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Bellundo
Anon
2008-Sep-16 9:19 am
Usenet is as strong as everUsenet has never been stronger. Why the demand is so great you may see the pay services such as giganews raising their rates. If not for the sorry state of the US economy they would have raised them by now. Getting back to RCN yes it's a sad day for subscribers and RCN is completly to blame. It just doesn't seem right cutting off an essential service without a plausible explanation. The line about this kiddy porn bit is getting old fast. These isp's have duped their subscribers out of a much needed service and most of them haven't reduced their rates. Sinister that's what it is! | |
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Cod2 join:2000-07-05 Kernersville, NC |
Cod2
Member
2008-Sep-16 9:22 am
raise rates $30 a month?Is that accurate? How and what did they increase by $30? | |
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RCN - Not an ISP I'd Ever Go With...My father had telephone and dialup service with RCN. Recently he switched his RCN dialup access to RCN DSL broadband. The appointment was on the Friday before Labor Day. The installer showed up, looked at the box outside for 5 minutes, said he didn't have the proper equipment for the install. The equipment he was missing was a drill. He reschedules the appointment for the following Tuesday. Over the weekend my fathers telephone service goes out and no one at RCN could apparently restore it until the installer shows up on Tuesday. Tuesday comes, a different installer shows and it's his first day on the job! He has as no idea how to proceed to install the DSL without a dial tone being present. Long story to short, after the installer spends 5 hours onsite and a 3 day weekend where my 90 year old father and his wife were without telephone service, my father finally has DSL. No offer of compensation from RCN and no appology. Truly an ISP to stay away from based on my fathers experience with them. | |
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| POBRes Firma Mitescere Nescit Premium Member join:2003-02-13 Stepford, CA |
POB
Premium Member
2008-Sep-16 10:27 am
Re: RCN - Not an ISP I'd Ever Go With...said by bandwidthhog1: Truly an ISP to stay away from based on my fathers experience with them. Notwithstanding cutting off newsgroup service without notice, the fact that your father lives in bumblefuck Pennsylvania probably goes a long long way that the first tech showed up without a drill and the second was a n00b. Long ago I lived in bumblefuck PA as well and every single local representing a large company like RCN was an ignorant hillbilly. | |
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Re: RCN - Not an ISP I'd Ever Go With...Actually my father lives in Silver Spring a northern Maryland suburb of Washington DC. | |
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| | | jbgroup1Non Conformist Premium Member join:2000-05-04 Dayton, MD 1 edit |
jbgroup1
Premium Member
2008-Sep-16 1:21 pm
Re: RCN - Not an ISP I'd Ever Go With...said by bandwidthhog1: ...Silver Spring a northern Maryland suburb of Washington DC. A central Marylnd Suburb north of Washington, DC. | |
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to bandwidthhog1
quote: Recently he switched his RCN dialup access to RCN DSL broadband.
RCN DSL? | |
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Re: RCN - Not an ISP I'd Ever Go With...said by Karl Bode:quote: Recently he switched his RCN dialup access to RCN DSL broadband.
RCN DSL? I tried to figure that out myself... I eventually gave up. | |
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| moonpuppy (banned) join:2000-08-21 Glen Burnie, MD |
to bandwidthhog1
I had dial up with Erols Internet. It was the best service I ever had. As soon as RCN/Starpower bought them, the service became crap, the rates increased and I dumped them. | |
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| | jbgroup1Non Conformist Premium Member join:2000-05-04 Dayton, MD |
jbgroup1
Premium Member
2008-Sep-16 1:26 pm
Re: RCN - Not an ISP I'd Ever Go With...I had Erol's dial-up right before I had broadband internet. They also had a video rental store chain in the Washington, DC area. Unfortunately it was ruined while they waited for Blockbuster to buy them out but it never happened. After that they went under. | |
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| | | moonpuppy (banned) join:2000-08-21 Glen Burnie, MD |
moonpuppy (banned)
Member
2008-Sep-16 1:33 pm
Re: RCN - Not an ISP I'd Ever Go With...said by jbgroup1:I had Erol's dial-up right before I had broadband internet. They also had a video rental store chain in the Washington, DC area. Unfortunately it was ruined while they waited for Blockbuster to buy them out but it never happened. After that they went under. Huh? Erols was bought out by Blockbuster. Blockbuster paid so much that they had no money left over to convert the stores so they did it one by one. | |
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| | | | jbgroup1Non Conformist Premium Member join:2000-05-04 Dayton, MD |
jbgroup1
Premium Member
2008-Sep-16 9:39 pm
Re: RCN - Not an ISP I'd Ever Go With...Hmmh! You're right. I was under the impression that Blockbuster didn't buy them. Erol's was still ruined by the Blockbuster deal IMO. They were just never the same afterward. | |
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| | | | | moonpuppy (banned) join:2000-08-21 Glen Burnie, MD |
moonpuppy (banned)
Member
2008-Sep-16 10:01 pm
Re: RCN - Not an ISP I'd Ever Go With...I used to live in Takoma Park before I moved to Baltimore. Erols was the best video rental store. There was an article in the Washington Post about how Blockbuster still ran Erols as a separate company because of the cost.
Their internet service was very good and they always told you of scheduled maintenance or outages. | |
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Kooly to jbgroup1
Anon
2008-Sep-16 2:56 pm
to jbgroup1
I too had Erols, and I'm still with RCN. Who's the alternative in DC, Comcast? | |
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SimbaSevenI Void Warranties join:2003-03-24 Billings, MT |
No newsgroups?Why would you cancel newsgroups? I'd be ticked if my ISP pulled this.
Oh wait.. The less news you get, the less of a threat you are. It's a darn conspiracy. | |
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| frankenfeet934 is 10-8 Premium Member join:2001-10-14 Smiths Grove, KY
1 recommendation |
Re: No newsgroups?said by SimbaSeven:Why would you cancel newsgroups? I'd be ticked if my ISP pulled this. Oh wait.. The less news you get, the less of a threat you are. It's a darn conspiracy. Yeah, news. That's what people are downloading. LOL | |
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| | ChiyoSave Me Konata-Chan Premium Member join:2003-02-20 Salisbury, NC |
Chiyo
Premium Member
2008-Sep-16 10:37 am
Re: No newsgroups?I enjoy my 4.7GB packets of news.. Umm its very, very, very good looking version of the Wall Street Journal | |
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NewsgroupsPeople say newsgroups are stronger than ever. I disagree.
I used to work for a large cable service. In the year and a half I was there, I got exactly 2 newsgroups calls, and they were both about outages.
2 calls compared to over 20,000 calls taken? If newsgroups are so popular, the law of averages doesn't seem to working here.
I had other associates who had never fielded a single newsgroups call.
(This is not a newsgroups bash, I love them myself.) | |
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| n2jtx join:2001-01-13 Glen Head, NY
1 recommendation |
n2jtx
Member
2008-Sep-16 11:27 am
Re: Newsgroupssaid by Attack Gypsy:I used to work for a large cable service. In the year and a half I was there, I got exactly 2 newsgroups calls, and they were both about outages. Might it be possible that USENET users are a bit more technically savvy than your typical web surfer? It generally requires a bit of technical competence to set up your reader since most ISP's don't even document the process. | |
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Re: NewsgroupsBelieve me, not these people. Our users were some of the stupidest people in the whole bloody world. Trust me on that. | |
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to Attack Gypsy
We silently dropped our Newsgroups 5 years ago. It was almost 6 months before I got the first ticket. Someone took the number of customers who used newsgroups and divided it by what we were paying and it worked out to over $100 per newsgroup user.
When I signed users up the call went like this.
Me: "You also get newsgroup access" Newbie: "Oh you mean like cnn.com?" Me; "Uhhh, yea."
I finally stopped mentioning newsgroups. | |
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| axelroseCottage Cheese is my Favorite food!! join:2005-05-25 Chattanooga, TN |
to Attack Gypsy
said by Attack Gypsy:People say newsgroups are stronger than ever. I disagree. I used to work for a large cable service. In the year and a half I was there, I got exactly 2 newsgroups calls, and they were both about outages. 2 calls compared to over 20,000 calls taken? If newsgroups are so popular, the law of averages doesn't seem to working here. I had other associates who had never fielded a single newsgroups call. (This is not a newsgroups bash, I love them myself.) Could it be that most of the people who know how to use Usenet are on the higher end of Internet Literacy? I imagine most ISP calls are like, "My Youtube stopped working, halp plz" Or, "I can't access my facebook from work." | |
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kd6caeP2p Shouldn't Be A Crime join:2001-08-27 Bakersfield, CA |
kd6cae
Member
2008-Sep-16 12:00 pm
What happens to the news server systems?For about a year I was on the Cox network, and I downloaded headers from their news server which was on network, to check how my line speed was doing. What I'm curious to know is when these ISP's discontinue offering their own in house news server, what happens to the hardware use to run the servers? I'm also curious how many distinct and separate usenet networks there are now, since most if not all ISP's don't run a news server at all anymore, and many usenet providers are merely resellers of the big guys like Giganews. Just something I've wondered about. The concept of how usenet works is quite neat I think.b | |
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Maggs Premium Member join:2002-11-29 Jackson Heights, NY |
Maggs
Premium Member
2008-Sep-16 6:36 pm
Why dump resourcesinto a declining market. Good for RCN. News.rcn.com was useless, most of the stuff on USENET is garbage headers and ads. | |
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BackDrop
Anon
2008-Sep-16 10:01 pm
No notice what so everYup, my ISP did the same thing. No notice what so ever. Of course when I emailed them, they gave the speech about its not part of the service. Not part of the service, for 10 years?!? How is that posable? Been using ISP NG's since the dial up days, then BANG left for the buzzards. Soon all you will be able to do is check email and pay per click web browsing. LOL | |
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instance
Anon
2008-Sep-17 6:38 am
where you cancel the accountRCN shouldn't be the only dsl provider in rurual PA.. Verizon and other carriers should be present as options. Whether you'll get dsl, or any other broadband out of them is another story, but it couldn't hurt to try. If that fails, you need to start putting some political pressure to bring other carriers to deploy service. Invite comcast, cablevision, cox, time warner, charter, etc. If there is a potential for ROI, a network may get deployed. On a parallel track, you should make sure that your state is encouraging fiber backbone lines get laid across PA so that there is a compelling reason to bring service to the community. If the backbone service is hundreds of miles away... your screwed. | |
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