Qwest Doesn't See The Point In FiOS > Amen Mueller!

reply to JasonD

Re: Amen Mueller!

"That is when the cable companies come in and eat your breakfast , bang your wife , and befriend your dog."

You know, you're right. I swore, swore, swore that I would never leave Qwest for cable, and I just have. Not just because of the higher speeds offered for approximately the same price (after the one year contract expires anyway) but because Qwest's attitude about upgrades and service quality left something to be desired.

It's not just about lack of innovation. As I've said before in other threads, I would have been satisfied for a while on 1.5/896 DSL service. It got the job done for what I needed it to do, and wasn't too terrible in terms of speed. The uptime was usually fantastic. After my phone line got cut a bunch of times, however, I started having massive errors on my line and my connection would only train at 512/896. When I called a technician out last summer to look at the line and see what could be done, after searching for bridge taps and testing various things, he said the only option was to downgrade me to 640/256. "You won't notice," he said. "I won't notice only being able to download at 70kb/s when I used to be able to download at 160kb/s?" That stopped him in his tracks. He obviously knew he was dealing with a customer who wasn't an idiot. I humored him, and let him call Qwest and have them train me at that speed and then bump me back up because it was too slow for my needs, especially on the upstream end. I find it unacceptable after having a product for three and a half years that I'm suddenly told my neighborhood can't support it anymore and they're downgrading anyone who calls in to complain. I'm not the first person I've heard of that that has happened to, either.

After sitting on those speeds for another eight months, hoping that there'd be some miraculous fix, and calling tech support from time to time to find out if there was anything they could do, the cable company finally offered a digital cable/phone/internet package that was too good to pass up. I don't want satellite TV, which is the TV bundle that Qwest pushes. I have three TVs, I don't want to pay extra for receivers on two of them - which is non-negotiable, since there's a small child in the house and the main TV is out of commission at night because it's too close to her room, and then extra for my local channels. The quotes I've gotten from both DirecTV and DishNetwork in the past always ended up being more expensive than cable was, and also forced use of a credit card, which we don't have at the moment. Paying $8/month for services like caller ID was also starting to tick me off. Now we have phone service with voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, three way calling, and long distance for $30/month.

I will keep an eye on Qwest - I haven't given up on them, per se - but they've given me no reason over the past year to show them any sort of loyalty as a customer. There used to a time where technical support was first rate, and they were willing to do anything to fix your problems, but those days are gone.

I definitely agree with your statement that the needs of a family could easily exceed 25 megs in the coming years. Most of the families I know aren't satisfied sharing one computer together. I know I could never share a computer with a spouse, let alone a child. Multiple computers means multiple people using bandwidth at once across the house, and there are plenty of legitimate, bandwidth-sucking services available to necessitate the need for higher speed tiers. For the sake of my suburb, I really hope that Qwest is hoping and waiting to get bought out by someone else. I drool at the thought of FIOS.
--
You're watching Sports Night on CSC so stick around...

reply to BosstonesOwn

Right - and not enough large cities to make the investment worthwhile.
--
Canada = Hollywood North

reply to John Galt
I might not live there but I have spent the last 8 years of my life out there. Great Barrington 3 Rivers , North Adams, Brush Hollow.

I know rural areas. I enjoyed my satellite tv and charter cable internet. At times i even had DSL. Of course working for one of the biggest employers out there helped , but still.

If qwest does not want to provide , then get the hell out of the way and let another provider or community project build out, instead of fighting it.
--
"It's always funny until someone gets hurt......and then it's absolutely friggin' hysterical!"

reply to en102
Then bite the bullet , bring fiber out to a centralized point. Verizon has single handedly cut the cost of fiber in half.

Qwest should be able to as well. You need to see the future not just 5 years out. Copper is not cheap to maintain. Fiber is getting cheaper to maintain every month.

At some point your venture is costing much more to maintain then upgrade.
--
"It's always funny until someone gets hurt......and then it's absolutely friggin' hysterical!"

Yup - similarly, AT&T has been sitting on its hands delivering fiber to the node.

For Qwest of any other company:

a. Cost of equipment (fiber, switch gear, infrastructure) - not horrible, some can be written off as upgrades as existing equipment is aging.
b. Cost of actual installation - this is the expensive part

vs.

a. Cost of maintaining existing gear, expanding where needed within a small budget (FTTN, VDSL, ADSL2+)

b. Profit

Qwest, like AT&T/Verizon, etc. want someone to pay for these upgrades, or concessions from govt. to deploy before they'll think about it. Cable typically does better in rural areas due to loop shared node vs. Telcos DSL line limitations.
--
Canada = Hollywood North

reply to danawhitaker
I swore I would never get Cable Internet (oversubscribtion fear). Then my DSL line started going out more and more and they would have to place it in "safe mode" and that would never help. Eventually I got cable and couldn't be happier, even on the worse day it will still be faster than DSL.

reply to BosstonesOwn

reply to en102