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Changing my ISP

I now have AT&T Uverse for my ISP. TV is Direct TV.

I was thinking about switching to EarthLink for my ISP provider since I am less than thrilled with AT&T.
The problems I have encountered seem to be outside of the house at various times of the day. Very slow loading times, very slow connecting to other sites. Any sites, makes no difference. I tried running SpeedTest and it took about 1 minute to connect, in order to begin the test. At other times it performs well.
Same thing happens sometimes when connecting to Google or other popular sites.

My worry is this:

At&T is fiber up to the box on the street, then copper to my house.
When I do a trace route or a Ping Plot, I see the routes going through some
SBC (Southwestern Bell) sites and I think that might be where the delay is.

I don't know what routing EarthLink uses but I suspect that eventually they will run over the same SBC wire/routers, that is also used by AT&T.

So, if the delay problems are in the SBC circuits, would switching to EarthLink be an improvement or would I be inheriting the same problems ?

I don't want to go through the hassle if there is no improvement.

thanks
 
People complain about all the internet providers at one time or another, so switching may, or may not, help. For the most part, speed or latency issues are a signal problem (signal to noise ratio, etc.). You don't mention what speed you are paying for, or what you're getting, or what kind of latencies you are seeing in ping plotter. If you're paying for high speed, and pages are loading slowly, there's a problem. Have you done a continuous ping, to check for packet loss, when things are loading slowly? Have you called tech support? When I have to call an ISP, if I get someone who is not helpful, I will call back until I get someone who is.
 
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