The Joys of Broadband

Since I got broadband, six or seven years ago, I’ve had it through the local cable monopoly, Comcast.  No one loves Comcast— they’re too big, too slow, too expensive, and have infamously bad customer service (which, however, seems to be improving— when I had trouble last year, they really did their best, for all that the problem was too complex for them). So anyway, I’ve always been on the alert for an alternative.

Qwest, the local phone company, offered DSL in some neighborhoods, but not in my rural district.  They sent me a great many solicitations through the mail claiming that DSL was available, but whenever I called them, they said they didn’t have it in my area.  (This despite illegally raising many millions of dollars from their subscribers to improve service in remote areas— millions that they decided not to spend on the promised improvements— and millions which the state, for reasons of its own, decided to let them keep.  We still await the indictments.)

Anyway, Qwest was recently bought by Century Link, who started bombarding me with phone calls offering DSL at about a third of what I was paying Comcast.  “Are you really sure you can deliver fast internet to me over all that old copper?” I repeatedly asked, and was answered in the affirmative.  I was skeptical, but what the hell.  An appointment was set up for someone to come over and install the new gear.

The new gear arrived in a box, but the guy who was supposed to install it never actually set foot in the house.  (I was told he showed up to inspect the outside line.)  After waiting for an entire day, I decided I might as well install the stuff myself.  Which I did, after spending about an hour on the phone to customer service chasing down various bugs and getting passwords.   Tests told me I was downloading at a respectable 18mbps, for all that my upload speed was 0.6mbps, which strikes me as counterintuitive.   Why the weird disparity?  It’s the same copper.  Or whatever.

At any rate, I knew the real test was in the usage, and I went on Netflix to download a movie.  Which downloaded very, very slowly, and interrupted itself every few minutes as its buffer emptied and had to refill.

No joy.

And as for uploading, I can’t even send email.  The upload is so slow that the connection times out before I can send a few lines to a friend.

I’ll contact Century Link tomorrow and see if this can be sorted, but I’m thinking my skepticism seems justified.  Fortunately I never actually canceled my Comcast subscription.

So it’s probably back to the Old Dinosaur for me.