[SLL] Nationwide Internet: melting down?

[Ken Meyer]

That's very interesting, Brian.  I didn't know that Wave, which has also
just acquired Millennium in Seattle, was already in the state.  One of the
big issues in getting the Seattle franchise renewal for Millennium has been
that Millennium's service has been nothing but pathetic -- no, appallingly
pathetic, whereas though I do not like Comcast's business practices, I
grudgingly have to admit that their support is pretty good, at least in my
experience.

According to those testifying at the public hearings on the Millennium
franchises, the problems are both in the types of features offered and in
the reliability and quality of that service itself, from simple connection
problems to belated and indifferent response by customer service peeps.
Now, Wave is promising to get well pronto, but there is a fair amount of
skepticism, and the City Council has apparently gotten the message that they
need to proceed "deliberately"... with a wait-and-see attitude. Of course,
by federal regulations, they have absolutely no leverage over broadband
offerings, and not very much over the video either -- at least as little as
the FCC under control by the R's can make it be.

So, I'd be interested in your experiences with Wave.  How have you found the
reliability and quality of the connection and the quality of customer
service?  Seems like at least their speed is pretty good on your end though.

Wave says that they have just opened a new CS Center in the Midwest, and the
local VP has been floating his telephone number and inviting subscribers to
call him personally about their problems.  The hearing and recent E&T
Council committee are on video accessible from those links I posted before,
should you ever want to avail yourself of it.

Ken M.


-----Original Message-----

From: linux-list-bounces at ssc.com [mailto:linux-list-bounces at ssc.com]On
Behalf Of Brian Lane
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 3:20 PM
To: linux-list at ssc.com

Subject: Re: [SLL] Nationwide Internet: melting down?

Ken Meyer wrote:

> Not to mention the "dial-tone quality" demands of the Comcast VoIP phone
> service.  I've found that the CS folks really snap-to when I mention their
> trying to sell me phone service over a pathetic connection.
>
> Note that the TacLUG list has been having a very similar thread that
started
> with someone complaining about his Nationwide service (at first I thought
it
> was about a national outage, given the dramatic magnitude of
infrastructure
> breakdowns these days).  However, others in the area who had DSL service
> over Qworst copper said that they were not having any problems, so the
idea
> that these are global problems attributable to Qworst is, I think, still
> pretty hypothetical.
>
> Who is your provider, Brian -- Charter?  Do you have a commercial account
> with static IP and permission to run servers?  If so, what does it cost?
> How fast?

Ah, yes, back on topic for poor Tim for a moment <G>

It used to be  Charter, now they are Wave Broadband. Its a business
account, 2 year agreement, 1.5M up, 6 or 8 or something down (the
contract is fot 1.5M down, but they've increased that over the 3 years
I've had it). 1 Static IP. $72/mo (extra static IPs are an outrageous
$15 each).

I don't have Cable TV, I use DishNetwork for that.

Brian