US Telco Support > Frontier Communications > 100GB Cap

100GB Cap

I know they were looking at caps awhile ago but haven't seen anything stating that they are in effect. Myself I have not been imposed on any or seen any throttling.

reply to SteveJobs
To my knowledge, Frontier doesn't have caps in any markets at the moment. I used over 270GB last month on Frontier Max DSL and didn't hear a single complaint from them about it. As a matter of fact, I actually received a call from my area supervisor saying they would be moving me to Fast Path and getting me more bandwidth. Frontier is great if you live a reasonable distance from the CO and have a decent quality line. Unlike AT&T, they seem to have learned customers hate caps and since bandwidth is so incredibly cheap for them, there's no reason to impose caps--they don't help with congestion or anything, all they do is push people to business-class connections or force them to use less bandwidth, which gives a less enjoyable experience.

reply to SteveJobs
I haven't had any complaints from Frontier about data usage and I tend to be on the heavy side of things.

reply to jamesonnorth
The regional manager actually called you? Wow! That makes me want to use even more!

But, they said they will be giving you more bandwidth and moving you to the fast path? I don't exactly understand. I know on the transceiver there's the path type: fast....but you weren't on that?

I got a call from my area supervisor--not sure how many CO's he oversees, but he was very helpful and willing to get me the best service possible, even if it broke a few corporate rules. I like good customer service.

I asked if there was any way to give me more speed than the 6000/768 I was getting, and he did some magic and the next day I was syncing at 8000/1150 with fast path type (fastpath for short) where I was on interleaved before. Fastpath isn't so much an upgrade for most people but it dropped my pings, so it made for higher perceived performance, even though raw throughput wasn't that much faster.

That's awesome! I hope our general manager is like that. I'd love to chat with him. Do you have bonded dsl?

And do you mind sharing your transceiver stats? I want to compare.

No, I don't have bonded DSL. Just a single DSL line, currently on a DSL max package. Customer support screwed up my provisioning today. I was at 8000/1150 until about 5 hours ago. It's supposed to be upped to 12/2 by Friday, or at least back to the 800"/1150 I was at before. I'm hoping to get more than the 6.9 real throughout Frontier says my area supports. We'll see.

Transceiver Statistics
Transceiver Revision 4.4.9.13.1.1
Vendor ID Code 4D54
Line Mode ADSL_2plus
Data Path FAST

Transceiver Information Down Stream Path Up Stream Path
DSL Speed (Kbits/Sec) 6937 1147
Margin (dB) 22.0 11.3
Line Attenuation (dB) 16.4 9.4
Transmit Power (dBm) 2.5 10.3
FEC Errors 0 0
HEC Errors 35 4174
CRC Errors 608 0

Ah, you have the adsl+, that explains it. I hope we get that soon, I'm more fond of adsl+ then the bonded dsl. Sorry for all of the questions, I guess you could say I'm a frontier fanatic. How much do you pay monthly?

Customer service told me I was on an old plan that was a carry-over from the Verizon pricing structure. I was paying 49.99 plus the local loop phone line, so around $55 a month after taxes. Then Frontier dropped the requirement to carry a home phone and my price dropped to $39.99 a month plus taxes, though my speeds also dropped from 8000 to 6900 down and my upload stayed the same around 1150.

I decided the loss 1.1mbit wasn't worth it, so I upgraded to the Ultra package, which is 12/2. Still ADSL2+, but idk how they manage the 2mbit up, as 1.5up is supposed to be pushing it for ADSL2+. I'm hoping my area can get VDSL2 pretty soon, as I know we have the backhaul for it. We have multiple 1 or 10gbit fiber lines running along major highways near me, and there are lots of customers out here who are stuck at 1.5 and 3mbit DSL plus crappy WISP or VZW, both with caps. My area needs an upgrade.

Caps seem to be at the whim of the regional management. In Elk Grove and in parts of Minnesota customers got letters demanding they cut back usage around two years ago. We went after them over that issue and drummed up some noise in those communities. Elk Grove is lucky enough in some places to have a fiber competitor so that was a no-brainer for those customers -- goodbye Frontier... like a shot.

Both of these letter campaigns appeared be one-offs, because after the first round of letters went in the mail, there were no others reported.

My guess is that they look for outliers who are consuming several hundred gigabytes a month. I know for a fact they do internally measure subscriber usage and have identified some of their heaviest users. I suspect they leave them largely alone unless there is a capacity problem that is not scheduled to be addressed in the near future, at which point they want people to cut back.

For now there is no formal usage cap program, but I seriously would not put it past them to try, if only because the same Wall Street people beating the drum for caps with cable operators also turn up beating the drum on Frontier's quarterly results conference calls.

That is one of the reasons CenturyLink has caps today.
--
Phillip M. Dampier
Editor, Stop the Cap!
»stopthecap.com

reply to jamesonnorth