I have ATT and I have o shut down and restart about 6 times a day. Getting used to it. My calls go directly to India.
When I lived in NYC I had Road Runner from TW for several years. Most of the time, it worked great and was very fast.
However, every couple months I’d have an episode where the middle light on my cable modem would go dark. The usual resets of modem, router, computer, etc. would never work and I would invariably end up spending hours on the phone with a tech, who would make me reset everything countless times and then give up. Every single time, the tech would set up an appointment for a specialist to come out, usually a week or so later. If the specialist was due to visit on day seven, the problem would mysteriously correct itself on day six and I would be back in business.
In those days, I did a lot of independent consulting from my apartment, and not having an internet connection for days on end could really kill my business. I kept a dial-up account for whenever these mysterious outages would occur.
After moving from NYC to Long Island full time, I became acquainted with Cablevision and Optimum Online. Also a very fast connection, but when it went down it was tough to get back up. Techs blamed problems on cable modems, inferior wire and even in one case a failed splitter. I was convinced all along they were bullshitting me and that it was a problem on their end.
I love cable Internet, but it’s infested with gremlins.
Seriously? I have AT&T DSL and it’s radiant. I love it. It’s never gone seriously down on me; occasionally (like once every few months) I have to reboot my modem/router (it’s a DSL modem that automatically creates a wireless network and a wired network). Every time I’ve called tech support I get someone with a southern accent or a New York accent who easily talks me through my problem (first time was installing the stuff, second time was when I couldn’t get their payment page to load - Never an actual problem with the service). It reminds me of back when my parents’ cable was run by AT&T.
~Tasha
I had a small problem a year or so ago with Time Warner when my neighbor was having some work done in his backyard and the contractor cut the underground cable that goes to our house. The technician I spoke to couldn’t seem to make two facts come together: that an underground cable had been cut but mine was the only house affected. Simply could not understand why if the underground cable had been cut, there weren’t more people affected. Insisted repeatedly that it was a problem with my equipment. I was about ready to go into my neighbor’s back yard and take a picture of the damn hole in the ground and e-mail it to them. Oh, wait …
Second the motion on AT&T DSL. Wonderful service. Never goes down for more than a couple seconds. Fast. Reliable. Cheap. What’s not to like?
I suspect that the cause of many problems comes down to the fact that management does not in the least way understand the issues involved, and consistently tries to take away access and sources of information from the actual front-line support people. Why they do this is a mystery beyond all recognition.
Verizon Phone & Internet, Time Warner Cable TV here- no complaints about the service on either, tho the rates on the Cable TV are making me reconsider other options (alas, TV through Verizon or other avenues means giving up several local/regional TV channels).
I’m going to be an ass, and say that all of you who have bad internet service should move to a Verizon FiOS area. It’s been fantastic for me!