 Review by davoice 
member for 11.7 years, 3121 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 1.3 years ago
 27340
 $99 per month- (month by month)
 about 7 days "DSL speed is slightly over provisioned, when you get someone on the phone they're nice" "$$$, 7 day installation interval on everything, cable modems and FTTH not overprovisioned, less than steller internet peering" "If you live in their area, you probably have no other choice."
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UPDATE: Jan 2011
Late last year I moved into a new house, also in Comporium territory. The new house was in a new build area and is served by their fiber-to-the-home product. Differences between their fiber product and the DSL and cable products are HUGE. I get 15mbps x 15mbps for the same price DSL and cable modem customers pay for 11mbps x 1mbps. That's a much better value to say the least. Thankfully they reduced the prices on the upper tier packages. I used to pay $99/mo. I now pay $75.
»www.comporium.com/29715/resident···d-plans/
I haven't had any major problems with their service. Their peering leaves something to be desired sometimes. They rely pretty heavily on their connections from Level3 now and of course those have all the pros and cons of Level3's own peering.
On the fiber connections, they are slightly over provisioned. I've gotten as high as 22mbps down when the network isn't busy. They use Sandvine for rate limiting connections on all types of connections. And yes, sometimes that causes weird things on the network.
Note they DO have explicitly stated bandwidth caps and they did recently increase their bandwidth caps slightly. Caps are manually enforced by human intervention. I'm on the 15x15mbps fiber product so I get 300GB download and 300GB upload. I average about 120GB down and 80GB up. Nice that they give symmetrical caps for symmetrical products. The network techs admit that I'm one of the top 20 users on the network. One of the businesses I support in the area is one of the top 5 business users (they're on dedicated fiber).
Bandwidth Caps:
»www.comporium.com/uploads/legal/···mits.htm
Packages:
»www.comporium.com/29715/resident···d-plans/
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I now have 2 Comporium connections. 1 DSL and 1 cable modem. Both subscribed at 9x1mbps for $99/mo.
You cannot order online. You cannot prequal service online. You must call in or go by one of their retail locations.
Interestingly enough, depending on where you live in Comporium territory you could have DSL, cable modem or fiber. They offer phone service over copper and fiber. And cable service over coax and fiber. Availability depends on location.
The FTTH product is an extension of their cable network and should be thought of as a cable modem. They use an exterior ONU and run ethernet inside from the ONU.
Interestingly enough, my DSL connection is slightly overprovisioned and delivers ~9.1x1.1mbps. My cable modem rarely reaches above 8.9x0.9mbps and is clearly not overprovisioned.
When they installed the cable modem, initially they had the wrong profile attached to it in their CMTS and I was only getting 5mbpsx512kbps. If I hadn't checked the speed and called them, they would have never known. (Since their CMTS is not connected in any automated fashion to their ordering and billing system.)
Comporium is the classic mom and pop monopoly phone company. Most of the time they do try. But occasionally you get a whiff of the "we know we're the only choice" attitude.
They *do* have caps on *all* of their internet packages:
»www.comporium.com/uploads/legal/···mits.htm
My $99/mo packages give only 130GB downstream and 70GB upstream allotments.
They do NOT have a portal or application where you can check your usage in real-time.
Peering is another Comporium weakness. For the longest time they only had *1* connection to the internet - via Spirit Telecom (used to be known as InfoAve Internet), of which Comporium, along with quite a few other independent phone companies in SC, is part owner. InfoAve's main connection to the internet is Cogent. (Supposedly they have connections to Time Warmer Telecom and Hurricane Electric.) InfoAve/Spirit uses Sandvine for bandwidth control. It is assumed that Comporium does also.
Recently (in that last 3 months) Comporium picked up a connection from Level3 in Charlotte to provide redundant internet routing. The catalyst for that was a series of connection failures and outages at Spirit over the past year. Most internet routes tend to preference the Level3 connection in all the traceroutes I've done. Most Charlotte Level3 traffic goes through Atlanta to get to the world - this causes some less than optimal routing from time to time. (Like going from CLT -> ATL -> DCA to get to XO in DFW.)
You can see Comporium's ASN peers here:
»www.fixedorbit.com/AS/14/AS14615.htm
And their peer map here:
»www.robtex.com/as/as14615.html
Can you do worse? Certainly. Can you do better? Certainly.
For Fort Mill/Regent Park residents there is hope of competition keeping Comporium honest. Time Warner Cable has begun to overbuild into new and existing housing developments in Fort Mill, starting from the NC border areas near the back Regent Park.
}Davoice
Comments:
 | | Bent over... Personally, I feel like they are bending me over and having their way with me. I just walked in today and paid my bill, get home, and low and behold, I am losing half of my packets and my ping is around 14 thousand. I keep good maintenance on my computer constantly and so I instantly began checking everything I had and spent a sum of about 4 or 5 hours trying to figure out the problem.
Low and behold, the problem is Comporium. I have been putting up with this bull for a couple years now and I am fed up with it. In fact, I am stopping by tomorrow and asking for the money I paid today as I am NOT getting the service I paid for. Quite honestly, I can hardly even use the internet with this service.
Overall, if I could, I would have this cooperation arrested... What they are doing feels criminal, illegal, and the entire fraud is enough to make me want to walk in and punch the owner. | |
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