Review by rsbrown69 
UPDATED: 196 days ago
member for 1 year, 23 visits, last login: 196 days ago
 Boise,Ada,ID
 $39 per month (6 month contract)
 "Basic broadband package starts at 3MB/s"
 "If you come anywhere near using your bandwidth THEY WILL THROTTLE YOUR CONNECTION"
 "Since they don't give you what you pay for (unfair bandwidth caps) I don't recomend them"
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CableOne will throttle your connection, it is in their terms of use and I have experienced it and confirmed it with their tech support while it was being done to me because I wanted to watch a NetFlix Watch Now movie.
I started with Cable one because it appeared they had the best value package with an advertised 3MB/s download speed. What sales will not tell you is if you even come close to your advertised plan for any length of time they will "cap" your bandwidth at what they call their "standard rate" which is approximately half of your advertised plan or less. I noticed that every time I started watching a NetFlix watch now online the movie would pause and a message would come up and say that my connection had slowed down and they would adjust the quality to prevent more interruptions. At 3MB/s the bandwidth is good enough to watch the HD Watch Now from NetFlix. The problem is if you come anywhere near the advertised download speed they will immediately start throttling your connection and your playback will keep pausing intermittently while it tries to buffer more information. I had an idea about what was going on and called tech support to try and figure out why I could not watch a simple movie. After weeks of calling and monitoring my line both DSLReports and Cable one tech support said it must have just been unusual high usage by my neighbors that caused my connection to slow temporarily, CableOne denied having throttled my connection because I had not gone over their cap. I had not tried to watch too many movies online since then because of the poor performance and chalked it up to just having greedy neighbors or a weak connection although most bandwidth tests kept showing I had a good 3MB/s connection?? Well last night I finally caught them in the act, while watching another NetFlix Watch Now my connection slowed drastically, I called tech support and he said everything looked fine on their end, try connecting my player directly to the modem, after a few grumbles I did and I had a great connection again. Maybe it has been my router after all, unlikely but possible. I hang up and started watching again and after about 10 minutes my connection slows to a crawl and now my watch now is horribly grainy. I immediately call back and keep my player recalculating the bandwidth to make sure it is still happening when I get tech support online and he says "everything is fine, oh wait, I see what is happening" he said my connection was being defaulted to the slower speed and the system does it automatically to prevent bandwidth abuse. He said that the 3MB/s plan is not designed to watch movies online.I said it works just fine until their system cuts my speed down and he said the other plans are better for watching the movies online!!! What!!?? He is trying to sell me a more expensive plan right after admitting that they will not even let me use the bandwidth I am paying for in my current one!! NO, I said that is not fair at all or ethical, just provide me with the service I am paying for and if it isn't enough bandwidth or not fast enough for me then I will upgrade. Do not throttle my connection down and say I need to buy the next higher plan!! If they throttled my bill then maybe I wouldn't be as upset but they don't. It is not in the name of preserving bandwidth for my neighbors because they will gladly sell me a much higher bandwidth plan (they don't change the hardware) which would would impact them even more if that were the real issue. No, it is a poor marketing tool to try and convince the user their plan isn't good enough but in reality they are just shortchanging the unsuspecting user. I do not condone the practice of shortchanging a customer in the name of convincing the customer to purchase a more expensive service. Just because they claim to admit it in their terms of service somewhere doesn't make it right. I am canceling Cable one and searching for a provider who does not use the unethical practice! Any suggestions would be great, I am in the Eagle Idaho area. It may take a few lawsuits to correct this practice if that is the only provider in your area. they are advertising it and you are paying for it. Would you settle for only being allowed to use half an advertised Ipod capacity?
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