# FCC opened a case against CenturyLink



## MikeInOr (Apr 5, 2022)

CenturyLink owns my local phone company.  I have been arguing with them for months about repairing the line between the street and my house that drops my internet connection every time it rains and constantly get put on eternal hold, repeatedly had my phone calls dropped and have had 3 appointments blown off by the local techs who never show while I wait at home for them.  They repeatedly brick wall me every time I try to get past the first level support and ask for a manager.  I have literally spent at least 12 hours in their call system.  There have been 3 technicians that have actually come out and confirmed that there is a ground short on the line but they have all given me excuses why they can't fix it ranging from "It isn't that bad", "It is too much work" to "I will have to dig a ditch for them if I want it fixed".

Today I received notice from the FCC that they have opened a case on my behalf to ensure the line gets fixed properly!  I will now take back "*HALF*" of all the bad things I have ever said about our government!


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## NCjeeper (Apr 5, 2022)

Nice. We were in the same boat. We lost power and internet one weekend from a storm. The following Monday Century Link said the internet was fixed. Well 1 mega byte per second isn't fixed. They kept blowing me off and would not send a tech out. Fortunately for us we just had Point Broad Band run fiber out in our area. I signed up with them and told Century Link to stick it. I got an email from some Century Link VP asking why we dropped them. Boy did I let them have it. Everyone else around here has dropped them also and signed up with Point.


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## MikeInOr (Apr 5, 2022)

NCjeeper said:


> Nice. We were in the same boat. We lost power and internet one weekend from a storm. The following Monday Century Link said the internet was fixed. Well 1 mega byte per second isn't fixed. They kept blowing me off and would not send a tech out. Fortunately for us we just had Point Broad Band run fiber out in our area. I signed up with them and told Century Link to stick it. I got an email from some Century Link VP asking why we dropped them. Boy did I let them have it. Everyone else around here has dropped them also and signed up with Point.



I would have dropped them a long time ago if I had ANY other reasonable choice but I am in a pretty rural area.  Around here CenturyLink used to be Qwest who used to be US West.  It doesn't matter how many times they want to change their name they are still crap!  I am sure you will never look back and wish you had stuck with CenturyLink.  I honestly believe CenturyLink is very likely the single worst company in the entire US for customer service!


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## Shootymacshootface (Apr 5, 2022)

Go underdog!


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## MikeInOr (Apr 5, 2022)

MikeInOr said:


> CenturyLink owns my local phone company.  I have been arguing with them for months about repairing the line between the street and my house that drops my internet connection every time it rains and constantly get put on eternal hold, repeatedly had my phone calls dropped and have had 3 appointments blown off by the local techs who never show while I wait at home for them.  They repeatedly brick wall me every time I try to get past the first level support and ask for a manager.  I have literally spent at least 12 hours in their call system.  There have been 3 technicians that have actually come out and confirmed that there is a ground short on the line but they have all given me excuses why they can't fix it ranging from "It isn't that bad", "It is too much work" to "I will have to dig a ditch for them if I want it fixed".
> 
> Today I received notice from the FCC that they have opened a case on my behalf to ensure the line gets fixed properly!  I will now take back "*HALF*" of all the bad things I have ever said about our government!


One hour after receiving the notification about the FCC opening a case against Centurylink on my behalf:

"_This email is to inform you that CenturyLink has received your case and on behalf of Stephanie Polk, our Customer Success and Advocacy Vice President, I will be your advocate in championing your needs as a customer.

I am sorry to hear about the ongoing issues you've had with your delayed order. I completely understand how frustrating this situation could be and will be more than happy to work with you to ensure it gets resolved.? 

Virginia
CUSTOMER ADVOCACY SPECIALIST
Lumen
	

	
	
		
		

		
			



_"


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## Shootymacshootface (Apr 5, 2022)

What a bunch of A-holes.
Glad to see that you may be getting that resolved.


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## mksj (Apr 5, 2022)

AT&T is no better and probably worse, only wired connections via phone lines where I live  and they will never bring in fiber cable because it would not be profitable. My internet goes down at least once a day and and whenever it rains. The other day I had an international video conference for work and no internet, so lost revenue since I bill hourly. I have signed up for Starlink satellite which is suppose to deliver 70-80 MIPS, but activating date keeps getting pushed back and the equipment/monthly rate keeps on going up before I even have service. TV currently is AT&T via satellite and is 90% infomercials, why am I paying so much for garbage content, continuous adds and shows that aired decades ago? If Starlink gets activated I plan to stream most everything. I have a feeling all these content providers are in bed with each other. My mom is in AZ with CenturyLink and had similar issues, in her community the internet was down for many days with lots of excuses that it will be up tomorrow, hours on the phone and took them almost a week for it come back online. Hope you have better luck, I wish I could bill these Bozos for all the lost revenue when the phone and internet goes down.


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## 7milesup (Apr 5, 2022)

You are lucky that you have a choice.  I have CenturyLink here too and it is my only choice.  DSL only and it cost me $1700 for CenturyLink to bury a line to my house.  There is fiber literally 1/2 mile away, owned by a different company, but they will not bring it up our road because there are only 6 or 7 houses on our dead-end road.  So much for living in an "advanced" country.  I could do StarLink but hate to give a single penny to Musk.  GRRRR.


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## woodchucker (Apr 5, 2022)

I had no service from cl for over a month, a lot of bs and they had the nerve to bill me. I left them, went to my cable company. At work we had tons of problems with cl across the country at multiple customers. I tried to give them a chance but they are useless 

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk


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## addertooth (Apr 5, 2022)

I live in the old part of town, which had COX install the cable very long ago.  The lines are lossy and intermittent.  I have complained for years.  They finally installed a booster in my house, but the line continues to degrade.  They are not planning to re-cable the network for a few more years.  It is on their "master upgrade plan".   

It isn't just Century Link, other companies are happy to make you wait a Century to get a Link.


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## extropic (Apr 5, 2022)

@MikeInOr 

I'm glad to here you're getting some attention. We hope it leads to results.

However, you left out a CRITICAL bit of information. How does one go about getting the attention of the FCC?

I had a friend in Grass Valley, CA who had a similar story to yours. Suddenlink was/is the service provider there (95949). Service was out on a whole cul-de-sac (10 or 12 residences) for months. My friend sold the place and relocated before the cable was fixed so I don't know if or how it was resolved.


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## MrWhoopee (Apr 5, 2022)

Frontier is our "provider", but the story is the same. No other options except satellite if you can afford it. My neighbor has been without phone service for 15 months, his internet finally went down 2 months ago. He was told the problem was between the local junction and his house. Because we are on a private road, they won't replace it, he has to dig it up. They finally came out and marked so he would know where to dig. They were kind enough to provide the wire and will connect him up once he has everything in place. 

Someday I hope to live in a civilized country.


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## rabler (Apr 5, 2022)

One of the issues I’ve encountered is that many services don’t take anything seriously unless it starts with a disconnection request.  I had that issue with comcast, start every conversation with “I’m calling to disconnect my service”.  They gave a special one or two year rate for internet service, then jacked it up to some ridiculous rate.  Call for service disconnect and get another year or two special rate.  When service doesn’t work, call to disconnect and suddenly they have a tech on site.  I think this has become standard practice to the extent that every one expects it.  I even read an article somewhere that there is a whole marketing/business concept based around maximizing how poorly you can treat customers before driving them off.


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## silence dogood (Apr 5, 2022)

I had century linkless and got rid of them. The modem that they had us use died. Service was lousy anyway, so I decided to try our local fiber optic outfit. Hugh difference! Wife and I decided to keep just phone service. CL kept charging us for the internet even though our modem was broken and we did not want it any way. Finally after several on hold phone calls, I told them to take out their line as we now got cell.  A month later, a guy comes to my door and says he can get me cheaper service. I asked him where is their office. He told me that I had to call a personnel rep in India or Lower Slobovia. Told him to get lost. It is real nice to be able to talk to a real person in a office in our town.


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## NCjeeper (Apr 5, 2022)

rabler said:


> One of the issues I’ve encountered is that many services don’t take anything seriously unless it starts with a disconnection request.


Century Link didn't even flinch when I called them to disconnect my service. All they said was okay it will be discontinued at the end of the day and to make sure I sent back the modem and cables or I would be charged 200 dollars.


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## Reddinr (Apr 5, 2022)

Similar rural internet story here, with a twist.

Moved to WA a couple of decades ago.  The choice was dial-up modem (0.056 MBPS!) or Hughes Net.  We did dial-up for short while but then put in Hughes Net.  Come to find out, it does not work with VPN, which is what I needed to get to work from home.  I had called Century link to ask about DSL and they said it was not available in my area. 

A year later I was having land-line issues and the technician that came out happened to mention that I should dump Hughes and get ISDN, which was available (and had been for years).  Because I needed VPN to work, even slowly, I went to ISDN.  It was reliable and worked very well, as long as there was no great hurry for downloads.  This was before Netflix and other streaming became much of a thing.

A couple of years later I happened to run into a local Century Link technician at a neighborhood picnic.  We talked a bit and I asked if it was possible to bridge 2 x ISDN lines together.  He said "ISDN?  Why would you be using that?  Just get DSL, it has been available out here for years."  So, the next day I called CL again.  Same response.  "Not available at your address."    I persisted, dropped the technician's name and asked for them to get in touch.  Long story short, I had DSL one week later.  I could have had it from the start.  Their database is just not up to date on our area.  Over the last 15 years I've coached several new neighbors through the "DSL getting process".  They still have not updated their database to this day.

So, DSL has been very reliable here.  Once, a few years ago I started having connection issues and they quickly changed our connection over to a new pair of wires because it tested out better than the wires we were on.  At that point the technician put in an order to remove any sort of throttling.  My speed is now "as fast as it can go" given the line length and signal quality.  It worked out to be about 12 MBPS.  Reasonable for the long line we are on.  Slow by "high speed internet" standards.

So, my CL experience has been mixed.  Having run into a great local tech., armed with his cell number,  we lucked out.  I am toying with trying Starlink.  I could use enough bandwidth for a Netflix stream while my wife is on Zoom etc.  Right now, it is limited one bandwidth hog at a time.

To be continued...   Join our story next year as I break out the chain saw to take out the tallest trees so I can "see" the satellites better...


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## Provincial (Apr 5, 2022)

When we were having problems with our Qwest (before Centurylink) phone, and getting no response from our calls of repair, my brother complained that it was like a Third World phone service.  I told him that it was worse - in the Third World, you can bribe someone to fix your phone!

I am one of those who is stuck with no alternative to Centurylink.  There is a possibility of fiber being extended our direction by a local Co-Op, and I've told them that I am VERY interested!  I would have to say that we have had pretty good luck with CL, but every line from the house to the paved public road has been replaced by me (or my Business) since 1995.  It does help that the line to my house also serves a rock quarry and also the water intake station for the local municipality.


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## addertooth (Apr 5, 2022)

For those who are considering Starlink, wait till they have more satellites up.  In some cases, the coverage is not continuous.


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## Provincial (Apr 5, 2022)

For the Original Poster: the State of Oregon has a Public Utilities Commission (PUC), which is authorized to regulate public utilities that operate within the State.  Based on it's performance, for the last 50 years, I have called it the "Practically Useless Commission."


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## Papa Charlie (Apr 5, 2022)

I have had a lot of problems with AT&T. Finally got away from them and have a WiFi service. but it is a nightmare as there are too many people on the system in my area so the system does a restart constantly. Just drops you and you have to wait for the system to reboot.

Some have gone to the Starlink and love it. Yest it is pricey at $500 up front and then you wait for your turn. From what I have read, it costs them around $1500 to build the systems that you are paying $500 for. They hope to drop the cost as technology and volumes increase. The carry on cost, I can't remember, but it didn't seem out of line. My problem is with our boat under cover I don't have a clear shot at the sky. But will be moving to our retirement home in the months ahead where I most like will only have Starlink to draw from. That is fine as I will need it to continue to work from home and to run my side business. Price of staying connected.


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## extropic (Apr 5, 2022)

rabler said:


> One of the issues I’ve encountered is that many services don’t take anything seriously unless it starts with a disconnection request.  I had that issue with comcast, start every conversation with “I’m calling to disconnect my service”.  They gave a special one or two year rate for internet service, then jacked it up to some ridiculous rate.  Call for service disconnect and get another year or two special rate.  When service doesn’t work, call to disconnect and suddenly they have a tech on site.  I think this has become standard practice to the extent that every one expects it.  I even read an article somewhere that there is a whole marketing/business concept based around maximizing how poorly you can treat customers before driving them off.



Your description fits my experience in too many cases. FUBAR and some people are working for a kinder gentler world. What a farce.


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## 81husky (Apr 5, 2022)

I suffered with HughesNet for 11 years and finally got Starlink last August. It's a real game changer for those of us out in the sticks. 99+% reliable, and it just works. Yes, it's pricey, but to me at least, worth it. Quite a few closed cells lately, so you may have to wait a while. Dropped Directv like a hot potato, and can stream anything we want now.


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## MikeInOr (Apr 6, 2022)

extropic said:


> @MikeInOr
> 
> I'm glad to here you're getting some attention. We hope it leads to results.
> 
> ...



OK, I'll be honest, I wanted the FCC to stick it to CenturyLink for me BEFORE I told everyone else how easy it is to file a complaint:









						Filing an Informal Complaint
					

The Federal Communications Commission gives consumers the opportunity to file informal complaints about problems with the communications services that the FCC regulates.




					www.fcc.gov
				






			https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us?return_to=%2Fhc%2Frequests
		


I gave very specific details of the problems I have had for the last two weeks even though the problem has been going on a lot longer than that.  I was only able to include a couple names of operators I talked to but was able to look at my phone log an include very specific times about when I made the appointments that they blew off.









						Growing pains: CenturyLink consumer complaints spike as service expands
					

CenturyLink's growing quickly, but so are complaints about price spikes, billing and poor customer service.




					www.kgw.com
				




I also filed a complaint with the Attorney General for the state of Oregon.  I have not heard back from them yet.  I am no expert but from what I read I get the impression that the state Attorney General is the proper place to file complaints for billing matters and the FCC is more appropriate for service issues.


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## MikeInOr (Apr 6, 2022)

Provincial said:


> For the Original Poster: the State of Oregon has a Public Utilities Commission (PUC), which is authorized to regulate public utilities that operate within the State.  Based on it's performance, for the last 50 years, I have called it the "Practically Useless Commission."


I am familiar with the Oregon PUC but have never tried to deal with them.  If I had thought of it I would have filed a complaint there too along with the FCC and Oregon Attorney general.  I figure the more I yell the more chance I have of actually being heard... hopefully.... eventually!

I also PM'd Centrylink via there Facebook account with out a lot of response but it is worth a try:








						CenturyLink
					

CenturyLink. 123,786 likes · 155 talking about this. Welcome to the official CenturyLink Facebook page! Our team is here to listen, learn, and assist from 7am-12am CT M-F and 8am-8pm CT Sat/Sun. Let...




					www.facebook.com
				












						CenturyLink
					

CenturyLink. 123,786 likes · 155 talking about this. Welcome to the official CenturyLink Facebook page! Our team is here to listen, learn, and assist from 7am-12am CT M-F and 8am-8pm CT Sat/Sun. Let...




					www.facebook.com


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## MikeInOr (Apr 6, 2022)

81husky said:


> I suffered with HughesNet for 11 years and finally got Starlink last August. It's a real game changer for those of us out in the sticks. 99+% reliable, and it just works. Yes, it's pricey, but to me at least, worth it. Quite a few closed cells lately, so you may have to wait a while. Dropped Directv like a hot potato, and can stream anything we want now.



I am no expert but my understanding is that HughesNet has high earth orbit satellites where Starlink has low earth orbit satellites.  My understanding is the problem with HughesNet is not their bandwidth but the latency (it just takes longer for RF waves to travel to and back from the satellites that are considerably farther away from the earth).  It is my understanding that the latency is the reason VPN connections do not work over HughesNet.  I have looked into Starlink some but was pretty leery because of co-workers that had tried to use HugesNet in the past.  I am very close to seriously looking at giving Starlink a try... hopefully it will not come to that!


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## Alcap (Apr 6, 2022)

I remember calling the cable co. asking to get internet , they kept saying we’re working on getting it in our area . After months of calling and asking with them the same response I happened to mention to the next door neighbor and asked if they ever called for cable internet, she said yea we have it for almost a year !  I called again and they STILLED told me they don’t have it in our area . I told the person that the neighbor has it and we use the same pole !  Silence, we had it next week lol


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## Radials (Apr 6, 2022)

@MikeInOr 

I had problems with centurylink link here in Redmond as well. My internet had always been spotty with almost daily nuisance drops and finally one day just stopped working, so I gave them a call. They told me that if a tech has to enter my home at all it'll be a $90 charge. Meaning I get to pay them for their tech to inspect the modem that they own. Of course, I would have to be available all day waiting for their tech, AND they wouldn't be able to get a tech out for 3 weeks! I told them that I naturally don't expect to be billed for time that their internet wasn't working and the phone agent told me that they couldn't do that. So, I requested a service termination and was told there would be a $140 fee to buyout my contract with them. Telling them that there couldn't be a service termination fee when there's NO SERVICE didn't seem to do much. I paid the fee to those oxygen thieves and switched to the other big internet provider here in Central Oregon. My internet had been spotless ever since. My parents use YellowKnife as they are rural and have had fairly decent luck with them.  

Nick


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## rabler (Apr 6, 2022)

Papa Charlie said:


> Some have gone to the Starlink and love it. Yest it is pricey at $500 up front and then you wait for your turn. From what I have read, it costs them around $1500 to build the systems that you are paying $500 for. They hope to drop the cost as technology and volumes increase. The carry on cost, I can't remember, but it didn't seem out of line. My problem is with our boat under cover I don't have a clear shot at the sky. But will be moving to our retirement home in the months ahead where I most like will only have Starlink to draw from. That is fine as I will need it to continue to work from home and to run my side business. Price of staying connected.


I got Starlink in late February.  Sort of.  The new dish they have built does not include an ethernet connection, it is WiFi only.  We have actual, old fashion desktop computers (by preference) and a wired network.  To get a wired network, Starlink requires you to buy a $20 adapter, and then you need your own home router.  The $20 adapter has been on back order, supposeably shipping this week.  So I've had to continue to pay for HughesNet.  I have been using the Starlink for wireless devices.  It needs a broad field of view as it tracks satellites as they pass (a major reason for the expense).  I'm going to mount the dish on a 25' high pole as soon as the adapter arrives, as we have a lot of trees in the yard.  Then fiber between buildings and a couple of VLAN capable switches, and I'll be set.  Hopefully.

Monthly cost has been raised (just recently) to I believe $115.


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## rabler (Apr 6, 2022)

MikeInOr said:


> I am no expert but my understanding is that HughesNet has high earth orbit satellites where Starlink has low earth orbit satellites.  My understanding is the problem with HughesNet is not their bandwidth but the latency (it just takes longer for RF waves to travel to and back from the satellites that are considerably farther away from the earth).  It is my understanding that the latency is the reason VPN connections do not work over HughesNet.  I have looked into Starlink some but was pretty leery because of co-workers that had tried to use HugesNet in the past.  I am very close to seriously looking at giving Starlink a try... hopefully it will not come to that!


HughesNet latency is a big issue, true.  The round trip time (called RTT in internet speak) also plays a significant factor in non-streaming Internet traffic.  Technically it effects TCP, but not UDP traffic.  TCP uses the RTT to determine the retransmission on lost packets.  Lost packets are just part of Internet traffic, so retransmission of a data packet happens frequently.  Because of the long RTT,  TCP detection of lost packets takes a long time to occur.  This creates a lot of stuttering in the data stream.  So while the one-way bandwidth may be high, _*the effective TCP bandwidth suffers*_.

That latency is high enough to make videoconferencing challenging.

HughesNet also caps your data to something like 30GB, (you can pay a larger monthly service and get up to 50GB).  They just changed the numbers but that is the general ballpark.  After you exceed that data, they throttle you to something hideously slow.  It doesn't take too many hours of streaming HD video to eat up 30GB.   They also only have a few satellites, so Internet capacity is shared across a huge number of users.  So on busy times, the bandwidth suffers even if you're not data capped.


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## MikeInOr (Apr 6, 2022)

Radials said:


> @MikeInOr
> 
> I had problems with centurylink link here in Redmond as well. My internet had always been spotty with almost daily nuisance drops and finally one day just stopped working, so I gave them a call. They told me that if a tech has to enter my home at all it'll be a $90 charge. Meaning I get to pay them for their tech to inspect the modem that they own. Of course, I would have to be available all day waiting for their tech, AND they wouldn't be able to get a tech out for 3 weeks! I told them that I naturally don't expect to be billed for time that their internet wasn't working and the phone agent told me that they couldn't do that. So, I requested a service termination and was told there would be a $140 fee to buyout my contract with them. Telling them that there couldn't be a service termination fee when there's NO SERVICE didn't seem to do much. I paid the fee to those oxygen thieves and switched to the other big internet provider here in Central Oregon. My internet had been spotless ever since. My parents use YellowKnife as they are rural and have had fairly decent luck with them.
> 
> Nick



I am WELL aware of those tactics CenturyLink uses.  The demark is the point at which their responsibility for the line ends and my responsibility for inside wiring starts, basically the box on the side of the house where their line from the pole terminates.  Years ago I ran a cat 5 cable down to that point.  When ever I start having internet connectivity issues I move my modem to a garage window directly above the demark and plug it directly into the demark with the patch cable they supplied with the modem then use the cat 5 cable as an ethernet cable too connect to my house network.  This way the inside wiring for the house is completely irrelevant; their modem, there patch cable plugged into their box on the side of my house.  This is all due to similar bs charges similar to what you experienced.  This has really taken a good portion of the wind out of their sails and they have stopped trying to hit me up with those charges.


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## MikeInOr (Apr 6, 2022)

rabler said:


> I got Starlink in late February.  Sort of.  The new dish they have built does not include an ethernet connection, it is WiFi only.  We have actual, old fashion desktop computers (by preference) and a wired network.  To get a wired network, Starlink requires you to buy a $20 adapter, and then you need your own home router.  The $20 adapter has been on back order, supposeably shipping this week.  So I've had to continue to pay for HughesNet.  I have been using the Starlink for wireless devices.  It needs a broad field of view as it tracks satellites as they pass (a major reason for the expense).  I'm going to mount the dish on a 25' high pole as soon as the adapter arrives, as we have a lot of trees in the yard.  Then fiber between buildings and a couple of VLAN capable switches, and I'll be set.  Hopefully.
> 
> Monthly cost has been raised (just recently) to I believe $115.



Great information!  Thank you. The tech just arrived at my house, I hope I don't have to switch to Starlink but it is an option.

I have always run a hardwired network to all of my desktops and media devices.  20 years ago WiFi was WAY too flakey, back when there was only the 2.4 A band, everything was flakey and I wired my house with cat 5.  I use a linksys router which I have flashed with OpenWrt.  OpenWrt gives me a LOT more control and monitoring capabilities of my internet connection.  When my internet connection is not having problems I put the Centurylink router in pass through mode then run a PPP connection on my Linksys router which makes the Centurylink router a dumb device with no routing and no WiFi responsibilities.  The old Centurylink routers would overload and have to be rebooted periodically when they were used as a router, putting them in passthrough mode eliminated all of that.


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## Papa Charlie (Apr 6, 2022)

One of the boats, not under cover, uses the Starlink and claim to be getting 300MB download. Which is pretty good in my opinion. When we lived in California and had Comcast, we were getting close to 30GB download. But I am told that it was unusual. With the Wifi we have now we are int he 250KB range for downloads and often much lower. A real pain when you look at the security my signal has to go through Boeing puts up for me to work from home. Too often I have to use my Verizon phone as a tether and we pay for extra (15GB) per month as it doesn't take much to burn through this if you have to use it for more than a few days a month. Suppose to carry over any unused but doesn't seem like we get the full amount and it is only good for the next month and doesn't carry over into subsequent months.

Currently looking at Grants Pass general area for retirement, with some land around us. Most likely will be on Starlink. But not sure what may be available in the area and specific to the home that we eventually buy. Will know either end of this year or beginning of next.


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## Bone Head (Apr 6, 2022)

silence dogood said:


> I had century linkless and got rid of them...


"Century Linkless..."  I love that, and it's true.
We had them for years (just internet and phone) and the bill got outrageous along with the service.  Due to a computer crash I had to re-install MS Office, including Outlook for my email.  Century Linkless refused to let me have access to Outlook emails, contacts and such unless I paid for a faster more expensive service.  Just phone and internet were already at $92 a month; the service they wanted me to buy would have put it well over $100!
I called Spectrum.  They brought out Time Warner, and straightened up the horrible rates and service there.  They hooked me up in 3 days for less than $70 a month.  And yes I know the rate will probably go up, but name me something that isn't going to cost more.


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## MikeInOr (Apr 6, 2022)

My new temporary Internet / DSL cable strung through the trees until Centurylink can install a new underground cable:



Less than 24hrs after the FCC informed me they were opening a case against Centurylink for me on my behalf.  I did agree to pay a $150 charge to have the new cable installed in the ground by Centurylink.  No charge for the temporary cable.


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## pdentrem (Apr 6, 2022)

The big stick for the win!


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## Provincial (Apr 6, 2022)




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## woodchucker (Apr 6, 2022)

around here, you are responsible for the line from the pole to your house unless you pay for their service.
150 is cheap... that would cost me a fortune... I have the power running in the same ditch...


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## Just for fun (Apr 7, 2022)

Around here once the phone service is in service the repair of the line is the responsibility of the phone company.  But it is up to the customer to provide a path.

$150 is not bad for a new line.  Did the temporary line solve the problem?


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## MikeInOr (Apr 7, 2022)

woodchucker said:


> around here, you are responsible for the line from the pole to your house unless you pay for their service.
> 150 is cheap... that would cost me a fortune... I have the power running in the same ditch...


I am incredibly happy to only pay $150 to get the line replaced!  I couldn't even rent a trencher for that much.


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## MikeInOr (Apr 7, 2022)

Just for fun said:


> Around here once the phone service is in service the repair of the line is the responsibility of the phone company.  But it is up to the customer to provide a path.
> 
> $150 is not bad for a new line.  Did the temporary line solve the problem?



The temporary line definitely solved the problem.  No errors or retrans on either of the two bonded DSL lines in the 18 hours since it went it.  S/N also increased.  Before the temp line only one of the two bonded DSL lines would come up (after the last rain) so I was working half speed at best.  I went from under 4Mb/s to 10Mb/s, a huge improvement!


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## RJSakowski (Apr 7, 2022)

Century link replaced our line at no cost to me.  The run was  dead end over 1/3rd mile through a marshy field.  But that was some 20+ years ago.  

Here in Wisconsin, Centurylink is responsible for line maintenance up to the service box in the side of the house.  Anything past that is my responsibility with the exception of the DSL modem.  The modem is leased and we pay a monthly fee for its use.  

When I call to report an outage, they insist it is my equipment that is defective.  I go though a complete test of our equipment prior to calling them.  For phone service, I can disconnect our lines and plug a phone directly into their service box.  I also check with neighbors to see if they are experiencing an outage.  99.99% of the time, the problem is on their end; either in the equipment of at the termination of the fiber optic line a mile away.   Once I get an actual service guy out, they are cooperative.  

The neighbors are all going over to Starlink.  I missed out on getting in when they were still doing beta resting


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## JimDawson (Apr 7, 2022)

I guess I'm really lucky.  I can't imagine what it would be like to have the problems some of you have been dealing with.

I live in a rural area and when I bought this place about 15 years ago there was no wired internet of any kind available, not even DSL.  I needed the best system I could get for my customer support activities.  I installed a rather expensive commercial satellite system, about $2500 for the hardware, and about $200/month for a whopping 3Mb connection, which was iffy at best.  I lived with that until they ran cable in the area.

I now have Wave Broadband cable internet.  100Mb to my desktop.  About 99.99% up time, with no noticeable slow downs.  The system is somewhat new in our area, all of the infrastructure installed new in the last 10 or 12 years so it's in pretty good shape.  In the last couple of years another company has installed fiber in the area, and there is a drop at the road in front of my property.  I don't think that system is live yet, but should be soon.  Looking forward to having a Gigabit connection when it's available.  I guess you could say I'm a heavy internet user with about 20 some connected devices.

Now if I could just get a cell phone signal out here..... But that is another story.


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## rabler (Apr 7, 2022)

I know my Comcast and Spectrum cable modems had signal strength parameters visible on the diagnostics webpage.  I'm sure the company can see those through SNMP also, so they can tell if there is a signal problem.  It is easier for them to connect you to a first level service technician whose menu looks like:  1) reboot your computer.  2) power cycle the modem  3) See step one.

Early in the 1990's, when Internet connectivity was still in it's young days, I had an ISDN line between home and the office as part of some experimental testing we where doing.  I managed to find out which test box the (then) BellSouth technicians used for ISDN, and had our group buy one for me.  First time a tech came out and I showed him the tester already hooked up, he just gave me the phone number to their third level support tier, the folks at BellSouth who had the ability to reset their side and change parameters.  ISDN had a lot of configuration options on the telco side and they would occasionally get reset so this was usually an easy fix once elevated to the right folks.  Miss those days ...


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## Provincial (Apr 9, 2022)

JimDawson said:


> I guess I'm really lucky.  I can't imagine what it would be like to have the problems some of you have been dealing with.
> *Now if I could just get a cell phone signal out here..... But that is another story.*


I have Verizon, and am in a signal shadow down in a canyon.  I also live in an all-metal building.  To get cell service, I bought an interface (Samsung Network Extender) that takes the cell signal and sends it over the internet (it is wired into our Ethernet and DSL lines) to make the cell phones work.  As long as we have power and internet service, the phones work.  During a power outage, we lose cell service.  When we had the big ice storm last year, even the Centurylink wired phone lines went dead.

I'm quite satisfied with the Network Extender.


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## JimDawson (Apr 9, 2022)

Provincial said:


> I have Verizon, and am in a signal shadow down in a canyon.  I also live in an all-metal building.  To get cell service, I bought an interface (Samsung Network Extender) that takes the cell signal and sends it over the internet (it is wired into our Ethernet and DSL lines) to make the cell phones work.  As long as we have power and internet service, the phones work.  During a power outage, we lose cell service.  When we had the big ice storm last year, even the Centurylink wired phone lines went dead.
> 
> I'm quite satisfied with the Network Extender.



Yes, that is what I have here also.


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