Most Consumer ISPs are Still Dreadful 2017 Edition

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monkeymagick

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Good news for everyone with terrible internet service, you're not alone in thinking it! Thanks to DSL Reports for this, according to Consumer Reports' latest telecom survey, most consumers have a less-than-pleasant feeling towards their own service providers.

The ratings are based on responses of more than 210,000 Consumer Reports subscribers rating 32 internet service providers. Of course, Comcast and Spectrum rank towards the bottom, earning low scores in value and customer service. Topping the list are Google Fiber catering to a smaller amount of markets, Armstrong and Consolidated Communications both operating in several states.

I guess we can tell, Kevin the service guy, to hurry up since we can't wait any longer between the hours of 7am-9pm to run the coax back into the house.

"Though consumer dissatisfaction with their cable companies has been simmering for quite some time, it's now starting to boil over in terms of actual cord-cutting from traditional pay TV providers," said Jim Willcox, Senior Electronics Editor at Consumer Reports. "The good news is that there are now more alternatives, so it's possible for consumers to get the shows and movies they want, often at a lower price than a traditional pay TV plan."
 
We recently dumped Comcast and switched to sonic.net. Symmetrical gigabit for $40 a month ($52.91 a month after all the taxes and local city "fees"). And they don't treat me like crap like Comcast did. This is what happens when there is actually some competition.
 
Hours is what I hate the most. "We'll come to install the equipment between 6 am and 10 pm". Why can't they setup a smaller time gap? Or let me setup the shit myself. You already give me the equipment and I already connected it all up. I don't need/want to spend $100 install fee, for nothing more than the guy comes in, says it looks good. Then calls someone else to let my equipment connect up.
 
krotch said:
Hours is what I hate the most. "We'll come to install the equipment between 6 am and 10 pm". Why can't they setup a smaller time gap? Or let me setup the shit myself. You already give me the equipment and I already connected it all up. I don't need/want to spend $100 install fee, for nothing more than the guy comes in, says it looks good. Then calls someone else to let my equipment connect up.
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I've never been lucky enough to be able to have a tech come out and say "everything's good to go". When I lived in an apartment the tech had to mess with stuff in the main box to get things working in my apartment. Then when I moved out of there and rented a mobile home I felt sorry for the techs because it was such a pain in the ass to do anything. The box was on another lot and some jackass before me self installed a satellite dish and really messed up running wires so that was fun. The first install out here took over two hours and multiple techs due to the issues and that was just to get a modem and cable box hooked up. Trying to get the phone working (cell signal was pretty bad out by my for the first year I lived here so I needed a landline) was a whole different ball of crap.
 
What ISPs don't seem to understand is that they are not just a business. They are critical national economic infrastructure. When they intentionally give terrible service to their customers they're not just hurting their customers. They're hurting the national economy. I understand that the most important thing for the ISPs is to maximize their profit. But at some point, someone in there has to have a minimum of vision and see that there is more profit if you have world-economic-superpower customers instead of digital-third-world customers. Can every single ISP fill up its board with people who have no trace of of national pride or interest in the long-term of the company?
 
I always find these surveys to be pointless as people say on them and how much they really care don't mean a whole lot. When given the choice over cheap and quality, the average person goes cheap every time.

krotch said:
Hours is what I hate the most. "We'll come to install the equipment between 6 am and 10 pm". Why can't they setup a smaller time gap? Or let me setup the shit myself. You already give me the equipment and I already connected it all up. I don't need/want to spend $100 install fee, for nothing more than the guy comes in, says it looks good. Then calls someone else to let my equipment connect up.
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Depends on who you are talking about and what type of service. Some types of install might take 1 hour, others might take 5 hours. So they can't really tell you for sure as they don't know how long every install will take. As for a self setup. Again depends on the type of service. Although the biggest reason is that 99% of the people out there are not able to do stuff like that correctly and you still end up going on site and now you have to undo what they did and probably spend longer fixing it than had you just sent out somebody in the first place. But some services can be setup by the customer or at leas they can be given the option with a higher fee for fixing their troubles. I forgot was it was that I was going to have done once. Since I declined to have them do the free install and to do it myself, had I needed to call them out later to come install it after all due to me screwing it up and now getting it working correctly it would have been a $50 - $75 charge. Which I thought was reasonable.
 
Exavior said:
I always find these surveys to be pointless as people say on them and how much they really care don't mean a whole lot. When given the choice over cheap and quality, the average person goes cheap every time.

snip
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What is average, 50% ?

Neither cheap or quality can be chosen when buying current internet service.
 
For almost 20 years, no matter who owned and operates our local ISP (it changes hands every couple of years)... they have all pushed the exact same thing... a $100 package, with a ton of crap nobody wants, or speeds at a literal fraction of what is available Nationally. The advertisement and descriptions they use play all the crap up as if it were some how focused on 'your needs' and is to your benefit as to why it's like that. I get ads from Spectrum 3 days a week, all offering the same price-point for the same crap every single time.

I just want faster internet without all the gateways and lag I get when doing something as simple as looking at a news page on the net. I don't want my morning 'Sinfest' comic to take 120 seconds to load in the morning (and yet a shit ton of ads will load no problem), which is exactly what happens to pretty much every page I look at, and every task I attempt. It can take as many as half a dozen tries just to actually access a site because the internet simply doesn't respond, and I'm so heavily throttled that I can't even access the internet to update Netflix or Amazon on my TV.. it's complete bullshit.
 
Exavior said:
Depends on who you are talking about and what type of service. Some types of install might take 1 hour, others might take 5 hours. So they can't really tell you for sure as they don't know how long every install will take. As for a self setup. Again depends on the type of service. Although the biggest reason is that 99% of the people out there are not able to do stuff like that correctly and you still end up going on site and now you have to undo what they did and probably spend longer fixing it than had you just sent out somebody in the first place. But some services can be setup by the customer or at leas they can be given the option with a higher fee for fixing their troubles. I forgot was it was that I was going to have done once. Since I declined to have them do the free install and to do it myself, had I needed to call them out later to come install it after all due to me screwing it up and now getting it working correctly it would have been a $50 - $75 charge. Which I thought was reasonable.
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Then you work around it and simply give me a phone call instead of having me wait around for hours and they might not even show up. I can tell my boss, that I may need to leave for install of Blah blah blah. They can ring me up 1 hour before they come over. I can make my way home to meet them. Good customer service isn't hard, regardless of what kind of install they'll do.

I have also had installs where I did do the install. They gave me the box, I went home, hooked it up, and it started working. Bam! $100 install, cause they turned on the service from their computer. I got charge $100 for a fios install, where they didn't do anything. I hooked it all up. I'm fine for paying an install fee, as long as they are actually doing some installs. Not just plugging up the equipment. I can do that shit. I mean making cables, checking to make sure the cabling that comes into the house is good, etc.

Whenever I actually have some like that done, it's been free. The guy came in, replaced the old coax panel with a new one. Custom made some coax cable and ran it right to where I wanted. Then used some cable clips that he had to hammer into the wall to secure the cable. That was free from T-Mobile. Hell, even the modem/wireless router unit was free.
 
True Story:

They are building a new house in the empty lot next door. (Duke) Contractors decided to upgrade all the telephone/electrical poles on our street. They dug the hole in my backyard where my pole was, severing my cable line, left the severed line laying in my yard, replaced the pole, filled in the hole and left. I came home to no internet and 18' of cable laying in my back yard they had yanked up and tossed. This was on Friday.

I called Spectrum, told them what had happened. The 'rep' on the phone kept telling me she couldn't help me until I helped her run through a simple checklist of troubleshooting issues. She then spends an hour demanding I power things on and off, like modem, router, computer... W.... T.... F.... the cable is laying in my yard.. I think I know what the problem is.. but she's not listening. She's got a Checklist in India and damn if she's not going to follow it. I demand a Supervisor. I've been on the phone for over an hour now. 'Supervisor' comes on and starts it all over again. I completely snap. he FINALLY shuts up and actually LISTENS to what I'm telling him. They schedule a repair call for Monday morning, no I don't need to be there, they can take care of it. Fine.. I work Sunday thru Thursday.. Monday I come home... cable is still laying in yard and I nothing was fixed/repaired. I never got a call from the tech "we're on the way" like they supposed to or anything. Nobody left a message about problems.

I call and ask for a service rep, he says I needed to be home so they could check inside and make certain the issue isn't actually with the Router, Modem, my computer.. etc...

I had some kind of out of body experience with that one.. I just snapped. I was so mad I could have soaked a nerf bat in vegetable oil and just started beating the hell out of every living thing on 2 legs @ that point.

Finally made my point clear on what was the issue, and they guy is REALLY snarky.. because there is no way he could possible have known any of that, as the trouble repair tickets have a 25 character limit for notes, and none of that was included. Then demands I have to be home for the repair to be completed. If I'm not home, they will leave.

After another aneurysm I managed to speak to a supervisor.. got authorization to do the repair without me being home..... *pant*

Next day I get home... there are a couple kids in my yard playing with the 70' bright orange cable running from the pole to my house. Its not buried because they need that 'ditch-witch' thing to insert it into the ground without tearing the crap out of my lawn.. fine.. chase off the kids and finish my day. it rained that night... a LOT. I get home from work the NEXT day, and the tires from their equipment have ripped my freshly seeded lawn from last winter all to shit... and there is a 2 foot wide ditch mark where they just backed in a back-hoe and tore up the yard instead of using the ditch-witch because the Hoe was faster....

FML... Think I'm going to see about getting the AT&T (U-Verse?) package for the 1k for $80 a month.. I've had enough
 
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krotch said:
Then you work around it and simply give me a phone call instead of having me wait around for hours and they might not even show up. I can tell my boss, that I may need to leave for install of Blah blah blah. They can ring me up 1 hour before they come over. I can make my way home to meet them. Good customer service isn't hard, regardless of what kind of install they'll do.

I have also had installs where I did do the install. They gave me the box, I went home, hooked it up, and it started working. Bam! $100 install, cause they turned on the service from their computer. I got charge $100 for a fios install, where they didn't do anything. I hooked it all up. I'm fine for paying an install fee, as long as they are actually doing some installs. Not just plugging up the equipment. I can do that shit. I mean making cables, checking to make sure the cabling that comes into the house is good, etc.

Whenever I actually have some like that done, it's been free. The guy came in, replaced the old coax panel with a new one. Custom made some coax cable and ran it right to where I wanted. Then used some cable clips that he had to hammer into the wall to secure the cable. That was free from T-Mobile. Hell, even the modem/wireless router unit was free.
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I just had FiOS installed at my mom's house and the did a sloppy job. At least they waived the install fee.
 
Luckily, i have yet to experience anything that terrible. They just never show up to fix issues or fail to fix issues.

I don't think it is possible for these companies to improve while there is no hope for competition. The current isps are too big to care. They overtly buy off politicians, and are seemingly untouchable. Local loop unbundling and breaking the content creation and delivery networks up may help.
 
Comcast has been fine for me in terms of being an ISP. I've had only a few hours of downtime over the course of a decade and speeds keep increasing. I'm perfectly happy with their service.
Where Comcast fails is on the back end: billing and support.
 
James Robinson said:
True Story:

They are building a new house in the empty lot next door. (Duke) Contractors decided to upgrade all the telephone/electrical poles on our street. They dug the hole in my backyard where my pole was, severing my cable line, left the severed line laying in my yard, replaced the pole, filled in the hole and left. I came home to no internet and 18' of cable laying in my back yard they had yanked up and tossed. This was on Friday.

I called Spectrum, told them what had happened. The 'rep' on the phone kept telling me she couldn't help me until I helped her run through a simple checklist of troubleshooting issues. She then spends an hour demanding I power things on and off, like modem, router, computer... W.... T.... F.... the cable is laying in my yard.. I think I know what the problem is.. but she's not listening. She's got a Checklist in India and damn if she's not going to follow it. I demand a Supervisor. I've been on the phone for over an hour now. 'Supervisor' comes on and starts it all over again. I completely snap. he FINALLY shuts up and actually LISTENS to what I'm telling him. They schedule a repair call for Monday morning, no I don't need to be there, they can take care of it. Fine.. I work Sunday thru Thursday.. Monday I come home... cable is still laying in yard and I nothing was fixed/repaired. I never got a call from the tech "we're on the way" like they supposed to or anything. Nobody left a message about problems.

I call and ask for a service rep, he says I needed to be home so they could check inside and make certain the issue isn't actually with the Router, Modem, my computer.. etc...

I had some kind of out of body experience with that one.. I just snapped. I was so mad I could have soaked a nerf bat in vegetable oil and just started beating the hell out of every living thing on 2 legs @ that point.

Finally made my point clear on what was the issue, and they guy is REALLY snarky.. because there is no way he could possible have known any of that, as the trouble repair tickets have a 25 character limit for notes, and none of that was included. Then demands I have to be home for the repair to be completed. If I'm not home, they will leave.

After another aneurysm I managed to speak to a supervisor.. got authorization to do the repair without me being home..... *pant*

Next day I get home... there are a couple kids in my yard playing with the 70' bright orange cable running from the pole to my house. Its not buried because they need that 'ditch-witch' thing to insert it into the ground without tearing the crap out of my lawn.. fine.. chase off the kids and finish my day. it rained that night... a LOT. I get home from work the NEXT day, and the tires from their equipment have ripped my freshly seeded lawn from last winter all to shit... and there is a 2 foot wide ditch mark where they just backed in a back-hoe and tore up the yard instead of using the ditch-witch because the Hoe was faster....

FML... Think I'm going to see about getting the AT&T (U-Verse?) package for the 1k for $80 a month.. I've had enough
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Sounds like you're in Florida. I got rid of spectrum and got centurylink fiber (i'm in the Orlando area). Couldn't be happier and the install guy gave me his personal cell if I ever needed help.
 
Spectrum is my numero uno and the only one on the list due to no data caps. And because of monopoly, my only other choice is DSL which maxes out at 6mbps. There is also the getting the fully advertised speed of my plan which is 300mbps but even that is inconsequential compared to no data caps.

I don't think I've ever called TWC/Spectrum regarding a problem with my internet since moving to my current house about 20 years ago. It's only calling to switch to another cheaper promo plan after the current one ended.
 
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Luckily I have no complaints about the service.
Just hate the crazy high monopoly pricing. $68+taxes for 50/5 mb internet.
 
NMR Guy said:
We recently dumped Comcast and switched to sonic.net. Symmetrical gigabit for $40 a month ($52.91 a month after all the taxes and local city "fees"). And they don't treat me like crap like Comcast did. This is what happens when there is actually some competition.
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I would love that. We are stuck with Cox, so we pay $90 for 300/30.
 
krotch said:
Hours is what I hate the most. "We'll come to install the equipment between 6 am and 10 pm". Why can't they setup a smaller time gap? Or let me setup the shit myself. You already give me the equipment and I already connected it all up. I don't need/want to spend $100 install fee, for nothing more than the guy comes in, says it looks good. Then calls someone else to let my equipment connect up.
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Some will. Many have self setup, they mail you the HW and you setup yourself assuming there is a connection to the house already, if there is not, no way in hell anyone is going to let a client mess with their wiring, and I don't blame them on that. I have however done self setup on Comcast before, after hooking everything up, call the number to have them take me out of the walled garden and done.
 
risc said:
What is average, 50% ?

Neither cheap or quality can be chosen when buying current internet service.
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Average person, ie somebody who isn't on this site. The people that will pay for a 1.5Mbps package because they don't understand the difference between 1.5 and 300Mbps. Then complain that they can't stream on two devices and play a game at the same time. Try to explain that they need to upgrade to a faster speed and they don't understand what you are talking about as that will cost more. Most people don't understand speed they only understand price. If this package is $50 and this is $75 why do I need the $75 web sites are web sites so why do I need more bits. By cheap, I mean the cheaper of all options. I work for an ISP. We have customers leave us to go to Comcast then tell us that they would have like to have stuck with us as we have much better service. their Comcast goes out at least twice a month for internet, at times slows to a crawl. Problem they didn't have with us. But they can save $10 - $15 a month on their bill so they are gong to deal with the slow speeds and crappy service in order to save the money. They will just go to the library or have their neighbor's let them use their service if they can see their wifi connection when their stuff is down because while we are a much better product, we cost a little more and they would rather save the money. Have businesses do the same thing, leave us then complain about how horrible Comcast service is, but say however we are more expensive so they will just deal with the crappy service to save that money instead of going with the better service they had before. Not everyone is like that. Some have decided that 40Mbps service from us at a higher price than faster but crapper service from somebody else is worth it as at least with us they can operate their business without having hours or days a month were they are down and waiting for somebody to fix their issue. They call us and within a few hours we will have somebody there looking at their issue, sometimes faster. We have had upper level supervisors go out on trouble calls because we could get there faster than we could get a tech on site and wanted to get the customer fixed ASAP.

krotch said:
Then you work around it and simply give me a phone call instead of having me wait around for hours and they might not even show up. I can tell my boss, that I may need to leave for install of Blah blah blah. They can ring me up 1 hour before they come over. I can make my way home to meet them. Good customer service isn't hard, regardless of what kind of install they'll do.

I have also had installs where I did do the install. They gave me the box, I went home, hooked it up, and it started working. Bam! $100 install, cause they turned on the service from their computer. I got charge $100 for a fios install, where they didn't do anything. I hooked it all up. I'm fine for paying an install fee, as long as they are actually doing some installs. Not just plugging up the equipment. I can do that shit. I mean making cables, checking to make sure the cabling that comes into the house is good, etc.

Whenever I actually have some like that done, it's been free. The guy came in, replaced the old coax panel with a new one. Custom made some coax cable and ran it right to where I wanted. Then used some cable clips that he had to hammer into the wall to secure the cable. That was free from T-Mobile. Hell, even the modem/wireless router unit was free.
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And honestly that isn't that unreasonable of a request to have. We do that for people that ask. The tech will call them within a certain time frame to let them know that the current job should be finished up in X amount of time so they expect to be at their house in a certain amount of time. We don't openly ask customers anything outside of would you prefer a morning or afternoon install. If they give us a certain time then or ask if we can call before getting there we will note that but try to avoid doing too much that will slow down the install process as much as possible. But we also know that it is a pain in the ass to take a day off to be home or that you have things to do so try to be as accommodating as possible.

James Robinson said:
True Story:

They are building a new house in the empty lot next door. (Duke) Contractors decided to upgrade all the telephone/electrical poles on our street. They dug the hole in my backyard where my pole was, severing my cable line, left the severed line laying in my yard, replaced the pole, filled in the hole and left. I came home to no internet and 18' of cable laying in my back yard they had yanked up and tossed. This was on Friday.

I called Spectrum, told them what had happened. The 'rep' on the phone kept telling me she couldn't help me until I helped her run through a simple checklist of troubleshooting issues. She then spends an hour demanding I power things on and off, like modem, router, computer... W.... T.... F.... the cable is laying in my yard.. I think I know what the problem is.. but she's not listening. She's got a Checklist in India and damn if she's not going to follow it. I demand a Supervisor. I've been on the phone for over an hour now. 'Supervisor' comes on and starts it all over again. I completely snap. he FINALLY shuts up and actually LISTENS to what I'm telling him. They schedule a repair call for Monday morning, no I don't need to be there, they can take care of it. Fine.. I work Sunday thru Thursday.. Monday I come home... cable is still laying in yard and I nothing was fixed/repaired. I never got a call from the tech "we're on the way" like they supposed to or anything. Nobody left a message about problems.

I call and ask for a service rep, he says I needed to be home so they could check inside and make certain the issue isn't actually with the Router, Modem, my computer.. etc...

I had some kind of out of body experience with that one.. I just snapped. I was so mad I could have soaked a nerf bat in vegetable oil and just started beating the hell out of every living thing on 2 legs @ that point.

Finally made my point clear on what was the issue, and they guy is REALLY snarky.. because there is no way he could possible have known any of that, as the trouble repair tickets have a 25 character limit for notes, and none of that was included. Then demands I have to be home for the repair to be completed. If I'm not home, they will leave.

After another aneurysm I managed to speak to a supervisor.. got authorization to do the repair without me being home..... *pant*

Next day I get home... there are a couple kids in my yard playing with the 70' bright orange cable running from the pole to my house. Its not buried because they need that 'ditch-witch' thing to insert it into the ground without tearing the crap out of my lawn.. fine.. chase off the kids and finish my day. it rained that night... a LOT. I get home from work the NEXT day, and the tires from their equipment have ripped my freshly seeded lawn from last winter all to shit... and there is a 2 foot wide ditch mark where they just backed in a back-hoe and tore up the yard instead of using the ditch-witch because the Hoe was faster....

FML... Think I'm going to see about getting the AT&T (U-Verse?) package for the 1k for $80 a month.. I've had enough
Click to expand...

we reseed and when needed sod anything that we tear up to make sure it looks like it did before we started. We have accounts with 3 different landscaping companies that our guys can just go grab dirt, seeds, gravel or sod from when needed for a job. Accidently nicked somebody's sprinkler lines putting fiber to the home into a subdivision. Made our guys go out there, dig up the lines and replace the damaged section, fill everything back in and then sod the yard where they had to dig so that everything looked as close to how it did before we put fiber to the house. Never used a back hoe in a yard before, it is either the ditch witch or you make the guys use spades to get the house. Mostly because anything else damaged the fuck out of the yard like you said then we are spending more time and money trying to make it look nice again and dealing with a pissed off customer. Like we tell our guys, you get paid by the hour so do the work right and make it look nice don't hurry. When you job is to hang areal cable every day or bury cable every day, doesn't matter if you get 900 feet done or 1200 feet done in a day, the next day you are just going to be putting in another 900 feet or 1200 feet so why not just do the work correctly. It isn't like doing it half assed and fast is going to get you anything. You just finish one job faster to then start the next doing the same thing. So all you get is a change of scenery so that instead of looking at one field you get to look at different field.

nutzo said:
Luckily I have no complaints about the service.
Just hate the crazy high monopoly pricing. $68+taxes for 50/5 mb internet.
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That sounds about right although that isn't really crazy high monopoly prices. Those are tariff rates set by the government and other alphabet soup groups. There is a nice 606 page document that goes through and breaks companies into one of 50 rate bands. This is based on the area they are in and how much trouble it is to supply service to customers. So somebody in the midwest where houses are spread out on average would be in a higher rate band than somebody that lives where houses are really close. Both of them would be in a lower band than where you have to use microwave to get through mountains... Then based on your rate band you are told that you have to charge at least X amount for different services. You want to sell a T1, the state or somebody is going to tell you the price for that. You want to sell internet service, somebody is going to tell you the price for that. There are ways that you can get around that some and charge less if you are regulated (the monopoly company if you want to call it that) but most are going to have pretty much the same prices unless they are one of the really big guys like AT&T to which the government lets them charge less if they want for residential since they will charge business more and still pay the same to the government overall.
 
As bad as consumer services are, commercial ones seem even worse. I have more outages at work than at home nowadays it seems.

But honestly the quality of home service only became better in recent years. From weekly, to monthly, now I barely have one outage every few months, and instead of it lasting days it usually only lasts a few hours at most.
 
my neighborhood is "too old" for my isp to care about providing good service. our node is almost a Km away and the best we can get is 15/5. I pay $78CAN for that and unlimited data.
 
pendragon1 said:
my neighborhood is "too old" for my isp to care about providing good service. our node is almost a Km away and the best we can get is 15/5. I pay $78CAN for that and unlimited data.
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What type of service is that? cable?
 
telus dsl. my other option is shaw cable. they can do faster for cheaper but I'm tied in with telus till the fall.
our node is so far away that weather affects the signal and it will fluctuate +/- 5mbps. yeah its awesome...
 
pendragon1 said:
telus dsl. my other option is shaw cable. they can do faster for cheaper but I'm tied in with telus till the fall.
our node is so far away that weather affects the signal and it will fluctuate +/- 5mbps. yeah its awesome...
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That actually isn't that far away. At that distance for download the max you would see is about 35 - 48Mbps depending on the line quality (guess with really bad wire it would be even less), upload might suffer more a tad bit more but that is always what suffers first. Under normal conditions weather shouldn't do that so sounds like there is cable issues in your area, which if it is odd that is very possible. Something is open and letting water in or a ground is off and causing terrible interference.
 
um not from my experience AND from talking to the techs, ground temps can affect it at this distance. it fucks with the resistance and snr causing ups and downs in speed. in the winter I was getting 20/6 now I'm getting 16/3.5 on speedtest.
 
I'm moving in a couple months. My new neighborhood has access to Google Fiber, so I'm counting down the days until I finally can rid myself of Comcast after 13 years. Looking forward to Gigabit + Playstation Vue and saving about $110/month.
 
pendragon1 said:
um not from my experience AND from talking to the techs, ground temps can affect it at this distance. it fucks with the resistance and snr causing ups and downs in speed. in the winter I was getting 20/6 now I'm getting 16/3.5 on speedtest.
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I was thinking more of weather like it starts to rain or snow and suddenly your speed drops 5 Mbps. That is caused by water getting into something it shouldn't. Temp will effect that some, and I could see maybe about a 2-3Mbps difference between the coldest temp and the warmest temp. It is still possible that you are experiencing two issues and one is temp related and one is poor grounding or other issues. As the wire gets colder it constricts which changes the gauge a little bit, which wire gauge will change a lot of things. That is why I had that range above as I myself at 1km from the node am getting a max of 35Mbps down, however I can go look at customers in another node that cable wise are a little closer to 1.4km but the wire is a much smaller gauge (19 instead of 22 or 24 that we use in most places) and those people at 1.4km are showing a max speed of 48Mbps. For our customers that ones that I have noticed the most changes are the ones that our cable had something wrong with it. Although in fairness also we try to avoid giving a customer a speed that is that close to their max possible as then you end up with issues like you are seeing and they get upset when they see the drop. So normally we account for a buffer like that knowing that during the winter if we see somebody right at 20Mbps that during the summer they are gong to be a few Mbps lower so we don't want to sell them 20 but maybe only 15, that or we need to bond two cable pairs to get them 20 so that we are sure not to need to worry about any possible minor shift.

Commander Shepard said:
I'm moving in a couple months. My new neighborhood has access to Google Fiber, so it's just a matter of time until I can ditch Comcast. Looking forward to Gigabit + Playstation Vue and saving about $110/month.
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In many places unless you signed up for Google fiber when they were in the planning phase you can't go back and get it later. So hopefully the new location was already connected to Google.
 
Exavior said:
In many places unless you signed up for Google fiber when they were in the planning phase you can't go back and get it later. So hopefully the new location was already connected to Google.
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Oh yeah, GF is already wired and available in the location. I made sure before even looking for a new pad in the area.
 
NMR Guy said:
We recently dumped Comcast and switched to sonic.net. Symmetrical gigabit for $40 a month ($52.91 a month after all the taxes and local city "fees"). And they don't treat me like crap like Comcast did. This is what happens when there is actually some competition.
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Yes. I just did the same. Took forever to negotiate how to do the install with my LL in my old ass apartment complex. The techs who did it told me Sonic bought a bunch of stuff from Google when they got out of the fiber business.

We are very lucky to have this option, most people don't! I'm dreading the day someone like AT&T makes their CEO an offer he can't refuse...
 
illram said:
Yes. I just did the same. Took forever to negotiate how to do the install with my LL in my old ass apartment complex. The techs who did it told me Sonic bought a bunch of stuff from Google when they got out of the fiber business.

We are very lucky to have this option, most people don't! I'm dreading the day someone like AT&T makes their CEO an offer he can't refuse...
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I was wondering what happen to those warehouses full of equipment. If my ability to deploy was larger I would have liked to get my hands on some of that stuff if they were selling at a discount. I just assumed it all went back into the distributor's normal stock and was being sold like normal to the rest of use using those same parts. I have noticed that my wait times for parts went from 3 - 4 weeks to about 2 or 3 days.
 
Exavior said:
I was thinking more of weather like it starts to rain or snow and suddenly your speed drops 5 Mbps. That is caused by water getting into something it shouldn't. Temp will effect that some, and I could see maybe about a 2-3Mbps difference between the coldest temp and the warmest temp. It is still possible that you are experiencing two issues and one is temp related and one is poor grounding or other issues. As the wire gets colder it constricts which changes the gauge a little bit, which wire gauge will change a lot of things. That is why I had that range above as I myself at 1km from the node am getting a max of 35Mbps down, however I can go look at customers in another node that cable wise are a little closer to 1.4km but the wire is a much smaller gauge (19 instead of 22 or 24 that we use in most places) and those people at 1.4km are showing a max speed of 48Mbps. For our customers that ones that I have noticed the most changes are the ones that our cable had something wrong with it. Although in fairness also we try to avoid giving a customer a speed that is that close to their max possible as then you end up with issues like you are seeing and they get upset when they see the drop. So normally we account for a buffer like that knowing that during the winter if we see somebody right at 20Mbps that during the summer they are gong to be a few Mbps lower so we don't want to sell them 20 but maybe only 15, that or we need to bond two cable pairs to get them 20 so that we are sure not to need to worry about any possible minor shift.
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I'm not upset about the drop, I understand that. its the old ass '70s neighborhood I'm in, the infrastructures old as shit. I'm actually considering a move at the end of july to a new neighborhood across town where I know I can get at least 150.
 
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