The problem is ALWAYS TDS! I did get a fourth account, this time with Yahoo, and I can send mail from TDS to Yahoo. Another example of the lousy service from an ISP when they know they don't have any competition so they don't care what the customer thinks of them: I got my monthly email that my TDS bill was available on line and ready for payment. My payment is taken automatically from my bank so I really don't need to do anything when this alert is sent. I do look at the itemized bill that is for my home phone, my DISH and my DSL service. From the time I moved here and established phone service with TDS, I specifically did not take long distance service. Almost all my LOCAL friends are considered long distance from my TDS home phone, so I use an MCI pre-paid long distance card that costs less than 3 cents a minute. There should NEVER be a long distance fee charged to me by TDS. So--this month I have a $5 and change fee listed as long distance. I immediately called customer service and eventually reached a rep who found the problem. The story I was told was that once in a while a lot of customers who don't have long distance service DO get charged. They said that since I had called to complain they would apply a credit against my next month bill. Duh----Apparently, even though TDS knows they have said "glitch" that charges unnecessary long distance fees, they don't bother to audit their records and automatically fix the problem. My invalid fee will be addressed only because I caught the "error" ?????!!!!!! I wonder how many unsuspecting customers just pay the fee without noticing it. I have automatic withdrawal for their fees and if I trusted TDS I would not have taken the time to log on to my account and find my itemized bill! My cell phone reception, first with AT&T and now with Verizon, often drops calls at my house so I feel I have to have a land line with TDS for security reasons. Also, their DSL is the only way I can get high speed internet except for maybe Hughes Net, which I am told is not a good company either. Nancy

I've had them for just 10 days now. It went out at 10AM this morning. I was on 'hold' with the customer service (repair) number for one hour and gave up...could take the recording and LOUD, RUDE music no longer. Called the # for having service installed and got an answer after 15 minutes. I told her I wanted to know about getting it taken out due to them not having customer service 24/7. Waiting on hold for one hour with no answer is just NOT customer service 24/7!...IMHO. What does anyone else think? She handed me off to the 'contract' dept. They said I would be liable for the $300 of equipment, and 12 months at $49.95. I told them if I billed them for my time spent on hold at $15 or $20 an hour that they would 'owe' me. They said they would have someone from their repair dept call me in about 2 hours. Repair called, (about 2 hours later) and said it was an issue here at my house, and will get it scheduled for a repairman to call me to schedule an on site repair call. SHEESH! It will probably be 2 days (or more) b4 I have a repairman out here to get it looked at. Repair calls are only 'free' for the first 90 days...after that it is $75 per visit!!! In the meantime the phone line is clear, and I'm just happy I kept dial-up as a back-up. With Wild Blue's track record, I doubt if I will ever be secure in canceling my dial-UP. Them claiming to have customer service 24/7 I feel is a lie. I don't consider waiting on hold for one hour, and still NO answer is any kind of customer service at all. What do you think a judge would say? I have had service for 10 days, and this is the 3rd major outage...one was a mass outage of theirs, one was a storm and I had to wait until the sky was blue (clear)...SHEESH! And now this one. That does not take into account all the times I have just lost the signal for no reason, and have had to recycle the modem...10-20 minutes. Right now I am not a happy customer at all, and I would advise no one to sign any contract with them. They really need to get their act together. They did say they have 100 new employees in training for the repair phones, and that they have been working overtime. That sure doesn't help me though at the moment...faced with crappy service I must pay for for a year. Grandms, I found out I am on WB1. I'm really hoping they can get me up and running as good as you are. I'm just feeling pretty pessimistic at this time, after all the hold and runaround time on this...and still looking at a 2 day outage, at the least. "They will give me credit for the outage...big dang deal is all I have to say to that. Sue

Thanks, I really depend on the excellent help I get here, it is appreciated. That said, I hope someone else using AT&T for an ISP and is happy pitches in. I am keeping for now to retain my email address, one I've used for at least 15+ years. Unfortunately, it appears AT&T is working on getting out of the ISP business (what, just wireless now?). They shut down the brand Worldnet, yet my 2.0 versions of Thunderbird address the "postoffice" and "mailhost" with "worldnet" as part of the address. But, it isn't working on my Thunderbird 3.0 version. I will try to figure something out tonight. My quick look last night at the AT&T help on the web said "pop and smtp with att.jahoo.com" was the magic. But that may be only if you use their DSL... not sure, seems strange. I have DSL form my local phone company, and it offers all the services Worldnet used to offer, I just am reluctant to change may address and lose contact with many I don't communicate with often... but AT&T is pushing me that way. I have all my personal email on Thunderbird, I use Outlook for business email. I suppose I can move the business email on to Thunderbird too (not as versatile as Outlook) but have not checked on how that is done. It appears one can't have two instances of Thunderbird on one computer. Maybe one can have one Thunderbird with multiple "accounts". I know Outlook provides for multiple accounts in one instance of Outlook, but I don't recall ever seeing anything like that in Thunderbird. Outlook is clearly the "industrial strength" email client... maybe Outlook Express has some of the same capabilities... I have never used it.

Thanks, I still notice some break-up (gaps) but not all the time. As for Netflix and speed, I started my Netflix trial on my computer (not HDTV - that is yet to arrive) and a 1.5 mb DSL (this DSL consistently tested at 1.5 +/- 10%). I had Netflex video quality set to "automatic" and can say I saw what was clearly better HD than SDTV, may have something to do with my computer display too. I also had some break-up so I decided to upgrade to 3 mb but while talking with the ISP representative they came up with a complete rework of my telecom plan, adding many features including unlimited LD and voice mail with 8 mb for less that the cost of upgrading to 3 mb - go figure, i did and took the package. On the side, one reason I kept my local telephone service and without LD is I am retired from AT&T and I get reimbursed for my LD on AT&T. For these reasons and a general dislike for the beating I've taken over the years from cable for cost of TV I didn't want to give cable any more business. That could change, but if the teleco had fiber to the home that would be considered. But I may also decide to buy Satellite from the Telco - a triple pay package. Anyway, I still get some break-up and Netflix should downgrade my quality not let interrupts happen... or can't Netflix "see" when a DSL stream has a short break in it..if that is what happens. My ISP teck says my signal tests constant and a bit over 8 mb. I'll try giving Netflix some time to build a bigger (?) buffer on my computer. I am testing on W8, so the laptop is fairly powerful with 8 GB of "RAM"... I'll have to check that, that's what I recall.