Grab a cup of coffee, this is a long one.
---------------------------------The good (boring) stuff------------------------
So I recently moved, I wanted to bring my family a little further out of town. I found new home construction, and started making sure everything would work for us. I also telecommute into the office, I do this, simply because there is no actual office to drive to. So one of my concerns before making this move was my access to high speed internet. I talked to some of the neighbors before closing and found out that this area has fiber optic, provided by centrylink... AMAZING, close on the house, move the family everything looks good....
After I closed on the house, I had a tech from centrylink come out and install the service. Since it was fiber, I was immediately fascinated by the foreign equipment used. I am paying for the 10MB service, didn't give it much of a thought. 10MB is fine for what I do, I have a few work machines connecting via VPN and transferring smaller project files, hosting training sessions on web conferences... standard work from home type stuff really.
So for about 2 months after the tech left... I was BLOWN AWAY (even bragging to coworkers) by how awesome having fiber was, I would routinely get download speed nearly triple of what I was paying for... and the Upload was always around 2-4 MB...
-------------------------------------The Bad Stuff-----------------------------------
About a week ago, I started dropping from conference calls on VOIP, 2mb file transfer were taking a very very long time..... I decided to run speed tests.. now I am getting exactly 10mb down, and that's fine, because that is what I am paying for... However the upload was going at about .5 - .7 mb up.... oh wow, so I did a full power cycle of the equipment, etc etc... Test again, same result... OVER AND OVER AGAIN, same result....
I call centrylink, and I learn that their 10mb service, has an upload speed of .7 ... I could not believe it.. I mean, even with 2 bars on my 4g cell, i still get around 2mb upload speed. So I plead my case, explaining that they are the only option I have where I am located, and if this is not resolved... I could and eventually will loose my job. However, all of that fell on deaf ears.
After calling many people, trying to explain the situation... I mean, I work from home and I loose my job, I loose the house... simple as that. Finally they said they can offer me 20mb down service(after saying repeatedly they can't) and the upload speed is between 1 and 2mb....By this time, I have no options... I am ready to bend over and pay whatever it is they are going to charge... Turns out, they need to send a tech out... the time frame I was given was "On or after 9/4, between 8am-5pm"..... Instead of throwing my phone and cursing... I just agreed to the 35$ monthly increase, and the 60$ tech visit to upgrade my services to "bonded" even though.... the hardware already on site is more then capable of (and was previously) running those speeds.
------------------------------Summary------------------
Bottom line is this... I would have NOT bought my house where I did, if I knew that centrylink performs the way they do... They don't advertise their upload speed on their site, and I know why,because I received better upload speeds on my cellphone on a rainey day. I just dont understand WHY? Why invest in fiber, if your not going to offer the speeds people want. I just wanted to vent here as opposed to going to the attorney generals office like I originally had in my head.
I just went thru the Kansas city shuffle, it never ends well.
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