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It’s official.

That is, it’s official if you live in the Bay Area (maybe nationwide?) and use Comcast cable for your internet service.

Let me review.

In December, I grew tired of paying about $45 per month to Comcast for internet access at home.  After all, $540 per year is a lot of money for something that I use on occasion while having internet access all day at work and via WiFi hot spots. 

I had convinced myself, partially due to the successful “Slowsky” advertisements, that I needed 6 or 12 Mbps downloads with “speedboost.”  I was not sure that I could live without it. More speed is better, right? Or were the Slowskys onto something…

After discussing with friends and colleagues, after many nights in hotels using DSL service, and after reading about AT&T’s “cable customer special,” I decided to take the plunge.  Basically, if I signed up for AT&T’s basic DSL rate as a Comcast customer, my monthly internet access charge would be $10 per month for up to 756 Kbps.

The installation was easy. The performance? Not too bad. My cable internet used to give about 3 Mbps of download performance while my DSL performance is about 512 Kbps.  On the surface, that seems substantial, however, in reality, it is barely perceptible. Website pages load slightly slower, music downloads are much slower (but I schedule them for other times of the day), and streaming videos glitch on occasion.  However, for general internet browsing, blogging, and email - basic DSL is fine.

Why has AT&T won? Today AT&T announced an agreement with Starbuck’s Coffee to offer WiFi service at all Starbuck’s locations replacing TMobile. On the surface this seems like a bit of a yawn, but AT&T is offering FREE WiFi service to all AT&T DSL customers!

That means for $10 per month, I have reasonable DSL service at home and WiFi access at all Starbuck’s Coffee shops!

This DSL access costs $120 per year, but more importantly, it saves me $420 per year! Not too bad.  This may be the best deal on the internet.  It may also be available for all AT&T customers nationwide.

I believe AT&T is required to maintain the $10 per month DSL internet access service through 2009. Then, the Basic DSL service will go from $10 per month to $14.95 per month. Still very affordable.

Even if I upgrade to AT&T’s Express DSL ($19.95, 1.5 Mbps) or Pro DSL ($24.95, 3 Mbps), I’ll still be saving $300 or $240 per year, respectively, and gaining free WiFi at all Starbuck’s locations.  I doubt if those speed levels are perceptible different in everyday use.

Maybe the Slowskys are right?