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Review by dsllh 
UPDATED: 201 days ago
member for 4 years, 681 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Milford,Hunterdon,NJ
 $89 per month
 about 2 days
 "Local DSL Tech service. Steady service since June 2008"
 "660 modem is very slow to resync"
 "Greatly improved since 6/08. Reliable. Confident of support help."
| Pre Sales information:
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(ratings below consensus)
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11/1/2008
Once the 660 series modem was put in last June 2008 to replace the old modem, the unpredictable issue has subsided. However, the Spring and summer have proven in the past good periods for service. Hopefully this better service will continue into the colder months. The negative on the modem, if it does go off it takes 5 or minutes to get resynched, but once it is it remains.
The business 24/7 tech service is always appreciated as well as the local business DSL tech service. I pay extra for the DSL business service that you would for residential, but the quick support attention is worth it despite the times the problem resolution was imperfect and now where it is mostly a reset issue. And it should be as now a lot of businesses like mine »www.myvemma.com/newbiz place orders and conduct marketing and other transactions 24/7.
5/23/09 Update: Service was great through all the cold months so we have a winner on the new modem performance. All is steady as she goes to the point you forget there are many potential breaking points. Modem is still a slow resync but also steady once it is synced. Breaking points are always beyond the local connection and pop. Lets keep it that way Century Tel
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Prior reviews
Prior good points: Local DSL Tech service.
Prior bad points: Constant unpredictable loss of service and throughputs.
Prior bottom line: Disappointing: Not reliable unless you are on site to reboot modem daily
Note 2/8/2008 - started a line monitor and as well this last 5 days we have steady service. So this review's negative on regular lost sync is on hold for data evaluation.
Overall the service degrades two or more times each day. This requires a reboot of the DSL modem. Over the three years I have had the service, this problem comes and goes. You can call and report, but the analysis process is too customer fault focused and it takes perseverance to get to the point they are evaluating their equipment. Since I am offsite often and need to access office computer via logmein. I have found that the modem sync is such you cannot gain access. When I am on site, during the day you often find the quality go down during the business hours to the point you need a reset.
There have been periods where the service was constant for weeks and weeks. But Embarq is not providing reliability and quality testing so it can go from bad to good to bad without notice.
Now there is a 10 M service. I cannot see trying it as reliability for the 5M is disappointing.
2/8/08 - Well this week no loss of sync detected in particular during business hours
Just not an exciting service that you can get your arms around waiting for the next newer features and gladly pay for it.
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Review by dapostolos
Posted: 204 days ago
member for 4.1 years, 64 visits, last login: 77 days ago
Ocala,Marion,FL
$44 per month
"Connection reliability has been high, tech support has been very good."
"Initially 3-5 yrs ago reliability was spotty at best."
"Very good performance & tech support."
| Pre Sales information:
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10meg down/ 896k up $44.95/mo.
Initially (6 yrs ago) my house was in a new development. Service was spotty, outages and speed issues were common. Embarq tech support was responsive, but not overly successful. As the area matured the service has gotten very reliable. Upgraded to 10meg service a few months ago when they dropped the price (about $10-15). I've always felt the upload speeds are relatively low compared to download. I've been using DSL for about 10 yrs through 5 different providers and Embarq has been the best.
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 Review by COMMAN
UPDATED: 204 days ago
member for 9.4 years, 3311 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
Las Vegas,Clark,NV
$120 per month (12 month contract)
about 1 days
"1 day to live, so far delivering what Cox could not."
"Billing dept. needs some adjustment"
"I'm actually going to miss being a customer!!"
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5/19/09
About a year and a half of Embarq, and I am actually enjoying a slightly reduced bill!
Now don't tell anyone, but a few months back I threatened to leave because of the high cost of the landline - I got a much simpler phone package while still keeping the "bundle" discount, and an additional monthly discount for "as long as I have service" as well (must be my good looks - LOL). All in all I'm saving about $40 monthly and still have the same 10 meg internet with static IP, plus landline and caller ID. I gave up the other "features", most of which I never used, and took off the unlimited long distance ($15/mo savings). The 10 meg service has been surprisingly consistent, the phone always works, no outages that I'm aware of in months - I love it. The bad news? - I'm moving out of state now and won't have Embarq where I'm relocating to -  Thanks to ALL the superb Embarq employees I've dealt with - most have been stellar and this is one of the most satisfying business relationships I've ever had - at least 95% of my contacts with the company have been the "standard" of what customer service should be. Thank You Embarq - I'm actually going to miss being a customer!!
9 months of Embarq - 08/23/08
Still a happy customer, though I still find their bills to be ridiculously hard to follow (perhaps as intended?). Service has been excellent, phone and internet, and speeds are amazingly consistent. Have experienced a couple of minor, short-lived slowdowns (affecting upload more than download-go figure), but all in all no complaints. Just yesterday I read about them getting rid of 1000 employees - hope thats not a sign of future problems, but the majority of the Embarq employees I've talked to are dedicated people who really try to help, and approach their job with a smile and a helpful attitude - some of the best customer service I've had from any company in years. Here's hoping this continues for a long time to come! Thanks Embarq.
Almost 4 months later
-service still good, a couple brief outages (minutes, not hours). Converting to Static IP was a nightmare - was given the wrong IP address (already in use) and went through 2 days of tech support hits and misses before a tech finally solved it. In the process, I replaced my old speedstream modem with a 660R from Embarq (Zyxel) and found I could indeed get the full 10/1 speed - YAY! Once I got through that issue, life is good. But......
the billing / sales folks have some 'splainin to do - LOL. The additional fees/charges to get hooked up and change to a static IP (even though I asked for that from the initial order) have been tremendous, and many were not explained in the beginning. The bill is harder to understand than a cryptic govt. document, and billing in advance for some services, after the fact for others just makes it more insane. After all the (*cough* BS *cough*) fees and taxes, the savings over Cox and Vonage aren't really there, but to "unbundle" to a "basic line and DSL only" is no real savings either, so - I gots what I gots. Long story short - the DSL is great, they are beating Cox cable here in Vegas hands down, the phone line is fine, if a bit over-priced, but BEWARE THE FEES!!!
(Initial review follows)
Have been a Cox Business internet customer for over 3 years. Recent speed upgrades must have saturated the network - could not sustain a media stream to my servers. As a streaming media provider I depend on a steady connection, and after 3 years of good service, Cox failed - and refused to believe the problem could be on their end. I'm just 40 hours into Embarq service, but not one hiccup so far, and I have intentionally "beat the connection" very hard.
I ordered the top package - 10/1 - and assumed going in I wouldn't get the full speed due to distance from the CO (DSL is only recently available at this address for that reason). Speed tests WERE showing an average of 7000/750, but since my Cox SOHO plan was only 5000/512 for considerably more money, I'm certainly not complaining.
I made several pre-sales contacts with Embarq sales and support for info, and had an unbelievably knowledgeable support rep talk me through re-configuring my old speedtouch modem to work on the Embarq network (the "Embarq Gateway", a 2wire modem/router combo, wasn't very configurable, and the support rep actually agreed the use of my old modem and router was best) - this guy was one of the best support people I have ever dealt with at ANY company!! My sales rep was also extremely patient and helpful. The line was hot less than 24 hours after order!
The price listed is not only internet but also phone and unlimited long distance! All together it's less than Cox internet and Vonage service (no complaints against Vonage, they've been great to me, but the bundle price on Embarq phone was a cheap add-on, and it won't affect my internet bandwidth). I'll update after a few months of service, but so far Embarq ROCKS!!!
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Review by ispyamoose
UPDATED: 205 days ago
member for 210 days, 47 visits, last login: 82 days ago
Lexington,Lafayette,MO
$30 per month
"Connection speed is stable, practically no down time"
"Horrible pings (at least for me without FastPath turned on)!"
"Decent connection"
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Setting up the connection was a major pain. It took around a week to receive the dsl modem, and after that it took another three days or so to "turn on" the dsl. They gave no assistance during the whole installation process. I was left to setting up my router with a brand new service that I knew practically nothing about. At that time I did not know much about networking either, so that made things even more difficult. In addition, I could not simply "Google" the problem (as I had no internet). Eventually I got things working, but only after a lot of trial and error.
Well, that was about four years ago, and we are currently paying for a 3.0/~512k connection. Most of the time we do get what we pay for, but the pings are usually awful. I play online games occasionally, so pings matter at that point. Often times I will try and make sure to connect to servers that are in the same state as I am. Most of the time that does not help much. I have pings as high, or higher, than 100ms to St. Louis. I receive approximately the same pings to Kansas City, which is pathetic as it is much closer to my home. Here lately I have had to reload web pages two times or more in order to get them to load. I am not sure what the deal is with that, but it is pretty aggravating. I am satisfied with the speed and reliability, but not with the pings.
Overall, I would only suggest this service if there are no other alternatives, or if you are simply browsing the internet for basic things. Unfortunately, I only know of one other service in my area, but that service is even worse than what we currently have.
UPDATE:
I talked with an Embarq representative on this site, and he checked to see if FastPath could be enabled for my dsl line. It was, so he enabled it; MAJOR DIFFERENCE! My pings through major network hubs have dropped by as much as 1/3rd, and my ping to local Embarq servers was cut by 1/4th.
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Review by ozar
UPDATED: 207 days ago
member for 1.6 years, 626 visits, last login: a few hours ago
USA
$103 per month (24 month contract)
about 3 days
"Occasionally able to get decent speeds for this area"
"Speeds drop off a great deal several times daily, must reboot modem every few hours"
"Horrible service overall, expect much better performance considering monthly payment"
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The only other options available to me in this area are dial-up, cable, and satellite. The cable service in this area is down quite often for no apparent reason, so I didn't consider that as a viable alternative.
I'm currently on the "Up to 10.0M download / 896k upload" package and the price I've listed for this review includes my regular phone line, plus the DSL service.
The initial order process (about 5 or 6 years ago) went fine and while it was a self-installation, the actual DSL signal was reaching my line in about 3 days and I was up and running. I started out with the 645 Series modem supplied by Sprint/Embarq and the 1.5 M download package, then I upgraded when 3 M package was available, then again when 5 M download package became available. In all cases, the upgrade was totally painless and without any effort on my part. However, when I recently upgraded to the 10 M downloads package, Embarq sent me a new modem (Embarq EQ-660R) that was supposed to be easy to install, but it turned out to be very problematic and took several different Embarq support techs a number of hours to get things so that I was up and running again.
The newly supplied modem drops the DSL sync signal quite often, but intermittently. In fact, it will sometimes drop out about every 5 or 10 minutes during the evening, then the signal re-syncs and you can connect again. Another thing that I've noticed that happens frequently is that the speed will suddenly drop drastically and I get download speeds around 5M/7M. Rebooting the modem will usually get things going faster again.
I recently replaced the ISP supplied modem with a D-link DSL-2540B modem/router and have not lost sync again since doing so. I've also not noticed the degraded speeds suddenly appearing, but I'm not certain just yet that all is fixed, as it's only been a few days since the ISP modem was replaced.
Update (04-28-09): the speed of my 10 Mb/s connection has dropped to about 2 or 3 Mb/s and stayed there over the last 4 days. Rebooting the modem doesn't seem to help speed it up any longer.
Update (05-17-09): just wanted to update my review to say that the speed finally did move much closer to the 10 Mb/s that I pay for, but I'm back to having to reboot the modem every few hours, or sooner, in order to maintain decent speeds. I'd definitely give Embarq a lower score for connection reliability if there was a lower score available. Otherwise, their DSL services are mediocre. Hopefully, the CenturyTel/Embarq merger will bring some improvements, but I've learned through experience not to count on it. Time will tell, and I'll be back here to report on whatever happens, either way.
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Review by djenner
UPDATED: 209 days ago
member for 10.4 years, 262 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Brinnon,Jefferson,WA
$59 per month
"Embarq is the only high speed Internet service available other than satellite in our rural area."
"Embarq is unable, or unwilling, to consistently provide the advertised and purchased bandpass."
"No alternative."
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We are "at the end of the line" in a rural, Washington community. We waited years for Sprint (now Embarq) to finally provide DSL service. At our location, Embarq advertises three tier service: 1, 3, and 5 Mbits/sec. We purchased 5 Mbits/sec. We actually occasionally achieve 4.8 Mbits/sec. However, the speed drops to the lowest level several times a year until I complain and they "fix it."
Getting the speed "fixed" is excruciatingly difficult. Every time you must call up a low level technician who insists that you reboot everything and won't pass on the troubleshooting until at least an hour is wasted on the phone. You may get upgraded to a higher level technician when you finally convince them that the problem is theirs. It then takes a day or two for some sort of resolution. You are never notified of the resolution or what the problem was.
One time, after spending an inordinate amount of time with the technical support people, I was finally told that THEY DID NOT HAVE THE BANDWIDTH CAPACITY TO HANDLE MY SERVICE BECAUSE THEY HAD ADDED TOO MANY NEW CUSTOMERS. I filed a complaint with the FTC for fraudulent advertising and failure to provide what I was buying. It took months to return to the 5 Mbit/sec service. I received NO compensation for Embarq's fraudulent business practices.
Having to go through this routine several times a year is very disconcerting. As I said in the bottom line, there is no alternative to Embarq DSL other than satellite.
I cannot recommend Embarq to anyone who wishes to deal with a good company. It's the only show in town, and the alternatives are dialup or satellite, both of which are unacceptable in this day and age. Unfortunately, Embarq is also unacceptable.
***************
Well it's less than a month later and here we go again. Download and upload speeds are 1/4 what I pay for. What a fraudulent operation. I wish there were an alternative.
Followup comments:  
Embarq_Joey
VIP
join:2008-09-22
| Service Issues Not sure if you know, but I'm here to help out Embarq customers with DSL issues. If you weren't getting what you were paying for something needs to be looked at. IM me your DSL # at anytime and I can look into this for you.
Thanks,
Joey H.
EMBARQ Customer Outreach
reachout@embarq.com | |
| 
Tarheels Fan
Premium
join:2006-01-05 | Fraudulent? Did you take embarq on their offer of support from your previous rant? | |
| djenner
join:1999-07-17
Seattle, WA
 ·Embarq
| Rant? Rants are misplaced or misdirected criticism. There is nothing misplaced or misdirected about the service Embarq provides for me. It is amongst the worst of any service I have or have ever had. Of course I took them up on their offer. The problems is, no matter how effective it is at one instant in time, it does not last. Embarq is simply incompetent (or fraudulent) and is unable (or unwilling) to provide the service they advertise and I pay for. | |
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Review by malkds
UPDATED: 209 days ago
member for 309 days, 116 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Laotto,Noble,IN
Contract price not specified.
about 7 days
"Generally very good customer and technical support."
"It took years to get the ball rolling in the first place."
"No non-satellite competition."
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My family lives way out in the middle of nowhere, and for years had no decent high speed internet options. After we started talking to a member of the state legislature, we were put in contact with the local Embarq office. After years of being told we were just able to get service due to distance from the equipment, the bridge tap on our phone line was removed and we were given the okay to order, with no promises on the end result. (Despite our 18,500+ feet from the equipment, we ultimately were able to get a ~570kbps connection.)
We received a 2wire 2701HG gateway. As I understand it, this piece of hardware is a wired/wireless router, modem, and hardware firewall in one - convenient. However, the gateway we received was dead/dying on arrival. The first calls to tech support were a bit frustrating. The technician, while friendly, ultimately did not resolve or diagnose the issue. Subsequent calls to tech support proved much more fruitful, as we were able to identify the gateway as the problem and have it replaced.
Once we found the right people to talk to, the process was a breeze, and took only about a week and a half from our first contact with the local office to the arrival of the equipment. Once our initial problems were identified, it took only two days for the replacement equipment to arrive.
In general, the customer and technical support, as well as the local rep and forum rep here have been very helpful.
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Review by rabeatz
Posted: 220 days ago
member for 264 days, 161 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Apopka,Orange,FL
$30 per month
"Great connection, test at 11.2mbps for a 10mbps connection"
"Routing issue to netflix, but they aren't on ISP's servers"
"Good price, high speed, and caring NON OUTSOURCED support"
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I have never had too much of an issue with my connection. I recently upgraded to the 10.0 mbps package for $44.95 per month ($30 after some discounts I have on my account) and enjoy the speeds. I test at 11.2mbps on speed test servers on the other side of the country, so the speeds are good. Whenever I have dealt with the tech support I haven't had any issues. I've had an issue with my connection to Netflix but it isn't Embarq's fault as there is an issue with hops on other ISPs on the way to the netflix server. I received the EQ-660R modem, and I have it bridged and connected to my DD-WRT router. I also have never had any negative experiences with the customer service/billing department, they are always patient and willing to help.
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Review by stevearino
UPDATED: 227 days ago
member for 7.7 years, 188 visits, last login: 25 days ago
Tallahassee,Leon,FL
$39 per month (12 month contract)
"Getting advertised speed"
"took awhile to get spped working"
"I am close to telco so that helps speed - Embarq OK"
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Embarq DSL was ordered at 5000 kps. after some tweaking which took awhile I can get that speed. they had to upgrade my dsl modem,
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Review by paulacraig76
Posted: 229 days ago
member for 331 days, 31 visits, last login: 157 days ago
Leavittsburg,Trumbull,OH
Contract price not specified.
"good for surfing"
"Fluxuating speed and terrible pings"
"no good for gaming but good for general internet"
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i have had embarq for a while.. originally for just basic internet use but lately have been trying to play games online with my friends, for general internet surfing everything is usually ok, sometimes things get slow and u can really tell the difference so i come here and check one minute im like10 d 9 u the next 2 d 5u also the latency has been terrible as of late.
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