,000 PacBell DSL customers have tried the self-installation kits over the last few months, according to Shawn Dainas, a PacBell spokesman. PacBell, a subsidiary of SBC Communications, has the majority of the more than 200,000 DSL subscribers reported by SBC at the end of March.
Earlier this year, PacBell customers complained loudly about long waits for DSL installation and days-long e-mail outages and other service woes. PacBell admits to struggling to meet demand for DSL, but Dainas says installation appointments are running 10 to 20 days from the order date.
Still, the company is eager for customers to use the self-install kit, which will reduce the workload for PacBell’s technicians and allow it to activate thousands of DSL lines a week.
“This is going to make it faster, easier and more convenient, so [DSL customers] don’t have to worry about when you’ll be home [for an installation appointment],” Dainas said. “We expect that by the end of the year about half of our DSL customers will be using the self-install kit.”
The free kit includes six phone-line filters, a DSL modem, an instruction manual and CD-ROMs containing software for the modem and Internet service. PacBell also will provide a network interface card for consumers who don’t have one in their computer.
The filters are easily installed between a wall jack and each phone or fax machine hooked up to the phone line that will carry the DSL signal. They screen out the digital signal so it will not interfere with the analog signals of phones and faxes.
On a typical installation, a phone technician adds a “splitter” to the phone line to separate the analog and digital signals. Filters do away with the need for splitters (and the need for an on-site technician), but requires the installation of a filtering device for each phone or fax machine connected to the DSL line.
PacBell says most customers should be able to complete the DSL installation within an hour. The kits are available for use with computers running Windows 95 or 98. Kits are in development for use with computers running Windows 2000, Windows NT, Macintosh, Linux or Unix software, according to PacBell.
