I work for an ISP that competes with Bell Atlantic in offering DSL here. Both use the same lines and equipment, but Bell's service is vastly inferior. Almost once a day I take a call from a dissatisfied customer asking how much it would cost to switch to our service.
Bell's reliability is terrible, at least in Pittsburgh. Not only do their customer complains of frequent service interruptions caused by issues with Bell's routing (which only affect their customers), the have frequent connectivity problems (which affect all DSL customers using Bell Atlantic phone lines). We've had new customers sign up for our DSL, and wait
weeks for Bell to straighten out all the problems with their phone line (on top of the normal set up time).
The modems that are compatible with their service are garbage. Current offerings range from $125 (internal) to $225 (external, ethernet). The $225 model is of [almost] acceptable quality, but still often needs to be power cycled to get it to work again. The internal one is not worth $40, IMO. After installing it, customers have complained of countless conflicts, crashes, and overall system instability. I have no hard stats on it, but it seems like the average user of that one needs to reboot his machine at least once or twice a day to regain connectivity.
My advice? Find a local or regional ISP that offers DSL, and ask if they have any service that does
not use Bell Atlantic's phone network. Currently, my company offers another competing service that uses Northpoint (
http://www.northpoint.net), and the customers subscribing to it so far seem much happier. Due to the fact that Bell does not permit line-sharing, a new phone line needs to be run to the house, raising set up fees and adding $5/mo to the monthly cost. The modem is also much more expensive ($275 for the cheapest modem, but so far none of our customers has had to send return a defective one), but IMO it's worth it. Current charges for that are in the neighborhood of $250/setup, $275/modem, and $45-$55 for the slowest (784kbs SDSL).
If you can't find a DSL offering that does not use Bell's lines, at least go with a local ISP. You're still at the mercy of the phone company (read: possibly frequent outtages), but at least you've elminated one area where you're likely to find problems.
The problems with Bell Atlantic might be specific only to the Pittsburgh area, but I wouldn't gamble on it. I've had the misfortune to deal with Bell in a few different regions (for other services), and my experience has been that Bell's service, reliability, and
billing department is positively pathetic no matter where you are.
My $.02. If you've got any questions I can answer, feel free to email me. I can give you some ballpark prices, based on what Bell and other ISP's charge here, but you'll need to contact someone in VA to be sure.