For more than a year I have suffered from low bandwidth availability. The only reason that I have remained with this ISP is because they have a contract with the company that owns my apartment complex that leaves me with no other choices for internet service.
Specifically speaking, DirecPath oversells their bandwidth. This isn't extraordinarily bad because all companies do it. What makes it a poor provider is the degree to which they do it. For a multiple-dwelling unit (MDU) with over 400 apartments, they allocate about 40 Mbps of total available bandwidth. I've subscribed to a 6 Mbps plan. Assuming that only half of the tenants subscribe (which is extremely conservative) and that all of them only subscribe to a 1 Mbps plan (also highly unlikely), they can only handle traffic from less than 18% of their subscribers. That number is simply too low. It makes it feel as though peak usage occurs 24/7. This makes it impossible to do ANYTHING that requires constant connection like watching videos, listening to music, audio chatting, or playing online games. After about a year of weekly service calls, nothing has changed. Do not let yourself get locked into a contract with them.
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