Verizon peeps gobbled by Frontier enter week two of crap internet The problems that have plagued the handover of broadband subscribers from Verizon to Frontier Communications are entering their second week – and Frontier says that some internet services will not be restored until mid-April. The issues began on April 1, when people reported widespread outages and service disruptions in …
that I don't live in Los Gatos, but rather a couple of cities away. Maybe those people could get helped out by Netflix (which is based there) and probably doesn't rely on wireline carriers for their internet connection (they probably have a BIG pipe feeding to/from their offices).
Must remember: GTE: great telephone experiment.
A lot of people, confronted with this sort of bollocks would just say "I'm off!" and go to another provider. But there's the problem, you see. Our ISPs conspire to make sure there's little or no actual competition anywhere. So it's "Oh, you're off? To where, precisely?"
I won't pay the one "broadband" provider available where I live their extortionate fee. So, yes, I have slow Internet. It would be nice if this problem could be fixed, which I'm certain our government will attend to right after they get the pigs flying in formation properly. In the meantime, there are worse things than slow Internet.
Mine's the one with the DSL router in the pocket.
I live in the Dallas, TX area and so far I haven't had any problems with my internet connection (my IP address even stayed the same). The traceroute does show it taking a path through the Frontier network now, so maybe they've only changed things a few hops upstream. However, I have heard a few people in the same general area that have been having problems (e.g. someone paying for 75/75 service and now only getting like 16/12 on a speedtest). I tested mine last night and was still getting the 50/50 service to which I'm subscribed. They did break reverse DNS though (at least for my IP address), which can cause delays on SSH connections that try to perform reverse DNS lookups (i.e. the default config).
My biggest worry is if/when they are going to start implementing "Copy Once" DRM on the channel lineup. Verizon only use "Copy Once" DRM for premium channels (along with some Fox channels starting last year), and "Copy Freely" for everything else. From what I've read, Frontier typically encrypts everything but local OTA channels. I have a CableCard with an HDHomerun and MythTV, and if they start doing that, it practically becomes useless and I'd have to resort to WMC (ewww).
I generally haven't have any problems with Verizon over the years except for the occasional billing snafu when I make plan changes or some idiots cutting a cable outside.
I'm also in the Dallas area and I haven't had any issues at all. Prior to having Fios I was dealing with comcast on a near weekly basis because they just couldn't keep their stuff running. When Fios became available, I switched that same day. This was 5+ years ago and in that time I believe I've only seen 2 outages.
The service has been rock solid. So much so that as I try to find a new home to move into fios access is at the top of my requirements list.
Now, all of that said, I just realized I haven't received a bill since February....
Copy Once would definitely suck. Hope that doesn't happen. Though I'm WMC/Ceton/Cablecard here, close to 10 years of WMC since XP MCE 2005, still using the same remote.
My only billing snafu was getting the package promotion ($15) extended when the contract renewed. Got it all sorted via an on-line chat, then when the bill comes, didn't include it. Always, always save a copy of the chat and any order #s!
The little bit I've used WMC, it's not that it's bad, it's just not as good as MythTV. The scheduling capabilities of MythTV completely blow other DVRs out of the water. Recording specific titles, time slots, previously recorded detection, automatic commercial flagging, etc. Then you have the Power Search feature where you can build an SQL query to choose the programs to record.
Since Microsoft has officially discontinued WMC on Windows 10 (and thus will stop supporting it on Windows 7 when its support ends in 2020), the options are getting scarce. Silicon Dust (makes of the HDHR) are working on HDHomeRune DVR as an alternative to WMC, but they've been working on it for almost a year and it still lacks a lot of features (and doesn't support "Copy Once" channels yet). It looks promising, but who knows when it will be finished, and I still won't be able to stream to my MythTV box.
Verizon did a "free HBO for 2 months" promotion last year, and they didn't turn it off until after 4 months. I grabbed (scheduled record) a ton of movies during that time for later enjoyment, so I was happy that I had a copy-once compatible install (I've borked that in previous computers by adding codec packs). Definitely need to look at MythTV soon though. I have Kodi/XBMC on a laptop to watch the WMC content in bed, but that leaves a lot to be desired as well - it wants everything renamed for it to match TVDB, won't cope with the raw WMC file names even though they have plenty of metadata.
I'm just north of Dallas (Lewisville) and the only issue I've had with my FiOS is the Verizon.net account. It lost track of my account number and then I couldn't access anything except email. That went on for 9 months while 7 different departments couldn't find their brain with either hand. Then I re-upped my service (the service never had issues) and they blanked my on-line presence allowing me to re-attach my account to my username and BOOM! Everything worked. That was a month ago... so now I'm a "new customer" and apparently I have no issues since I'm a later in the month billed customer. Seems most of the people on the news (and at work that have had issues) are first of the month billed users. I also only have internet service and use my own router connected directly to the ONT. I even have a UPS on the ONT's battery backup just so I can keep my internet up. When the ONT's battery backup is in use, it drops all service except voice, so since I don't use that service, UPS on the UPS so the UPS won't shut off for at least 2 hours (actually tested due to a power outage that lasted about 6 hours) and preserve my Internets so I won't use mobile data for that time. My UPS that my router is on will stay up for 3+ hours if I shutdown my main beast that's also on it.
So meh. "I dunno what all the hubbub is about."
Mine's the coat in a coat from the Department of Redundancy Department with the USB battery booster connected to a USB battery booster in the pocket.
Happy Verizon FIOS user here in LA.
The choices here for most people are Time Warner Cable or AT&T DSL. The few areas that had FIOS infrastructure installed years back get a third choice.
I regularly check if I can get a better deal via cable internet, but the FIOS solution beats the other choices on price and bandwidth, and in my experience, reliability too.
The only grumble - I wish they'd introduce lower price tiers when they up the bandwidth. When I fiorst signed up, 15Mbps up/down was plenty enough for me, but now I get 25/25 for the same price. Would love to save a few dollars by dropping down to 15/15 again, but that probably will never happen.
I'm having a problem calling people whose service is now Frontier. I now have Frontier as well. DSL has been pretty good (Sylmar CA). Usually get the recording that the number has been disconnected or no longer in service. At first I believed it, but then I placed a call using my cell phone and got thru to one of the numbers. The others are not reachable by landline or cell phone. ALSO: The AOL e-mail that Verizon moved to is not as good as the old Yahoo.
I feel so bad for my neighbors who are firmly shackled to Verizon for landline service, and may have lost all of their landlines. We had the foresight to insure a mix of landline and VOIP telco services so, while we had our own shitty April Fool's Day joke when some of our landlines stopped working, thank $DEITY we are not completely beholden to fucked over by this transition.
While April 1 turned out to be just another aggravating day at the office, some of our customer and vendors weren't so fortunate.
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