Paul Boutin

Imagine if you could strip your local phone company’s high-speed network of its polite, but powerless, customer service layer (”You’ll have to talk to someone in mumblemumble, please hold”), and replace them with hands-on network engineers immediately reachable should your connection stop working. Same wires, same price, but much better service.

That’s the formula for Raw Bandwidth, my DSL provider since early 2001.

A couple of serious Linux hackers recommended the company to me after I’d suffered a week-long outage from SBC PacBell. A belligerent SBC technician had refused to escalate my problem report at his end (I could see their servers dropping packets) unless I reinstalled all my computers, and had hung up on me. Mike at Raw Bandwidth took my frazzled phone call after midnight and sighed, “Oh yeah, they’ve been having problems with a Redback [router] in your neighborhood.”

Mike’s had my business ever since, and continues to handle both newbie and nerdy questions quickly and knowledgeably. No lost hours on the phone, no days of DNS downtime no one will investigate. Network hiccups have been fewer, too.

Raw Bandwidth serves as both billing agent and first point of contact for all DSL issues, even for disputing a bogus DSL fee SBC added to my phone bill. That felt like a blow-off from the at first, but I’m now realizing SBC PacBell just wants the same thing I do: That I never have to call them again.

Check it out at rawbandwidth.com.

UPDATE: A few months ago, Mike pointed out that SBC PacBell has still been charging me for DSL service for two years since discontinuing the service. Several phone calls and letters since have resulted in excuses (literally, “the check must be in the mail,”) but no refund of the $500 they slammed me. I don’t recommend SBC even for local phone service.