Offered Internet Speeds Changes Drastically During the Day

[bobber205]

Do I have any recourse here?
We just moved into a new house across town and we have Qwest for all of our internet, phone and TV services.

In our old house, we paid for and quite enjoyed the 7 meg download connection. I checked every couple weeks during the summer including two weeks before we moved and their website said 7 megs was still the highest we could go even with the state of the art wiring this new home supposedly has.

I get here this afternoon after finally able to rest and hook up the modem/router and it's THREE megs down instead of 7! I was pretty pissed as I didn't see any refund on my account for the lesser service. I called and was told this was the max.

About 10pm tonight, I checked again and it's 1.5! Their website confirms this as being the max. Still no credit to the account.

What is going on? Charter can offer me 20 meg down in this new house where it would only offer 5-7 in our old house, just like Qwest.

Any advice on what I should do?

 

[Buzz Bumble]

The speed of your Internet connection depends on many factors, including: your phoneline (inside and out to the street connection), the phoneline from the street to the local exchange, the equipment in the local exchnage, the servers at the ISP / websites you're using, how many people are on the same main phoneline / exchange using Internet too, etc., etc.

It might simply be a bad area or one that is yet to have its exchange updgraded, or maybe the phonelines need to be checked and fixed. (One place I do work for has on-going issues with their connection due to being close to the sea and the area still having over-head power and phone lines - the salt air corrodes the connectors from time to time.)

You're lucky. My brother moved into a new(ish) suburb area and they can't get broadband Internet at all, so he has to use an expensive mobile broadband connection. I'm still using dial-up.

 

[kate-willbury]

dsl will always be slow and unreliable compared to cable. get cable instead.

 

[tman07]

I feel your pain, but as far as i can tell (and 4 phone calls to timewarner) there is nothing we can do. In the early am, its decent, but at night, and right now, actually- it is HORRIBLE. im getting 1.39Mbps down and .38Mbps up right now. And we are paying for 'turbo' with speeds supposedly up to 15Mbps. No where near that. It sucks. Big time

 

[Adam0306]

Check out CenturyTel. They are in your state and if it is anything like down here, everyone loves it!

 

[bobber205]

Check out CenturyTel. They are in your state and if it is anything like down here, everyone loves it!

I will look into them.
Tomorrow my ISP is sending a truck/guy over to fix our phone line. We're getting alot of static even w/o the modem plugged in.

Maybe we'll get lucky.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

well the up and down during the day sounds a lot like it is lining up with the spikes in usage. The pipe line serving your area can only handle so much data at once no matter what they say your connection is.
Remember that max connection speed they sell is based on a statistical model. If everyone in an area uses the internet at one time the system crashes or locks up.

Other areas to look at that explain this is when Houston Evacuated for Hurricane Rita the phone system was overload. People inside of Houston area could neither receive or make phone calls as there were no open circuit for them. Cells with a Houston number that were in another city (like Lubbock) would not be able to receive any phone calls. They could make calls but not receive.

I use that as an example of how the phone system is not based on max usage but peak average usage and when something spikes the system it can not handle it.

Short answer is your problem sounds a lot like the old cable modem slow down problems.