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 Review by tvtek 
UPDATED: 9 days ago
member for 5.7 years, 337 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Concord,Contra Costa,CA
 $89 per month (12 month contract)
 about 5 days
 "Installation was done the day they rescheduled it to."
 "The installation was rescheduled!"
 "Not as consistant as Comcast !"
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First of all they sent me an email informing me that the scheduled date that was originally set up was not available. The day of the installation the installer was 1.5 hours late (however Astound did call to inform me). I had Astound over a year ago with HD then switched to Comcast. The internet consistancy with Comcast was better than Astound, but the HD picture quality with Astound is superior with less noticable artifacts of compression.
Update 11/16/09: Cable TV hasn't really had any issues with an exception of a few lock ups on the cable box. At that point I just unplugged the box for 5 minutes to reset it and all was good again. I have had more than 5 times I have lost internet connection and it has taken more that 10 minutes each time to obtain sync again. At this point I will go back to Comcast. When I had Comcast I never lost sync once during the year that I did subscribe. : )
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Astound Broadband |
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 Review by g0nepostal
UPDATED: 88 days ago
member for 8.6 years, 2036 visits, last login: 8 days ago
Concord,Contra Costa,CA
$35 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
"Reliable service, very few outages"
"Services servers slow, usage is now capped/throttled"
"Stay away unless you like capped/throttled service"
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Final update: Now that Astound is part of Wave Broadband their service is now being capped/throttled. The last straw came when, despite having a local caching DNS as well as a proxy server on my home network (to help reduce network traffic), my HSI service kept getting throttled to less than 512Kbps downstream - on a 6 Mbps downstream account.
I have now signed up with DSL Extreme and have an activation date of 09/01/2009, so as soon as DSL service is live I am going to Astound's customer service center in Walnut Creek to hand in the cable modem and drop my HSI service from my Astound account.
See you later Astound, and good riddance.
(Original review is below)
I have had Astound Broadband for about four years now after ditching Comcast (Comcast had just taken over ATT Broadband). Thankfully, Concord has the option of either Comcast or Astound for its cable service, so I went with Astound.
Despite some growing pains Astound Broadband has been a pretty good (4/5 stars) ISP. It's connection reliability is excellent: I have had a total of 4 outages - each lasting less than an hour - in two years. Its routing is also not bad at all; we reach most any server in the continental United States in less than 50ms. Since my brother and I do a fair amount of gaming this is important.
NOTE: There are now reports here on BBR that Wave Broadband - Astound's parent company - is now capping its users. I too have noticed (but have not scientifically confirmed) that Astound does now appear to be using traffic shaping, as its speeds during long downloads have been all over the map. I have also noticed several times that the Netflix streamed movies I watch have had the stream speeds slowed down. If Astound is now indeed now capping its service then I will find another, uncapped alternative. Because of this I am downgrading Astound a notch.
When I first signed up for Astound I signed up for 1.5 Mbps down / 256 Kbps service at $40 a month, bundled with cable TV. Astound now has five different service tiers, with a 6 Mbps down / 1 Mbps up tier for $35 a month when bundled. This is the tier I am on now, and having 1 Mbps for upstream is awesome. I generally get about 92% of the rated speeds whenever I run speed tests, so I am getting what I pay for. Astound recently raised its rates for cable television service, but kept its HSI rates intact.
Growing pains for Astound are evident in its DNS servers, which have a nasty habit of going down or being extremely unresponsive. Because of this I previously used third-party DNS servers from Cisco and Level 3 for my DNS lookups and avoided Astound's DNS servers altogether. Also lacking is Astound's e-mail, which while good at blocking spam has a rather spartan (and confusing) webmail interface.
(Update: I have gone back to using third-party DNS servers from Cisco and Level 3; for a while I had been using Astound's but they're too unreliable and slow to use for my network. Eventually I plan to use my own caching-only DNS server, with the third-party servers as forwarding DNS servers.)
I've only used tech support a few times, mostly to report outages and slow DNS servers. However, each time I called I spoke to reps who appeared to be using scripts rather than being competent tech support staff. Since this seems to be a standard industry practice I won't downgrade Astound for this but will mark its tech support as average.
Overall, I'd rate Astound a 3/5 (used to be 4/5 but since it is now capped with traffic shaping as far I am concerned Astound HSI is no better than Comcast). It's not a bad ISP; connection reliability is excellent and the prices are not bad at all. Despite its shortcomings, if you don't mind doing a little work on your own and appreciate reliability Astound is an above average ISP.
EDIT: The monthly rate for 6 Mbps down / 1Mbps up is $25 when bundled with cable TV, and I recently had a short outage. However, given Astound's connection reliability, $25 a month is not bad at all. 
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Astound Broadband |
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Review by Niltiac
Posted: 116 days ago
member for 116 days, 0 visits, last login: 116 days ago
San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
$32 per month
about 2 days
"Friendly, knowledgeable and efficient service. Good speed, reasonable cost."
"None so far!"
"I highly recommend it."
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I considered a DSL provider but decided to go with Astound on the basis of their offer and reviews on this site. I've been extremely impressed. I got the High Speed 10 plan for $29 ($32 with cable modem rental) and it was installed within two days. Support has been extremely efficient. I really don't have a bad word to say about them - the only bad thing that happened was Comcast's fault (they disconnected me but Astound fixed this straight away). I have written more about my experience on my blog: »www.niltiac.net/2009/08/astound-···ts-name/
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 Review by sechs
Posted: 200 days ago
member for 8.3 years, 2626 visits, last login: 1 days ago
San Mateo,San Mateo,CA
$30 per month (12 month contract)
about 14 days
"Not Comcast"
"It's Cable"
"Cheaper than Comcast, but not really better than DSL."
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First step was to get into Astound's database. No previous resident here had Astound or RCN, and because it faces a street that Astound does not service, it was marked as unserviceable. However, all utilities come from poles on the cross-street, which Astound does service. I had to go into their storefront shop to get someone to put in an order to engineering to check if my house was serviceable -- which, of course, it is.
Installer came as described, but seemed to only kind of know what he was doing. He didn't bring a ladder tall enough to reach to the roof of my two-story, and didn't appear to have spikes for poll climbing. He cracked a piece of wood in the utility cabinet, and the install job, over all, was sloppy.
After ghosting problems on the TV side and mysterious internet drops, had a second truck roll. Technician tightened the connection at poll, which was apparently very loose, and replaced the five-way tap on the premises side with a simple splitter.
I appear to be on the same node as several nearby apartment complexes, and there is sometimes a distinct evening slow down. Even during the day, while pings aren't high, web pages will load slowly. DNS is slow and sometimes doesn't resolve at all. The e-mail service is a spam magnet.
Customer service is poor. Most of the time, I end up talking to someone in Washington State.
Once my one-year promo rate is up, I'll probably switch to DSL, which has served me well for many years in the past.
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Review by revmyo
UPDATED: 217 days ago
member for 6.9 years, 73 visits, last login: 217 days ago
San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
$30 per month
about 5 days
"Smooth phone order, skilled installer, easy changeover from Comcast"
"Upload speed as promised, but much less than Comcast"
"So far very good."
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We decided to bail on Comcast, which we had been using for several months essentially without incident, because the monthly charge was due to double (!) in the next couple of months. Also, we wanted to try a service with a less massive, looming, sinister, corporate shadow.
We opted for the "High Speed 10" internet service, with a guaranteed charge of $29.95 for 12 months, with no additional services such as telephone or cable TV. We elected to provide our own cable modem (from Zoom). Placing the order by phone was simple and quick. We selected a day five days out, and the installer arrived within the indicated time frame.
The installation process involved stringing a new cable from the utility pole across the street. The installer, a personable fellow named Albert, managed the job skillfully, including maneuvering an enormous telescoping ladder, meanwhile fielding a request from the neighbors to get his truck out of their driveway. Once the cable was strung, the connection to the house took about ten minutes, and the new modem was provisioned by the CO, connected to the house network, and was running smoothly within another ten minutes or so. Total installation time was about 1 1/2 hours, most of that devoted to stringing the cable.
Altogether the process was quite satisfactory. It's too soon to say much about reliability, but I believe there's reason for optimism. I did notice that the speed test showed a download speed (about 10-11 Mbps) comparable to Comcast, but the upload speed (about 1.5 Mbps) was perhaps less than half of what Comcast provided, at least on a good day. We consider that a reasonably small price to pay for getting out of Comcast's clutches.
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Review by eger
UPDATED: 218 days ago
member for 6.9 years, 157 visits, last login: 84 days ago
Redwood City,San Mateo,CA
$100 per month (12 month contract)
about 14 days
"Fast, fairly stable, no 'SpeedBoost' throttling like Comcast"
"Forced static IP address switch when migrated from RCN"
"Better than I have expected after fearing the switch from RCN"
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My RCN cable became Astound sometime a while ago. Nothing really changed much other than my static IP address that I paid for changed. This didn't make me too happy.
But the speed seems closer to around 15M/1M now where the RCN was about 10M/1M. Not sure if there was a speed plan change.
For most stuff on the net I am able to pull the full line speed all the time (1300 - 1400 kB/s) and am happy with that. They also don't mask hops in my trace routes out (like Comcast) or employ any 'SpeedBoost' throttling type stuff that slows my connection down after a couple megabytes of transfer... Just full 15 megs down when I want it.
I would much rather have a connection that is stable 15M than bursting to 20M for a second then slowing to 8M (yea, I'm looking at you Comcast).
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Review by gruvsf
Posted: 342 days ago
member for 1.1 years, 1 visits, last login: 342 days ago
San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
$130 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Fast, cheap, consistent, and no filters"
"Only cover parts of SF; channel options a bit sparse compared to others"
"Great alternative to Comcrap and AT&T"
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I've been an Astound/RCN customer for over 3 years now, and I can't be happier. Their offerings are not as expansive as the other providers, but they offer competitive services at a very competitive price. They don't have a lot of other tv channel options such as Comcast, but for the price and service, it can't be beat. I've only experienced about 2-3 service interruptions in the entire time that I have been using them. An oasis indeed in a world of sub-par providers.
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Review by sideband
UPDATED: 1.1 years ago
member for 9.4 years, 120 visits, last login: 1 year ago
Redwood City,San Mateo,CA
$29 per month (12 month contract)
about 3 days
"Great presale and tech support, solid connection"
"Possible poor install quality"
"A solid connection with speeds as advertised"
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I had DSL for eight years of good quality service until I lost my pair. Six months of degrading service from that point made me decide to switch. My choices were Astound and Comcast. I had a prior bad experience with Comcast (TCI at the time) which immediately eliminated them so Astound it was.
I made several pre sale calls to ask various questions about prices, services, and the use of my own cable modem. The support people were friendly and informed. In cases were they didn't know the answer, they immediately got it from someone else in the office.
I signed up for the service on 3 September and was able to get an install appointment for 6 September, which was shorter than their normal time frame of about five days. Since it was a Saturday, the window was 8 to 5. Weekday windows are only two or three hours.
The installer showed up an hour and a half before the close of the window. He very patiently fished the cable through the tree and hedges in my yard. The connection at the poll is exposed, just the bare connector screwed into one of the ports. The unused ports have an outer sleeve on them that looks like it should remain. The one at the house is male to male without a ground. My old Comcast connection was grounded. I don't know if either of these connections are standard practice these days. It's my only concern.
I had already installed the internal cable and my own Motorola SB5101 modem so all the installer had to do was call in the MAC and I was up and running. The connection bounced a few times in the first hour or two, but settled down after that. I ran a few speed tests from this site and got 5680 and 5692 Kb/s download and 967 and 962 Kb/s upload. I have their 6000 Kb/s download, 1000 Kb/s upload package. Strangely, the San Francisco test site which is about 30 miles away gave much slower results.
When I came in one morning a few days after the install, the connection was down. The cable modem said it was connected so I twiddled a few things before calling tech support. I got through quickly to someone who spoke clear English and didn't ask a bunch of inane questions like the first level support in India for AT&T does. AT&T second level support and their tech were great, however. He was able to immediately look at my connection and reboot my cable modem, which fixed the problem. He even saw my router behind the modem and could tell the make. Scary. When I asked him about the cable connection the installer made, he couldn't answer. It's not surprising as this isn't his area of expertise.
The connection has been solid since then. I listen to Internet radio. It runs all day without dropping. I also do daily Internet backups. The 1 Mb/s upload is nice improvement over my DSL of 374 Kb/s or thereabouts. Here are the stats from my Motorola SB5101:
Frequency 735000000 Hz
Signal To Noise Ratio 37.4 dB
Power Level 8.7 dBmV
Upstream Value
Channel ID 4
Frequency 24816000 Hz
Power 36.0 dBmV
I use other providers for my DNS, email hosting, web server hosting, and Usenet so I can't speak to any of the services provided by Astound. I also didn't sign up for cable TV or phone services so it's a bare Internet connection.
After two weeks of connectivity, I'm quite pleased with the service. There are no or very few other users in my neighborhood so it remains to be seen if the throughput will hold up when there are a lot more. As long as you don't live on my block, I highly recommend this service.
Followup comments:  
Hazy Arc
join:2006-04-10
Greenwood, SC | 6 kb/s down and 2 kb/s up? Are you on their dial-up tier? | |
| | sideband
join:2000-07-02
Redwood City, CA | Re: 6 kb/s down and 2 kb/s up? I have 6 Kb/s download, 1 Kb/s upload. What's their dail-up tier? | |
| | | WizBomber
join:2007-10-17
Cary, NC | Re: 6 kb/s down and 2 kb/s up? I think he means 6 Mbit/sec Down and 1 Mbit/sec Up, according to the company's website. | |
| | | | sideband
join:2000-07-02
Redwood City, CA | Re: 6 kb/s down and 2 kb/s up? Yeah after lunch when my brain was more alert, it clicked what was meant. I'll correct it. | |
| smg9779
join:2008-10-23
South San Francisco, CA | is this still possible? Is it possible to split the cable internet line and run one line to your tv and get free basic cable tv from astound? | |
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 Review by thebombs12
Posted: 1.3 years ago
member for 8 years, 2033 visits, last login: 59 days ago
San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
$36 per month
"Great speeds and steady connection, 10Mbps down/768kbps up"
"Experienced a few provisioning problems during the RCN/Astound transition"
"Ultra competitive company gives customers great value"
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I am very happy with my connection with Astound. I am on their promotional plan of $36.95/month with no contracts and I bring my own modem.
I also received a speed bump since I was grandfathered into the 10Mbps download speed without additional fees from RCN, before they sold it to Astound.
Things were a little bumpy during the first few months of the RCN/Astound (Wave Broadband) transition that I was unhappy with. The first time my modem was accidentally unprovisioned by someone it took tech support 30 minutes to figure out my modem was not registered on their network. My connection was out for almost an entire day and I didn't realize this until I got home. The next time around when it happened I knew exactly what to tell the tech to look for and I was off in a matter of minutes. The rep was shocked that I knew what I was talking about before he even started troubleshooting!! :-P They explained to me that the issue had something to do with my using my own modem. Their internal system flagged it for removal but I was ensured it would not happen again.
Overall I am completely satisfied with my connection. Disruptions are extremely minimal and I never had a major outage that lasted more than an hour. This company is pretty small compared to Comcast and I get great download/upload speeds.
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Review by BigDave469
Posted: 1.5 years ago
member for 6.4 years, 30 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Concord,Contra Costa,CA
$29 per month
about 5 days
"Good, Reliable, Cable Connection"
"Poor Home Networking Hardware"
"Good value for the money for a decent cable internet connection!"
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I have had Comcast before, but I wanted to try something different. Where my residence is, the DSL service sucked because I was too far away from the switch. The phone companies should just give up on DSL because it is a broadband rip off. Cable is the best service value for the money and I am getting a very competitive price. Even when I have to pay the full price, it is still a very good value. I opted for the wireless networking option because I thought they might have some nice hardware, however they gave me a linksys box that was a worse model than what I already had. So I just gave it back to them, used my old router and am now saving for a wireless N so my new laptop can scream. At least it will have something to scream about because now I get 12x better bandwidth than with DSL. The cable modem they provided was a Moto Surfboard and that is not too bad, I think I will buy one when I invest in my networking upgrade later. You can order the service online and they dont even check your credit! So if you are a person that does not score too well at the FICO game, than don't worry. You might as well call them to place the order because they have to call you and talk to you about your order, basically as far as customer service they are just a bit above Comcast, but you don't need them once they make the connection! So all in all, it is a good value!
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Astound Broadband |
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