8 ms·

FTC and several states sue Frontier Communications regarding internet speeds

339 points by marc__1 5y ago

daniellarusso 5y ago
Where can I donate?
- gruez 5y ago
  FTC is a government agency.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html
  - admissionsguy 5y ago
    I expected it to be a joke page. It would make a brilliant 1st April post, actually.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      People actually do it! https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm
  - aitchnyu 5y ago
    Reminds me of a Reddit user who asked for the source of an apparently intelligent bot. They got a reply similar to: https://ftp.ensembl.org/pub/release-104/fasta/homo_sapiens/dna/ https://ftp.ensembl.org/pub/release-104/fasta/homo_sapiens/d...
mips_avatar 5y ago
I'm so glad the current FTC (and the end of Ajit Pai's to a lesser extent) to audit these DSL companies who claim their DSL connections offer reliable broadband. My DSL was so bad I had to use cellular to reliably connect to video calls.
- tomxor 5y ago
  In the UK not US, but same situation, DSL keeps getting worse wherever I move, last move it was unusable (<2Mbit), with no fiber available, so mobile was the only viable option for modern web use. Mobile internet can be a bit variable depending on time of day and the provider, but still way better than DSL for me, I get anywhere from 15 to 100Mbit throughout the day, although this level of stability was only achievable using a Cat20 LTE router (Netgear Nighthawk M2 with a couple small external antennas). They probably seem a bit expensive but it's worth the investment, not only for throughput stability but reducing packet loss. Just don't ever buy mobile contracts for this stuff, at least not before trying out a PAYG sim, you need empirical testing to find out which provider is viable. I attempted to use open cell maps to figure out which provider would give best carrier aggregation in theory, but you don't always connect to the masts you expect, and even then it's reliant on back-haul availability and subscriber contention ratio anyway. In the UK a couple of the main mobile networks have unlimited 1month rolling contracts under different brand names now... so real competition is now possible!
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  This is the Federal Trade Commission, which occasionally does investigate things like false advertisement, not the Federal Communications Commission (which Ajit Pai ran) which has consistently backed provider and ISP interests over customer interests for a long time.
companiooon 5y ago
Frontier has advertised different tiers of speeds to consumers, including an August 2018 mailer that offered download speeds of 12 Megabits per second for $12, the complaint said. Assholes.
mfer 5y ago
I used to have Frontier for my Internet. The speeds were acceptable for my day to day until the local schools got out for summer. Then the network was saturated and I couldn't get fast enough speeds to do my job. I tried to trace where the issue was. My best guess was the issue had to do with their uplink to the rest of the Internet. At times in the day it would get saturated because they didn't provide enough bandwidth at that point. There was a bottleneck.
- phamilton 5y ago
  I have Frontier gigabit fiber and I have zero complaints. At the peak of Zoom school, I had 3 kids on zoom calls, my wife and I both on zoom calls, and the 2 year old watching Netflix all at the same time without even a blip. I'm 90% certain the gigabit download isn't that important, but synchronous upload and download speeds that make all the difference.
  - mfer 5y ago
    It may depend on where you are. gigabit speeds and fiber aren't available in my region. The places that have it are not routed to the upstream providers the same way my region is. ISPs that have many locations around the US are routed differently to the broader Internet and can have different footprints in different locations.
  - jabroni_salad 5y ago
    Before you credit frontier with that, most of Frontier's fiber was acquired from Verizon and represents a minority in their customer base.
troydavis 5y ago
Here's the FTC press release and complaint: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/05/ftc-sues-frontier-communications-misrepresenting-internet-speeds https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/05/ftc-s...
andrew_ 5y ago
I had Frontier when they took over for Verizon FiOS in the south a number of years ago. Customer service was a nightmare and frequent service interruptions was the norm. I went back to the local cable company for two years. I've given them another shot after they offered an insane deal on gigabit, but I've not once clocked gigabit speeds on a hard line with my gigabit-capable nighthawk, nor Frontier's own router. I'm not going to complain about a missing 150mb/s because it's a hell of a deal still, but I would think this claim that they're misrepresenting speeds goes beyond their DSL customers based on my own experience.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Frontier doesn't invest in maintaining its wires. They just pocket the money and let it all rot. I had their service years ago in their home base of Rochester before they went on their expansion spree and could only get 4Mb. Water in the line forced me to a new pair that could only get 2Mb. They wouldn't make any effort to fix the issue.
- TomMasz 5y ago
  When I canceled my DSL the person on the phone admitted their service was lousy. They just gave up trying to defend crappy service.
maximilianroos 5y ago
I tried both Spectrum and Frontier at 1Gbit/s. I'm in Santa Monica. Only one example but: Frontier was so much better than Spectrum — pings to 8.8.8.8 are consistently 6-8ms, compared to Spectrum at 10-30ms. And Frontier download speeds are 500Mbps-800Mbps, significantly higher than Spectrum. The installation was also more competent and organized. I'd guess there's lots of regional variation though.
- t3rabytes 5y ago
  This could just be pinned down to Frontier using fiber and Spectrum using coax, yes?
  - seizethegdgap 5y ago
    Spectrum offers a "Gigabit" package, but it's asymmetric 940/35. Full Duplex DOCSIS via DOCSIS 4.0 is coming (https://stopthecap.com/2019/06/25/cables-docsis-4-0-symmetrical-broadband-coming/ https://stopthecap.com/2019/06/25/cables-docsis-4-0-symmetri...), and it looks like Comcast is demo'ing it in a lab (https://www.lightreading.com/cable-tech/10g/comcast-full-duplex-docsis-trial-pumps-out-4-gig-symmetrical-speeds-/d/d-id/768950 https://www.lightreading.com/cable-tech/10g/comcast-full-dup...), but who knows how much longer it'll take to get it fully up to speed.
- selectodude 5y ago
  West LA is mostly old Verizon Fios infra.
- rcpt 5y ago
  Long Beach here using gigabit Frontier and it's been great. Easily the best home internet service I've ever had. I plug my Google WiFi (yes I work at Google) directly into the modem and ignore the router they gave me entirely. It's real nice not having to deal with that huge box.
milkytron 5y ago
> Since at least January 1, 2015, Frontier has in numerous instances advertised, marketed, offered, or sold DSL Internet service at tiers corresponding to speeds that Frontier did not, and often could not, provide to consumers. Doesn't every ISP do this? Isn't that why we have the wording of "up to n Mbps"? I have had three ISPs in the past 5 years, and only one of them was able to occasionally deliver the speeds that they advertised for the plan during off-peak hours. I even made a twitter account just to let Verizon know, their reps didn't seem to appreciate it: https://twitter.com/VerizonFiosUser https://twitter.com/VerizonFiosUser I mean it's great a lawsuit has been created to address this, and I hope they win. But I also am pessimistic that this will lead to meaningful change for the big ISPs. Frontier might be the lowest hanging fruit to go after, but they are all doing this. On another note, I could see value in a separate certification process that shows the actual average speed delivered for each plan in a given area.
- borski 5y ago
  For cable, probably, since those are shared lines. For DSL or dedicated fiber lines, I’ve never had the paid-for speed not actually get hit on a regular basis (with the obvious exception that your ISP should be honest with you about your distance from the telco).
  - wmf 5y ago
    Tests (see my other comment) show that DSL ISPs routinely deliver worse service than cable in the US. IMO "up to N Mbps" is fair if the ISP routinely delivers, but if they never deliver N Mbps (hey Frontier) then it's just plain fraud.
    - milankragujevic 5y ago
      With DSL, it is trivial to see which speed is assigned to you and which speed is the maximum possible on your line. If your measured speed is lower than your "Actual bitrate" as shown by the modem, something must've gone terribly wrong. If however your plan speed ("on paper") is much higher than what is attainable by the modem, that is a fact of physics and you have to downgrade the plan. You cannot oversell DSL, if it says attainable rate is 10240/1024 Kbps, you cannot sell 15360/1536. The modem will literally be unable to connect at that speed.
djanogo 5y ago
Frontier has been bad company, not because the management or employees were being malevolent. This is truly a case of Occams razor, this is simply a company struggling with finances. Mini Rant: They went through bankruptcy, struggling to make ends meet, no bonuses, so all good employees left within first few years, no investors wanting to risk with installing or maintaining physical cable, and people, especially in this forum with hatred of ISP's, have no idea how expensive it is to maintain cable lines to every house in US, yet they expect GbPS for 39.99. 39.99 doesn't even cover truck costs for 5 years when somebody drives over or cuts fiber line on the street or digs to plant a tree, forget about any profit or return for the company.
- ep103 5y ago
  I have seen the internals of Frontier communications, and the area I saw, was completely run by consulting companies, that were all competing with each other not over contracts, but over which parts of Frontier's corporate hierarchy they had ownership of. It was normal for employees of the various consulting groups to jokingly compare which group was doing the most aggressive job to overcharge frontier comm. I have never stood in one location, and seen so many consulting groups managing so many people, doing so little productive work. I am not surprised to learn they have had financial problems.
- ggggtez 5y ago
  Ok but if they lied about what they had the ability to offer, how do you interpret that as "not bad"? I don't care if they had good customer service, or were working on a shoestring budget. If they sold something they couldn't do, then that's a crime.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jabroni_salad 5y ago
  Frontier said it in their own bankruptcy statement. When it came time to pick a technology to champion, they chose DSL, a decision that did not stand the test of time. You know what's more expensive than having to run infra to every home? Having to run it twice because your first choice didn't cut it. Infrastructure is an investment. You deploy infrastructure and then have customers pay for it over the next decade. Unfortunately, Frontier has the highest customer churn in the industry so the cash flow is really not great. Their challenge is to figure out how to execute that 2nd investment even though the first one never paid off. Over the past few months they completed their bankruptcy and shed a ton of debt, so they may actually be able to pull it off. Simultaneously, there are new challengers in the field like Google Fiber, ImOn, MetroNet, and municipal initiatives who are all making their first investment with fiber... and they all offer pretty good pricing.
wmf 5y ago
One of the best things the FCC did in the last decade has been the Measuring Broadband America program that named and shamed ISPs for not providing advertised speeds. For years Frontier was providing only ~75% of the speed that customers paid for. https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broadband-america/measuring-fixed-broadband-tenth-report https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broad... (Chart 4 is my favorite)
- mikelward 5y ago
  So all surveyed DSL providers are under delivering?
  - MrRadar 5y ago
    I have VDSL2 service from CenturyLink and I actually get better speeds than I pay for (I pay for 40/20 and get around 47/18 in speed tests).
    - ggggtez 5y ago
      Not to point out the obvious but by your own admission you're only getting 90% upload.
      - MrRadar 5y ago
        Eh, my modem syncs at the full 20 Mbps line rate for upload, I can't help that some of that gets eaten up in overhead for framing and error correction and other such things. You usually don't even get a full 1 Gbps with gigabit fiber either.
  - wmf 5y ago
    At this point DSL is basically inferior technology that you only use if you have no other choice.
  - ggggtez 5y ago
    That's how I read the chart too. Though I don't know if those 4 represent all DSL providers.
kevingadd 5y ago
Absolutely horrible ISP by any standard. Happy to see the government go after them - in many places they were a monopoly so you had no choice but to put up with profoundly sub-par service, to the point that it could interfere in day-to-day tasks like exchanging emails, uploading class assignments, etc.
ddingus 5y ago
I am on Ziply now. No real complaints. Prior to that, I was on Frontier who took over Verizon fiber, which was setup at my house, but unused due to their insistence I pay a very unreasonable setup fee. Was $600, and no way. It was up, ready, nothing needed. Pretty sure they did a free move deal for the people who lived there prior thinking they would get money from me too. Nope. I used a 3G dongle for about a year standoff with Verizon. Also had a Moto droid with Verizon unlimited running the house for a few months too. Was a work phone with that great plan baked in. Frontier waived all that and I bought TV plus Internet. (Fam wanted TV) Frankly, I loved Frontier! Tried to setup auto pay and it would break. This happened a few times, so I left it broken figuring someone would call and we could sort it out then. 8 months go by, and service stops. I call, expecting a big bill and terms. The service woman and I had a chat about the back end mess and it was truly spectacular. I asked her why she worked there and she said the crew was the best, systems not so much. Fair enough. It was broken, but they laughed a lot. Love that! Anyway, she said it would be easier if I were a new customer. No big bill, no terms, just start over. And new customers get a free year of Amazon Prime. I asked her is she serious? Answered yes and this spoke to why they laughed a lot. The system was broken, but they had wide latitude to take care of people because it was broken enough the higher ups rarely could sort it out otherwise! She was a hoot! Great chat while she got me all setup on the new system, autopay working just fine. TL;DR: Payment system failed and I was shut off for non payment and got free Prime and better service for less money despite being 8 months over due! Other than that, I love an ISP I never hear from, unless I really need to. Never heard from Frontier. And it worked just great. Seriously fast, basically no downtime. The only negative is the old Verizon fiber interface and its pain in the ass battery. I finally just wired a power supply to the battery so it would shut up and I no longer change batteries. I do not hear from Ziply today either, and it works great, and cost makes great sense for everyone.
- setpatchaddress 5y ago
  > Tried to setup auto pay and it would break. This happened a few times, so I left it broken figuring someone would call and we could sort it out then. Never do this in the US. You need to proactively call them to resolve the situation. The standard thing for nonpayment -- which maybe Frontier didn't have working, but you're taking a real risk -- is for these to go to a collections agency, and it will go on your credit record, which affects your future ability to get credit for large loans of various kinds.
conorh 5y ago
I have frontier fiber in FL and it is rock solid, one of the better ISPs I have had. This is ex Verizon territory though.
ronnier 5y ago
This might be regional. I had frontier in the Seattle area and it was rock solid. Fast and never went down. It was later renamed to ziply and it's just as good, the best internet I've had so far.
- mjevans 5y ago
  The city of Seattle in _specific_ is an exception. The regulatory agencies in that specific, highly desirable, region had a strong initiative and provided accurate maps of areas of the city served by providers with 21st century gitabit (download) speeds at least the better part of a decade ago. I distinctly recall that at the time I was looking to rent somewhere less pricy and literally crossing outside of the city lines relegated someone to living in 'the internet ghetto' of ADSL at 7mbit down and less than one up if you were lucky, or cable with outrageous rates and gigabit deploying years after it became available in the city of Seattle. There were a couple expensive apartment complexes served by Wave broadband, which had acquired an earlier company, 'condo internet'.
jp42 5y ago
I have gigabit plan and supposed to get up to 1gbps speed, I have never seen speed above 150mbps.
- CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
  The Verizon router won't support wireless speeds over 200 mbps, you need to connect the router to your device through Ethernet. I went through this same song and dance with Verizon.
  - sand500 5y ago
    Unsure about fiber but for cable, usually you need to make sure your modem is a docsis 3.1
mrpippy 5y ago
Most people are sharing experiences with Frontier's FiOS/fiber-to-the-home service. This complaint is about Frontier's decrepit DSL-over-copper service, which is the only service they offer to 80% of their customers, and varies widely based on loop distance (to the central office) and line quality. Very few of these customers get more than 20 Mbps. [1] Hopefully Ars Technica will have a post about this lawsuit that contains more context. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/frontier-prepares-for-bankruptcy-regrets-failure-to-install-enough-fiber/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/front...
- bfuller 5y ago
  When I worked for century link briefly their customers barely got above dial-up speeds. In fact many were using dial up (this was probably almost a decade ago) Line attentuation can be a huge problem because a lot of rural homes are far down dirt roads away from infrastructure.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    Interesting tidbit: Apparently ~2% of households with internet still used dial-up as of November 2019. https://www.statista.com/statistics/185532/us-household-dial-up-internet-connection-usage-by-state-2009/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/185532/us-household-dial...
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    I always hated the CenturyLink brand. It makes me think of covered wagons: "linking you to Internet access the way your grandpappy liked it." Story time: I worked at a CLEC in the late 90s, and my entry there was in tech support. People would call in and literally scream at me that they couldn't get better that 26.4Kbps from their dialup even though they lived in a brand new subdivision full of expensive houses, so it was obviously due to our incompetence. I'd patiently explain that rather than running new lines to their new lots, SWB had installed a pair gain, and no modem was going to get decent connections through that beast. The sheer fury these customers would direct at SWB after I told them was an awesome and terrifying thing to behold.
bluefirebrand 5y ago
I wish Canada would start going after our internet providers.. it's really a joke up here.
dikaio 5y ago
Cox should be next.
InitialBP 5y ago
I grew up in rural West Virginia and Frontier's DSL offering was (and in most cases) still is (aside from satellite internet with ridiculous throttling limits) the only option for internet connectivity. As a teenager I was always frustrated, and as an adult with a fully remote job, I am still frustrated because I cannot visit my parents for any extended period of time due to the abysmal internet. Not only is the speed exceptionally bad (often between .5 mbps and 1 mbps for paid service of 5mbps) but they have regular outages and issues with the supplied routers and modems. To top that off, I've heard from my old friends and family, that the lines in some neighborhoods are so overwhelmed by the current load, that they are have begun to turn down new customers because they do not have the infrastructure to support them. West Virginia and Frontier have a long and troubled history and it seems like it's going to continue for a long time. I can only hope that StarLink is a real and viable solution for people who don't have good internet access. Some details about WV's past with Frontier https://www.wvpublic.org/government/2020-12-10/frontier-has-sucked-up-millions-before-without-giving-w-va-good-broadband-theyre-about-to-get-another-chance https://www.wvpublic.org/government/2020-12-10/frontier-has-...
- graton 5y ago
  Your parents might consider Starlink. My mother is in a similar situation. Way out in the countryside with only very slow DSL available. Even the two WISP (Wireless ISP) providers did not have towers in line-of-sight of her property (darn trees). She got Starlink and now is getting about 80Mbps down and 40Mbps up. It is a bit pricey at $550 for the unit delivered and $99 a month. But when you don't have any other realistic options...
  - cronix 5y ago
    And it's portable. I take mine camping in the National Forests in Oregon, far away from any sort of cell signal (or data for that matter). I love how fast it is to set up and automatically positions itself to get a signal lock (as opposed to having to manually point it at the right spot like most other satellite tv/internet dishes). I've done a few 4k youtube livestreams with it. Something that would be impossible otherwise without a tv satellite truck.
avelis 5y ago
FTC needs to investigate Spectrum Communications as well (Charter + TWC merger). That merge did nothing to increase capacity for their subscribers.
inson 5y ago
when FTC will go after comcast for their monopoly and ridiculous prices?
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
Let me know when someone's ready to take on the Regional Sports Fees. Every telecom participates, and I have to pay $7 a month to the Chicago Cubs because every cable provider in the state says I do.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  What gets really fun is when you are in the blackout zone, but not in the TV zone. I live about 50 miles from Seattle. 120 from Portland. My TV is Seattle-based. Basketball games for the Portland Trail Blazers are unwatchable, even with League Pass, because I cheerfully get told the game is blacked out and to "watch on my local Portland channel".
dougg3 5y ago
I had Frontier (originally Verizon) DSL up until 2014 when it became obvious that the network was turning into crap, which finally led me to switch to Charter. This story doesn't surprise me at all. Luckily, in my region Frontier was sold to Ziply last year, who immediately started investing in ditching the old copper wires and now they offer symmetrical gigabit fiber here, so I switched back and have never been happier. Based on what I've read over on the Ziply subreddit, Frontier's network was in poor shape when Ziply took over. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ZiplyFiber/comments/kw56u4/does_ziply_truly_care_about_their_dsl_customers/gj2sk6c/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ZiplyFiber/comments/kw56u4/does_zip...
xbar 5y ago
Why didn't Ajit Pai do this?
rasengan0 5y ago
Is this the same Frontier given a pass by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and received " $283.4 million each year from the FCC's Connect America Fund (CAF)...financed by phone customers nationwide through universal service fees"? If so, I think phone users will have an interest in justice. [1]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/ajit-pai-refuses-to-investigate-frontiers-horrible-telecom-service/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/ajit-pai-refuses...
app 5y ago
I got Frontier after moving into a house with no internet in upstate New York ("Upstate" being 100 Mi north of NYC). I ordered the 20Mbit plan and after missing and having to call to reschedule 3 installs (w/ 12 hour windows), the first words out of the installers mouth was "you got scammed". Indeed our signal was so weak we were only able to sustain about 0.5kbps. They wanted $75/mo for this and made it as hard as possible to cancel. The basic history of Frontier in my area is that they bought up all of Verizon's old copper lines and have done exactly nothing to improve the capability. They don't even know what the capabilities ARE. Areas are either oversubscribed or so far from nodes that the signal is worthless. They're trying to squeeze every last cent out of rural houses with no other options and letting the underlying infrastructure slowly fail. I ended up using a pretty performant (~50Mbit) LTE connection, hacked AT&T hotspot and yagi antenna for 2 years. Finally, as part of a rural broadband grant program New York State got Altice to come in-- probably in exchange for a monopoly in a more attractive part of the state. Now I have 300Mbit cable for $100/mo. Altice (aka Optimum) is also a terrible company, but Frontier still sends me postcards claiming to be "the best internet in <my town>". These guys are selling a product that doesn't work. They deserve to be sued and I'm disappointed that New York State isn't involved.
- tacocataco 5y ago
  Small claims court? Imagine if every customer filed a claim.
TomMasz 5y ago
They called my 7Mbps DSL "High-Speed Internet". And it was only that "fast" because we had two phone lines. Now I have Spectrum and get 200Mbps. A lot of people around hate Spectrum but it's been fine for me so far.
Blackthorn 5y ago
Leaving Frontier DSL once we got cable (not even fiber, just cable!) a couple years back was so freeing. One thing that was unexpectedly bad was their routing. It was just atrocious. Playing any online game would see ping constantly jump between 50 to 180 ms as their network did... whatever the fuck it wanted to do. I had to use a VPN while gaming just to get a stable ping. Getting the packets out of frontier's network ASAP was the most important thing to have a usable experience. I've never seen anything like it before or since.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
My guess is Frontier is going to end up a private company when they come out of bankruptcy, just like their doppelganger Windstream did. I also expect there will end up being a merger between those two or one of them and Lumen (CenturyLink). These primarily rural ISPs all have the same difficulties in maintaining and upgrading service in their low density coverage areas. I'm not sure if merging is the answer for them to succeed, but the talk in this space has been very much in that direction. What remains to be seen is how much of an impact Starlink will have on their customers. In a way in might be helpful, allowing them to rid themselves of their most expensive to service customers. But if Starlink becomes popular in small towns rather than just rural areas, that could eat into the easier to service and profit from customer base of these companies.
prirun 5y ago
A neighbor has slowish DSL from AT&T. Not only is there not much bandwidth, but latency is also much higher than cable, making everything feel very slow.
awb 5y ago
Pro Tip: If you live in rural areas with bad internet, check out T-Mobile’s 5G internet: https://www.t-mobile.com/isp https://www.t-mobile.com/isp I’m not affiliated with the company, but I am a customer. We switched from Frontier to T-mobile and went from 5mbps to 150mbps for about the same monthly rate, $50/mo.
- totalZero 5y ago
  Nice. What's your uplink speed?
  - awb 5y ago
    ~40mbps I think

339 points by marc__1 5y ago

daniellarusso 5y ago

Where can I donate?

gruez 5y ago
FTC is a government agency.
ceejayoz 5y ago
https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html
- admissionsguy 5y ago
  I expected it to be a joke page. It would make a brilliant 1st April post, actually.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    People actually do it! https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm
- aitchnyu 5y ago
  Reminds me of a Reddit user who asked for the source of an apparently intelligent bot. They got a reply similar to: https://ftp.ensembl.org/pub/release-104/fasta/homo_sapiens/dna/ https://ftp.ensembl.org/pub/release-104/fasta/homo_sapiens/d...

mips_avatar 5y ago

I'm so glad the current FTC (and the end of Ajit Pai's to a lesser extent) to audit these DSL companies who claim their DSL connections offer reliable broadband. My DSL was so bad I had to use cellular to reliably connect to video calls.

tomxor 5y ago
In the UK not US, but same situation, DSL keeps getting worse wherever I move, last move it was unusable (<2Mbit), with no fiber available, so mobile was the only viable option for modern web use. Mobile internet can be a bit variable depending on time of day and the provider, but still way better than DSL for me, I get anywhere from 15 to 100Mbit throughout the day, although this level of stability was only achievable using a Cat20 LTE router (Netgear Nighthawk M2 with a couple small external antennas). They probably seem a bit expensive but it's worth the investment, not only for throughput stability but reducing packet loss. Just don't ever buy mobile contracts for this stuff, at least not before trying out a PAYG sim, you need empirical testing to find out which provider is viable. I attempted to use open cell maps to figure out which provider would give best carrier aggregation in theory, but you don't always connect to the masts you expect, and even then it's reliant on back-haul availability and subscriber contention ratio anyway. In the UK a couple of the main mobile networks have unlimited 1month rolling contracts under different brand names now... so real competition is now possible!
InitialLastName 5y ago
This is the Federal Trade Commission, which occasionally does investigate things like false advertisement, not the Federal Communications Commission (which Ajit Pai ran) which has consistently backed provider and ISP interests over customer interests for a long time.

companiooon 5y ago

Frontier has advertised different tiers of speeds to consumers, including an August 2018 mailer that offered download speeds of 12 Megabits per second for $12, the complaint said. Assholes.

mfer 5y ago

I used to have Frontier for my Internet. The speeds were acceptable for my day to day until the local schools got out for summer. Then the network was saturated and I couldn't get fast enough speeds to do my job. I tried to trace where the issue was. My best guess was the issue had to do with their uplink to the rest of the Internet. At times in the day it would get saturated because they didn't provide enough bandwidth at that point. There was a bottleneck.

phamilton 5y ago
I have Frontier gigabit fiber and I have zero complaints. At the peak of Zoom school, I had 3 kids on zoom calls, my wife and I both on zoom calls, and the 2 year old watching Netflix all at the same time without even a blip. I'm 90% certain the gigabit download isn't that important, but synchronous upload and download speeds that make all the difference.
- mfer 5y ago
  It may depend on where you are. gigabit speeds and fiber aren't available in my region. The places that have it are not routed to the upstream providers the same way my region is. ISPs that have many locations around the US are routed differently to the broader Internet and can have different footprints in different locations.
- jabroni_salad 5y ago
  Before you credit frontier with that, most of Frontier's fiber was acquired from Verizon and represents a minority in their customer base.

troydavis 5y ago

Here's the FTC press release and complaint: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/05/ftc-sues-frontier-communications-misrepresenting-internet-speeds https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/05/ftc-s...

andrew_ 5y ago

I had Frontier when they took over for Verizon FiOS in the south a number of years ago. Customer service was a nightmare and frequent service interruptions was the norm. I went back to the local cable company for two years. I've given them another shot after they offered an insane deal on gigabit, but I've not once clocked gigabit speeds on a hard line with my gigabit-capable nighthawk, nor Frontier's own router. I'm not going to complain about a missing 150mb/s because it's a hell of a deal still, but I would think this claim that they're misrepresenting speeds goes beyond their DSL customers based on my own experience.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

Frontier doesn't invest in maintaining its wires. They just pocket the money and let it all rot. I had their service years ago in their home base of Rochester before they went on their expansion spree and could only get 4Mb. Water in the line forced me to a new pair that could only get 2Mb. They wouldn't make any effort to fix the issue.

TomMasz 5y ago
When I canceled my DSL the person on the phone admitted their service was lousy. They just gave up trying to defend crappy service.

maximilianroos 5y ago

I tried both Spectrum and Frontier at 1Gbit/s. I'm in Santa Monica. Only one example but: Frontier was so much better than Spectrum — pings to 8.8.8.8 are consistently 6-8ms, compared to Spectrum at 10-30ms. And Frontier download speeds are 500Mbps-800Mbps, significantly higher than Spectrum. The installation was also more competent and organized. I'd guess there's lots of regional variation though.

t3rabytes 5y ago
This could just be pinned down to Frontier using fiber and Spectrum using coax, yes?
- seizethegdgap 5y ago
  Spectrum offers a "Gigabit" package, but it's asymmetric 940/35. Full Duplex DOCSIS via DOCSIS 4.0 is coming (https://stopthecap.com/2019/06/25/cables-docsis-4-0-symmetrical-broadband-coming/ https://stopthecap.com/2019/06/25/cables-docsis-4-0-symmetri...), and it looks like Comcast is demo'ing it in a lab (https://www.lightreading.com/cable-tech/10g/comcast-full-duplex-docsis-trial-pumps-out-4-gig-symmetrical-speeds-/d/d-id/768950 https://www.lightreading.com/cable-tech/10g/comcast-full-dup...), but who knows how much longer it'll take to get it fully up to speed.
selectodude 5y ago
West LA is mostly old Verizon Fios infra.
rcpt 5y ago
Long Beach here using gigabit Frontier and it's been great. Easily the best home internet service I've ever had. I plug my Google WiFi (yes I work at Google) directly into the modem and ignore the router they gave me entirely. It's real nice not having to deal with that huge box.

milkytron 5y ago

> Since at least January 1, 2015, Frontier has in numerous instances advertised, marketed, offered, or sold DSL Internet service at tiers corresponding to speeds that Frontier did not, and often could not, provide to consumers. Doesn't every ISP do this? Isn't that why we have the wording of "up to n Mbps"? I have had three ISPs in the past 5 years, and only one of them was able to occasionally deliver the speeds that they advertised for the plan during off-peak hours. I even made a twitter account just to let Verizon know, their reps didn't seem to appreciate it: https://twitter.com/VerizonFiosUser https://twitter.com/VerizonFiosUser I mean it's great a lawsuit has been created to address this, and I hope they win. But I also am pessimistic that this will lead to meaningful change for the big ISPs. Frontier might be the lowest hanging fruit to go after, but they are all doing this. On another note, I could see value in a separate certification process that shows the actual average speed delivered for each plan in a given area.

borski 5y ago
For cable, probably, since those are shared lines. For DSL or dedicated fiber lines, I’ve never had the paid-for speed not actually get hit on a regular basis (with the obvious exception that your ISP should be honest with you about your distance from the telco).
- wmf 5y ago
  Tests (see my other comment) show that DSL ISPs routinely deliver worse service than cable in the US. IMO "up to N Mbps" is fair if the ISP routinely delivers, but if they never deliver N Mbps (hey Frontier) then it's just plain fraud.
  - milankragujevic 5y ago
    With DSL, it is trivial to see which speed is assigned to you and which speed is the maximum possible on your line. If your measured speed is lower than your "Actual bitrate" as shown by the modem, something must've gone terribly wrong. If however your plan speed ("on paper") is much higher than what is attainable by the modem, that is a fact of physics and you have to downgrade the plan. You cannot oversell DSL, if it says attainable rate is 10240/1024 Kbps, you cannot sell 15360/1536. The modem will literally be unable to connect at that speed.

djanogo 5y ago

Frontier has been bad company, not because the management or employees were being malevolent. This is truly a case of Occams razor, this is simply a company struggling with finances. Mini Rant: They went through bankruptcy, struggling to make ends meet, no bonuses, so all good employees left within first few years, no investors wanting to risk with installing or maintaining physical cable, and people, especially in this forum with hatred of ISP's, have no idea how expensive it is to maintain cable lines to every house in US, yet they expect GbPS for 39.99. 39.99 doesn't even cover truck costs for 5 years when somebody drives over or cuts fiber line on the street or digs to plant a tree, forget about any profit or return for the company.

ep103 5y ago
I have seen the internals of Frontier communications, and the area I saw, was completely run by consulting companies, that were all competing with each other not over contracts, but over which parts of Frontier's corporate hierarchy they had ownership of. It was normal for employees of the various consulting groups to jokingly compare which group was doing the most aggressive job to overcharge frontier comm. I have never stood in one location, and seen so many consulting groups managing so many people, doing so little productive work. I am not surprised to learn they have had financial problems.
ggggtez 5y ago
Ok but if they lied about what they had the ability to offer, how do you interpret that as "not bad"? I don't care if they had good customer service, or were working on a shoestring budget. If they sold something they couldn't do, then that's a crime.
deleted 5y ago
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jabroni_salad 5y ago
Frontier said it in their own bankruptcy statement. When it came time to pick a technology to champion, they chose DSL, a decision that did not stand the test of time. You know what's more expensive than having to run infra to every home? Having to run it twice because your first choice didn't cut it. Infrastructure is an investment. You deploy infrastructure and then have customers pay for it over the next decade. Unfortunately, Frontier has the highest customer churn in the industry so the cash flow is really not great. Their challenge is to figure out how to execute that 2nd investment even though the first one never paid off. Over the past few months they completed their bankruptcy and shed a ton of debt, so they may actually be able to pull it off. Simultaneously, there are new challengers in the field like Google Fiber, ImOn, MetroNet, and municipal initiatives who are all making their first investment with fiber... and they all offer pretty good pricing.

wmf 5y ago

One of the best things the FCC did in the last decade has been the Measuring Broadband America program that named and shamed ISPs for not providing advertised speeds. For years Frontier was providing only ~75% of the speed that customers paid for. https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broadband-america/measuring-fixed-broadband-tenth-report https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broad... (Chart 4 is my favorite)

mikelward 5y ago
So all surveyed DSL providers are under delivering?
- MrRadar 5y ago
  I have VDSL2 service from CenturyLink and I actually get better speeds than I pay for (I pay for 40/20 and get around 47/18 in speed tests).
  - ggggtez 5y ago
    Not to point out the obvious but by your own admission you're only getting 90% upload.
    - MrRadar 5y ago
      Eh, my modem syncs at the full 20 Mbps line rate for upload, I can't help that some of that gets eaten up in overhead for framing and error correction and other such things. You usually don't even get a full 1 Gbps with gigabit fiber either.
- wmf 5y ago
  At this point DSL is basically inferior technology that you only use if you have no other choice.
- ggggtez 5y ago
  That's how I read the chart too. Though I don't know if those 4 represent all DSL providers.

kevingadd 5y ago

Absolutely horrible ISP by any standard. Happy to see the government go after them - in many places they were a monopoly so you had no choice but to put up with profoundly sub-par service, to the point that it could interfere in day-to-day tasks like exchanging emails, uploading class assignments, etc.

ddingus 5y ago

I am on Ziply now. No real complaints. Prior to that, I was on Frontier who took over Verizon fiber, which was setup at my house, but unused due to their insistence I pay a very unreasonable setup fee. Was $600, and no way. It was up, ready, nothing needed. Pretty sure they did a free move deal for the people who lived there prior thinking they would get money from me too. Nope. I used a 3G dongle for about a year standoff with Verizon. Also had a Moto droid with Verizon unlimited running the house for a few months too. Was a work phone with that great plan baked in. Frontier waived all that and I bought TV plus Internet. (Fam wanted TV) Frankly, I loved Frontier! Tried to setup auto pay and it would break. This happened a few times, so I left it broken figuring someone would call and we could sort it out then. 8 months go by, and service stops. I call, expecting a big bill and terms. The service woman and I had a chat about the back end mess and it was truly spectacular. I asked her why she worked there and she said the crew was the best, systems not so much. Fair enough. It was broken, but they laughed a lot. Love that! Anyway, she said it would be easier if I were a new customer. No big bill, no terms, just start over. And new customers get a free year of Amazon Prime. I asked her is she serious? Answered yes and this spoke to why they laughed a lot. The system was broken, but they had wide latitude to take care of people because it was broken enough the higher ups rarely could sort it out otherwise! She was a hoot! Great chat while she got me all setup on the new system, autopay working just fine. TL;DR: Payment system failed and I was shut off for non payment and got free Prime and better service for less money despite being 8 months over due! Other than that, I love an ISP I never hear from, unless I really need to. Never heard from Frontier. And it worked just great. Seriously fast, basically no downtime. The only negative is the old Verizon fiber interface and its pain in the ass battery. I finally just wired a power supply to the battery so it would shut up and I no longer change batteries. I do not hear from Ziply today either, and it works great, and cost makes great sense for everyone.

setpatchaddress 5y ago
> Tried to setup auto pay and it would break. This happened a few times, so I left it broken figuring someone would call and we could sort it out then. Never do this in the US. You need to proactively call them to resolve the situation. The standard thing for nonpayment -- which maybe Frontier didn't have working, but you're taking a real risk -- is for these to go to a collections agency, and it will go on your credit record, which affects your future ability to get credit for large loans of various kinds.

conorh 5y ago

I have frontier fiber in FL and it is rock solid, one of the better ISPs I have had. This is ex Verizon territory though.

ronnier 5y ago

This might be regional. I had frontier in the Seattle area and it was rock solid. Fast and never went down. It was later renamed to ziply and it's just as good, the best internet I've had so far.

mjevans 5y ago
The city of Seattle in _specific_ is an exception. The regulatory agencies in that specific, highly desirable, region had a strong initiative and provided accurate maps of areas of the city served by providers with 21st century gitabit (download) speeds at least the better part of a decade ago. I distinctly recall that at the time I was looking to rent somewhere less pricy and literally crossing outside of the city lines relegated someone to living in 'the internet ghetto' of ADSL at 7mbit down and less than one up if you were lucky, or cable with outrageous rates and gigabit deploying years after it became available in the city of Seattle. There were a couple expensive apartment complexes served by Wave broadband, which had acquired an earlier company, 'condo internet'.

jp42 5y ago

I have gigabit plan and supposed to get up to 1gbps speed, I have never seen speed above 150mbps.

CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
The Verizon router won't support wireless speeds over 200 mbps, you need to connect the router to your device through Ethernet. I went through this same song and dance with Verizon.
- sand500 5y ago
  Unsure about fiber but for cable, usually you need to make sure your modem is a docsis 3.1

mrpippy 5y ago

Most people are sharing experiences with Frontier's FiOS/fiber-to-the-home service. This complaint is about Frontier's decrepit DSL-over-copper service, which is the only service they offer to 80% of their customers, and varies widely based on loop distance (to the central office) and line quality. Very few of these customers get more than 20 Mbps. [1] Hopefully Ars Technica will have a post about this lawsuit that contains more context. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/frontier-prepares-for-bankruptcy-regrets-failure-to-install-enough-fiber/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/front...

bfuller 5y ago
When I worked for century link briefly their customers barely got above dial-up speeds. In fact many were using dial up (this was probably almost a decade ago) Line attentuation can be a huge problem because a lot of rural homes are far down dirt roads away from infrastructure.
- dataflow 5y ago
  Interesting tidbit: Apparently ~2% of households with internet still used dial-up as of November 2019. https://www.statista.com/statistics/185532/us-household-dial-up-internet-connection-usage-by-state-2009/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/185532/us-household-dial...
- kstrauser 5y ago
  I always hated the CenturyLink brand. It makes me think of covered wagons: "linking you to Internet access the way your grandpappy liked it." Story time: I worked at a CLEC in the late 90s, and my entry there was in tech support. People would call in and literally scream at me that they couldn't get better that 26.4Kbps from their dialup even though they lived in a brand new subdivision full of expensive houses, so it was obviously due to our incompetence. I'd patiently explain that rather than running new lines to their new lots, SWB had installed a pair gain, and no modem was going to get decent connections through that beast. The sheer fury these customers would direct at SWB after I told them was an awesome and terrifying thing to behold.

bluefirebrand 5y ago

I wish Canada would start going after our internet providers.. it's really a joke up here.

dikaio 5y ago

Cox should be next.

InitialBP 5y ago

I grew up in rural West Virginia and Frontier's DSL offering was (and in most cases) still is (aside from satellite internet with ridiculous throttling limits) the only option for internet connectivity. As a teenager I was always frustrated, and as an adult with a fully remote job, I am still frustrated because I cannot visit my parents for any extended period of time due to the abysmal internet. Not only is the speed exceptionally bad (often between .5 mbps and 1 mbps for paid service of 5mbps) but they have regular outages and issues with the supplied routers and modems. To top that off, I've heard from my old friends and family, that the lines in some neighborhoods are so overwhelmed by the current load, that they are have begun to turn down new customers because they do not have the infrastructure to support them. West Virginia and Frontier have a long and troubled history and it seems like it's going to continue for a long time. I can only hope that StarLink is a real and viable solution for people who don't have good internet access. Some details about WV's past with Frontier https://www.wvpublic.org/government/2020-12-10/frontier-has-sucked-up-millions-before-without-giving-w-va-good-broadband-theyre-about-to-get-another-chance https://www.wvpublic.org/government/2020-12-10/frontier-has-...

graton 5y ago
Your parents might consider Starlink. My mother is in a similar situation. Way out in the countryside with only very slow DSL available. Even the two WISP (Wireless ISP) providers did not have towers in line-of-sight of her property (darn trees). She got Starlink and now is getting about 80Mbps down and 40Mbps up. It is a bit pricey at $550 for the unit delivered and $99 a month. But when you don't have any other realistic options...
- cronix 5y ago
  And it's portable. I take mine camping in the National Forests in Oregon, far away from any sort of cell signal (or data for that matter). I love how fast it is to set up and automatically positions itself to get a signal lock (as opposed to having to manually point it at the right spot like most other satellite tv/internet dishes). I've done a few 4k youtube livestreams with it. Something that would be impossible otherwise without a tv satellite truck.

avelis 5y ago

FTC needs to investigate Spectrum Communications as well (Charter + TWC merger). That merge did nothing to increase capacity for their subscribers.

inson 5y ago

when FTC will go after comcast for their monopoly and ridiculous prices?

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

Let me know when someone's ready to take on the Regional Sports Fees. Every telecom participates, and I have to pay $7 a month to the Chicago Cubs because every cable provider in the state says I do.

FireBeyond 5y ago
What gets really fun is when you are in the blackout zone, but not in the TV zone. I live about 50 miles from Seattle. 120 from Portland. My TV is Seattle-based. Basketball games for the Portland Trail Blazers are unwatchable, even with League Pass, because I cheerfully get told the game is blacked out and to "watch on my local Portland channel".

dougg3 5y ago

I had Frontier (originally Verizon) DSL up until 2014 when it became obvious that the network was turning into crap, which finally led me to switch to Charter. This story doesn't surprise me at all. Luckily, in my region Frontier was sold to Ziply last year, who immediately started investing in ditching the old copper wires and now they offer symmetrical gigabit fiber here, so I switched back and have never been happier. Based on what I've read over on the Ziply subreddit, Frontier's network was in poor shape when Ziply took over. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ZiplyFiber/comments/kw56u4/does_ziply_truly_care_about_their_dsl_customers/gj2sk6c/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ZiplyFiber/comments/kw56u4/does_zip...

xbar 5y ago

Why didn't Ajit Pai do this?

rasengan0 5y ago

Is this the same Frontier given a pass by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and received " $283.4 million each year from the FCC's Connect America Fund (CAF)...financed by phone customers nationwide through universal service fees"? If so, I think phone users will have an interest in justice. [1]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/ajit-pai-refuses-to-investigate-frontiers-horrible-telecom-service/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/ajit-pai-refuses...

app 5y ago

I got Frontier after moving into a house with no internet in upstate New York ("Upstate" being 100 Mi north of NYC). I ordered the 20Mbit plan and after missing and having to call to reschedule 3 installs (w/ 12 hour windows), the first words out of the installers mouth was "you got scammed". Indeed our signal was so weak we were only able to sustain about 0.5kbps. They wanted $75/mo for this and made it as hard as possible to cancel. The basic history of Frontier in my area is that they bought up all of Verizon's old copper lines and have done exactly nothing to improve the capability. They don't even know what the capabilities ARE. Areas are either oversubscribed or so far from nodes that the signal is worthless. They're trying to squeeze every last cent out of rural houses with no other options and letting the underlying infrastructure slowly fail. I ended up using a pretty performant (~50Mbit) LTE connection, hacked AT&T hotspot and yagi antenna for 2 years. Finally, as part of a rural broadband grant program New York State got Altice to come in-- probably in exchange for a monopoly in a more attractive part of the state. Now I have 300Mbit cable for $100/mo. Altice (aka Optimum) is also a terrible company, but Frontier still sends me postcards claiming to be "the best internet in <my town>". These guys are selling a product that doesn't work. They deserve to be sued and I'm disappointed that New York State isn't involved.

tacocataco 5y ago
Small claims court? Imagine if every customer filed a claim.

TomMasz 5y ago

They called my 7Mbps DSL "High-Speed Internet". And it was only that "fast" because we had two phone lines. Now I have Spectrum and get 200Mbps. A lot of people around hate Spectrum but it's been fine for me so far.

Blackthorn 5y ago

Leaving Frontier DSL once we got cable (not even fiber, just cable!) a couple years back was so freeing. One thing that was unexpectedly bad was their routing. It was just atrocious. Playing any online game would see ping constantly jump between 50 to 180 ms as their network did... whatever the fuck it wanted to do. I had to use a VPN while gaming just to get a stable ping. Getting the packets out of frontier's network ASAP was the most important thing to have a usable experience. I've never seen anything like it before or since.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

My guess is Frontier is going to end up a private company when they come out of bankruptcy, just like their doppelganger Windstream did. I also expect there will end up being a merger between those two or one of them and Lumen (CenturyLink). These primarily rural ISPs all have the same difficulties in maintaining and upgrading service in their low density coverage areas. I'm not sure if merging is the answer for them to succeed, but the talk in this space has been very much in that direction. What remains to be seen is how much of an impact Starlink will have on their customers. In a way in might be helpful, allowing them to rid themselves of their most expensive to service customers. But if Starlink becomes popular in small towns rather than just rural areas, that could eat into the easier to service and profit from customer base of these companies.

prirun 5y ago

A neighbor has slowish DSL from AT&T. Not only is there not much bandwidth, but latency is also much higher than cable, making everything feel very slow.

awb 5y ago

Pro Tip: If you live in rural areas with bad internet, check out T-Mobile’s 5G internet: https://www.t-mobile.com/isp https://www.t-mobile.com/isp I’m not affiliated with the company, but I am a customer. We switched from Frontier to T-mobile and went from 5mbps to 150mbps for about the same monthly rate, $50/mo.

totalZero 5y ago
Nice. What's your uplink speed?
- awb 5y ago
  ~40mbps I think