Home internet woes

[lclev]

Well, for those of you who have been subjected to my rants about my home internet speeds I have a new chapter to add to it. For those who don't know my situation I will explain.

I live in a rural area where sunlight is piped in and electricity is at times a luxury item. So cable internet is not available. My options are satellite - which is very expensive and throttled, or ADSL from Frontier.

We had a series of tornadoes go through our area on May 27th (Dayton, Ohio.) They tore the heck out everything. Frontier has proven to be pathetic when it comes to repairing their lines. The tornadoes did not get my home but I have not had home phone service since then and my internet speed is 200-400 kbps at best. I have phone lines but obviously they are not in great shape. I called in for repair back at the end of May and got a repair date of July 23rd!

Anyway, I called Sprint because I had read about their Magic Box. It acts like a relay for their LTE service. Since I can't get a LTE signal at my home I was able to get one and now I can hotspot my mac to my iPhone. I have decent speeds - 7 Mbps, but the technician who helped me set it up is still not happy and has ordered service on the tower I am boosting off of. But considering all I could get from Frontier was 1.47 Mbps this is a huge boost. One thing I have been very impressed with is Sprints customer service. My tech, Raphael, has called me several times to see how I was doing and what speeds I was getting plus tweaking my magic box. I have never had tech service like this.

So looks like Frontier will be losing a customer!

Lisa

 

[carlhataway]

Hey lclev,
I use to have Spectrum cable service but when the cable bill was getting higher than the electric bill I canceled and went with AT&T Fiber Optic. Granted I dropped from 400 Mbps to 54.1 Mbps down and 16.4Mbps up. I really don't see a difference in download speed (time-wise) the Fiber-Optic seems to have some worth to it! So, if your telephone is a ground line then AT&T might work for you.

 

[krs]

......I have not had home phone service since then and my internet speed is 200-400 kbps at best. I have phone lines but obviously they are not in great shape. I called in for repair back at the end of May and got a repair date of July 23rd!

If your phone lines are in poor shape and since you can connect to a cell phone tower, can you not get wireless home phone service?
Something like this (a US equivalent)?
Wireless_home_phone | Zoomer Wireless

I have had this fgor several years now, not because the phone lines are poor here but because the wireless service is so much cheaper - I pay $10.- a month for unlimited Canada wide calling and the connection is rock solid since the ZTE unit in the house is stationary. That unit also has a built-in battery so phone service stays up for 3 to 4 hours during a power failure

 

[krs]

Hey lclev,
I use to have Spectrum cable service but when the cable bill was getting higher than the electric bill I canceled and went with AT&T Fiber Optic. Granted I dropped from 400 Mbps to 54.1 Mbps down and 16.4Mbps up. I really don't see a difference in download speed (time-wise) the Fiber-Optic seems to have some worth to it! So, if your telephone is a ground line then AT&T might work for you.

I'm a bit confused by your post.
If Lisa at her location in a rural area cannot get cable, she sure as heck wouldn't be able to get fiber optic internet.
And fiber optic internet, here in Canada at least, is always much faster than cable internet - partially because one doesn't share the final pipe to the house.
Cable sort of maxes out at 120 Mb/s and slows down during busy times; fiber service to the premises can be bought up to 1.5 Gp/s, more than 10 times as fast as cable and the speed stays steady.
For one, if

 

[carlhataway]

krs, forgive me for confusing you?

 

[lclev]

Well, my options are limited to say the least. No fiber optic cable and no hope of it ever being available for the foreseeable future. If frontier would ever get my internet service fixed I could live with 1.7Mbps. Sad but I am use to slow speeds. I have fiber optics at work so if I need a large download I do it there.

I just am totally amazed at how poor Frontier's customer service has become. They use to be better.

Lisa

 

[chscag]

I just am totally amazed at how poor Frontier's customer service has become. They use to be better.

See my other reply to you Lisa. Word is that Frontier is losing money and possibly may go bankrupt. A rumor perhaps, but their service although never as good as Verizon, has gone downhill.

 

[pigoo3]

Congrats Lisa. Sounds like you got something like a 4x or more speed boost! Which I would think that at those speeds...should be a significant improvement in page loading & downloads!

- Nick

 

[Slydude]

Welcome back Lisa. I was wondering where you had been just a few days ago> Glad to know you are OK.

We've also gotten good service from Sprint in the past. Several years ago I had the following interaction play out with their tech support:

My wife had changed her phone number some months before for reasons I don't remember. She had inadvertently been assigned a number that used to belong to someone else. We would periodically get calls / texts intended for that person -- including texts from a Houston area club advertising who would be at the club that Saturday night. Over time the calls diminished but we kept getting one / two texts a week. No big deal right? Wrong!!!

That Saturday night the first text came in as expected. The "STOP" option didn't work (never had). Suddenly we start getting that same text every minute or two. Since I hate talking to any tech support rep, at any company, I went to the net looking for a solution. The web page that was supposed to let me opt out out these texts did not work so I bit the bullet and called tech support from my phone because hers is still being bombarded with texts. Blood pressure rising exponentially.

The nice fellow who answered listened to my predicament and informed me I could fix this from the the web site. (Head exploding, grumpy old man voice kicking in. See (insert name of spouse) this is why I don't call tech support. After explaining that the page wasn't working he tried from his end -- no luck. Meanwhile, every thirty minute or so we are hearing all the beeps from her phone because she is still getting the same text!! At some point, he asked what the noise was and nearly had a fit when I told him each beep was a text. I don't know what voodoo he performed but the texts stopped. Over about a 3 hour period I think we got between 100 and 150 texts.

 

[dtravis7]

I think what user carlhataway was speaking of was not Fibre to her house but AT&T UVerse that is Fiber to Node down the way and twisted pair from the node to the house. Lisa is so far in the boonies I doubt AT&T would have even UVerse to her house. I could be wrong.

Congrats Lisa, sounds like that Sprint box is giving you a lot more speed for sure!

 

[lclev]

Sprint is still working to get me even more speed which is fine by me.

AT&T does not have service in my area - regardless of what their coverage maps show. My GMC has wifi through AT&T and sitting in my driveway I can maybe get a signal ... but usually not.

Until this is all works out, I plan to see if frontier can get my service going. My husband still wants a landline so I am going to let them try one more time. I will be demanding a bill adjustment though.

Lisa

 

[dtravis7]

Keep us posted on what Frontier does. Good luck.

 

[lclev]

Frontier has finally fixed my home phone and internet. I still max out at 1.4 Kbps down / 235 Kbps up. So now on to calling them and getting a credit for the time I had no service.

Lisa

 

[chscag]

So now on to calling them and getting a credit for the time I had no service.

I wish you luck with that. It took them 3 months to credit my bill after they overcharged me for channels that I never subscribed to.