Anyone have input on dropping your landline for business use? (going tethered)

[Mark Bolton]

I know it will vary based on what type of business and how much data you use but we have DSL at the shop through Frontier. All my business telephone traffic is via cell. I have a landline at the shop (with the lowest plan, no long distance) just for faxing (I cant remember the last time we sent or received a fax though it does happen with local state employment issues on occasion) and have the basic DSL (rated at 3 megs but the local tech stopped in the other day and bumped us to 6 at the switching station next door). That said, the land line and the 3 meg plan is at 66/mo a the moment and its not uncommon in this rural area to see speeds in the 1 meg and under range for long periods of time. Frontier is simply not willing to build the infrastructure to bring more data into the area (as per several of their techs). People who are paying for 12meg, 25meg, and larger, plans never see anything close to the speeds they are paying for and more often than not drop the costly plans all together.

I dont know anyone in our area, regardless of the provider, that gets their advertised speeds. In the city, 45mins away, my SO has suddenlink and is suppose to be getting 40 megs but Ive never seen a speedtest at over 30 at her place. Comcast is the only other provider there and I'd guess they are the same.

So today is one of those days when something is going on that our DSL is ridiculously slow. Testing at half a meg for much of the day, then will pop to 3 megs, then six, then back down to 1.5, and so on. I am perfectly content with 3 megs. We we are getting a solid 3 I can do anything we need for the business. But .5 I cant do anything. Its Christmas break and I would imagine every kid in town is home and buried in their phones, tablets, and video games.

When this happens I simply tether to my phone (picking up the cell tower in sight that Frontier feeds oddly enough) and ALWAYS get anywhere from 6 megs on up to insane speeds. Every time this happens I start thinking why not just take the 66 bucks a month Im shipping to Frontier and dump it into my AT&T wireless plan and just tether the business through my phone. It looks as though for another 40 bucks a month I go to a 25 meg plan on the phone (at 6 now) and dont have any throttling issues OR for 45 a month go to AT&Ts Unlimited plus plan which Im suspicious of as it only offers 10GB per line of tethering per month and then throttled to 128kbps and 22GB of usage per device and then throttled. I want nothing to do with the throttling and I dont think 10GB a month would cover the business (I only have one device to tether from so I am assuming the other two devices, an employee flip phone, and a smart watch, I will not have access to their 10 megs of tethering).

Frontier doesnt offer a way for me to look back at how much data I have used monthly that I know of so I have no idea if the 25GB will cover but just wondering if anyone has ventured down this path. Im enticed a bit by some of the features on the plus plan but I cant bring myself to get anywhere near the threat of being throttled. I had satellite internet for a few years and they pulled that BS and it was a complete and total nightmare.

Sorry for the length. Figured with everyone cutting the cord maybe someone would have some input on the business side.

Thanks

[Jim Koepke]

Does your state have a Public Utilities Commission to watch these service providers?

My guess with the end of Net Neutrality you won't see things getting better anytime soon without a state agency to pound on doors for you.

My feeling is if you are paying for speed, then you should get what you are paying to receive.

Have you tried calling customer service? What do they say?

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

Mark,

A quick consult with Dr. Google >how much bandwidth does my internet use < found this page:

https://lifehacker.com/5917367/how-c...-using-at-home

There are a couple of applications listed to help you determine such things.

jtk

[Mark Bolton]

Mark,

A quick consult with Dr. Google >how much bandwidth does my internet use < found this page:

https://lifehacker.com/5917367/how-c...-using-at-home

There are a couple of applications listed to help you determine such things.

jtk

Jim,
Thanks for both your responses. The community, and I would guess our entire state (as well as many other states) have carried on about nearly every provider out there advertising a giving speed that you may possibly hit one time a month at 3:30 in the morning, but it is in no way what you get on "average" or even regularly. This has been going on in our area for years. People have gone round with the PSC (Public Service Commission), the state, the AG, and so on. I dont think this issue is unique to our area but no, no on here (perhaps other than me because my business is literally located 10 feet away from a phone company switching building) receives any where near their "advertised" speeds.

My apologies about the tracking of broadband use question. After posting I found a link to an ap that I have since installed that is making it clear that moving to tethered cell data is not going to be feasible. In just an evenings worth of drawing, and responding to commercial clients, web use, and so on, we are at 2GB in a single evening. That would make me think a single full 8 hour day may be 8-10GB, perhaps less because in the evenings I catch up on forums and youtube.

At that pace we would be looking at 200GB easy on a full month or six day weeks and Im often easily here 7 days many times. In hind sight the thought of jumping to cell was a joke but I had no idea our daily data use was so high.

Thanks for the input.

[Matt Meiser]

Frontier is a sorry excuse for a telecommunications company. I got a hold of the email address for the president of the whole region when I had them and took to emailing him every issue. I kind of got the feeling he didn't like me. I got service from Frontier literally the first day they could get me DSL and it was great until my neighbors started getting it then it started working exactly as you describe. We got cable from a region cable provider at that house literally the first day they could connect me. Frontier even tried to pull a fast one on me when I fired them and charge me for an extra year of service claiming I was on a yearly contract plan that had magically just renewed.

To answer your question, its going to depend entirely on your usage. Why not try it for a month before cutting off Frontier and see how it goes?

As an aside, Comcast MAY offer significantly higher speeds in town. At our new house we are on a 150x20 plan and regularly test at 175x25. I really can't complain about the price or service. The longest outage we've had in over 3 years was a few hours. Might have to call next month and argue the price since its been a year since we moved to that plan and it might jump up. We have a 1TB cap and average under 1/3 of that with a teenager watching Netflix 34-8 (or so it seems but I guess I can't complain since it appears she's pulling off a 4.0 this quarter.)

[Matt Meiser]

At that pace we would be looking at 200GB easy on a full month or six day weeks and Im often easily here 7 days many times. In hind sight the thought of jumping to cell was a joke but I had no idea our daily data use was so high.

This seems suspect. We use 300-ish GB/mo on average with heavy streaming media usage and me working at home full time and transferring files, sometimes fairly large database backups, at will. How big are your drawing files?

[Mark Bolton]

Frontier is a sorry excuse for a telecommunications company.

Thanks Matt,
I knew (and was hoping) you would be one who would respond. As i posted above, after my initial post and having tracked even a short period of usage (still tracking) I dont think dumping the DSL is going to be an option.

You want to know a funny thing? Mitch Charmichael who was a Frontier exec. is one of our state senators. He would recuse himself of any any all actions relating to broadband infrastructure. He has since been "layed off" due to "a reduction in force".

The whole game is rigged. The providers spent all their profits on paying shareholders and executive salaries and not on building infrastructure and saving for future infrastructure. The industry is now at capacity and NOT going to invest to upgrade infrastructure to current standards. Its why nearly every nation on the planet has obscene broadband speeds yet the vast majority of the US is barely getting their 3 megs (more like 1). You can travel abroad and have speeds consistently in the high teens and mid 20's (not that any individual needs such speeds).

[Brian Henderson]

Frontier is a sorry excuse for a telecommunications company. I got a hold of the email address for the president of the whole region when I had them and took to emailing him every issue. I kind of got the feeling he didn't like me. I got service from Frontier literally the first day they could get me DSL and it was great until my neighbors started getting it then it started working exactly as you describe. We got cable from a region cable provider at that house literally the first day they could connect me. Frontier even tried to pull a fast one on me when I fired them and charge me for an extra year of service claiming I was on a yearly contract plan that had magically just renewed.

To answer your question, its going to depend entirely on your usage. Why not try it for a month before cutting off Frontier and see how it goes?

As an aside, Comcast MAY offer significantly higher speeds in town. At our new house we are on a 150x20 plan and regularly test at 175x25. I really can't complain about the price or service. The longest outage we've had in over 3 years was a few hours. Might have to call next month and argue the price since its been a year since we moved to that plan and it might jump up. We have a 1TB cap and average under 1/3 of that with a teenager watching Netflix 34-8 (or so it seems but I guess I can't complain since it appears she's pulling off a 4.0 this quarter.)

I hate Frontier too, but as far as really fast Internet, they are the only game in town. Over the summer, I tried to switch because I was tired of their terrible customer service, but nobody could offer me 100/100 service and I can go faster with Frontier if I want. I can either keep them and suffer through the bad service or I can take a significant cut in my speed and pay the exact same price.

Luckily, I can go years without ever having to deal with those idiots, so I just suffer along.

[Mark Bolton]

This seems suspect. We use 300-ish GB/mo on average with heavy streaming media usage and me working at home full time and transferring files, sometimes fairly large database backups, at will. How big are your drawing files?

Well, Just this evening (my original post was at 2:55 and its now 8:22, Lucky me Im still at the office) I suffered a windows update, emails, surfing, checking here, youtube, and I am at 2.93GB as per the counter (ShaPlus). Thats one eveing and I havent uploaded any files or downloaded any files from servers in response to quotes or to download architectural packages to-be-quoted.

I did some rough math base on an afternoon/evenings usage thinking 2.93 would possibly be 8 per day, 24 days in a month, and your way out of the range of wireless.

[Jim Becker]

Unfortunately, it sounds like you're stuck with a "performance vs caps" challenge. Tethering (or using a cellular access point on the same account as your phone(s)) will likely provide you with better performance than your DSL if you're in a good coverage area, but it could end up costing you more as you've identified. DSL has both distance limitations and wire size limitations (related to distance), too, which is why it's "sucking mightily" in so many rural areas.


In fairness, there was "something going on" on the Internet in the last 24-48 hours that was even affecting my 150/150 fiber optic service. Only certain sites were sluggish, but it was very noticeable and my daughter was struggling with streaming as part of that.

[Mark Bolton]

Unfortunately, it sounds like you're stuck with a "performance vs caps" challenge. Tethering (or using a cellular access point on the same account as your phone(s)) will likely provide you with better performance than your DSL if you're in a good coverage area, but it could end up costing you more as you've identified. DSL has both distance limitations and wire size limitations (related to distance), too, which is why it's "sucking mightily" in so many rural areas.


In fairness, there was "something going on" on the Internet in the last 24-48 hours that was even affecting my 150/150 fiber optic service. Only certain sites were sluggish, but it was very noticeable and my daughter was struggling with streaming as part of that.

Jim,
Im am interested in learning/understanding the physical, and mechanical, dynamics of the situation. The local techs have spilled the beans on some of it but of course not the technical bits. Again, we are rural, so the motivation for infrastructure investment is minimal. Interestingly we had fairly decent internet until a local cell tower went in. Given that my shop is located immediately adjacent to the land line companies switching station I am in almost daily contact (rubbing elbows) with their crew.

It was stated that when the cell tower went in, the company pulled half the pairs that fed the main road in the town and shipped them to the tower (of course they are being compensated to feed land-line traffic to the tower). This was when things started going south. There have been many other infrastructure based issues since then but its oddly interesting that DSL can go down but the tower is always up. Its understood that cell traffic can be tower to tower but at least to my knowledge if they can bring it off the cell and take it over land lines thats he preferred option. For instance, we once had a lightning strike here that took out the AT-T on the tower. It took a month for them to get the parts. Its the ONLY tower that serves the town. Many many people had abandoned land lines and cut the cord for At&t and they were basically without anything for a month. As were we with my business (cell phone number is my sole business number). It was a major nightmare forwarding calls, and so on. At&t credited me royally.

My real beef is that ISP's should be faced with real and serious penalties when they dont meet contracted speeds. Period. If I tell my customer I am going to supply XYZ and I dont, I get sued. We are a pathetic citizenry that we dont hold our elected officials feet to the fire for allowing us to be railed.

[Brian Henderson]

My real beef is that ISP's should be faced with real and serious penalties when they dont meet contracted speeds. Period. If I tell my customer I am going to supply XYZ and I dont, I get sued. We are a pathetic citizenry that we dont hold our elected officials feet to the fire for allowing us to be railed.

Which is why they advertise speeds UP TO whatever their maximum are. They don't guarantee a speed, they offer a maximum speed that they don't guarantee you're going to get.

[Greg R Bradley]

The fee for typical internet speed is based upon the link from your location to the provider's access point. If you pay for a 5/1Mb DSL connection, that just means that the design speed of the link from your Modem to the DSLAM is 5Mb down and 1Mb up. In many connections the speed is more of a maximum than anything else. There are other bottlenecks that can appear, the most common being traffic.
Business providers generally have connections with more guarantees. They are lots more money. A LOT more. They generally automatically discount your bill when they don't perform at the Service Level Agreement rate. So if you received 10% less speed for 10% of the month, you get a 1% discount.

[Matt Meiser]

And Frontier will probably log into your modem and show how you are connected (to next door) at well over advertised speed. Its "not their fault" that the backhaul connection is saturated 90% of the day. When it works that is.

[Brian Henderson]

And Frontier will probably log into your modem and show how you are connected (to next door) at well over advertised speed. Its "not their fault" that the backhaul connection is saturated 90% of the day. When it works that is.

That's why I would never use DSL again, the second FiOS was available, I was the first one in the neighborhood to get hooked up. I get high speeds 100% of the time.