Review by netengr 
UPDATED: 39 days ago
member for 1.5 years, 32 visits, last login: 25 days ago
 Sherman,Grayson,TX
 $43 per month
 "Business Office in my local area"
 "Deceptive Advertising; Too many Service Disruptions"
 "Don't advertise unlimited bandwidth then direct customer to Acceptable Use Policy for actual bandwidth policies."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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[Update]
CableOne service to my home seems to be better in the past 3-months. I have not performed any large file downloads in that period however. I am still steamed about the discontinuation of the News Server.
[Update]
There was no mention in the service description when I subscribed to CableOne Internet service that advised about bandwidth limitations at certain utilization thresholds. I only found this out when tech-support directed me to read the online Acceptable Use Policy. Why the heck wasn't this info included in my service contract?
The contract documents presented to me at the CableOne office indicated unlimited service for the 3Mbs/300Kbs service to which I subscribed. My service runs at less than half of the promised service level most of the time. I also have a very strong suspicion that CableOne is stepping on P2P traffic in addition to putting an overall bandwidth squeeze on customers.
[Update] CableOne ended Newsgroup services 31 December 2007. This action after recent fee increases may indicate financial problems at the company. Perhaps the better strategy would be a reduction in executive compensation and bonuses to match the companies declining service performance.
[Update] I must compliment CableOne Support. I worked with a CableOne Tech in activating a subscriber's system and found the Tech to be quite knowledgeable and professional. Despite this however the subscriber that I assisted had such limited OS knowledge that they were unable to effectively interact with the technician and requested my services. CableOne should consider investment in a "Remote Hands" service offering to provide remote system configuration, scheduled backups, anti-virus, etceteras. I am seeing many CableOne subscribers that could benefit from such a service. Why leave this money on the table...
[UPDATE]
After digging around on the CableOne site I finally found the "EULA". CableOne customer support was unable to tell me why the 'EULA" was not located with all the other CableOne legal documents.
The CableOne EULA provided more surprising information; information that was not in the original contract that I signed. I was also miffed by the omission of a posting date for the EULA by CableOne. My contract with CableOne promised 3.0 Mbs Download and 300 Kbs upload speed. Well... somewhere along the line CableOne decided to redefine the service offering with the addition of the terms Standard Speed and Extended Speed.
My original service contract for base rate Residential service promised 3.0 Mbs download and 300 Kbs upload with no mention of a "standard" or "extended" speed qualifier. The 3.0 MB download is now characterized as "extended speed" and 1.536 Mb download speed is now "standard speed" for the base rate Residential offering now called Residential Plus. Upload data rates have also been redefined, with 300 kbs now the "extended speed" and 150 kbs the "standard speed".
As it currently stands if you download more than 1.3 GB between 12 noon and midnight your available download bandwidth will be reduced from 3 Mbs to 1.5 Mbs until midnight the next day. Account suspension may also be imposed if repeated transgression occurs. The Business Threshold Limits have received a similar treatment.
CableOne also states in their EULA that they will discriminate against certain clases of traffic "in their sole judgment". This does not bode well for legitimate file-sharing applications for Residential Users or for Business users using VMware or similar applications.
CableOne ! Listen to your CUSTOMERS. Build out your infrastructure to give the customer what they are requesting; better value for their money, better service and a company responsive to their needs. Why is it that American companies fail to listen to the people paying their salaries. Included is an excerpt of the CableOne EULA covering Bandwidth, Data Storage and Other Limitations, below.
Bandwidth, Data Storage and Other Limitations
"The Cable One network is designed for typical usage by a computer user seated at his or her keyboard. Computer activity resulting in excessive or sustained bandwidth consumption such as from unattended computer activity may burden the network and such usage may be restricted. It is therefore essential that you comply with the current bandwidth, data throughput, file storage and other limitations on the Services. Users must ensure their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Services, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Cable One, Inc.) an unusually large burden on the network itself. In addition, users must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cable One, Inc.'s ability to deliver the Services and monitor the Services, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services. Cable One provisions all customers with up to at least Standard Speeds or higher. Nearly all customers will experience Extended Speeds and remain provisioned at that level. Customers who exceed threshold limits remain at Standard speeds during the enforcement period. The enforcement period begins mid-afternoon and continues until approximately midnight. For example: A "Residential" customer getting extended speeds who consumes 1,347 MB of download bandwidth during the measurement period will automatically change provisioning to Standard Speeds until midnight of that day. Cable One may, without notice, modify the speed, interrupt, or prohibit such data traffic. We also collect data on customer traffic pattern usage through the use of traffic management software. The analysis is provided as broad categories of usage and enables Cable One to modify, when necessary, the amount of bandwidth you have available for any general category of use if, in Cable One’s sole judgment, your bandwidth consumption is excessive generally or in any particular category. In addition, users must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cable One, Inc.'s ability to deliver the Services and monitor the Services, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services. Cable One residential or commercial customers may not resell, share, or otherwise distribute the Services or any portion thereof to any third party without the prior written consent of Cable One, Inc. For example, you cannot provide Internet access to others through a dial up connection, host shell accounts over the Internet, provide email or news service, send a news feed or redistribute Cable One Internet service via wireless network. The CableOne.Net residential service offering is a consumer product designed for your personal use of the Internet. For example, the service does not provide the type of security, upstream performance and total downstream throughput capability typically associated with commercial use. You may not run a server in connection with the CableOne.Net residential service, nor may you provide network services to others via the CableOne.Net residential service. The CableOne.Net residential service includes personal Web Space accounts for publishing personal Web pages. Examples of prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, running servers for mail (pop3 & smtp), http, https, ftp, irc, dhcp and multi-user interactive forums. "
Followup comments:  
cableone user
@cableone.net
| regards to p2p shaping and whatever They say they have bandwidth caps at 2 gigs a day until 12am-12pm which at that time, the service becomes unrestricted. In reality, they are just blocking p2p traffic, bittorrent especially. Programs like Blizzard's auto-updater for WoW, Xfire's download area (just to name a couple of programs that utilize bittorrent on a legitimate basis) will not work after the 2 gigs is used. My connection is continuously reset if I leave a bittorrent client running after the allowed cap. Irc resets, vent resets, etc...
I can however, still download at 400kb from any ftp or download site, such as Cnet. I hope that someone sues the **** out of them and they stop this bull****. | |
| 
Le Roy
Skillz
Premium
join:2002-05-03
Biloxi, MS
 ·AT&T Southeast
 ·CableOne
| Your just getting the bandwidth 2nd hand. What else do you expect? They have to buy the bandwidth they are selling to you from AT&T anyway. Just do a tracert to any place on the WWW (Google for example, or here) and see that the first hop outside of Cableone's "network" I don't think it's actually a backbone, is directly to AT&Ts. Go figure. | |
| brimulti
join:2006-12-18
Twin Falls, ID | Look at your Bill for Late Fees Take a look at your bill too. Bet there is a late fee calculated on there that shouldn't be. $2.95 on every bill whether they are late or not. | |
| cableonewtx
join:2005-01-11
Odessa, TX
| re: Newsgroups Financial difficulties are not true, especially when the parent company is the Washington Post.
Try the fact that there were less than 200 newsgroup users out of over 300,000 internet customers. The cost to keep the agreement with Supernews was probably too costly to keep it, based on number of users.
Besides, go spend 14 a month and subscribe directly to any of several newsgroups out there, and you will have a tremendously larger capability on newsgroups....if it's that important. | |
| netengr
join:2007-12-18
Sherman, TX
·CableOne
|  CableOne Service Activation
Setup with CableOne support went smoothly but took way to long. I don't need to follow a script for a simple service activation but the subscriber found it informative. They wanted to know how a normal person could be expected to activate service if the CableOne installer could not get it done with customer support. Well, I told them, that's what the "Geeks" are for. [Note: I am not a Geek] | |
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