Background:

I've had ATT DSL 6Mb/512k since 2007 (formerly Bellsouth) in two different houses, including the current one.  In the first house, it would disconnect for about an hour or more anytime it rained - in Florida.  I ran a fresh CAT3 cable from the outside box directly to a surface mount RJ11 box inside, above ground level, connected directly to the Westell DSL modem using a new phone line (tested a few) - no other equipment - with no improvement.  Two years after that we moved and took the service with us.  It went down every other day at about 3:30pm and also 11am on weekends - but it was consistent and I could work around the limitations.  It was reliable in the evenings, which is when I was using it most anyway.

Catalyst for change:

We recently got heavy into photography and sending images to Flickr and various printing companies took a long time at roughly 50KB/s up, and using the Internet simultaneously was out of the question as the upstream was easily saturated.  So when I heard about the U-Verse 12Mb/1.5Mb special for 12 months, I signed up immediately (4/19/12).

Ordering:

I placed my order, quickly received confirmations and a shipment notice, and had a tracking number for 2Wire 3600HGV self-install kit scheduled for 4/23/12 delivery and activation (after 8pm).  Excellent.

Tech-check:

On my activation date (4/23) I received a call from a U-Verse tech with an ETA.  He was on time, a second truck in tow, and they were gone in less than 20 minutes.  He did warn me that my DSL would be down from that point, so I had no Internet starting at 11am on my day off.  I had expected this, so no problem.

Delivery/Install:

I received my gateway via UPS at roughly 6:30pm and spent the next hour mounting it in its new home - replacing the Westell DSL modem, Netgear 5 port 10/100 switch and 3Com OfficeConnect A/B/G AP.  I was happy with the cleaner look, with just the one piece of equipment now.  I avoided connecting it to the phone jack or power.

Activation:

I left the house and returned home at almost 9pm.  I connected the phone jack and then the power.  It came to life and lights went active.  I sat down at my PC (wired ethernet to GW) and entered the activation URL.  Somewhere in the middle of the process, the 'Continue' button at the bottom of the form stopped continuing, and instead would scroll back up to the top of the page.  I tried flushing browser cache, flushing DNS cache, changing browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE9), using Compatibility Mode (IE), changing computers and every other trick I could conceive as my vision grew red and my fangs extended.  I found that after anywhere from 20 to 50 slow clicks, it would eventually go through.  This made the activation process extremely tedious.  But it worked.  I was online!  I configured my preferred DHCP range and period, and changed my SSID then disabled its availability broadcast - nothing more.

Afterwards:

I noticed the occasional disconnect over the next 3 days, but it wasn't unlike my previous DSL.  Then I looked closer at the logs and diagnostics and realized just how bad it really was.  In a 24hr period in my first week of service, I was having over 70 signal loss failures, over 30 loss of margin failures, and my upstream had crept down from ~920K to ~500K (as reported by the GW). Though when it worked, the download speeds were brilliant (1.4MB/s).

First support call:

On the Friday after my Monday activation, I got fed up with it.  I just got home and went straight to the computer to plan a weekend trip across the state.  U-Verse down.  U-Verse up.  U-Verse down.down.down.down.  After nearly an hour it didn't reconnect on its own.  I power-cycled the GW to no avail.  Time to call and get the 'ol script thrown at me.  25 minutes of the same one song on endless repeat (that's how you incite riots, btw) I get someone on the line.  Despite having entered my telephone service # and account # on my tiny Blackberry keypad, I had to give it again verbally.  Have you rebooted your computer, rebooted the GW, etc etc.  Yes, yes, yes, yes - can we PLEASE move on to more sophisticated troubleshooting.  I have many wired PCs (Windows and Linux), 2 wireless laptops, 2 DirecTV DVRs, a Panasonic BluRay player and multiple portable devices - all experiencing the same issue with the GW logfile to prove it, down to the exact second.  I'm told they will communicate with Level 2 support and run some line tests.  I describe the flashing pattern of the Broadband light.  20 minutes later there is no change.  I'm told I will be routed to Level 2 where they will attempt to help me further and schedule a tech if necessary.  Level 2 answers and asks me how I got that line.  I explain that I was transferred from U-Verse Internet support.  I have to provide my tel service # and account # again.  He asks what we have tried so far and I fill him in.  He has me power-cycle the GW again and follows up with more line tests while I describe the pattern of the flashing light again.  He can almost see it coming through but no dice.  Now he has me reset it to factory defaults, ugh.  Glad I didn't spend much time customizing.  More tests and still no dice.  We schedule a tech for the following day (Saturday).

First tech visit:

Service comes back on its own by morning, still experiencing issues though.  My appointment is scheduled for the 4pm-8pm window, but I received a call at 10:30am that there was a tech in the area and he could be there in around 30 minutes.  Excellent.  He had a quick snoop around my GW then went outside to the box.  He found an old-style filter in use there and bypassed it, wiring the street hookup directly to my in-house pair with gel splices.  His outside readings mirrored my inside GW readings (~13000 down, ~1500 down).  Wow, what a difference in that upstream!  I thanked the tech, shook his hand, and he was on his way - a job well done.  Why hadn't any other tech since 2009 detected that before?  Dunno.

Disappointment:

Later in the evening I went back and looked at the GW logs.  Back down to ~500 upstream.  I notice it goes as high as ~900, then fails and reconnects at ~800, ~700, ~500 and occasionally as low as ~320-380 before starting the cycle over again.  Downstream is generally high, above 11000 and often stays at 13200.  And I'm right back to where I started from.  Sometimes it will stay up for 2 or 3 hours, sometimes it will fail-loop for 5 minutes every 30 minuntes.  Because it was a wet and rainy weekend, and my experience with that in the past, I wanted to wait for a dry day before calling it a massive fail.  Well now I'm calling it.  It appears the higher demands of a faster connection has magnified the trouble with my connection to the DSLAM.

Observation:

Anyone else notice that most of these issues (at least, as reported here) seem to exist outside the home, generally beyond the immediate street-level connection, and further up AT&T's connection chain?  Is their infrastructure so fragile or outdated that nothing works 100% from the get-go?  It seems like every case I read about xDSL connection issues is eventually traced up the stream somewhere the user/customer cannot fix or troubleshoot, yet the support system focuses on finding blame with the home wiring and/or equipment.  How many issues could be solved by simply sending a meticulous tech with a helper to each neighborhood and going through the company-owned equipment from top to bottom before certifying its condition.  Make sure all pairs are properly terminated.  Make sure all terminals are properly labeled.  Make sure there is waterproofing.  Etc etc.  Spot-check throughput back to a couple homes.  Maybe I'm crazy.