[widebody911]

I keep having problems with my PacBell/SBC/AT&T (whatever the fsck they're called this week) DSL line. I call support, and get some Indian guy/gall named "Steve" or "Cindy" who perpetually apologizes for my problem, but has no real resources to fix it other than to read from a script "Is the power on?" "Can you see your windows XP?" <--- yes, they really did ask that!

They do the 'line test' song and dance, and of course they don't find a problem.

What's the magic word to get this escalated to someone who can actually fix it?

I have two basic problems (which I can't seem to communicate to the Indians)

* Degradation of bandwidth over time: The modem's "DSL" light is on, but my bandwidth steadily decreaes over time to zero. Some times it comes back on it's own, but 95% of the time I have to power-cycle the modem.

* Spontaneous disconnects: the connection spontaneously drops - and the "DSL" light goes out - two or three times a day. What's interesting about that is the times of day are pretty consistent - around 6:30am, 3:30pm and 9:00pm I was tracking it for a while, and the day-to-day disconnects would be within minutes of each other. I know it's doing it at other times of the day, but I'm usually not home to witness it. I know that back in the day, some ISPs would cycle entire banks of modems to clear dead connections and kick off people who were camping - I wonder if this is what they're doing.

I've done some shopping for an alternate provider, but the only options are ComCast (cable) and SureWest (fiber). Comcast is almost $60 a month for just internet - I don't want 20000 cable channels - I don't watch TV! SureWest says they don't have service in my area, although I watched them string the fiber along the poles on the side of my house, and I see their service vans in my neightborhood from time to time. I guess if service isn't available in my area, they wouldn't mine me cutting through that nice trunk of cable with some bolt cutters - they're not using it anyway, right?