 Review by mob 
member for 12.5 years, 5230 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 196 days ago
 Shawnee,Johnson,KS
 $65 per month- (12 month contract)
 about 5 days "Upload is better than cable modem based internet access" "Not always getting full upload speed" "Better than DSL or cable modem internet services"
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I moved to an area served by ATT, Time Warner Cable and Surewest. ATT offered capped Uverse with a contract, not much upload speed with a price that was not attractive. Time Warner wanted to sell me "all the best" however I was tired of their poor HD cable quality and slow upload speeds.
Surewest offered me digital cable, an HD DVR with dual tuners and 25mb symmetric internet service for a little over $101 a month after "fees" and taxes.
In most cases the connection is very speedy, with no problem getting the full advertised download speed. However when uploading it seems the speeds drop. I still get well beyond anything cable or dsl offer, just not the full speed I know the line can do.
Beyond that issue I am more than pleased with the stability of the connection. Ping times to various servers are usually below 10ms.
»www.speedtest.net/result/1327937818.png
September 10, 2011 - update
Solid, stable connection. Insanely low ping times to most servers and sites. Would love a free speed upgrade while maintaining current cost.
July 14 2012 - update
Dropped cable TV, DVR, etc since I barely used it. Switched over to 50/50 for $100 a month for a year.
»speedtest.net/result/2057520415.png
Do I miss cable television service? No. Nothing on was worth watching. Netflix and Amazon Instant Video both work very well on the higher speed service however.
Routing and latency are the same, and have been stable for the most part. I do not use their DNS however, it has too many problems. Virtually all other connection failures can be traced to my hardware, so once I got the DNS issue taken care of it's been very stable and steady with the occasional router issue that is solved by a reboot of the router.
September 23 2012 - update
Price was lowered to $59 a month plus fees and taxes. I'm able to go faster than many sites can handle, so if I have a download that is not at the full speed of the connection I am often not too worried about it. On most speed tests I am able to get over 50mb down and at least 48 up. I can now upload HD video to Youtube without spending 4+ hours waiting for the upload to complete.
Google Fiber is looming big in the area though....
Comments:
 |  | | | Re: Ironic.... They don't see it as a priority issue because even though it bursts to ~75Mb/s, it averages to your advertised speed of 25Mb/s (+/- 5Mb/s). It has to do with how and where they limiting the upload speed, so it's just life until they decide to redesign and upgrade their internal network.
I as well hope they fix it eventually, since the heavy-handed upload limiting (i.e. hard-drop overflow packets) is horrible for efficiency and is basically just resulting in heavy packet-loss and re-transmissions on outbound traffic within the Surewest network. Not an issue for Surewest because of the immense surplus of available bandwidth within their fiber network, but it does cause minor issues when uploading to high-speed servers outside the network in terms of re-transmissions.
If we're lucky, it will all get resolved when they upgrade all their 100Mb/s fiber gear to 1Gb/s fiber gear in the future. Still a question of when (or if) Surewest is going to perform such an upgrade anytime soon. Fortunately, in the near-future we may have Comcast getting competitive on price/speed with DOCSIS 3.0 channel bonding, as well as that 1Gb/s Google Fiber project near Surewest's other deployment in Kansas City to hopefully encourage Surewest to quicken adoption of 1Gb/s. | |
| | |  spewakR.I.P DadkinsPremium
join:2001-08-07
Elk Grove, CA
kudos:1 | Re: Ironic.... Would it be that they would upgrade from BPON to GPON? If so, is it just one piece of equipment at each node?
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The weekend is here, grab a can of beer!
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| | | | | | Re: Ironic.... Surewest doesn't use Passive Optical Network (PON). In Sacramento at least, they use a Direct-Fiber Active Optical Network (aka Active Ethernet), where each customer has a dedicated fiber strand to the CO. In other words, no nodes like PON.
A change to 1Gbps would be done on existing fiber, and would require replacing ONTs on every house, and potentially extremely expensive upgrades/replacements of fiber routers and switches in their CO. The main issue right now appears the be the cost of 1Gbps fiber routers/switches/modules and the more pressing concern of availability of triple-play 1Gbps Active Ethernet ONTs with 1Gbps Ethernet Ports and POTs. Their current vendor for ONTs, Allied Telesis, doesn't make such an ONT yet. The hybrid 700GE-series ONTs from Calix (who is also a vendor for Surewest, but not for ONTs) appears to be the only decent option I've seen. The question then becomes, "Does Surewest have a contract which requires them to buy Allied Telesis ONTs for X years?". If so, that would be the biggest limiting factor in any switch to 1Gbps which could take place.
HDTV IPTV and internet sharing the same 100Mb/s fiber link, is why we are currently limited to an excessively priced 50Mb/s top-tier internet plan. Despite Surewest's CEO saying they would offer 100Mb/s internet if anybody would buy it, they would never do such a thing on their current 100Mb/s fiber, since it would mean loss triple-play revenues. Such a plan would need to cost more than triple-play combined to be economical to Surewest, but nobody except a business would pay such a high price. That said, competition with residential internet plans 50Mb/s and higher may be what ultimately forces Surewest's upgrade, in order to remain competitive. The problem is, as of yet, Comcast hasn't actively attempted to compete on price or speed with Surewest. | |
| | | | | spewakR.I.P DadkinsPremium
join:2001-08-07
Elk Grove, CA
kudos:1 | Re: Ironic.... Thanks for the insight cyber!  | |
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| | Contact Surewest to fix your upload speed Back on topic. mob, if you are only getting 20Mbps out of 25Mbps on upload speed, contact Surewest, they will fix it.
You're in luck that 80% of advertised speed is the magic number you need to hit before Surewest will attempt to resolve speed issues. If this isn't a router or computer issue, they will simply bump the upload speed limit on your fiber port from 25Mb/s to 30Mb/s. | |
| mobOn the next level..Premium
join:2000-10-07 | wow Holy crap, never know so many people read my review.
I will call SW up and see what they can do about the upload. Even on their internal speed test I am not hitting 25. I seem to top out at 20 no matter what. | |
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