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Embarq Drops Fastest DSL Tier By $10
10Mbps/896kbps tier now $54.95 'naked,' $44.95 bundled
According to some discussion among Embarq customers in our forums, the nation's fourth largest telco has dropped the price of their 10Mbps/896kbps ADSL2+ package by $10. The tier was previously $64.95 stand alone, and $54.95 if bundled with certain voice packages. According to a post from an Embarq employee in our forums, you have to call to get the new price. It looks like this $10 drop is also for business customers. You can thank Syncognition See Profile for the tip. Have you seen any pricing changes from your ISP? As always, hit us up here.
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fifty nine
join:2002-09-25
Sussex, NJ

fifty nine

Member

Day late, dollar short

Service Electric is $41.95/month for 10 meg.

Besides, I can't even get 10 meg from Embarq where I live! I can only get up to 6 meg, which isn't enough.

Come on Embarq, get me some fiber to the home!
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx

Member

Re: Day late, dollar short

How much upload speed?

Also, Service Electric is $47/month for basic cable bundling, $57 with no bundling, slightly more expensive than Embarq.

Don't they also have caps on service? Embarq doesn't.

Maybe I'm envious...5 Mb DSL is the max here, and $57 per month would be for "12/896" that's really about 10/700 with Qwest. Even then interleave makes things seem even slower.

No, I'm not terribly fond of the fact that line attenuation makes 10 Mbit DSL unavailable for lots of people, but $55 per month for naked 10/896 internet? I'm paying $65 for 8/2 right now and, if 10/896 for $5 unbundled was offered here, in all likelihood I'd switch right over.

Fox McCloud
Crazy like a fox.
join:2006-07-23

Fox McCloud

Member

Re: Day late, dollar short

said by iansltx:

How much upload speed?
896kbps, the max ADSL2+ will support.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx

Member

Re: Day late, dollar short

Sorry, I meant upload speed on Service Electric. 896k overprovisioned is the max ADSL2+ will support, without reallocation of frequencies. But yeah, knew that...still, cool vs. 384, 512 or 768k elsewhere.

fifty nine
join:2002-09-25
Sussex, NJ

fifty nine to iansltx

Member

to iansltx
Upload is 1M for the 10M tier.

For the 30M tier which I am on, it is 2M upload. They are capable of more, over 100M since it is DOCSIS3. How likely we are to see that remains to be seen.

I quote the $41.95 price (for 10M) because most people also subscribe to pay TV service in addition to broadband. I also use vonage so I don't have a pots phone nor do I want one.

Yes there are caps of 60G each way for the 10M tier and 100G each way for the 30M tier which is the only bad thing. Reliability is good. It has only gone out twice for me in 2 years and these weren't very long outages.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx

Member

Re: Day late, dollar short

You're paying 70c per GB?!? Yep, that's the amount for the 10/1 cable. Worse than Comcast, and on a 10/1 connection I couldn't live with it. $80 for 100 GB? Even more expensive...80 cents per gig. Meh, I'll take 10 Mbps unmetered DSL any day of the week; if I have a 30 Mbps connection I will use it more than 100 GB per month. 10 Mbps connection/60GB is the ame way.

Then again, suit yourself. Seems like you've got fast enough internet, but nothing terribly competitive. Yes, DOCSIS 3 can do 100+ Mbps on triple-channel, but you have to have the backbone for it. I figure that, with the per-gig costs, you could probably run a whole city off 100M ethernet/fiber even with the 30 Mbit tiers, since even the heavy users can't go beyond 100GB.

Yeah, I'll take Embarq, though people with different usage patterns than I (not streaming legal HD video, music, VPN, file uploads, backup, etc.) may be fine with a capped connection like that.

fifty nine
join:2002-09-25
Sussex, NJ

fifty nine

Member

Re: Day late, dollar short

said by iansltx:

You're paying 70c per GB?!? Yep, that's the amount for the 10/1 cable. Worse than Comcast, and on a 10/1 connection I couldn't live with it. $80 for 100 GB? Even more expensive...80 cents per gig. Meh, I'll take 10 Mbps unmetered DSL any day of the week; if I have a 30 Mbps connection I will use it more than 100 GB per month. 10 Mbps connection/60GB is the ame way.

Then again, suit yourself. Seems like you've got fast enough internet, but nothing terribly competitive. Yes, DOCSIS 3 can do 100+ Mbps on triple-channel, but you have to have the backbone for it. I figure that, with the per-gig costs, you could probably run a whole city off 100M ethernet/fiber even with the 30 Mbit tiers, since even the heavy users can't go beyond 100GB.

Yeah, I'll take Embarq, though people with different usage patterns than I (not streaming legal HD video, music, VPN, file uploads, backup, etc.) may be fine with a capped connection like that.
I am not exactly an average user. I do actually stream a lot of video. Maybe if Netflix didn't have such a piss poor HD selection I'd use more and probably hit my 100GB cap. My usage hasn't gone over 100GB and I use slingbox and download TiVocasts a lot. The cost per GB after the cap is $1. A few bucks a month extra isn't going to hurt me, even if I do go over, which is probably never.

Furthermore with a 6 meg connection, many people haven't been able to stream Netflix in HD. With the 30 meg connection I am pretty much guaranteed to stream HD because I have a lot of headroom. On the worst days my connection barely goes below 25 megs. On most days it is at 27-29 megs.

Speed is more important to me than caps, and Embarq's offering to me in the speed department has been piss poor. Verizon in other parts of the state is offering 50/20 FiOS. Copper twisted pair is so last century.

This is another reason I am not getting Embarq DSL. Service Electric has upgraded their headend and cable plant to offer DOCSIS3. Embarq is only offering ADSL2 and is dragging its feet on fiber to the home, throwing out a few bones but not really doing anything. The last thing I heard is that they're up for sale to CenturyTel, and from what I gather, this won't mean fiber to the home anytime soon.

So I think I know who has the future in mind, and who does not, and Embarq does not.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx

Member

Re: Day late, dollar short

CenturyTel has 15 Mbp FTTH.

Also, as far as HD streaming goes, I'm pretty sure Netflix stuff is 5 Mbps or thereabouts. Ill have to try later on and count the bits going by, but I can absolutely do HD over my 8/2 connection.

As to reliability on Embarq, I have family in NC, who use Embarq. On holidays they have ping spikes, otherwise the connection is rock solid. Smokepings? A perfectly flat line.

fifty nine
join:2002-09-25
Sussex, NJ

fifty nine

Member

Re: Day late, dollar short

said by iansltx:

CenturyTel has 15 Mbp FTTH.
Embarq also has a limited trial in Las Vegas from what I heard.

But they certainly aren't as aggressive as Verizon is with FiOS. When they bring fiber to the home in Northwest NJ, I may take them up on it. But for now? I'm not going backwards in speed to ADSL2.
quote:
Also, as far as HD streaming goes, I'm pretty sure Netflix stuff is 5 Mbps or thereabouts. Ill have to try later on and count the bits going by, but I can absolutely do HD over my 8/2 connection.
I can only get 5 meg service here. It may stream HD sometimes, but not all the time.
quote:
As to reliability on Embarq, I have family in NC, who use Embarq. On holidays they have ping spikes, otherwise the connection is rock solid. Smokepings? A perfectly flat line.
I have to try smokepings here but the internet service has so far only gone out twice that I noticed.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx

Member

Re: Day late, dollar short

Take a look at a smokeping. Cable tends to be +/- 10 ms from what I can tell. Comcast here in CO seems a little more reliable than TWC/RR in Fredericksburg TX as far as I can see.

But the variance on Embarq, usually less than 1ms...rock solid. Not that it impacts connection quality a ton, but it's funny that the phone company's internet service is the best one for VoIP.
iansltx

iansltx to fifty nine

Member

to fifty nine
Whoops, 35 cents and 40 cents per GB, assuming you use symmetric. Not as horrible, but you can push 100+ GB over any of Embarq's connections and they won't ocmplain. Each wa, even.

Hazy Arc
join:2006-04-10
Greenwood, SC

Hazy Arc

Member

Nice



'nuff said.

Titus
Mr Gradenko
join:2004-06-26

Titus

Member

I'd rather pay Embarq

than Comcast any day of the week. Nearly 100% uptime and the speeds are consistent.

My tests with both 3M and 10M service:

»/testh ··· 67/8cbb5

--

fifty nine
join:2002-09-25
Sussex, NJ

fifty nine

Member

Re: I'd rather pay Embarq

said by Titus:

than Comcast any day of the week. Nearly 100% uptime and the speeds are consistent.

My tests with both 3M and 10M service:

»/testh ··· 67/8cbb5

--
Lucky you. I can't get 10 meg here, only "up to" 6. Maybe if I could get 10 meg or speeds beyond that I'd consider Embarq.

Titus
Mr Gradenko
join:2004-06-26

Titus

Member

Re: I'd rather pay Embarq

said by fifty nine:

said by Titus:

than Comcast any day of the week. Nearly 100% uptime and the speeds are consistent.
--
Lucky you. I can't get 10 meg here, only "up to" 6. Maybe if I could get 10 meg or speeds beyond that I'd consider Embarq.
I was happy with 3.0, but now that I'm doing more streaming I do feel lucky I can get 10M - and the price cut doesn't hurt either
--

fifty nine
join:2002-09-25
Sussex, NJ

fifty nine

Member

Re: I'd rather pay Embarq

I just checked the website again for pre-qual and it says 5M, not 6. Don't know where I got 6 from, but only 5M is available here.

I'll just wait until they decide whether or not they're going to do some sort of fiber to the home service. I'm not going down to 5M from 30M.
talbain
join:2002-10-05
Hamburg, NJ

talbain

Member

Re: I'd rather pay Embarq

how are you getting 30meg download speed in sussex nj from service electric? their site says 10meg is the fastest they have

hereitwas
@comcast.net

hereitwas

Anon

4th largest

Hey, I thought Comcast had become the 4th largest last year?
»Comcast Becomes Nation's Fourth Largest Phone Company [52] comments


daniyel
join:2001-05-10
Tucson, AZ

daniyel

Member

Weee - They decreased my bill

Called CS today, and they happily modified my monthly bill, effective on the 19th she said.

Very cool, and really rare - when I was a Cox customer in Southern AZ with internet only, Cox did drop my monthly fee by 5 dollars, and later gave me basic cable.

I am now liking Embarq/Cox, much better than the Qwest/Comcast territory I was living in before...peww
betam4x
join:2002-10-12
Nashville, TN

betam4x

Member

EMBARQ Price Drop...

I just called in to get the price decrease. It's too bad i'm moving out of the EMBARQ service area. I'm going to miss their customer support. Sounds corny, i know, but having delt with comcast, verizon, sprint, and AT&T i can say that by far EMBARQ has the best support.