Those of you who were following Steve Godun's apallingly Kafkaesque saga of trying to get Bell Atlantic to sell him a high-speed ADSL Internet connection to use with his Mac clone probably consider the story closed-- after all, Steve sure does. And it ended badly, following an apparent victory when BA posted information on its web site indicating that Mac support for its ADSL service would be available in mid-February. Unfortunately, mid-February came and went, and not only was Steve still unable to purchase the service, but he was also suddenly unable to get any of the BA reps with which he'd spoken to return his calls. Steve called it quits, and is looking for another DSL provider-- while he also switches his local phone service, not wanting anything more to do with Bell Atlantic. And, frankly, we can't blame him, because they treated him like a leper carrying an explosive device.

But one AtAT viewer (who shall remain anonymous) wrote in to say that Mac users should not give up on Bell Atlantic just yet. He claims to have a friend who is one of the primary Mac people on BA's staff-- and if you're surprised to hear that BA even has any Mac people, you're not alone. Our correspondent goes on to claim that several Mac folks within BA's ranks are "busting butt" to get widespread Mac support up and running, including finishing up the software they plan to use which will consistently report a correct Ethernet hardware address on Macs not connected to another network device. Reportedly, Steve Godun's final disappointed and bitter rant "really hurt a lot of BA people who really do care and like Macs" but who are fighting the classic bureaucracy of their company. We were told that anyone who's been following the whole Bell Atlantic ADSL story should just wait two weeks to see what happens.

We at AtAT feel that Bell Atlantic was 100% in the wrong in their treatment of a customer, but it concerns us that there really are Mac people in the BA trenches-- not the people that mistreated Godun-- who are trying hard to change things from within. For us, it's all sort of a moot point, since we're not in the market for an ADSL connection anyway, but we feel that we had to pass on our viewer's information: just because a corporation as a whole might show no concern, and the minions working the phones might not know how to treat a customer, that doesn't mean that there aren't people there who care about the Mac platform and who are working hard to get things done right. Our personal take on the whole thing is that we'd wait for the two weeks and see what happens; if there's no change, well, there's always Dale Sorensen's list of Mac-friendly DSL providers.