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Broadband experience?

dmention7

dmention7

Hater
My promotional period with comcast's "performance" package just ended, and I'm thinking about switching over to one of Quest's promotions. Previously, I've been very satisfied with comcast, but the 6 months on my current package have been just garbage. Seems like there's tons of latency and dropped connections across the board on websites, and in practice I've been getting nowhere near the advertised 12mbps speeds.

Qwest has a package right now that's 7mbps/896kbps for $35/mo for 6mo (plus a $50 visa gift card). I've never had DSL before, and it's been years since I've dealt with Qwest in any way. Are there any current Qwest customers here with experience or suggestions? I know that with DSL your distance from a main hub can affect your bandwidth, so that's something I'll probably check out. Does DSL suffer from any problems like cable, where shared nodes can get congested and really bog things down?

I'll probably switch anyways, because $35/mo for shitty internet is better than $50/mo for shitty internet, lol
 
D

DrWebster

Guest
DSL is different from cable in that it's a direct connection between you and the DLSAM (basically, the box in the central office that aggregates DSL traffic and forwards it on to the main switching facility), so you don't have to worry about other douchenozzles in your neighborhood stealin ur bandwidth.

That said, DSL typically offers lower speeds than cable, and there's the distance factor that you mentioned. Have you tried calling Comcast and bitching about the poor performance? Have you tried a different cable modem? If anything, threatening to cancel because of the poor speeds would in the very least get them to offer you the promotional rate for a longer period...that's what I do every 6 months or so; I haven't paid full price for cable/Internet for years.
 
Workdawg

Workdawg

NARWHAL
You can always call up and tell them you don't want to pay full price for their service. They'll very likely offer you the new promo rates to keep you... that's what I did last year.

I am paying less now than I was with the first promo rates, and I have more stuff.

I haven't really had any issues with Comcast's cable though, so I have no issue staying with them.
 
Picklz

Picklz

SUDO Make me a SAMCH
I spent the past 3-4 months dealing with the shitty Comcast service at my house, when it worked which in their defense was most of the time, it was great and I got all of (and more) my advertised up and downstream bandwidth most of the time. However I had intermittent service outages and packet loss which they didn't seem to be capable of tracking down or fixing. I just switched to Qwest's 20mbit/896k service, only having ~800k of upload really sucks but so far the downstream and latency of the service has been great, so I'll put up with it till VDSL is available in my area which should get me 2-5mbit of upstream. They also offer better add-on services than Comcast like static IP's (I got a block of 8)

So I guess depending on what you do, the DSL may be plenty for you, I think they 'guarantee' up to 70-80% of advertised bandwidth, and like Colin said whatever your neighbors are doing shouldn't affect your connection at all.
 
dmention7

dmention7

Hater
Appreciate the feedback.

My Comcast promo plan was $25/mo, and I had called a couple of times to complain of poor connection speeds, but since there was nothing physically wrong with my connection, and my modem was reporting all parameters normal, they just kinda shrugged and fell back on the whole shared node explanation. When I had business class internet (Comcast's Workplace @ Home deal) it was great. But the residential service just seemed weak.

At this point, I'd rather gamble $10/mo that the Qwest service will be more tolerable than just keep going at the comcast promo rate, so I'll probably check into this tomorrow.


Oh, and does anyone know how long you have to not be a customer before you can get a promo rate again? If I decide to come back to comcast in 6 months, will I be considered a "new customer"? lol, it reminds me of the games my parents used to always play with the long-distance companies... each time they switched, a couple weeks later the other company would come back with a better offer and a larger sign-up credit.
 
Z

Z-licious

Guest
dmention7 said:
Oh, and does anyone know how long you have to not be a customer before you can get a promo rate again? If I decide to come back to comcast in 6 months, will I be considered a "new customer"? lol, it reminds me of the games my parents used to always play with the long-distance companies... each time they switched, a couple weeks later the other company would come back with a better offer and a larger sign-up credit.
Click to expand...
6 months. You can only get promo rates if you haven't been a comcast subscriber in the past 6 months. Find a good deal at a site like comcastoffers.com and you get a free modem and $100 rebate if you sign up too! I like to do this once a year to get $100 free and promo rates for 6 months.
 
derrian

derrian

Pika-Zoom!
Staff member
Bestbuy always offers deals too. Normally in the form of Giftcards, when you sign up through them.
 
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