An item about residential Internet service.

17 responses total.

    I have cancelled Cable Internet service for the end of
this month.  It's usually about 3M down but there are days
when it drops to about 50k and things stop working.  The
Cable company weren't able to fix it so I reluctantly turned
back to the phone company.

    They no longer sell ADSL service but offered VDSL for
US$ 46/month +ehft.  They charged $100 for a modem/router
(can't buy just a modem) and when it arrived I unboxed it to
find that they'd sent me obviously used equipment.  A couple
of days (and lots of conflicting information) later I'm left
with a red blinky light on the front of the modem/router and
no service.

    Those are my two wired options.  The next best bet is
terrestrial fixed wireless but I've not been able to find a
provider locally.  Mobile networks are out because of their
bandwidth caps: No YouTube and Netflix.  Satellite Internet
service is glacially slow, horribly expensive and the
latency would break VoIP, videoconferencing and remote
desktop applications.

Am I missing some viable alternative Internet service?

Do you have near neighbors who would share?

Re. #2: I wouldn't feel comfortable asking. I managed to get
   the VDSL service working last night by swapping the pair
   from the house in the network interface box.  I'm still
   disappointed that the telephone company sent me a used
   modem/router but I'm on-line and there's value in that.
   Let's hope their service proves to be more reliable than
   cable Internet was.

What cable service is that in #1?  We find Comcast fast and reliable (well,
it crashes every few days, which is an annoyance). 

Re. #4: Comcast ;-)

I have my internet connection through AT&T [have for about 7 years now 
after dropping Comcast due to issues with them]. But for whatever 
reason, it seems like it's been a lot slower over the past few weeks.

We quit AT&T for Comcast after a few years of rate hikes.  Comcast is faster
and cheaper and so far has worked fine.   AT&T lied to us one weekend when
internet was exceptionally slow that they were not working on the lines.  
I spent hours swapping out all our equipment before Jim found a repairman
nearby working on the lines.  Eventually the two giants will have affordable
competition from the cell phone carriers, at least for those of us who don't
want to pay for 150GB of data when we use at most 5GB/month.  

    We eventually quit Comcast, who couldn't offer
Internet service that worked and reluctantly went
back to AT&T, who are the only other wired option.
Last week we dumped Comcast's television service
too and switched to satellite television from Dish
network.

Why not just watch TV over the internet?

    A fairly modest antenna on the roof would bring in two
or three streams from the local PBS station and that would
satisfy all of my television needs.  Netflix and YouTube are
nice supplements to that.  In my opinion the extra money we
spent on cable (and now spend on satellite television) is
wasted.  Sadly my opinion in this matter does not count.

I don't have a tv so I subscribe to Netflix and to hulu. For the most
part, this covers everything I want to watch. But there are special
events as well as sports that I wish I could watch. For example: the
recent basketball tournament. I'm a Duke fan [worked there for 10 years]
and would've loved to see them when they won it all. Or Ican't see any
of the Tiger games. 

    AT&T "Uverse" VDSL has been a lot better than Comcast.
After some high winds it failed last week and we had an
engineer out to replace the drop to our house.  It worked
for most of the day after that and now it's broken again.
They're going to have an engineer out again today and my
hope is that they'll get it working again because I have not
found any viable alternative.  There used to be terrestrial
fixed wireless Internet service providers in the area but it
is possible that LTE killed those off.

We switched from $50/month 2.4MBps AT&T service over a year ago to $20/month
3.7MBps Comcast service and it works fine.  Two weeks ago I asked them for
the $20 new customer price and speed (10MBps) and three phones calls later,
having talked to 9 people, I am still waiting for two of them to call me back
'tomorrow' or in '24-48 hours' to deal with the 'error ticket' that has
prevented them from giving us the promised speed and price.  They may expect
customers to just give up.  I told them AT&T had a $20 rate for new customers
and we would just switch back and forth every year so they passed me along
to Customery Loyalty.  I also said I preferred their customer service but I
am starting to wonder about it.  AT&T made worse mistakes.  
Right now we are paying their regular $35/month for 3.7MBps.  AT&T has a
$15/month rate but a lot slower.

I have several phones signed up with ringplus.net for free phone service
including some data.  For $5 one-time (goes towards overages if needed) I got
1000 min texts and MB.  I don't use minutes and I sent maybe 2 texts a month
and read one email so this is a good deal.  You can add Opera Mini 4 to a 2010
flip phone but not 2009 phone (Opera mini 3 no longer supported). 

    My AT&T Uverse service crapped out a few weeks
ago and when I called them to have it repaired, I
wasted four hours of my weekend on the phone with
them before cancelling service.  On Monday I had
Earthlink Internet service stood up, which turns
out to be VDSL over AT&T's copper lines, installed
by AT&T and with an AT&T modem/router. Oh well, at
least I had the momentary satisfaction of
cancelling.

*snort*

    Four years later we're still with Earthlink (over AT&T
copper). Recently had to upgrade the speed so that Mrs. ball
would be allowed to work from home on some days.  I'm more
disappointed than surprised that we still don't have more
than one Internet option.  The local terrestrial fixed
wireless ISP doesn't provide service in town and Comcast
were unable to make their service work at my house.

I recently aquired Starlink

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