Windstream Promising Faster Speeds as Frustrated Users Flee

We were looking at building a new house in Broken Arrow Oklahoma, which is one of the largest suburbs of Tulsa with a pop of over 100k people. This entire town is windstream while the rest of Tulsa and surrounding areas are AT&T. I checked a few addresses where we were wanting to build and windstream offers 6 or 10mb max plain DSL. This is far from "Rural" which they say they serve. Meanwhile AT&T everywhere else offers up to 75mb on VDSL or 45mb on FTTP. We completely ruled out that whole town as a result.

ADSL2+ PAIR
3M 18,000 FEET
6M 12,000 FEET
10M 7,000 FEET
12M 6,000 FEET

BONDED PAIR
10M 12,000 FEET
12M/1.5 10,000 FEET
16M/1.5 8,000 FEET
20M/1.5 7,000 FEET
20M/4 6,000 FEET

V.BOND

50M/8 3,500 FEET
75M/8 1,000 FEET
100M/8 250 FEET

AT&T is a joke too. I can't even get 3mb at 10,000 feet.

... they come up with are crap. Project Excel? Really?? Worst part is a bunch of people sitting around a gigantic table thought this was a good idea.

Of course they used the name Project Excel. Windstream is pretty much run 100% by bean counters, who live off of MS Excel.

It's how they keep costs down and speeds slow.

These zombie copper corporations lack the capital to do any meaningful overhaul. The long term goal is to launch fiber to the presses while paying high salaries/dividends until the federal government is forced to bail them out at the behest of "small government" republicans.

At the rate they're going, they won't make it to any "federal bailout". The company is nearly broke from buying up smaller & shoddy telco's and now the "chickens have come home to roost", the bill is coming due to pay for it. My DSL went out suddenly on the 29th, and things would have been fine, until a "customer service" idiot (Laura, with a thick accent, so I doubt that's her real name) decided to pick me to be condescending to. So I e-mailed CEO Anthony Thomas HIMSELF and gave him an real ass ripping. Since I depend on my internet to do business, they had me for a repair date of 3/3, and that simply wasn't going to suffice. I told him in NO uncertain terms, that I DO have a choice for internet and that I will call them to get a new connection. At 7:30pm last night (02/29), he said "someone would reach out to me". By 10:30am today (3/1) its fixed. And yes, I have called the cable company to cancel my order. Amazing what a real "ass ripping" will do ?

The bottom line here is that WHY should ANYONE have to go to these lengths just to get a simple line repaired ?

On average for the past two years, my internet has gone down at least once a month for 1-2 days at a time. My only question is now, how long with THIS fix last ?

If it goes down again in the next few weeks, my ass ripping tool is ready for service.

Well you didn't file a complaint with the FCC so you will continue to get terrible service. Every single time you have an issue, file an FCC complaint.

You're in for a huge surprise when Windstream/CL/Frontier get federal bailouts before/after bankruptcy. Too many taxpayers will be abandoned. You going to get to see the most crazy republicans vote for a bailout because their base is the one that will be mostly affected.

They can close all they want, but you do realize the company doesn't own any assets anymore right? They spin those off to a trust in case something happened. Smart on the half and everyone should do it. Spin assets off into a major publicly traded company and lease back the network.

People who settle for DSL today do it because it's all they can get. The phone company had its footprint established for years before the other providers came into being. Do they capitalize on this? Nope. They offer the same DSL speed today as they did 12 years ago for the vast majority of their customers. Oh sure, if you live next door to the main office you might get one of the new fast speeds but that's not applicable to the people who have no other ISP choices.

My business was on Windstream's fastest offering - 3 meg - for almost 2 years. When I moved down the street I became eligible for Charter service. I moved to 80 meg service and included business telephone service for 50 dollars less per month.

Why don't they admit their real position with a new advertising slogan: Windstream - At Least We're Better Than Satellite.

Windstream's 12 meg service is fine for my grandfather. He's in his late 80s so his email & web browsing aren't exactly taxing their network

I believe that Windstream settled a false advertising suit with the state of GA, paying a fine. They wouldn't want to get slapped with the same thing again.

"Of course this being DSL, Windstream users will only qualify for these faster speeds if they have short copper loop lengths and quality lines...which many Windstream customers don't thanks to overall network atrophy and no competitive incentive to upgrade."

So if someone IS within ~3000 feet of a DSLAM, and their copper is corroded, does Windstream have the incentive to replace the copper with new wire if a customer wants to sign up for the service?

From direct personal experience. No.

I can open my front door and see the DSLAM (end of a residential block from me ~ about 300 feet). Speeds of less than 1Mb/s and they basically ignored me every which way from Sunday. I've been a happy Charter user for 2 years now, pay less, get more, zero troubles. Some of my family have no other options but Sat, not even 4g, I hate it for them.

Just because you see the DSLAM doesn't mean you are wired in a direct line from it. That's always been an issue with copper/DSL.

Is the DSLAM fiber fed?

Looks like it's feast or famine with Windstream.

Yeah it is famine here. My area has been oversubscribed for almost 6 years now with no upgrades in sight.

Wow that looks really good!