Frontier Communications → My Frontier Speed "Upgrade" saga

Hello all,

I have had service with Frontier DSL for just over 3 years now. My original connection speed was 6/1.5. I kept that connection for about a year with no problems and perfect connection speeds. I live a very short distance from the remote DSLAM.

Sometime last year, I was called by Frontier to tell me that the new 12/2 plan was suddenly available in my area. I signed up on the spot. My speeds on this plan were always 11.5Mbps/1.99Mbps for the last year. Very solid and very reliable.

Last week, I was paying my bill on the Frontier website and noticed that an even faster speed was suddenly available - 24/2! I called customer service and they confirmed that I was eligible. My service was upgraded remotely 2 days later to this plan. My speeds on the 24/2 plan were always 22.5Mbps download, 1.00Mbps upload. I was curious as to why the upload speed was suddenly HALF of what it had ever been. On top of this, my actual download speeds didn't seem to increase by much. The official "Frontier Speed test" told me that I was transmitting at 24Mbps, but in reality I was really only getting download results that were closer to the old 12Mbps plan.

I called support and they told me it was a provisioning issue. A tech was sent out yesterday to look at my line. He left a note with a member of the household and told them that "I can't get 24Mbps speeds, and that my 12/2 plan is working perfectly fine. If I'm paying for 24/2 speeds, I need to call billing because they owe me some money for service I can't get."

I really wish I would have been here when he came over - I would have loved to show him the results of my Frontier Speed Test, showing him that he had no idea what he was talking about!

Well - it gets better. Now my speeds are back down to 11.55Mbps download, and only .99Mbps upload! So whatever he did yesterday actually cut my speeds down by half AND also caused my upload to stay at the 1Mbps provisioning cap.

A call this morning with another tech support agent revealed that I AM supposed to have 24Mbps access. The agent tested my line and had me run some tests. His final suggestion was that the technician that came out to fix the service actually somehow made it worse (the words "this isn't a provisioning issue, there are shorts on your lines. The tech yesterday must have left the box open and rain got in." were used. It didn't rain yesterday.) He also let me know that the 2Mbps upload is "not promised" and "likely not available at my address." Then why was I getting it 1 week ago before someone monkeyed with my lines?!

Seriously, Frontier? What is happening? I knew I shouldn't have messed with this.
At this point, I am paying for 24/2 service, but I am only getting 11/1. This is WORSE than a week ago, and I'm paying $10 more a month than I should be.

Seems to be a similar story to mine when I upgraded from 3Mbps to 7Mbps before the bonded plan became available. I upgraded to the 7Mbps plan and it did fine for a couple of weeks and then after calling in about congestion issues I found myself back at 3Mbps and not eligible for 7Mbps.

I was lucky enough to dodge that and went straight for the bonded plan and have been stuck on 12/2 ever since. I am hoping 24/2 will become available at some point as I am extremely close to the CO, but I know the upgrade may not go as planned as you have described.

Hello NekoSaur,

I am sorry to hear of the recent download/upload speed confusion and the resulting support issues you have encountered with Frontier Support. If you would be willing to provide some account details, I can have your account looked into by the Help Desks Lead Technician group as well as take the appropriate corrective actions for both your speed issue. Please send the account details to support@frontier.com with the subject Attention Lead Techs DSL Forum escalation "My Frontier Speed "Upgrade" saga". This will get to our Lead technician group who can then work the issue. Additionally if you would like to be contacted by one of these Lead technicians please provide a good call back number as well as a good time frame for them to reach you.

If you were on 12/2 I'm going to assume you were on bonded ADSL2+, right? You could be on single port ADSL2+ MAX with a 7550 modem but those provisioning set-ups are rare in my area...

The ONLY way they could "remotely" re-provision you for 24/2 would be if you were on a bonded setup...otherwise you would have to have been set up for single-pair VDSL.

I'm also confused how the Frontier speed test site quoted you 24Meg speeds if, like you said, you were only really getting speeds similar to your old 12/2 plan.

Could you post your modem stats, the type of modem you run, and your speed test results?

The fact that the technician showed up and said "you can't get 24Mbps speeds..." may be indeed true. You could be too far from the CO to run 24Meg, or, your CO may not be equipped to provide that level of service.

It's not uncommon for them to sell you a service, especially online, that you can't ACTUALLY get, despite the call to customer service.

Your speeds being worse now may just be an anomaly on the speed testing sites due to peak usage hours or CO congestion at the time of testing....

That's why modem stats would be great to see here so we can help you "diagnose" the problem.

I'm going to wait to see what the next technician says before I escalate this to anybody who has volunteered to help here (thank you for the support by the way.)

As far as my modem stats go - my modem is actually in "bridge" mode, so getting the stats off of it required resetting the modem and losing the configuration. It's annoying to set up in bridged mode, so all I can really give you are the physical modem stats.

Comtrend NexusLink 5631
Bonded ADSL+
One brand new phone line running directly into my house from the telco box outside. The distance is roughly 15'. Installed 3 years ago. The installer recently broke the line into two pairs and then put those into a double phone outlet when I upgraded to the 12/2 plan.

Speedtest.frontier.com gave the following results (I saved them) for my different speeds over the last year.

6/1 Plan: (2 years ago)
ping - 79ms
5.79Mbps download
.90Mbps upload

12/2 bonded Plan: (1 year ago)
Ping - 37ms
11.55Mbps download
1.98Mbps upload

24/2 bonded plan (last week)
Ping - 25ms
22.95Mbps download
.99Mbps upload

24/2 bonded plan (after "fix", today)
Ping - 36ms
11.65Mbps download
1.00Mbps

The 24/2 plan was a tad faster - in real life downloads, I was actually only getting about 2MBps downloads. I thought it should be closer to 3 megs a second. On top of all that, my upload speeds have now been capped at a solid 1Mbps, even though I was getting 2Mbps regularly for over a year. This never changed. Ever. It was always almost exactly 2. The only thing that changed was the techs re-provisioning me to the 24/1 plan (which is supposed to be 24/2)

The whole thing is a mess. If the tech doesn't fix it I will reset my modem and do a screen grab of my stats.

be glad I was told that 12 megs won't be available where I live until maybe sometime next year so 6 down is it for me.

Welcome to the new Frontier, or whatever slogan they use.

I have been a customer for a little over 2 1/2 years. I was signed up for "Up to 7Mbps" plan. I only get around 3Mbps and that's only because I fought for 8 months to get bumped up from 1.5, yet still paying for the "Up to 7".

They like that phrase "Up To". After speaking with a a tech in the area, it doesn't look like they are going to make any improvements, so I will be stuck on the congested network while they work to add more people.

Just got a call from a Frontier tech on my cell phone at work stating that "my line has been provisioned correctly for the faster speeds"

I'll see what happens when I run a test later today.

Fantastic, I'm glad you were able to get what you so rightfully deserve!

Glad to hear there are FTR reps on here actually listening!- These provisioning snafu's should just never happen...better across the board training is obviously necessary...

Regarding your throughput rates during app downloads- That may be a limitation of the peering device, or server, you are connected to for that task. I would be inclined to think that it's more of an anomaly than anything else, a mere coincidence that you are only pulling around 12Mbps when you are downloading. I'd be interested to see if that continues during different periods of testing/downloading...

May the force be with you!

I have only noticed something like this in one instance, on the testmynet speed test site. I am on the 12/2 plan and the site reports I get 6Mb download bandwidth. Watching taskmanager I can see this to be the case in that particular test, however I actually do get the full 12Mbps in real world download situations.

It almost seems as if it acts as a load balancing setup, but I am curious if it is a modem limitation. I notice we both have the comtrend, and as far as I know they are one of the few bonded modems they are using.

It would be interesting to see how widespread this is with other modems. I will have to look more into it.

My guess is the speed difference would have to be with the way the Comtrend handles the bonding. For example, MLPPP allowing the modem to use both connections at once, rather than in Bridge mode which utilizes one connection. I'm not sure and I'm not terribly familiar with how Frontier does their bonding.

While the Comtrend was bridged, did you try running two or more downloads at the same time? Testmy.net has a nice Multithreaded downloading test which might help you figure this one out a bit more.

I usually suggest bridging modems to a dedicated router, but if you get better performance using the Comtrend in NAT, I'm sure there's a great way to fix that.