Suddenlink → [Rant] 2013

I feel like every year, I end up having to post one of these topics, and every year I feel angry and left behind everyone else...

Here we are in 2013, and here we are with some of the worst upstream speeds in the entire cable industry.

Across the entire SL footprint, the highest upstream speed you can get is still only 5mbit. In my market, the highest you can get is 3mbit.

Looking around on the forums here, you can see truly how poor this really is.

And it's not like we aren't paying the same prices as everyone else. In some cases, we are paying more for less.

15 down and a measly 1.5 up here. Most days I hardly use any upstream bandwidth, but the days that I do need to upload a big file make me wish for more upstream!

For the most part, I am happy with the downstream speeds. I'd be more happy if we could get the 107 MAX plan here, although again the very limited 5mbit upstream while better than 3, in my opinion is behind most everyone else.

The 107 plan is available here, but I think it's priced at over $100 per month. Having come from a 3 Mbps DSL plan, I'm still pretty pleased with 15 down. But indeed, I would love to have more available in the upstream side when I need it. I don't know if it is a network limitation or just their way of discouraging servers at home.

Right now, I think it's an equipment limitation. At least in my area. Back when we got the new docsis3 upgrades done, it was said that my node only had 2 upstream channels available. One was the newer 64QAM and the other was the older modulation standard, I forget offhand what it's called.

Not sure what would be involved for them to offer higher upstream speed plans.

16QAM or QPSK maybe?

I would also kiss someone to increase the upload speed. I'm having to pay for the 30meg tier just to get 2megs up speed?! I had 2 megs upload 8 years ago with time warner.....

And lets not start on pricing. Hands down it's ridiculous. Even among users here on the forum LIVING IN THE SAME TOWN with the same tier, there is a SEVERE price range. Then directly across the river is Comcast (i could probably hit their cable lines with a frisbee) and their pricing is almost half what I'm paying last I called them....

I mean, I appreciated the increased download speed for the same price (wait, they just raised prices.....) but if i had wanted faster down speeds, I would have just ordered the next package. upload speeds need added to badly.

Hey Gator, I know this is kinda off the subject but can you do me a favor please? Do some speed tests now if you don't mind and can you post them for me? I'm trying to do some comparisons.

QPSK rings a bell.

If they would force everyone to upgrade to 2.0 or 3.0 modems, they could, at least on my node, have 2 qam64 channels. At least I think so anyway.

I just did some speed tests today. You can always see my speedtest.net results, anytime you want. I don't test as often as I used to, but you can see them here:

GatorKrams speedtest.net results

Wouldn't really want that. If you had connection issues, your modem will try to drop backwards. If they got rid of the older standards, you'd just be offline :s

For $349.95/month you can get 50 down/8 up on a business account. I don't know why they don't offer that on personal accounts.

That's getting close to my house note...

That price sounds really close to what I remember them saying 5/5 fiber would cost.

But yeah, to expensive for my taste, though a good price for the speeds compared to say a T1.

50 down and 8 up is pretty respectful, I'd love to see that hit the residential side for like $125, I mean, for $50

The high cost is because on business accounts you get a 4 hour SLA and (supposedly) packet prioritization. I've never seen evidence of packet prioritization on my modems compared to my residential modem. An overloaded node is an overloaded node.

I'm paying FAR more than 50 for my 30/2, good luck

I for one been thinkin of dropping suddenlink all together.. haha, suddenlink is now small in my town.. of 20,000 people their are some viable options.. one is a new company called nextlink here in texas.. they have been expanding like crazy I have no idea how or how much backend they have access to but, my buddy just got it.. and was able to get 17.89 mbps and 5mbps up on fixed wireless connection! ping was 14ms.. cant say the same for suddenlink.. my pings are always above 54ms and its really irritating, that and suddenlink has caps where nextlink does not and suddenlink doesn't even offer 20mbps to us.. and for the same price we pay for 10mbps we could go with nextlink.. only thing is they install a antenna on top of the roof but not a big deal.. Nextlink has expressed that they are faster than suddenlink and plan to expand rapidly threw out texas, and start work in other states.. I personally cant find much info about the company other than they have been selling back end to huesnet for many years and other companies.. anyways competition always helps