Frontier Keeps Pushing Out Bonded DSL Though Upgraded Users See Only 12 Mbps Down, 2 Mbps Up Frontier Communications has announced that the telco continues to very-selectively deploy bonded DSL services, this time to portions of 28 communities in Appalachian Ohio. The speeds aren't much by current generation standards, Frontier offering residential users in range 12/2 Mbps service and business customers in the region 15/2 Mbps. Still, these upgrades are more than Verizon (who sold much of their DSL territory to Frontier) was doing, which isn't saying much. As we noted again yesterday, incumbent phone companies are fleeing the DSL and landline industry while smaller telcos can't or won't upgrade their networks to seriously compete with cable speeds. While our users say Frontier is busy with upgrades, the majority of their customers continue to be very fortunate if they can get speeds between 3 and 6 Mbps downstream.
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 | | Left Frontier almost a year ago And have not looked back. My current upload speed of ~1.6 mbps is more than HALF of what I was getting as a downstream speed for twice the price I am paying now. Terrible product offering to consumers that is unfortunately for some the only option. It seems that if you are only looking to use the internet for browsing, email and occasional movie streaming/downloads you'd be better off buying a 70-80 mobile 4G hotspot and get speeds and service beyond that of what Frontier is offering. | |
|  | Reviews:
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| Re: Left Frontier almost a year ago That's great, good for you, at least you have options...most of these areas being served with UPGRADED service have spotty at best 3G/4G coverage and Verizon DEFINITELY had NO plans of even doing anything remotely as close as this.
At least Frontier is DOING something in these areas, it's not like they have to, they don't have ANY competition.
Where would the incentive be to spend $$ on upgrading infrastructure/backbone to support more speeds if they weren't being pushed by the competition? Granted the only push now would be by the eventual deployment of better wireless coverage, but those options are STILL CAPPED! | |
| | | | | Re: Left Frontier almost a year ago I totally agree with you. DSL isn't a competition to cable or cell coverage in performance, it's a competition to them in price. One of my relatives is still on dial-up. Their choices include cable, some form of cell hotspot, or satellite. Out of those options the cheapest is around $40 a month. For someone who occasionally reads the news and checks their e-mail once a week on the computer, it's pretty hard to justify spending that much for internet. If they could get DSL I would have them on a 768k plan for around $15 - $20 a month. It would completely blow their current service out of the water and not really cost much more. | |
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| | Ugh. If you haven't read the comments in the Frontier forum, please do.
Our local "remote" DSL box is FULL. I've been bugging the snot out of Frontier to bring us faster speed but it goes by the number of requests they get in any area! I'm still trying to get the temporary cable buried, which resulted in a long strip of weeds down my front yard since last October. | |
| | | $$ better press release would be about how they're using the usf & government "stimulus" money to wire FTTP and do it the RIGHT way.. or did only fairpoint get money? | |
| | Sammer
join:2005-12-22
Canonsburg, PA | Re: $$ said by tmc8080:better press release would be about how they're using the usf & government "stimulus" money to wire FTTP and do it the RIGHT way.. or did only fairpoint get money?
Frontier will be getting Connect America Fund money but it's a maximum of $750 for an "unserved" household. Try bringing FTTP to a rural household for $750. | |
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| | Frontier Premium High Speed DSL -- NW Indiana Without notice, about six months ago Frontier began tacking on a surcharge to a locked-in fee contract for its so-called premium high speed DSL, 3 to 5 Mbps service in NW Indiana, part of the old Verizon network. Funny thing, though, the fastest non-Frontier DSL test speed has been 2.8 Mbps download, 0.788 Mbps upload. I have mentioned this to Frontier and it says I am receiving the 3 to 5 Mbps service. In other words, tough, we say we are providing you with our 3 to 5 Mbps service, OUR tests show you are getting 3.3 Mbps, and we are charging you extra for that service, so all of those other benchmark tests are irrelevant and just plain lying.
A number of times service has slowed to less than 1 Mbps, although uplink speed remained at 0.65+ Mbps.
Frontier apparently has no local backup for its Portage, Indiana, server. I have experienced a number of local, non-weather related outages at say, 0230, that have lasted until about 0530, perhaps the time its tech people are arriving at work and reviewing status reports in the Eastern time zone. So its service is somewhat lacking.
On a plus side, when talking by phone, I can understand the USA-based tech help, whereas with Verizon, often I could not because of their heavy foreign accent and echoes. Also, the Frontier tech help tends to give more realistic and helpful status reports, such as following a local server channel failure. | |
| Reviews:
 ·AT&T Wireless Br..
| Wow I am in NW Ohio we are getting Screwed Wow I am in NW Ohio we are getting screwed by Frontier here only thing we can get is 7meg x 768kbps that is even the co can even carry it what makes Appalachian Ohio area so special? while they cant upgrade the whole state of ohio like that? of should I say everystate who haves frontier? | |
| | | | Re: Wow I am in NW Ohio we are getting Screwed I'm in east central Ohio and they skipped our place over a town that has less than 400 people in it.
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Vita est bona. | |
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iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
 ·Verizon Online DSL
 ·RoadRunner Cable
·Comcast
| Pricing & Speeds Looks like the 12/2 bonded service, if you can get it, is $60 per month. Not horrible for that speed if there's nothing else available, but definitely venturing into cable territory for pricing. Speeds aren't great, sure, but if you're in an area that isn't served by cable, even if you can get 4G its speeds are going to only be comparable, for a higher price.
NekoSaur's postings on the Frontier forum suggest that Frontier may have a LOT of room to up speeds to some of their customers, but is choosing not to do it. He could probably hit 25/2 without having any last-mile connectivity issues on his bonded system...maybe even 30/2 or 35/2...or even more with Annex M. Unfortunately Frontier isn't offering more than 15/2 yet, for fear that only five people in an entire city will have loops short enough to sustain higher speeds...or maybe their backbone network can't handle it :/ | |
| | | | Re: Pricing & Speeds Nekosaur and I share the same CO. He is to the west by a couple of miles, I am north by 10. I have fiber under the major road that leads to the box. Apparently the upgrade is very pricey and I suspect that my neighbors are so used to being shafted by ISP's they don't assume faster speeds could be available if we ask. So far I seem to be the only one bugging Frontier. | |
| | elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | $60/month for 12/2 is not bad at all, for Frontier.
That's on par with AT&T U-Verse.
Neither service would be my first or second choice, but if I was living in a town of 400 households 100 miles from nowhere, and fortunate enough to have an RT piped from the CO ten miles away, I'd be very willing to pay $60/month for 12/2. | |
| | | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 | Re: Pricing & Speeds As would I. My parents pay around $30, plus landline costs (about $20 for local calling only and no calling features), for a 1.5/384 line from Verizon. To my knowledge there are no DSL-enabled RTs in their town of ~10,000. | |
| | |  DavidNow accepting new patientsPremium,VIP
join:2002-05-30
Granite City, IL
kudos:78
 ·DIRECTV
·AT&T Midwest
 ·magicjack.com
·Google Voice
·AT&T Southwest
| said by elray:$60/month for 12/2 is not bad at all, for Frontier.
That's on par with AT&T U-Verse.
Neither service would be my first or second choice, but if I was living in a town of 400 households 100 miles from nowhere, and fortunate enough to have an RT piped from the CO ten miles away, I'd be very willing to pay $60/month for 12/2.
I agree as well, granted there are faster options in town with charter cable,but not seeing the bright side as I finally will cut the landline budget this year for a good voip provider. I plan on using one of the two WAN providers this year for Clear wireless.
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If you have a topic in the direct forum please reply to it or a post of mine, I get a notification when you do this.
Koetting Ford, Granite City, illinois... YOU'RE FIRED!!
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 DaneJasperSonic.NetPremium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
kudos:9 | What equipment? Anyone know what equipment they are using to do bonding? Which DSLAM, which modem make & model, and whether they are using ATM G.bond or the newer PTM bonding?
-Dane | |
| | | | Re: What equipment? I just had this installed today. The modem they gave me is a ZyXEL.
Huge white box.
Model # P-663HN-51 | |
| | | DaneJasperSonic.NetPremium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
kudos:9 | Re: What equipment? said by crucify:I just had this installed today. The modem they gave me is a ZyXEL.
Huge white box.
Model # P-663HN-51
Thanks. That means they're continuing to use ATM, with G.bond, the older technology, generally used on ADSL2+ DSLAMs.
Here's the ZyXel product: »www.zyxel.com/products_services/···html?t=p
Thanks for the info. | |
| | | | | | Re: What equipment? The thing that was nutty, the tech told me this just came available here. Then, he says that VDSL will be available next week for us.
I'll be upgrading again next week. | |
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| | not bad move considering many of the vacation beach houses in Michigan probably have Frontier as the only option. If they do well in Ohio, they'll expand. | |
| | | They need to quit underprovisioning their lines first. Frontier is desperate to keep their backbone and DSLAM backhauls from saturating. Instead of upgrading they have opted to cut people's provisioned speed whenever their contract gets renewed or when they call in for tech support under the guise that their previous speed is no longer supported in that particular area and pushed down into the next lower tier. A 7 meg capable customer is only going to get the 3 meg package. Customers with a 3 meg capable line will get 1.5 max, and a customer with a 1.5M capable line will get 1.0. Hence the reason why Frontier is about the only ISP has become slower in the past year. | |
| BiggA
join:2005-11-23
EARTH | At least they're doing SOMETHING Where Verizon isn't, and AT&T is only building out U-Verse in the more urban areas that by and large have cable anyways. | |
|  CylonRedPremium,MVM
join:2000-07-06
Bloom County | Ummmmmmm bonded DSL - 12 meg down.... It would be nice if I could get bonded DSL from Speakeasy for the same price I currently pay. That is only about 8 times faster on download and a crap load more on upload for me....
Too bad I can't stand TW and their build out here I think is terrible- even in newer neighborhoods. U-Verse is available a street over from me - but we still can't get it at my house....
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Brian
"It drops into your stomach like a Abrams's tank.... driven by Rosanne Barr..." A. Bourdain | |
| Reviews:
·HughesNet Satell..
| SOL without DSL one of the frontier techs told me I post to have dsl in late October and from what I hear from the contractor last week. Frontier run out of money to get everybody on dsl where I live here.
Run out of money!!!!
how can they? LOL
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HN7000S 5.8.0.82 - 99 West 1370 MHz - .74m Dish - 1.5mbps down 196kbps up with 375MB CAP - installed October 2007 - Repair September 20011 - Linksys N3000 DD-WRT & WRT54G DD-WRT at neighbors house | |
| | | | Re: SOL without DSL I wonder when this will be brought to western WV since it seems to be not that far away from where they are bringing this to now. | |
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