Company Forums » Companies beginning with C » Cincinnati Bell > Connection problems all of a sudden.

Connection problems all of a sudden.

We are in Englewood and have had problems with Verizon and then in March we switched to CinBell on promises of 3 - 5 Mbps.

We had troubles before. Verizon was terrible customer service and didn't want to send out their union technicians. Line seemed sensitive to moisture and freezing.

Had long ping times in late afternoon and evenings when many people were using the local central office. The problem got corrected about June 1. The tech who came to the house had said they were adding a tech to work into the evening hours so they put us on the list to come out to check line when problem occurred instead of around noon. But problem got fixed.

We ran at 3000 until July 4th when modem went into continual reset mode few times. The speed seems to be only 2500 now as possible. The higher level tech yesterday was terse and foreign and hard to 8understand, but lots better than Verizon's used to be. The tech's approach was just lower the speed as long as it's above 768 that's all we're paying for. The salesman said 3-5000.

I think Frontier is doing something to reduce costs. We are 7-8000 feet from central office. The wires have been in place since 1970s. But something changed because we had great connection for several weeks at 3000 again.

I think CinBell doesn't have any clout to get things shaped up because Frontier has been saddled with Verizon's debt and infrastructure repair cost of the Old Verizon landline business. I suspect it will be bankruptcy after a few years. I don't know how to get anyone to care other than writing to Jack Cassidy, President of CinBell in downtown Cincy.

reply to Aralelo
There is definitely line issues somewhere along your routes. Getting them to acknowledge it and fix it is an entirely different issue though. If enough people in the area have problems and complain then they might do something.

I had speed problems for the longest time. It's a long story and I doubt I remember everything, so I'll try to keep it short. Was running the Cisco 675 ever since ZT was available in my area (many years ago) up until recently. Could never pull good speeds. They would fluctuate randomly too with no apparent rhyme or reason. I live fairly far from my CO, nearly 2.5 street miles (~13,000ft), so I can understand slower speeds, but something wasn't right. Put up with it for years because CBT claimed they couldn't do much. Probably not more than a couple years ago everything pretty much crapped out (phone was full of static and no net). Techs found the issue in the box at the end of our block. Lack of upkeep over the years left it a mess and they had to redo most of it. Water was getting in there too. Around this time they also reran new trunk lines along the main street (box is right next to it) back through the business district close to my neighborhood. Speeds improved a tiny bit but eventually issues started up again. Speeds tanked out of nowhere and the connection would drop at random. Had a tech out after basically demanding to support that there was a problem even after they could get the speed up to their minimum. The tech changed our copper pair from the box to our house over to the much newer second line we used to have but stopped using. He also switched us over to DMT (the Westell) from CAP so he can use his fancy test equipment. He got the line trained at a little over 3000 down (about 2.46Mbps after overhead) and 768 up. Old speed with the crap lines and Cisco was ~1.2-1.4Mbps down and a little over 800kbps up. Much improved. Wish I could get a bit faster but my distance from the CO is just too far.

reply to Aralelo
The switch from Verizon to Frontier is causing all kids of problems for former Verizon landline customers. Keep written documentation of all contact with Verizon/Frontier and CinBell. If they are unable to resolve your issue, I would suggest writing a letter to the PUCO and cc the phone companies as appropriate, including all past documentation and outlining your problem that hasn't been resolved. Keep complaining to tech support as well, sometimes the grease trickles down from the engine gaskets to the squeaky wheel.

We've started doing that. Hopefully this problem can get resolved so that we're happy. I doubt Frontier will do much thoug as they're just a dummy company and will probably go bankrupt soon anyway. Maybe if Cincinnati Bell gets more customers from this area (it looks like they may actually have a lot), they'll be able to increase or improve the cables that are in place already.