Broadband Blues

**Sir-Nerd** · 10-22-2012, 03:26 PM

Well, for those who don't know me, I'm currently living at home and going to college in my hometown. I just figured out that Frontier (formerly Verizon, which was awesome), our DSL provider, is now throttling our connection from 6mbps down to 2mbps. They are doing this in an effort to make us pay for either a higher speed service such as FiOS or a faster DSL package.

They stand by the fact that the service we are paying for IS 6mbps, even though I've been doing bandwidth tests for the past 2 weeks at different times of day and I've been consistently getting around 2mbps. And also our connection has been going on and off sporadically for the past couple of weeks for no apparent reason.

Anyone ever have this happen? The thing that stinks is that the only alternative to Frontier is the local Cable Co Op, which has horrendous reliability issues.

**Warlab** · 10-22-2012, 04:29 PM

If they are throttling you Nerd, that sucks.

I haven't had a chance to read this but here's a link where an employee complains about a lot of Frontier's practices.
http://stopthecap.com/tag/frontier-communications/

**BeSiege82** · 10-22-2012, 08:37 PM

It is interesting that you say that, because I've been suspecting that Verizon has been doing the very same thing.

**Beinseth** · 10-22-2012, 08:49 PM

Sir Nerd, you can hastle the hell out of them. Let them know you want your 6 megs, and to send out someone to fix the "issue". When it doesnt get resolved, ask for compensation for lost service. You pay for 6 and only getting 2. I did this alot with my past two ISPs, Allegiance Communications and Centurylink. Comcast has been pretty good so far. This will get you several months of free internet, talk with the customer service managers, tech support managers. You may have something legit wrong with your connection, at the very least your getting something back for their throttling.

**snooggums** · 10-22-2012, 11:00 PM

I had Cox cable, and my connection went to crap when they upgraded the network but dropped support for my router, with the symptoms you described. The cable always had craptastic upload speeds though, supposedly 512 up but it was barely 128 before choking the download and they always advertise 'up to' speeds and rarely delivered. Their tech support was awful as well.

We switched to Att/uverse which is a fiber to the network system on which I get a solid 6 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up for around 50 or 60 bucks if it was not bundled with TV (haven't checked individual prices for a while). I can maintain the listed download and upload speeds for several days without issues. They recently announced a 250GB monthly cap, although it was always previously advertised as unlimited, so they could go downhill but but overall the connection itself has been great and only once or twice has the support staff been poor.

I would not suggest their DSL, but I have had good luck with the uverse services.

**Bisclaveret** · 10-28-2012, 01:57 AM

If you're paying for 6, and are getting 2, and previously got 6, you can and should hassle the hell out of them. Especially if you're paying for 6. Argue that recieving that much signal loss in a DSL line to drop that much (yes, they will claim that they are 'best effort' service but stay with me here) would have sent flags when you signed up for the package that provisioning was 'not feasible' and they should have denied you service instead of scamming you. Throw that around a lot, that they are scamming you out of your money and you will hit them at the BBB, etc. Threaten to leave them. Threaten to go to satellite if you have to.

**Sir-Nerd** · 10-29-2012, 03:29 PM

I've been harassing them on the phones, came across a tech guy who was friendly enough. I told him I work in tech support and we had a good laugh at how ****ty things can get. He noticed static is on the line, and has personally ordered a repair service to be sent to my location for free. So fingers crossed, I miss ArmA and BF3, and NS2 is coming out.

**Harlequin** · 10-29-2012, 09:27 PM

Time Warner isn't innocent in this either, twice I've caught them throttling down connections, both mine and my parents. I did some perusing online, and found it happening to others as well, with the most common guess is that it's done since most customers won't notice as they mostly web browse and check e-mail, with most downloading being songs on i-tunes, etc.