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John Taylor
join:2001-12-20
Hartland, WI

John Taylor

Member

[Internet] Business Class service response

I am located in SE Wisconsin, about 25 miles from Milwaukee. We have "Time Warner Business Class Broadband" Internet cable service at our office. Day before yesterday (Saturday) the service went down a few minutes after 5:00 PM. TW's tech support tested the circuit and found that the problem was in their network. The earliest service availability was 8:00 to 5:00 today (Monday). The service miraculously fixed itself Sunday shortly after 6:00 PM. Today (Monday) it went down again shortly after 5:00 PM. Although I repeatedly requested that this be escalated, the earliest that TW will have a tech on-site is tomorrow (Tuesday) between 8:00 and 5:00.

Question 1: Does Time Warner ever do repair work on this type of circuit outside of the hours Monday through Friday 8:00 to 5:00? In other words, does "Business Class" service mean that TW only provides service during business hours?

Question 2: The timing of the failures (shortly after 5:00 PM on two occasions a day apart) suggest that maybe the circuit is being brought down intentionally to work on it. Driving home Saturday I noticed two large TW bucket trucks parked about a mile from my office. I have never before seen any TW trucks in the area other than small panel trucks. Does TW have a record of shutting down circuits at the end of the business day without notifying their customers or am I just being paranoid?

Smith6612
MVM
join:2008-02-01
North Tonawanda, NY
·Charter
Ubee EU2251
Ubiquiti UAP-IW-HD
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Smith6612

MVM

Business class should be an indication of higher levels of support, reliability, and performance in comparison to cheaper options like home broadband packages. Is your office paying for "Business Class" over the HFC/Coaxial network or are they paying for a real Fiber connection from Time Warner Cable?

It's possible with the MAXX upgrades coming along, Time Warner has been doing some upgrades to the plant and nodes, which might have knocked out service for a bit. If the connection is Fiber, who knows why it went down.
John Taylor
join:2001-12-20
Hartland, WI

John Taylor

Member

Our current service is Business Class over coax. Later this month that will be upgrade to fiber. Part of my concern is that we plan to move most of our work to the fiber and if it is down overnight that is a problem for us. A TW tech arrived at 9:35 the next morning and was surprised that nothing had been done overnight. He said that TW has techs on-call overnight. However, on the phone I was told that "Dispatch" had "declined" the request for expedited service and "there is nothing that can be done until tomorrow".

As it turns out, the tech replaced the 11 year old modem and the problem has not recurred. He indicated that they had been having "a lot of problems" with the modem that we had - an Orion 2000.

I have been told that the fiber has a 4 hour response time under the terms of the SLA. I certainly hope that turns out to reflect reality since the "Business Class" support that we have received for the cable service is abysmal.

mackey
Premium Member
join:2007-08-20

mackey

Premium Member

Yeah, despite the 5x price the cable "business class" just means they're open business hours; it does not have a SLA or guaranteed MTTR. Fiber should be much better however as it does have a SLA.

/M

maartena
Elmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA

maartena to John Taylor

Premium Member

to John Taylor
said by John Taylor:

Question 1: Does Time Warner ever do repair work on this type of circuit outside of the hours Monday through Friday 8:00 to 5:00? In other words, does "Business Class" service mean that TW only provides service during business hours?

Business Class cable internet means that you can use your cable connection for commercial purposes, such as the running of servers for profit (such as a webshop), or the offering of free wifi for hotels/coffee shops, and whatnot.

It does NOT grant you a SLA or faster repair service then the residential service. There are business connections that have a 24/7, 4 hour SLA, but they are often customized metro-ethernet type connections, costing hundreds of dollars a month for slow connections, and probably over a thousand a month for anything greater then 10 Mbps.

Once you get connected to their fiber circuit, it should come with some form of SLA. Make sure you thoroughly read the paperwork before signing anything.

TWCguy
@98.148.51.x

TWCguy

Anon

While it is true that there are no guaranteed faster response times on service calls. Business Class aims for same day service calls if you call before noon. Otherwise it would be the next business day.