Windstream → Help Me Get Rid of Windstream in My Inman, SC Community!

I have been a Windstream customer for nearly a decade and have been listening to lies of promised upgrades for almost as long. I've had enough and went around my subdivision asking my neighbors to sign a petition to help bring Charter Communications into our neighborhood.

I took the petition to Charter and was contacted by the local Charter Construction supervisor who informed me that our neighborhood with 17 homes is just a little too small to meet Charter's budgetary requirements for brand new construction. He said that 6/10ths of a mile of new cable would need to be laid underground and the total costs would be $29,921. He also said that if we could make a co-payment of $7000.00 to help cover the expense, then we could get Charter out here and say goodbye to Windstream.

I'm certainly willing to contribute but I don't have an extra $7000 at the moment and I'm looking for suggestions to help me raise the money. I plan on taking this information to my neighbors and have already contacted the local news but I'm wondering if any of you have had similar circumstances or any ideas to help make this happen.

Thanks!

It sounds like you already know what you have to do. Kudos to Charter for working with you instead of just handing you off to some lackey with a script. I would definitely be asking about some sort of SLA before co-funding the build-out, though. It would suck to lay out the money and find the service lacking soon after.

edit: I suppose it couldn't hurt to check to see if they have a franchise agreement with your municipality and what it entails. Although, I suspect that if they were required to wire your neighborhood they already would've.

I'm in a similar situation, but they would have to extend their plant further and I haven't gotten a hard quote like you have. It sounds like you just need to collect $411 from every one of your neighbors (which would admittedly be a hard sell) OR see if they'd be willing to work with you and others in your neighborhood to sign a long-term contract so that they would be guaranteed to recover their investment over time. They'd probably rather just have the cash in hand, though. Good luck, your situation seems more positive than mine!

I have found some services that offer telecommunication grants to help fund rural areas in need of upgrades. I have created a letter detailing the information I received from Charter, a satellite image of my subdivision and a report that list my Windstream broadband speeds that range from 0.04 Mbps to 1.96 Mbps. It shows that I have 102 tests that were less than 1.0 Mbps and 72 tests that were above 1.0 Mbps but less than 2.0 Mbps.

I will keep this thread updated with any new developments.

I've been a charter customer for the last 4 years & can say my connection is a rock solid 60/4 MB with 10-20ms ping times. Was a windstream/alltel customer for 6 years before & would go back if they offered a reasonable package for less money, but even with an upgraded fiber fed dslam they only upped the speed from 3 to 6 . I'm only 4K feet from the dslam, but that last run of thin gauge copper kills any hope of competing with cable.

I'm not a big fan of Charter, but Windstream is delusional if they think anyone will pay almost the same for 6m high ping dsl as 60m cable.

Your Charter speeds make me cry.

I've got a lousy 3mb connection on a copper line. Like you the Windstream DSLAM is less than a mile away and my speeds are almost never close to the 3 megs that I pay for. I had an 800 MB file to download yesterday just after 5:00 PM and the speed was clocking in at 0.12 Mbps. That is absolutely ridiculous.

I've talked to my neighbors about the costs and at just a little over $400 from each of us which is less than 6 months worth of Windstream, the price is quite reasonable. Now we just need to coordinate our efforts, start pulling the funds together and get rid of Windstream.

Sounds like your dslam isn't fiber fed(prob multi T1's) & also oversold(too many people). When i had windstream/alltel my connection was a solid 3/768 with 100ms ping time. This was due to charter serving most in my neighborhood & windstream's dslam not being oversold.

I wish you luck on getting charter & dumping windstream. It's truly liberating to have a real broadband connection to the home.

I'm also in Inman, and talked to Charter a few times. They would not even give me a quote, even though their line runs right past our subdivision. Please update when you can - I may contact them again - it may be that they are more open to adding new business now.

I tried to get Charter's attention a few times before collecting signatures from my subdivision to show that we really wanted to get rid of Windstream. After collecting the signatures, I mailed the information to Charter corporate offices and that is when I was contacted with a quote.

I'm currently working on getting the Charter co-payment together. I've received pledges that will cover a substantial sum but still have a ways to go.

I have just created a GoFundMe campaign to help raise money for Charter in our neighborhood. I've also created a Wordpress blog that I will continue to update.

Is it okay to post links to other sites on these forums? I really need to get the word out and believe that sharing the links with others that know my pain from being with Windstream would be a good place to start.

Sorry but that is not allowed:

»Site FAQ »Soliciting for money or donations not permitted

I thought I remembered reading something about that when I first joined this forum but wasn't sure and that's why I asked beforehand. Thanks for the quick response.

You are welcome.

Just to highlight what a 60M connection will do, I grabbed a 4GB file in under 14 minutes the other day. Things you never thought possible from the home are no problem.

I have listed and sold some items on Ebay to help raise the money we need to get away from Windstream. We still have a long way to go but it's a start. It's funny, Ebay won't even allow the word "Windstream" to be sent through their mailing system to answer questions.

I have also created a Twitter account and blog to help with the Charter Fund. Hopefully it will help spread the word to get our neighborhood a much needed and long overdue upgrade.

I would post direct links but I don't want to risk angering the DSL Reports powers that be.