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Comments on news posted 2014-02-28 08:21:12: Windstream has announced that the telco will be eliminating roughly 400 positions by March 3, with about 175 of that total being eliminated via a "voluntary separation initiative. ..

LostInWoods
join:2004-04-14

1 recommendation

LostInWoods

Member

Makes sense

Since Windstream is not putting any money into their network, they might as well lay off the people that have nothing much to do anyway.

The real question is how will this affect Jeff Gardner's performance bonus? Because we all know THAT is the really important thing...

IowaMan
Premium Member
join:2008-08-21
Grinnell, IA

IowaMan

Premium Member

Agree'd Windstream says 6Mb DSL is SO fast, Yeah right if it isn't at least 30Mb or faster to me it's slow. Which rule's out any DSL based product, Well at least where I live since my choices are Mediacom at up to 105Mb or Windstream at 6Mb

TestBoy
Premium Member
join:2009-10-13
Irmo, SC

TestBoy

Premium Member

Fines and "workforce reduction"

Funny how they get fined... then they fire people.
I wonder how many of these workers are in GA?

Windstream isn't a company I would work for anyhow.

As stated above... these people had no work to do since Windstream doesn't fix or upgrade anything anyway.

(not saying they are retaliating but you never know)

coldmoon
Premium Member
join:2002-02-04
Fulton, NY

coldmoon

Premium Member

...highly competitive marketplace

I don't think they know what that word actually means...

SHABAZZ
join:2008-07-13
Seattle, WA

SHABAZZ to IowaMan

Member

to IowaMan

Re: Makes sense

30 Mbps down and only 2 up is pretty ridiculous as well. Cable companies really need to put some effort into upload speeds.
smcallah
join:2004-08-05
Home

smcallah

Member

Then you should invent a new technology that is better than DOCSIS for them.

A DOCSIS upstream for a node is 10mbit/sec. That is shared between all customers on the node. This has been known for years. They can't give everyone half of the upstream or all of the upstream. It's amazing that they give everyone 1/5th of the upstream in this case.

They have started bonding 4 or 8 upstreams with DOCSIS 3, but that is still only 40 or 80mbit/sec. And with that, they've been doing 300/20. But with current DOCSIS 3 technology, the best downstream/upstream combo that you can do is ~720/80. And that's if you give someone all of the bandwidth available.

MDA
Auto Negotiating
Premium Member
join:2013-09-10
Minneapolis, MN
Netgear CM600
Asus RT-AC66U B1

3 edits

MDA

Premium Member

A 64QAM 5120ksyms upload channel is 30.72mb alone. You are looking at Docsis 1.x numbers that only allow up to 16 QAM.

You should have at LEAST 1x64 QAM upstream channel if you are with a good cable company. I know some like Charter or TWC still are sitting at 16QAM single upstream because their nodes are as old as es-aitch-eye-tee.

Companies like Comcast or Videotron wouldn't be able to push the 50+ mb upstreams for their highest tiers if they were on 16QAM channels at the symbol rate they push them.

The reason WHY upstream is hard to upgrade is the noise level in the 5-18mhz range. You have 42mhz of usable return path. Anything A/TDMA has issues below 18mhz. Fitting 6.4mhz channels in 24mhz of usable space is damn hard. You can't bond ATDMA and TDMA channels together so either you need all 6.4mhz or 3.2mhz channels or have a mixed mode channel that falls back when a legacy device needs to lock onto it. This is why they are trying to get rid of Docsis 2.0 modems and lower so upstream doesn't have to be configured for lower devices.

S-CDMA is a remedy to this and for a while it has been talked about to expand the return path to 85mhz from 42 mhz, but we need analog broadcasting to cease more and more to reacquire usable spectrum.

rebus9
join:2002-03-26
Tampa Bay

rebus9 to LostInWoods

Member

to LostInWoods
said by LostInWoods:

The real question is how will this affect Jeff Gardner's performance bonus? Because we all know THAT is the really important thing...

Cost Savings = Higher Profit = Bigger CEO Bonus. That's the usual equation.

I'm not shedding any tears. I had considerable $DAYJOB experience with Paetec business services (phone and data, T1's, fiber and vendor-managed MPLS) both prior to and after the acquisition of Paetec by Windstream, and it was a disaster. We were stuck with them for a little over 5 years, because every time we had to make even the slightest change, they reset the clock on our 36 month term.

Quite literally-- the day our contract expired and we told Paetec to come pick up their gear, our department went out for a team lunch to celebrate.

Since ditching Paetec/Windstream, we've been infinitely happier.

KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
Premium Member
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK

KrK

Premium Member

Translation: We must shore up our stock value

.... it's my main source of income.