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Review by Zenit_IIfx See Profile

  • Location: Purcellville, Loudoun, VA, USA
  • Cost: $61 per month
  • Install: about 7 days
  • Telco party Verizon
Customer Service, Routing, Pingtime, Stable, Cheap
Old DSLAM's, Old Outside Plant, service is stuck in the mid-2000's
Good enough if your close to the CO and dont need too much speed
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

My Other Reviews

·Comcast XFINITY
2/18/18: I ran a new Cat5e home run to the NID. Modem now syncs at 14Mbps down, netting 12.5Mbps usable. Service is still stable and reliable. Bill has gone up by $1 due to the various fees and taxes. My loop still holds up through severe weather without fail. No sign of FiOS yet.

11/27/17: Still holding well at around 10Mbps down (12Mbps sync), 1Mbps up. Pretty stable, only one minor service difficulty in the form of a third party peering outage causing congestion between the VZ network and that external network. This was resolved in 1 day. I wish Verizon would implement pair bonding as that would open the door to speeds above 12Mbps. Two pairs could probably pull off 24Mbps at my address. Unfortunately Verizon doesn't upgrade anything associated with DSL. All of the technology is firmly stuck in 2004.

I'm honestly super impressed that there have been no outside plant failures with my line.

Comcast keeps lowering the price for 25/5 service. It's now only $29/mo and the tier will be going to 75/5 soon. There is little financial sense in holding on to the slow 10/1 DSL if Comcast continues to be somewhat competitive for HSI only customers.

Still waiting on FiOS, it's been 10 years of waiting so far.

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8/31/17: It has been almost 1 year since I first got VZ DSL activated again on my line. The service has been rock solid for the most part, especially after a tech came out and conditioned the loop in September of last year. The service is resilient to power outages and severe weather, if only because my loop is entirely underground and fed out of the Purcellville CO. ASSIA occasionally adjusts the line +/- 100kbps but goes wild in the aftermath of a power outage. When the power goes out my loop can hold 15Mbps sync due to the lack of electrical noise (the phone lines are joint bury with power and CATV), so it takes some time to stabilize once the lights come back.

Overall happy. Billing is consistent. Service is consistent. It's basic and plain but it works. I realize most people will not be this lucky with VZ DSL service as the quality is highly dependent on local plant and equipment.

7/8/17: Still solid. Line sync is still at 12Mbps down, 1Mbps up. Underground copper is still in good condition as it survived a torrential downpour, no static or service outage. Billing is consistent. ASSIA has settled down and rarely makes fine adjustments to the line. Uptime is high, usually no drops for up to 30 days at a time.

Wish I had FiOS, but this will have to do until VZ's Network Transformation project hits the area.

5/10/17: Line is completely rock solid, still at 12Mbps down, almost 1Mbps up. This is turning out to be a decent escape from Comcast.

4/30/17: For some reason, ASSIA decided to push the limits this month. I had a few weeks of regular drops of service for 30 seconds while ASSIA messed with the speed, eventually pushing the line past what is stable. It has decided to settle on 12512kbps downstream sync which is rock solid. Overall service is good and reliable, so long as the automated systems don't mess with the line too much.

3/13/17: 5 days after getting bumped to 10Mbps, the automated system ASSIA bumped my line up to 12Mbps. It's stable so far, error rate is acceptable. 12Mbps is the realistic max of my line.

3/11/17: I managed to find someone in VZ Engineering willing to remove the speed cap hobbling my Alcatel 7300 DSLAM. I am now on the 7.1-15Mbps tier for the same monthly price. The automated provisioning system assigned me 10Mbps to ensure stability; it is much faster than the old 7Mbps service and is stable. Line could probably do 12-13Mbps with some work on my inside wiring.

2/18/17: Uptime on the circuit over the past 30 days was measured at 99.97% by my RIPE ATLAS probe. Very good for a residential line. The few minutes of outage were caused by me rebooting the modem as it's memory had filled causing packet loss. Billing has been fixed and is normal again.

1/21/17: Billing is even more screwed up. Account is somehow split in two, they want $65 for DSL and $25 for POTS, way over the agreed $55/mo bundle. Amazing the automated billing system can't handle just removing a $10 activation fee.

1/3/17: Service still at 7Mbps solid with good SNR numbers. My bill is screwed up though; much lower than it should be. Somehow I got dropped out of bundle by the system when it was only supposed to remove the charge for the activation fee, the DSL vanished off of the bill. Everything still works and I paid the full normal amount. Attached current speedtest.

10/18/16: Service is holding at 7Mbps. Bill is exactly as promised. POTS is clear. No complaints at this time.

9/29/16: Verizon removed a half mile worth of bridge taps off of my loop making it effectively a conditioned circuit. (perhaps not to the level of a T-1 but better than the typical POTS line). Very happy this was done. I was also moved to an ADSL2+ DSLAM. Service is rock solid at 7Mbps. The loop could do 10Mbps but Verizon will not sell me the tier due to internal notes at the billing department, even though there is no engineering side restriction. I am fine with 7M, 10M would be pushing the limits of the wiring. The number port was completed today. The loop is holding up in heavy rain/moist conditions which means the plant serving my home is still in relatively good condition.

9/20/16: Loop has been in service; I am getting 7mbps down, 700kbps up thanks to TimK's help. My loop is in OK condition and there is no problem with service even in the rain. Verizon is coming out next Tuesday to repair my NID and condition my loop for DSL by removing the bridge tap and checking connections on their end.

Comcast would not budge on price, so I will be a VZ customer now.

9/6/16: Placed an order for my loop to be activated with 3-7mbps DSL + Regional Essentials at $45/mo no contract. Comcast keeps raising the rate for my triple play and they show little signs of negotiating. I am barely home now, so the slower DSL will be fine for a few months until I can get the new customer "deals" at Comcast. My loop is fairly short so 5mbps should be a given. The loop runs direct to the CO; ex-C&P Telephone/Bell System.

Loop activation is scheduled for Friday with self install.

member for 11.8 years, 5519 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 6 years ago