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Review by GregBrehm 
Posted: 9.1 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 9 visits, last login: 6.9 years ago
 Sanborn,Niagara,NY
 $49 per month (12 month contract)
 about 15 days
 "Service has been UP and speed out here (in my rural area) is near T-1!!"
 "It took forever to get their attention?"
 "I think the cost is high, however at the current speeds - the value IS THERE!"
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I use Adelphia-Power Link, thru Adelphia-Niagara. I link thru the same servers as the rest of the users here in the Buffalo area. I live in the "country" and I have very consistant speeds in the 1100+ kbps range. I have not expereienced any down time, however I have been a user for only 6 weeks. I'm not impressed with their sales dept. I wanted this serviec 4 months ago. I called, e-mailed x2, completed a trade show application, and not a single response from ANY of them. Finally another call and I got the service within a week. It took 2 people, one to come and verify the line speed, and the other to install the modem and network card/software. I found that amusing! I do not use their ISP homepage, so I can't speak for that reliablity or email service, though I have heard there have been e-mail server outages in the past. All in all, I am a satisfied customer. Now if my speeds dropped and outages abounded I'd be changing my tune... If that happens I will be SURE TO LET YOU'all KNOW!!
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Review by WriteGirl
Posted: 9.1 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 15 visits, last login: 8.8 years ago
Tupper Lake,Franklin,NY
$41 per month
"Two-way cable internet access frees my telephone line"
"Too many browsing problems and very poor speed"
"You pays yer money and you takes yer chances."
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I live in northern New York state and Adelphia provides cable service in my area. In early 1998 Adelphia began hyping their high speed cable internet access, which they said would be available by December 1998. It wasn't until mid-to-late 1999 when it was actually operational. I ordered two-way cable (at $39.95/month plus tax) in February 2000 and they installed it within a week of my order. At the time, they were offering free installation, plus the first month free.
The tech installed a Kingston KNE100TX fast ethernet adapter and a Surfboard SB3100 cable modem on my brand new Endura Pentium II, 400 mHz, 128 RAM computer.
The FAQ on the Adelphia Powerlink website says Powerlink doesn't offer static (permanent) IP addresses in my area. However, when I check my IP address it seems to always be the same one - from the time I boot up until the time I shut down.
For the first 4 months or so, I was a happy camper. Then a friend sent me a link to MSN's computing central Bandwidth Speedtest page. So I began checking my speed. Call me a dummy, but I thought cable would be faster than my old dial-up ISP. (I was using a 33.6 modem with them, so I did have some expectations.) My new computer has a 56K modem in it, and since cable is supposed to be faster than that, I was quite disappointed to start seeing speed tests that seemed to me to be barely above 56K. My MSN bandwidth speed test has not exceeded 85K and seldom exceeds 60K. In fact, the speed quite often doesn't reflect anything better than I was getting with a 33.6K modem on a dial-up connection. And for this I'm paying double what my dial-up ISP was costing.
The speed issue has not yet been resolved, despite several "upgrade" and "maintenance" notices posted on the Powerlink Netstatus page for my area. A tech told me just last night (by email, of course):
"The speed test we use to gauge your download speeds is the FTP to yourlocal omega server...As long as you are getting approximately 80 Kbytes/sec, then your connection is acceptable."
Somehow that doesn't seem "high speed" to me, especially when I look at posts here from people who claim a lot high speed rates with Powerlink in their areas. If someone could explain to me...
I have mixed feelings about Tech Support. Sometimes I've gotten a tech who doesn't seem to know as much as I do - like I'm saying I can't browse the web and he's saying he doesn't know of any problem in my area. LOL. Other times I've gotten a tech who actually does try to resolve the problem. (That's how I learned about ping and traceroute and the ftp test download). Although I have dealt with Tech Support by phone, I'm beginning to prefer email contact so I have a record of exactly what they are telling me from one contact to the next. Since I've been instructed to change proxy server settings three times since July, I find email to be a good recording-keeping tool.
On a positive note, I've had minimal problems with Powerlink's email and news servers.
For what it's worth, I think that Powerlink has a lot of problems and may be over-sold in my area.
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 Review by rcookjr
Posted: 9.1 years ago
member for 9.2 years, 186 visits, last login: 4.3 years ago
Dayton,Montgomery,OH
Contract price not specified.
 Ameritech
"Not reviewed"
"Not reviewed"
"Not reviewed"
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Sorry This should be a review for Earthlink
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 Review by snorpus
Posted: 9.1 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 1530 visits, last login: 201 days ago
Export,Westmoreland,PA
$40 per month
about 10 days
"Could have been installed in 8 days, if I could have made the first appointment. My fault!"
"Installer drilled into return vent, didn't realize that had to remove WinModem to free up an IRQ. had no clue about Linux ."
"With tweaks, I'm getting >3.6Mbps download on the dslreports tests (off-peak, of course)."
| Pre Sales information:
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9/19/2000: I get an Adelphia-gram in the mail, informing me I can trade in my "old" cable-box for a "new" digital cable box at a local community center. I go down that night, and come home with a bazillion new channels, a digital cable box, and a bill that's $8 lower per month. While there, I agree to sign up for PowerLink (Adelphia's cable modem service) for $40 a month. An appointment to install PowerLink will be scheduled later.
9/20/2000: By the afternoon of the next day, the digital cable service is activated. More movies I won't watch, 45 music channels which my kids say are great, and, just for me, Speedvision.
9/22/2000: Adelphia calls and sets up an appointment to install the cable modem next Wednesday at 3-5pm. I agree.
9/27/2000: I have a meeting at my son's high school, and am 20 minutes late. The cable guy has been and gone. I call Adelphia and re-schedule for Friday, September 29th.
9/29/2000 1500EDT: I'm here, the cable guy is here, let's get it on...
My cable feed runs through the basement, so the installer (unlike some other areas, I have "one guy does all", not separate cable runners and modem/NIC installers) decides to drill down thru the floor next to my computer, and run the RG-59 from there in the basement. I presume this is fairly normal. But he (we) didn't check the other side of the wall, where we would have seen, if we had taken the time to look, that a return vent used the same wall space. So the first hole went into the vent, and the cable never came out the other end.
We do some measurements, determine where to drill to come out in the joist space, and all is well.
Next, we try to install the NIC (a Kingston KNE100TX). The first time he doesn't get it seated correctly, the second time it seats but since its in a previously unused PCI slot, the contacts are dirty (My PC is a Pentium II, over 3 years old), and the third time is a charm. (Hint: if your computer is more than a few months old, seat and re-seat any cards you mount, the contacts could be a bit corroded.) OK, we don't really know the contacts are dirty, but it seems like a reasonable explanation. I've had quantity orders (50) of new PCs delivered where 20% of them had to have cards reseated, so this isn't terribly surprising.
Anyway, we're now up and running, the cable guy runs some tests at www.toast.com, seems OK, so he leaves. Total time on site, including running the cable and getting my workstation up and running in Win98 mode, is about an hour and 15 minutes.
Untweaked download speeds of 1-1.5 Mbps from the dslreports East Coast Server, 0.5-1.0 Mbps from the West Coast Server. Not bad "out of the box", let's see what some Registry tuning can do.
Initially, I ignored the instructions, and just created a new Default Receive Window key, which promptly caused the system to crash on startup. Went back, reread the instructions, identified which of the *four* TCP keys was the right one to monkey with, added all the item-value pairs listed in the Tweaks section, and "voila`".
It works, it works like a champ. Best East Coast download speed has been 3630 Kbps (!), and consistently (during offpeak hours) its been >3000 Kbps. West Coast is usually >2000 Kbps offpeak, and >1000 Kbps peak times. Admittedly, I'm an early adopter, and I'm probably one of the few sharing my node right now, so my download speed might drop as more neighbors get on the system.
Speed Ordered: I don't think Adelphia ever quoted a speed. The upload speed appears to be limited to 128 Kbps (I've never exceeded that). When I record speed measurements in the dslreports database, I've decided to use 4000 as the download speed, but I really don't know for sure what the upper download limit is. The best I've ever gotten is 3650 Kbps, but I don't know, at this point, if that's the very best I can do.
Order/Install Process: If I hadn't missed the first appointment, it would have been in place in 8 days. As it was, it was only 10 days. (I was pro-active, and called Adelphia and apologized for missing the first appointment, which might have helped somewhat.) The tech was reasonably competent, although I think he should have thought of legacy hardware hogging IRQs before I did.
My PC is a Gateway PII 300Mhz, dual booting to Win98 (upgrade from Win95, *not* Win98SE) and Linux/Mandrake. The tech had never heard of Linux, so I thought it best that I just get Win98 running, and I'll figure out the Linux side for myself.
NIC: Kingston KNE100TX (10/100 PnP Ethernet card)
Cable Modem: Terayon DOCSIS ECM110
IP: Dynamic, 3 hour renewable leases... I've been connected for over four days now, and still have the same IP as at the beginning. Maybe these could be called "quasi-dynamic" or "semi-static" IPs.
Other Experiences: Installed BlackICE as soon as I got the cable modem. In four+ days, have had six separate probes, scans, attacks, etc. Reported them to Adelphia, and they very quickly responded via email with a list of items that they need (Attacker IP, probe type, etc.) to follow up on. Too soon to see if they'll be effective, but at least it appears they're trying.
Dave
Update for 10/04/2000
Read some other reviews of Adelphia from other areas, and decided to re-do my speed tests. Couldn't get into the East Coast server at dslreports.com, but the West Coast Server (at 7:45pm EDT) gave me the following results:
Test running..........
** Speed 2420(down)/124(up) kbps **
(At least 48 times faster than a 56k modem)
Logging result
Finish.
I didn't mention in my review, but at least in this area (Western Pennsylvania), Adelphia, AT&T, and Verizon (ex-BellAtlantic) are in a big marketing battle. Verizon just announced a six month free trial for some web services, etc., and AT&T is stringing fiber like mad, at least till their sub-contractors poke into a natural gas line and blow up a neighborhood.
I can't comment on what Adelphia is doing in other parts of the country, but around here, they strung all new hardline and, IMHO, appear to be the system of choice, right now. Technically, I think DSL should be winning, but the telco's seem to be dropping the ball (read all the posts about coordiinating the telco, the dsl company, and the isp).
Dave
Update at 10-04-2000 20:45 EDT
Got into dislreports East Coast server around 8:45pm. Here are the results, copied and pasted into this review addendum...
Test running..........
** Speed 2420(down)/124(up) kbps **
(At least 48 times faster than a 56k modem)
Logging result
Finish.
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Review by chipwhitney
Posted: 9.1 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 24 visits, last login: 7.7 years ago
Boca Raton,Palm Beach,FL
$39 per month
"Absolutely None"
"Pre- Installation, Installation, Web Service, Tech Support, Speed, Service"
"If you like to pay for serious aggravation, this is the service for you!"
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Here is my experience with Adelphia. You can decide for your self if this is the kind of service you would like. This is a VERY Brief description as I dont really have the time to include the day to day happenings. I will update this with happenings both good and bad.
Adelphia
Sat. 5/13/00 Installed at 9:15 am. Crashed after rebooting. On phone from 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM trying to troubleshoot. Finally while on hold I unattached and reattached USB cable. It was decided that I needed a network adapter card to prevent the system from going offline when rebooting the computer. The contractor also said that someone would be out Monday to bury the cable outside and ground and reattach the box on wall that was hanging off.
Mon. 5/15/00 No one shows up to bury cable and fix the box. On phone from 9:00 to 10:30trying to troubleshoot the USB and finding out why no one showed up to bury the cable. Was told that someone would be out Tuesday to bring network card and bury cable.
Tues. 5/16/00 No one shows up to bury the cable or bring a network card. Spoke to Barbara that PM. who called to see if I wanted to sign up for Adelphia. She said she would make a report about the problems I was having and to call corporate.
Wed. 5/17/00 Spoke to a supervisor in the AM. She called me back at work and said they would be out on Thursday to bury the cable between 10:00 am and 12:00 noon, and then someone would come on Friday between 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM to bring a network adapter card. Gave me a $40.00 credit.
Thurs. 5/18/200 No one shows up. Spoke to another supervisor who said that someone would be out Friday at the appointed time to bury the cable and bring a network adapter card between 6:00 and 8:00.
Fri. 5/19/00 Got home at 5:30 and someone had already buried the cable and left. I called Adelphia and they said they were probably running late and they would be here. They did not show up by 10:00. I installed my own network adapter card and spent two hours on the phone with technical support who could not get it to work after reprovisioning my modem. When he asked second level support they said they would not support a network card I had installed. He gave me $20.00 credit and said he would make sure every supervisor knew about this and it would definitely be taken care of probably by Monday. I work on troubleshooting the card and get it working myself by 3:00AM.
Sat. 5/20/00 Contractor comes out to bury the cable, and has a network adapter card on his work order but say's he has no Idea what a network card is and doesn't know why it would be on his work order, when all he does is bury cable. He asked, ' if a network card is something that goes in your house? Say's to call the office. I call the office, which is Riviera Beach and spoke to a supervisor and she said that she is amazed by all this and that she would give it to her supervisor David Stirling on Monday and that a network card would definitely be delivered without failure on Monday.
Mon. 5/22/00 Got home to a card on the door saying, 'Everything checked out OK outside. No network adapter card delivered.
Wed. 5/24/00 No connection. Tried rebooting modem and lights just blink and will not go online. Called technical support and got message saying that there was extremely heavy call volume, and that I was the tenth caller in line. Waited for an hour and hung up. Called back again after 10:00 PM and got the same
thing. Sent email including (pasted) this document.
Thurs. 5/25/00 8:00PM Connection is basically unusable. Downloading pages at 4-6 kps. Received email back from tech. Support saying someone would be in contact with me.
Fri. 5/26/00 A tech. Named Kyle called and I was not home. He spoke to my wife and said that I could call him back and the wait would be twenty minutes on the phone, or he would call back. I decided I was tired of sitting on hold with Adelphia and opted to let Kyle call back.
Thurs. 6/1/00 Still have not heard back. I feel that under the circumstances every effort should be made by Adelphia to get in touch with me. I do not feel like sitting on hold. This is certainly wearing me down.
Wed. 6/7/00 Connection is half of the speed of my 56k modem with EARTHLINK. I am submitting this documentation to the REPORT A PROBLEM section of the ADELPHIA site requesting the name of the PRESIDENT.
Thurs. 6/8/00 Called technical support to find out why connection is slow. 'Jill ran ftp test and pinged my computer. She confirmed that the connection was way too slow and said she now has 'hard evidence to pass on to the 'higher ups . She said that the highest supervisors would be made aware of this problem. I told her I have spoken to supervisors before and nothing has been done about anything I have requested. I also suggested that if Adelphia is having problems with the bandwidth that they should put something on the system status page so I don't waste 20 minutes on hold and then speak to someone who cant do anything except tell me they'll pass this on to someone who historically has done absolutely nothing.
Tues. 6/20/00 can't access web page to upload files. Sent a letter in the report a problem section of the support page.
Thurs. 6/22/00 Did not get any response. Sent another letter on the report a problem section of the support page.
Fri. 6/23/00 Still have not heard anything. Called and spoke to 'technical support and they said they do not provide technical support for the web space, 'they just provide the space. I told them I could send files to other FTP sites using the same program or Internet Explorer, or Netscape Composer, or an FTP client and none of these work at the Adelphia site. He said maybe it was a problem on server side and he would report it to the UNIX group who would get back to me. I asked for them to check the error log on the server. He said they would.
Sat. 6/24/00 6:15 AM No service at all.
Mon. 6/26/00 Received bill for $60.68. Spoke to Pat at the billing service. Explained the credit I was to receive (see above) and he said to pay nothing. I explained that I have only had the 'service for a month and I should not be seeing any bill except for cable TV until August.
Tues 6/27/00 Still no service. Spoke to Mathew at the Riviera Beach office. He said the system is still down and that they are working on it. He confirmed the calls that I have made in the past and also found it absurd that there are no follow up comments about any of the calls I have made in the past.
Mon. 7/3/00 Got email message saying to remove any old messages from the server and to uncheck ' leave mail on the server in my email preferences . My email is already set like this and when I downloaded my messages there was less than a meg. of messages. I returned an email to get specifics.
Thurs. 7/6/00 I went to my web page and there is nothing there. It has all been erased, and when I try to log on using WS_ftp it says that my logon is incorrect. I cannot get to my files. I called tech support and waited 30 min on hold. I spoke to Jeremy who also could not log onto my site. When I told him that all my stuff was erased from my site, he asked if I had a lot of work on there. I told him I did and he laughed. When I did not laugh, He said, ' I know it's not funny . He then put me on hold and had someone reset the password. We were both then able to log onto my site using ftp.
Mon. 7/31/00 Received bill for $120.13, saying ' our records show that we have not received your payment for last months previous balance , after speaking with Pat at billing last month and him telling me to pay nothing and I should pay nothing but cable till August. (See above). Called Adelphia, and spoke with Evelyn. Her extension is 1742. She spoke with her supervisor named Jill who said our service would not be disconnected, and that my payment should be $35.52 total.
Mon. 8/28/00 Again received a bill saying that I am passed due for $79.45. I sent the bill due right after speaking with Evelyn last time and it shows on my bill. Called and spoke with Nancy. She said she would take care of this and d doesn't know why this has happened again. She said to go ahead and send $59.45, and that I am in no danger of getting my service disconnected. I will send in tonight.
Mon. 9/18/00 cannot access my website. Will try again tomorrow.
Tuesday 9/19/00 Still cant access my website. Tried in dos and using ftp. Ran tests using tracert and ping. Called tech support again waited for 20 minutes and then spoke to someone who said she would connect me to tech support. Then waited 45 more minutes) who said that they could log into my page and ping it so everything was okay on their side. They had me rerun the ping test and when I could ping the site successfully they said it should work tomorrow. I knew this was not he case, but agreed to try the next day.
Wed. 9/20/00 Still cold not access my website. Called tech support. Waited for 20 minutes to get through the Boca Line so that I could be transferred to technical support in Pennsylvania and wait another 40 minutes for someone there. When I finally got through I told them I could still not access my website and he had me run the same tests. Only this time he had me copy the results from a dos prompt for the ping, and ftp, and tracrt tests and email them to tech support. I insisted it had to be an Ip address issue and he said it couldn't be because I'm the only one that has called about this issue. I told him I'm probably the only one that is trying to access my web site from this block of IP addresses. I also told him I could ftp to any other site that I wanted to but not home.adelphia.net. He told me he talked to senior tech support and they said that the other sites might not require the same dos shell extensions. I said I found that hard to believe that sites like Aol, CompuServe, Prodigy, Symantec, McAfee and literally every other site I successfully ftp'd anonomouysly to didn't require the same shell dos ftp extensions. They said they would look into this and to call back if it didn't work tomorrow.
Thurs. 9/21/00 Still can't access the site. I call back and now they look at the report and say that it has to be the operating system. I once again tell them that I can ftp from my other computer through dial up Internet or if I switch the adelphia cable connection over to it both with a different IP address. Then they tell me to take the network card out of that computer and put it into the other computer, that the network card in the computer must be bad. I again ask them why every other aspect of my networking, including email browsing, (which by the way is slow due to Adelphia service being down (this is posted on the network status page)), email, and ftp'ing to other sites. They say well it's either the network card or the operating system. I ask them if I can do a reinstall of the operating system and they tell me no, that that will just over write the newer files and that I need to reformat the hard drive and reload windows. This is a process that will involve backing everything up and reloading Windows and all of my applications and then restoring all of my data. I know this, and I tell them, because I just did this last week. This will take at least 20 hours to do including all software updates that will need to be reinstalled from the Internet. They tell me this is the only way that they can get someone to research this problem is if I can in essence prove that the problem is not on my end. I very reluctantly agree to pull apart my computers and call them back after I have swapped network cards.
Thurs. 9/21/00 After pulling my computers apart I cannot switch the network cards because the card in the older computer is not a pci card. I call back and plead and beg with them to please try checking the servers to see if there is some reason the network server won't accept my IP address. To make a long story short (if you call three nights of about 8 hours on the phone and another 5 hours trying to troubleshoot on my own) after testing further they agreed that the server did not have reverse dns enabled for my block of IP addresses. They told me they would work on this and to check the next day. This is an abbreviated version of the story I can assure you.
Fri. 9/22/00 they made the adjustments to the server and now it works. I cannot believe that I had to go through this ' it must be something wrong on your end attitude and poor service. I do not feel that I should have to go through what I went through to get the tech support to try to fix a problem on their end. Had I not known something about computers they would have had me spend countless more hours trying to fix this problem on my side, and even possibly eventually have broken something.
Sat. 9/30/00 Service has been beyond the usual slowness and downtime this past week. Browsing on the web has been intermittent, slow or non existent.
10/07/00 Update This has been posted for the past week and the speed has been slower than a 56k modem.
Power Link Network Status Update 09/22/2000
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10/12/00 I just read this Advertisement from a post above:
"Power Link is blazing-fast Internet access through your cable line -- much, much faster than ISDN or any dial-up modem. With Power Link, you finally experience high-speed access at home. And we've eliminated the tariff charges, the per-minute access fees and the hefty modem costs you'd otherwise pay for anything above 56K. Even the installation hassle is history: we come to your home, hook everything up and personally make sure it works. "
THIS IS FRAUD.
Here is the update to their system status page which has not changed (nor has their service been back up)since my post from above:
OH and before I forget-----They screwed up my billing again. It still has not been correct since May!! I spoke with them again last month and was supposed to get a months credit and instead they billed me $67.00 again!
FLORIDA PEOPLE - DO I SPEAK THE TRUTH??
11/13/00 Well I said I would update so here goes. ADELPHIA has run WELL for almost three weeks in a row. I cant believe I'm still with them, but since they have the monopoly I have no resonable alternative. I hope I am not speaking too soon, ( I'm knocking on wood ). I finally spoke to someone that would address my packet loss one Friday and then lo and behold on Monday it was running like a top!!! I'm praying it stay's this way. If it does I will start changing some of my above ratings - in about six months!!! after the hell I went through, I'm not raising anything prematurely.
UPDATE: 1/2002
THEY are still the most pathetic company I have ever dealt with! First chance I get I will dump them like the poor saps they are. THERE are no good point to bring up. The list from above only gets worse and worse. Please do your self a favor and don't ever even think about experimenting at your own expense. Look at their system status reports. Now you can't even look at their message boards because they have removed them. THAT SHOULD TELL YOU SOMETING ABOUT THIS COMPANY!!!!!!!
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Review by wlt16
Posted: 9.1 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 65 visits, last login: 2 years ago
Lorain,Lorain,OH
$39 per month
about 14 days
"Its Beautiful at night (as long as its not a weekend)"
"This is Adelphia you should allready know"
"not really worth the price"
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Im just gunna make this very simple, Adelphia signed to many poeple up at one time. And now they are paying for it, download time is pretty bad and there upload is horrendous. Theyve got to get better , i love adelphia for there digtal cable but there internet really Bytes:(:(:(:(
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Review by ReginaldEdit
Posted: 9.1 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 4 visits, last login: 7.6 years ago
USA
$45 per month
about 14 days
"Better than a 56k modem...(sometimes)"
"Over-sold bandwidth..."
"Go with DSL"
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Hmmm...where to start?
I ordered this service and the friendly person told me that the connection would be one megaBYTE a second download. "That's fast", I thought.
I called back. "One megaBYTE a second". I had my friend call. "Yes sir, one MegaBYTE a second". According to the "techs", they never promise One megaBYTE a second and I SHOULD get 500-1000 kiloBITS a second. According to my calculations that should read 62-125 KiloBYTES in Internet Explorer.
Today, I get 20 KiloBytes. Hmmm...160 kilobits...
The speed was pretty good during the first month, but has diminished considerably over time. I used to see 130-300 KiloBYTES a second during the free month. Now I am getting 20 KiloBYTES a second (As reported by Internet Explorer).
I think they use the kilobit/kilobyte confusion against consumers very well.
Sometimes I can browse my network neighborhood and I can see 28 workgroups in there. And some are MAJOR corporations.(Don't forget that most workgroups contain many computers).
I think their member base is growing bigger than their servers can handle. It is interesting to note that they do not print the speed promised on the website. Only pretty pictographs. C'mon, I grew out of that years ago...
It isn't surprising that they forbid internet connection sharing.
...If I weren't so far away from a telco central office...
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Review by cleger
Posted: 9.1 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 25 visits, last login: 9 years ago
Mont Vernon,Hillsborough,NH
$40 per month (12 month contract)
"One cannot PROVE that Adelphia's service is the WORST IN THE FREE WORLD.."
"These guys are clueless amateurs."
"Avoid Adelphia's PowerLink service at any cost."
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No help or meaningful info after numerous calls and emails to their
"Technical Assistance Center" (HA HA HAAAA!!!)
Them: "O.k, click on start... then settings..."
Me: "I'm running Linux."
Them: "We don't support Windex"
Me: "It doesn't matter. There's nothing wrong with my config. What's going on with your network? I'm getting 32% packet loss at xxx.merrimack.adelphia.net"
Them: "???"
Wrote some shell scripts to track uptime and file download speed. Uptime
(ping external machine every 15 minutes from 8:00AM until 8:00PM) has
averaged 43% during business hours for the past 28 days. Average
download speed (and this is a file on a machine on their WAN!!!) is in
the vicinity of 0.7KB/sec.
$39.95/month for speeds less than a 56K Modem. I can beat that with the
free dial-up connection provided by my emplyer.
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Review by Rocketeer7
Posted: 9.1 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 24 visits, last login: 2.6 years ago
Barnegat,Ocean,NJ
$49 per month
about 21 days
"When it works, the speed is good."
"Unreliable, incredibly bad tech support, ignorant staff, poor business practices"
"Look elsewhere. This is a profoundly incompetent and dishonest company."
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As several other reviewers have indicated, Adelphia is the absolute bottom of the barrel. They may be the very worst company I have ever dealt with for any service, not just for telecom services. They are wretched. They know it. And they don't care.
Installation was painful. They had to come back many times to fine tune it and they often failed to show, even after insisting they couldn't be nailed down to either a morning or evening appointment. So I was pinned down to my apartment all day for nothing! Adelphia is obscenely inept and they hold their customers in the utmost contempt.
The connection speed can be good, though. I have two-way service and late at night I get 1.4mbps down, 440 up. During the day download speed may be about half that. But outages are frequent. AS I WRITE THIS my modem is losing block sync!! Any time there's a heavy rainstorm they go down. They also go down at least three or four days or nights per week, for from a few minutes to many hours for no apparent reason. And they never explain why. If you have Adelphia you must sign up for two or three free ISPs as backups (Juno, Freelane etc.). You need more than one backup because when Adelphia goes down the local POPs (points of presence--local phone numbers) for the free services start to get bogged down.
They do not permit their customers to run servers and they claim they use dynamic IP addresses but my IP address has remained the same for many months, if not from day one.
Outages seem to happen disproportionately on the weekends, leading me to believe that they leave their network operations center unmanned on the weekends and rely on beepers to bring in the techs when something goes awry.
If that's not enough to scare you off, consider this: They lose email!!! People who have tried to email me report getting permanent fatal errors. I'm in the Dover township area of NJ and my pop3 server is pop.dov.adelphia.net. But the error messages report errors from pop.buf.adelphia.net (Buffalo, NY) and pop.pit.adelphia.net (Pittsburgh)! When I reported this to tech support the guy just scratched his head and said he couldn't figure out why it happened. They say they have just revamped their mail servers so the problem should go away. Yeah, like my mail went away?
Here's an example of how incredibly stupid these people are: I emailed them complaining about the most recent outages and asking for an adjustment in my bill. Now in my "reply to" and "email" fields of my email user info I do use the email address of a domain I own, not my Adelphia address. That was enough to throw them off so bad they wrote back telling me they can't find my account! Of course my full name is in the email and they KNOW which of their smtp servers I use yet they can't figure out who I am!!!
They are also seriously understaffed. Getting a real live tech takes forever. And to exacerbate the problem they have no-tech newbies screen the calls and grill you for 1) your last name, AND 2) your street address, AND 3) your phone number AND 4) the last four digits of your social security number!!! I'm NOT making this up!!! Someone ought to break the news to them about caller ID and how you can tie it in to a customer service database. This technology has been around for what--ten or fifteen years now?
In short, Adelphia simply cannot be trusted. Do not use Adelphia. As soon as DSL comes to my neighborhood I will drop Adelphia like a rock and never look back.
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Review by Bobbro
Posted: 9.1 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 5 visits, last login: 7.1 years ago
Cumming,Forsyth,GA
$40 per month
"Knowledgeable tech support"
"Takes forever to answer phone"
"Satisfied"
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Used to be Prestige cable, recently taken over by Adelphi, Cable provider, reasonably priced cable modem($100)service rarely
breaks down, Tech support to 11 pm, adequate, would prefer 7/24.
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