4 ms·

I'm fortunate to live in an area of downtown Phoenix served by CenturyLink FTTH. They offer symmetric 1 Gbps for $65, priced for life (I think it's $70 now for

I'm fortunate to live in an area of downtown Phoenix served by CenturyLink FTTH. They offer symmetric 1 Gbps for $65, priced for life (I think it's $70 now for newcomers), with no caps, and that's inclusive of all fees and taxes. Symmetric gigabit feels like a dream. Cox, on the other hand, lacking literally any survival instinct or competitive sense, charged me $110 per month before taxes, and for only 1.25TB of data. For unlimited data, it was another $50. So I'm in to them for $160+ per month, for vastly inferior service. I hope CL stays healthy enough to keep our deal going because it's the best internet I've ever had. (CL's old DSL product, in contrast, sucks immensely.)

quicksnap 3y ago
I used to be so pleased with CenturyLink myself. symmetric 1Gbps as well, and it was dreamy. Then I began to exhibit packet loss. For gaming/discord, it's a death knell. I isolated the source of packet loss to be within the CenturyLink network, basically between me and the first traceroute hop. (Also retroactively verified by switching ISPs) CenturyLink as an _offering_ is great, but their company operations and customer support is... kafkaesque and absurd. They are beyond incompetent and seem to have neither the capacity nor desire to fix any real problems. When talking with some of the technicians and support people, the insight into their world was sad and disappointing. What a ramshackle company. I really hope nothing ever goes wrong in your network segment :)
- bastard_op 3y ago
  You are right, CenturyLink support is apparently non-existent these days. My aunt recently had issues for weeks before finally giving up trying to get any real engineering support, and eventually it resolved itself, presuming some monkey noticed a rampant trend for problems in the area. Cox wasn't much better at times unless you knew exactly how to deal with support (I for a time ran part of their engineering and do), but it's still volumes better than the worse than nothing you get with CenturyLink now. That said I've been lucky, in the 6-7 years I've been on CL moving from Cox I've had 0 problems with my DSL, where I'll say there's something to be said for the old legacy 2-wire stuff. At least every 3-4 years, I'd have to have cox out to fix my cable terminations for suck-out (center conductor eventually contracts itself to lose contact with hot/cold over time) with the extreme heat in Phoenix, so it's been almost a nice change.
bastard_op 3y ago
Living in Phoenix too, I moved off Cox when they instituted their bandwidth caps to CenturyLink, but I can only get DSL here in Peoria, and will likely never get their fiber with the lazy US telco mentality. Still, even with "only" 140mbps down and I think like 3mbps up, I can live with it vs. Cox sending me hate emails and a bill for bandwidth overages every month. One of my best friends is an engineer at Cox in town, and still quip at him about their silly bandwidth caps. He says it's a topic at every all-hands meeting that even employees are tired of hearing from their friends and family that they hate their bandwidth caps. Cox was one of the last Cable MSO's to actually implement bandwidth caps, but eventually they realized every other scumbag Cable ISP in the country was doing so, that they were leaving too much money on the table. Everyone else is doing it, so why not them too. It's cool providers have gig speeds now, but if you use all you bandwidth for a month in 3 days to start getting overage charges every month, it isn't cool for long. It took Google Fiber threatening Cox and CL in Phoenix to actually get them to start rolling out FTTH years ago, so at least Google was good for something.
EternalUsenet 3y ago
Does anyone know if there is a quality map for where AT&T, Google Fiber, or Quantum Fiber services are available for the Phoenix Metro area? I’m trying desperately to get off of Cox, and am assessing my options on where to relocate to in the Valley (I currently live in East Mesa) but it seems like a real pain in the butt finding actual service easily. Any recommendations aside from searching one mailing address at a time?

quicksnap 3y ago

I used to be so pleased with CenturyLink myself. symmetric 1Gbps as well, and it was dreamy. Then I began to exhibit packet loss. For gaming/discord, it's a death knell. I isolated the source of packet loss to be within the CenturyLink network, basically between me and the first traceroute hop. (Also retroactively verified by switching ISPs) CenturyLink as an _offering_ is great, but their company operations and customer support is... kafkaesque and absurd. They are beyond incompetent and seem to have neither the capacity nor desire to fix any real problems. When talking with some of the technicians and support people, the insight into their world was sad and disappointing. What a ramshackle company. I really hope nothing ever goes wrong in your network segment :)

bastard_op 3y ago
You are right, CenturyLink support is apparently non-existent these days. My aunt recently had issues for weeks before finally giving up trying to get any real engineering support, and eventually it resolved itself, presuming some monkey noticed a rampant trend for problems in the area. Cox wasn't much better at times unless you knew exactly how to deal with support (I for a time ran part of their engineering and do), but it's still volumes better than the worse than nothing you get with CenturyLink now. That said I've been lucky, in the 6-7 years I've been on CL moving from Cox I've had 0 problems with my DSL, where I'll say there's something to be said for the old legacy 2-wire stuff. At least every 3-4 years, I'd have to have cox out to fix my cable terminations for suck-out (center conductor eventually contracts itself to lose contact with hot/cold over time) with the extreme heat in Phoenix, so it's been almost a nice change.

bastard_op 3y ago

Living in Phoenix too, I moved off Cox when they instituted their bandwidth caps to CenturyLink, but I can only get DSL here in Peoria, and will likely never get their fiber with the lazy US telco mentality. Still, even with "only" 140mbps down and I think like 3mbps up, I can live with it vs. Cox sending me hate emails and a bill for bandwidth overages every month. One of my best friends is an engineer at Cox in town, and still quip at him about their silly bandwidth caps. He says it's a topic at every all-hands meeting that even employees are tired of hearing from their friends and family that they hate their bandwidth caps. Cox was one of the last Cable MSO's to actually implement bandwidth caps, but eventually they realized every other scumbag Cable ISP in the country was doing so, that they were leaving too much money on the table. Everyone else is doing it, so why not them too. It's cool providers have gig speeds now, but if you use all you bandwidth for a month in 3 days to start getting overage charges every month, it isn't cool for long. It took Google Fiber threatening Cox and CL in Phoenix to actually get them to start rolling out FTTH years ago, so at least Google was good for something.

EternalUsenet 3y ago

Does anyone know if there is a quality map for where AT&T, Google Fiber, or Quantum Fiber services are available for the Phoenix Metro area? I’m trying desperately to get off of Cox, and am assessing my options on where to relocate to in the Valley (I currently live in East Mesa) but it seems like a real pain in the butt finding actual service easily. Any recommendations aside from searching one mailing address at a time?