Review by sethf Location: Danielsville, Madison, GA, USA Cost: $100 per month Finally a directive to fund upgrades in areas with no competition Phone support has long hold times and hit or miss service Completely pleased ultimately, but you may have to work for it

Pre Sales information: Install Co-ordination: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:

*updated July 2016 to reflect current realities*

I know there's a lot of griping about the service many of us have endured under Windstream, but I just wanted to share my story to give some hope to those of you who are still suffering with oversold equipment and low speeds.

About four years ago, my DSLAM was horribly oversold and running on copper backhaul. During these times, I would regularly see pings to google in excess of 2000ms (yes, two full seconds), tons of packet loss, and websites completely refusing to load. About two years ago, they finally connected fiber to it and I was able to upgrade from my 3Mbps service to 6Mbps down 650Kbps up service that was consistent at any time of day (even during peak times). Well over 6 months ago, I noticed new equipment being installed in my area and having read about Tony Thomas's Project Excel initiative and the CAF II funds, I knew this had to be VDSL2+ capable equipment. I was excited, but I knew a sad fact - I was over 2 miles from my DSLAM. The switch that was very close to me (~1200 feet) was actually on a different exchange due to the fact that I am right on the border of two different local phone exchanges. I went ahead and upgraded to the 10Mbps package that was the maximum available to me at my distance and contacted the local support team (you can contact them at 706-894-1330) and explained my situation and my desire to have my service moved to the closer equipment. We had back and forth conversations over the course of many months and finally about a month ago, I was contacted by them and told that they just wanted to be sure I understood I'd have to change my phone number if they were going to do this and my response, of course, was "absolutely." So construction work began to install new copper from the other direction to my pedestal (with no cost to me other than the standard monthly rate) and they put in a new order for me to get connected to the new switch. Last week, I finally got my new 100/8 package installed and am EXTREMELY happy with it.

Just so you know, I live in a pretty rural area with about 32 homes/mile in a county with only about 30,000 people spread out over 280 square miles. Windstream has no competition in my area (Charter stops their service area about 3 miles away), but they still upgraded me nevertheless. I say all of this to hopefully give some others hope and tools to work for their own upgrades. This would not have just "happened" for me had I not reached out to the local team and taken my broadband fate into my own hands and politely, but persistently worked to get the upgrade that I know should have been available for me. I had been told by every phone rep I spoke to and even the direct forums here that it was just not possible to switch exchanges, but (despite the definition of insanity) kept asking the same question and hoping for a different answer until I finally got one. I have not/do not work for Windstream, nor do any of my friends or family. For those in oversold situations currently, I hope this gives you a little bit of hope about Windstream's future vision under Tony Thomas' leadership.

Now for the obligatory speed tests taken just a moment ago during what would have formerly been the prime-time crap-time:

DSLR speed test:

Ookla speed test:

Sammy_D @windstream.net Sammy_D Anon 2012-Dec-20 2:24 pm Price gouging and poor service. WIndstream gouges it's customers because they know they are the only one servicing many rural areas. The service is down so much they owe me months worth of back service- but you know they won't do that. I'll be glad if or when ATT or somebody gets lines out here - there's is less than half the price for the same service. 2012-Dec-20 2:24 pm: · hey mods ·

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