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Review by RobertMc 
Posted: 5.9 years ago
member for 5.9 years, 0 visits, last login: 5.9 years ago
 Depoe Bay,Lincoln,OR
 $54 per month
 "When I first signed up speeds were decent."
 "Slow speeds, outages, frequent disconnects high ping in games."
 "A hassle, if I had any other option they would be dumped."
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I've used MDM for about a year now. My experience with them hasn't been good. I live in a small coastal town and MDM is my only option for broadband. I'm not sure how long they've been available in my area but I wouldn't be surprised if they set up broadband the week I ordered it here. The tech support I initially talked to seemed to have no idea what they were doing. I've had to call this company atleast 60 times in the time I've had my broadband service due to unexplained outtages, drops in my connection, and poor speed no matter what time I use it.
Installation was a bad experience. I recieved my modem with a self install kit and wasn't given any instructions on which IP address to use or how to set it up. I called them up and they didn't even have me listed as a customer yet. So I wait 2 weeks then after calling and some run around I was finally up and running. A friend of mine got MDM service not to long ago and his installation was a nightmare as well with tech person on the phone telling him the wrong things to do to set up his phone and eventually telling him there is nothing she can do and ends his call. It took five days for them to contact him and tell him what to do to get set up
For two months I contacted this company because my modem kept disconnecting every 5-30 minutes and of the 10 times I called them they sent a tech once and the only thing he did was take a wrench and tighten the RF cable on the back of my modem. In my head I was laughing and really angered at the same time. After that I cancelled my cable television service. I then wen't to radio shack to see if I could buy a signal amplifier for my modem. A radio shack employee and I got into a discussion about how poor MDM was and that he wasn't even able to check his email service because they were so bad.
One day my modem lost connection completely after calling MDM they told me they would have a tech support person call me back in an hour. After about an hour and a half I called them back and they said they were caught up and would have sombody call me in 10 minutes. After 20 minutes I called back again and couldn't get through to anyone. My modem no longer loses signal every 5-30 minutes but my ping times are horrible. No matter what time I try to play any online game my pings are always in excess of 600ms. I was doing better than this with my dial up service.
Here's a little hint to MDM. If you pitch a product by stating. "Tired of dial up, tired of being disconnected?" make sure that your product actually doesn't disconnect. I pay for 1500/256 service I recieve 300/180 or less most of the time. If you live in Oregon and are concidering broadband I urge you to avoid MDM at all costs. Do a quick google news groups search for "Millenium Digital Media" and you will see their track record is mediocre for all services they offer and they leave alot of people unhappy I being one of them. I suppose this should be expected in a small town with a company selling a product so new to them with inexperienced employees. I've not experienced any problems like this in other parts of the country with larger broadband ISP's I unfortunatly don't have access to them in this town.
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Review by yvliew
UPDATED: 6.3 years ago
member for 7.5 years, 733 visits, last login: 206 days ago
Seattle,King,WA
$48 per month (month by month)
 about 2 days
"Good speed! about 1.5m/256k as advertise."
"Until now....none..."
"If only setting up email account can be easier!"
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November 12th 2003.
Cablespeed increase their price to $49.99!!!! They didn't upgrade their speed as well!!! This is bad. Why can't I get other cable service other then MDM?
05/15/02
The speed was good. Great service. But still the install isn't that friendly! Did not help me to take care of the cable!! I want money back for installation!!!
05/23/02
I've complain about the installer to customer service and they credited back $50 for me. What a great service!!! Now I am 100% satisfied with MDM/Cablespeed!!
05/25/02
The modem lights starts blinking and I was disconnected for 1 minute. This is the 2nd time it happens.
06/07/02
The modem lights went out again. Could not establish IP!! It takes very long to get back up..
same date..
After connected back for 15 minutes, it goes out and for 2nd time in half an hour time!! What is going on? It's hard to establish a IP address! Hmm
12 hours later....
The connection went down again. Called tech support, and they need to call me back. After 15-20min of down time. The online signal went back on and I was connected again. Tech support called back and told me that last night they were doing or having some problems. And so is just now but they have already
April 12th 2003
Terrible slow speed occur. It's been 2 times now. Tested the line quality and got most 30% packet lost. Thumbs down......
June 3rd 2003
Everything works greatly... and now i found out they provide hosting space for every email account.. pretty good..
June 29th 2003
SPEED TEST
2003-06-29 03:02:27 EST: 1640 / 232
Your download speed : 1640547 bps, or 1640 kbps.
A 200.2 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 232720 bps, or 232 kbps.
Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier!
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Review by csaechao
Posted: 6.4 years ago
member for 6.4 years, 53 visits, last login: 221 days ago
Seattle,King,WA
$49 per month
about 10 days
 Qwest
"Downloads are as advertised 500kbps out of 640kbps"
"Upload is only 100kbps out of 256kbps, Pings are horrible for gamming."
"Good for surfing the net and the occasional download of files but bad for playing online video games."
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My order was due 10 days from talking to the customer service rep. It arrived on time. Setup of the modem was easy. Plug and go. I was up in about 10 minutes. The only thing I have to complain about the service is the horrible pings for online gamming. At my old place I had cable internet service and it was the best speeds that I've ever tested on cable modem. I had pings of 60 or lower on west coast servers. East coast was always around 100 - 130ms.
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Review by Essexjp
UPDATED: 6.7 years ago
member for 7.7 years, 56 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
Seattle,King,WA
$50 per month
about 7 days
"Competitive Price, Good Speed, Easy Networking, Reliable So Far"
"You pay for 1.5mb speed, but they guarantee only 768k. No Dial-Up."
"Twice as fast as MSN/Qwest and no noise on the phone line."
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Update on 03-14-03: Cable Technician arrived today as scheduled. Confirmed lack of signal was causing outages. Trimed cable wires outside the house and added new connectors. Replaced cables connecting modem to splitter with cables that have more RF shielding. Internet connection restored to robust level. Working well 12 hours later. I'm optimistic the fix will prove to be reliable.
Update on 03-12-03: After nearly a year of very reliable service, I began experiencing outages in mid-February. After a 3 day outage in late February I called customer service. They made an appointment to send a technician the next day but I cancelled after the service restored itself. After about 7 days, it went out again. Phone support responded promptly and, after a power cycle of the modem failed to restore service, offered to schedule a visit from a technician the next day. I asked to wait a few days until I can be home. The phone tech suspects the signal level is low, we'll see if they can restore it.
Update on 06-27-02: Lost internet and tv service today after an apartment fire a few blocks from my home. I appreciate that customer service rep was willing to explain that the fire had melted some of MDM's equipment, damaging a fiber optic line, and that it would likely take 8 hours or more before service could be restored. I also appreciate that she offered to credit my account for the day even before I could ask for a credit. However, MDM suffers by comparison. While the fire knocked out electrical power to the neighborhood, the city's utility restored it in an hour. I never lost phone service so am using my dial-up account to post this message. Hoping service will be restored to its previous robust level.
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Update on 4-14-2002: DSLReports speed test now consistently shows download results in the 1.2-1.4mb range. Service remains reliable. No regrets, yet.
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I wanted to stick with MSN/Qwest DSL, but hard as they tried they could never get me speeds much higher than 300k or eliminate the noise from my phone line.
Ordering was quick and easy, though I was surprised at the mention of a $19.95 activation fee since it's not prominent in advertising or listed on this website. Since I was already a cable tv subscriber, they only charged a dollar more a month to include a digital cable box. (Not necessary to access the internet, but I've never had one.)
Self-install went smoothly with the Motorola Surfboard 4100. I networked in 15 minutes by plugging in a Linksys 4 port router, rebooting everything, and letting Windows XP Pro figure out the rest. If the connection has ever gone out, I haven't noticed.
Used DRTCP to implement the recommended tweaks. The speed test at dslreports.com consistently reports speeds in excess of 700kb, about 10 percent of the time it reports speeds in excess of 900kb.
Spoke with technical support briefly to set up my e-mail account, the technician was courteous and knowledgeable. Haven't needed to call for help since.
So far, a better experience than I expected.
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Review by sonicfan11
UPDATED: 6.8 years ago
member for 8 years, 60 visits, last login: 136 days ago
Woodinville,King,WA
$55 per month
about 5 days
"Easy to setup and blazing speeds once up and running"
"BASICALLY STOPPED WORKING AFTER 12 MONTHS"
"USE VERIZON DSL"
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UPDATE FEB 2003:
We have cancelled our MDM Cablespeed service after repeated tech attempts to fix major outages (apparently affecting our house only). Starting about 2 months ago, our high-speed service would shut off completely and only be on for spotty periods. MDM technicians came out on 4 DIFFERENT OCCASIONS (causing me to miss hours of work since I had to be there) and still could not find a permanent fix!! They replaced the modem, changed the splitters, and finally were saying that we'd need to pay extra $$ for a signal amplifier to be installed!!
As you can see from my previous review below everything was perfect but now I don't know what to tell people but to beware of MDM. They also severely raised their prices in the last year from $40 to $55 (including modem rental). I'd stick with Verizon DSL even though their customer service takes hours to reach at least I'd have my high-speed back!!
Very disastisfied customer!
Jan 2002:
I ordered the highest plan that they offer for home users 1.5Mbps down/ 256K up and it included a static IP (which they no longer offer for new customers, dhcp for them) and three email accounts. The Motorola modem rental fee is another $5 a month. But you get a $10 a month discount if you are also subscribing to their digital cable TV. With the digital cable TV + high speed cable modem package the total price is $86.95, which about half of the price is for the high speed service.
It took about 4 business days to receive the equipment after ordering and I was eager to set it up. Yet, after about 3 hours of double-checking all settings and connections, I couldn't get it to work. Finally, I called MDM tech support on a Sat. and got right thru they said they would look into it and call me back. About a half hour later they called back and said that they had given me incorrect IP and network settings originally and gave me the correct ones. Like magic everything finally worked flawlessly. My guess is that there are still not many new users signing up for the service so some misinformation gets passed out accidently sometimes but the support service guys are knowlegeable and willing to point out their mistakes.
I'm now using my own Linksys router to connect 3 computers to the network and it all works perfectly. Speeds are also great and still consistent 2 months later at an amazing 1483K/182K with no observed outages or slow-down periods. I just hope they stay this way.
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Review by csplayer
UPDATED: 6.8 years ago
member for 7.3 years, 61 visits, last login: 2.8 years ago
Seattle,King,WA
$50 per month
"Good Throughput maximums; good tech support, but could be better"
"HORRIBLE response times: pings ranging from 800 - 1500+ ms lasting from 5 mins to 30 mins and a few outages"
"Look at speakeasy DSL and others before you put your money down here"
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True log entries from a real user...
First log at bottom, most recent at top...
///////////// --- Fifth Review after close to 18 months of service --- \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Internet Service has been good the last several months. I haven't had any trouble with ping that's consistently bad since before... ohh October. I'd say they tightened their ship and added a pletty of nodes. I think I remember an outage between the last time I updated and this time.
(the sea's are clear and calm) no surfing only nice low pings good for playing online games i.e. raven shield... cs... anything else you enjoy
---- well it looks like a spoke too soon...
I posted the first part about 5 PM today and its about 11 now. I've just had about 5 minutes of 100-500 ms pings to my DNS. tisk tisk (and the water ripples)
»/r0/download/2···.com.png
///////////// --- Forth Review after a year+ of service --- \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
»/r0/download/2···m.02.png
The black line is latency (scaled to 2000ms max) The red is packet loss (scaled to 100% max).
Does anyone else have this horrible of service?
///////////// --- Third Review after a year+ of service --- \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Well today MDM had an outage and yesterday I had ping spikes so bad I couldn't get on my FTP or webserver on my computer. I don't see other people writing about this, is it just me that is having the bad service? Please respond...
///////////// --- Second Review after a year+ of service --- \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
The service has been inconsistent. They had been pretty much gone for a few months, but the ping spikes are back (they remind me of how it sucks to have to deal with them) and there have been a couple more outages, mostly because of service in the area. The service isn't living up to my expectactions.
--> Does any one live in downtown Seattle (belltown)? --- and get great service? That's what I'm looking for and I'd like to think that that's what MDC is trying to deliver, but I still don't see it happening.
Come on MDC, make me believe. Otherwise, why should I stick with the service?
///////////// --- First Review after 6+ months of service --- \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
I had a link to an image of the lag between my computer to the primary DNS, secondary, and Gateway servers that showed pings averaging 800+ (the image is no longer at that address). I don't think that kind of lag is acceptable for a cable connection, but the tech support guys don't seem to want to refund me for the horrible lag that was in the picture. If you read my other reviews you'll see that I've had this lag for about 4 months if not 6 (I didn't really keep track at first because I didn't think it was going to persist this long). I'm about to the point that if I don't get refunded for the service I'm going to stop paying MDC and go to speakeasy DSL.
The only thing I want is a low ping. Its really not that hard to do. Just make the infrustructure bigger / faster / stronger and we'll all be happy.
My opinion of the company's service is it will continue to get worse and worse as they continue to charge for the horrible service. I've called 3 other times and I will continue until I get a refund or get tired of trying.
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Review by spollack4
UPDATED: 6.9 years ago
member for 7 years, 12 visits, last login: 5.2 years ago
Seattle,King,WA
$50 per month
about 7 days
"Good speed, tech support if you get the right person"
"Had 128k speed and was charged for 1.5mbps for 3 months"
"Problem was solved after calling and complaining enough"
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Sorry to leave the bad review up here after getting the problem fixed. We were credited for the difference so other than living with the slow speed for 3 months, everything is all right. So here is the full story: Had the slow speed to start with then went to 1.5, then back to 128, then called to upgrade back up to the faster speed. I know more flip-flops than a fish (I'll blame it on the roomate situation). Anyway the last time they took note of the upgrade in the billing dept but never got around to actually giving us the faster service. I called them after a few weeks and was told "some times the site you are dowloading from has a slow upload speed" well being a fairly new to broadband user I coudn't really tell if it was faster but had no quantifiable results (until this site--was referred actually by a MDM tech) so...I called again and the guy I spoke to figured it out fairly quickly and got us back up to speed. So in conclusion: dslreports is awesome. Thanks everybody for your help and advice. And MDM? They need a little help in the customer service dept but once you get up and running the 1.5mbps speed is pretty awesome and fairly reasonable priced compared to attbi which a friend of mine has.
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Review by brodey55
UPDATED: 6.9 years ago
member for 8.7 years, 2286 visits, last login: 11 days ago
Seattle,King,WA
Contract price not specified.
about 7 days
"Tech support seems great. No long holds."
"None so far"
"I am happy with my new service so far."
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I recently switched to Millenium Digital Cable because Earthlink couldnt get DSL working at my new home. I had Millenium basic cable TV and inquired to how much cable internet would be. I ended up going with something called Millenium Connection which is digital cable TV with every movie channel and 1.5/256 internet connection for only 10 bucks more than internet/basic cable! Self-install package(Motorola Surfboard 3100) arrived 7 days afer order. On install I had one minor problem that forced me to call tech support. I was only on hold for 5 minutes and the guy was very helpful. My NIC was not binding to TCIP so I had to remove and re-install it. After that I was up and running. I went and did a speed test and got 1400/220. Not bad at all. Setting up e-mail I encoutered another problem. Called tech support back and got the same guy after a minimal hold! They had a typo for my username which was fixed quickly. Its nice using a "smaller" service than Earthlink. Earthlink made a mess of my relocation service and made me feel like they dont care about their customers. Hopefully my cable service will rock.
***Update as of 1/1/2003***
My cable modem service has been rock-solid since installation 3 months ago. I get advertised speeds and there have been no outages.
****Updated as of 2/5/2003
Occasional slow-downs but usually really reliable. I have had like 2 service interuptions.
*********Updated 11/2/2004
Continued great service. Recent speed tests all come back at around 3.0/256 so I guess speeds were increased.
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Review by sherryd
Posted: 7.1 years ago
member for 7.1 years, 12 visits, last login: 4.9 years ago
Seattle,King,WA
$45 per month
about 14 days
"On all the time-really!! (unless I turn off computer for other reasons)--WAY better than Qwest DSL (shut down after 5 minutes)"
"Price-difficulty with customer service people not verifying I had necessary equipment-I don't know hardware at all"
"I was supposed to pay for installation, but was given credit for that and some free equipment to compensate for that -I'M HAPPY"
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I have had this service a fairly short time (less than a month), and after some initial problems with customer service not asking appropriate questions as to equipment I had (including whether I had a free cable line), forgetting to schedule an installer for my second appointment, etc., which meant it took four appointments for this to get installed. Once the installer who actually was trained in the type of installation I needed was sent, it was accomplished quite quickly.
I have been very happy with the speed, truly always on, and lack of problems of any kind, especially compared with the Qwest DSL I had previously for about the same price--which was horrible, NOT worth the money. Qwest kept shutting off when I didn't open a new page every few minutes, or after two hours per day, which I was never told. Horrible problems with installation, lame tech support, on and on.
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 Review by sream
Posted: 7.3 years ago
member for 7.3 years, 517 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Seattle,King,WA
$45 per month
about 6 days
"Fast, port 25 open, good news server"
"Modem will only sync from one of two outlets, short DHCP lease"
"Better than DSL"
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Location: Seattle's Central District (21st&Union)
Provider: Millennium Digital Media
Service: CableSpeed 1500/256
Modem: Motorola SurfBoard 4200
Since we were switching the phone to another name I decided to cancel our DSL (Qwest/MSN) and switch to Millennium's CableSpeed 1.5M service. I was a bit wary because my previous experience with cable (@home, later ATTBI in the U-District) was not that good. After talking to some friends who reported a good experience with CableSpeed in the CD (18th&Jefferson) I decided to give it a shot.
Though I never had any problems with Qwest/MSN service (speed and connectivity were always good) I had several reasons for making the switch:
1) Phone line noise - no matter what we did it was still there
2) Port 25 blocking - I actually don't have a problem with this practice but MSN uses the MS-only Secure Password Authentication (SPA). My next project is to set-up a POP/SMTP/IMAP mail server on an OpenBSD box so I needed to switch.
3) Newsgroups - Another plan I have is to set up a local news server (INN) and keep a local mirror of various newsgroups. Since MSN's NetNews also uses SPA this was also a no-go.
4) Tunneling - I still can't find a good reason for this but tunneling (IPv4 in IPv4, and IPv6 in IPv4) just did not work using MSN. For shi*s and giggles I hooked up my OpenBSD box to the cable modem to try a tunnel or two and everything was a breeze. If anyone has any ideas why tunneling wouldn't work using MSN I'd love to hear them.
5) Disinformation - I got really tired of the MSN tech(?) support people telling me that their service "would not work" using *nix. I wish I had kept the message exchange where the guy tried to say that MS ethernet was somehow 'different' than Unix ethernet. I love baiting those guys! Another thing I can't understand is why MSN tells you to use DHCP with the Arescom modem. It is completely unnecessary as there is only one possible address you can use (192.168.1.2)
So I made the switch. I called to sign up for service which took me about 2 minutes. They informed me that the first month was free (bonus) and my modem would arrive in a week. When it did I plugged it in bare to the cable in the back of the apartment to see if I could get a signal, it couldn't. I tried the cable in the living room and it started syncing right away. Plugging a OpenBSD and then a W2k box got DHCP leases quickly (why only 1 day leases?).
8/19/02
I've had the service for a few days now and am happy to report no problems. Up/down is consistently at or above advertised speeds. I do get some high pings (700 to 1000ms) to sea1.cablespeed.com once in a while but that it is it. Signal is good, 39db s/n.
I love the news server (they outsource to supernews!!) which has great article retention and all the major groups. I have not used the email as I have no use for it. I also have run some tests on their nameservers and got some good numbers (20 to 250ms). Also it seems that the ip doesn't change when it re-leases, which is good.
The real test will come later when I start setting up dedicated tunnels. At this point I would have to rate cablespeed an A+.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------
Update 8/24/02
I've had the service for over a week now and nothing but good news. Speed great, pings good, news server rocks!
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