comments on review of Socal Telephone → Re: What's the problem ?

Actually my post is quite warranted as I work in the WISP industry and am a customer of a WISP. But sure, ok, 224k difference. The original poster said "AROUND" and 1024k is AROUND 800k. No, it does not EQUAL. Please read the entire post, before you start speaking.

What I was trying to say, is that it really amazes me that when a WISP or any ISP will offer their users higher-than-paid-for speeds for either a trial period or longer time, and then when the speeds gets reduced to what they are paying for, they get their panties in a bind. WTF ?? Be thankful they gave you the extra bandwidth.

Now support...that is a differnet matter altogether.

said by prag:

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"What I was trying to say, is that it really amazes me that when a WISP or any ISP will offer their users higher-than-paid-for speeds for either a trial period or longer time, and then when the speeds gets reduced to what they are paying for"

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It amazes me too to think that an ISP, or in your case an WISP, would be so foolish to think that giving their customers more and then taking it away would help in retaining them, sounds like a bait and switch tactic.

I'd much rather know upfront what my speeds will be. Sure, one cannot predict precisely what download speeds are due to extenuating circumstances but don't tell me that my downstream will be about a meg (Peoples perceptions are not alike, when I'm told about a meg, I'm thinking 900k to a 1000k minimum) and then after feeding me unregulated bandwidth they drop my speed to an unflinching 800k?!?!?! I feel that is just a poor business practice and I'm sure other end users feel the same.

As for support being a different matter, I think not. I may be more forgiving and willing to work with the WISP, in this case as it pertained to my downstream, if they had only responded to my issue a 120 hours earlier and in closing, the last time I checked I do not wear any panties.

It would be better just to get what you were promised in the first place. When they start making tweaks and you lose bandwidth to the point of dialup working better then there is a problem.

I think we are misunderstanding each other. It sounds like you think I am saying it's ok to reduce speeds BELOW what you are paying for. That is NOT what I am saying. Yes, that is wrong, and clearly a bait-and-switch. What I am saying is that if we offer a 1.0 CIR plan, and when they first sign up their router/AP is unmanaged or we have a surplus of bandwidth (yes this does happen, some data centers have a minimum purchase like 10Mb/sec sustained) and they get 3.0 Mb. Then as we get more customers on the AP, we have to make sure that everyone gets their CIR, so we lower the MIR down a bit to 1.5. If you lower the cap, then it gives other users more availble bandwidth overall rather than killing the AP. This is common sense, I believe.

Sorry to have mislead you in my previous post. Yes, lowering the speed to LESS than what you're paying for is uncalled for and should be brought to their attention immediately if you see this. However, if the ISP lowers the speed from high (3.0) to what you are paying for (1.0) (and not less ) then you have nothing to complain about.

And yes, you are correct, 800k is not 1024k. I would complain too.

Let me chime in as to why this happend.. Yes at one point we ran all uncapped on the download and upload starting out.
We had intended and did follow thru on plans to add Bandwidth control to ALL 18 (and growing) of our towers, this plan as been implemented. We are having some growing pains as all wisps encounter at some point and are addressing them. Yes we have not been as responsive to all supposed problems as we had been in the past due to once again not enough people...

We take calls based on priority if you are slow and still online and another customer is compeletly down were going to try and fix that person or business first, now that does not really mean you are less important but thats how almost all companies function.

We are always monitoring for any outages and get paged as soon as one occurs.

If you are curtrently still having problems PLEASE call and talk to me Martin, Sean or Carlo and we will see what we can do to get you up to speed..

You should be seeing peaks of 1.5- 2.0 megs doan and 256 up

As towers get more traffic on them the speeds do go down. We have more then enough bandwidth on the backend as we are tied right to a fiber netowork and have 10-15 megs of download available to us..

Thanks

-M

agreed