We moved into this neighborhood at the end of 2006 and signed up for Commonwealth Telephone DSL. When we moved in, we had 120KB/s DSL speeds. Around March, we were bumped up to 150KB/s when Frontier bought out Commonwealth Telephone. These speeds continued for a month or so.
One fine sunny day our DSL cut out and we noticed a Frontier worker out on our telephone pole and inquired what he was doing. He stated he was 'upgrading the DSL.' We went back inside and waited for him to finish. When he left we tried to reconnect and found we had no DSL service at all. Repeated attempts online and via telephone were futile as Frontier could not be reached. We temporarily gave up and 2 days later were happy to find our DSL was working again. However it was now only running at 100KB/s.
We left it alone for 2-3 weeks as the time spent with their horrible support usually yields nothing anyway. Then our internet started cutting out like crazy. We couldn't stay connected. It would disconnect anywhere from 5-20x per hour. OK, now we had had enough - it was time to call and call until we got someone.
Well after speaking to about a half dozen different people, we finally got a tech to check our readings. He said our SNR (Signal-Noise Ratio) was a 6 and shoudl be an 18. He said it was so bad he was surprised we had any internet at all. He promised me they would have an engineer out there to assess the problem and that it was likely going to require a line crew as "there is obviously something with the line."
3 days went by and I contacted them again to see what the status was of this crew and the engineer. I was told there would be neither. They said the hot weather was the cause. Hot?! It was 67F outside. That isn't even room temperature. I made countless calls to them and got nowhere for weeks. Finally they agreed to send a tech out.
The tech came and he stated that the filter in the basement was bad, likely the result of a power surge due to a storm. He replaced it. He then told me he had contacted the office and had them sync us at 640 (66KB/s). He said "you are paying for 1.5mbit (150KB/s) but I don't think you'll get that stable here so I told them to sync you down and I made a note on your paperwork in big red marker stating NOT to set you back to 1mbit or 1.5mbit ever again."
Well now we're totlaly screwed. He set us lower stating it would make us 100% stable and our internet is more unstable than ever PLUS we are stuck at the ungodly slow speed of 66K. The CSR I was dealing with has stopped taking my calls, despite the fact that I was very polite with her. I believe it is because she promised she would "take care of everything" and never followed through.
What makes this worse still is tonight I realized they have begun blocking countless ports. I can no longer access a great number of ports which is problematic since I code and maintain servers for a living from home. I can't access half of my clients servers now. I can and will sue you for this Frontier. You can count on it. The neighbors and I have met with a lawyer regarding a class action suit and we have a solid case.
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