[PLUG-TALK] time to upgrade from DSL

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 03:34:08AM -0700, Pete Lancashire wrote:
> In Portland.
> Suggestions ?

We've had good luck with Comcast.  They used to suck,
but have radically improved.  We use them with Ooma VOIP 
service, paying less and getting more than we did from
Frontier (not an option for you anyway).  Much depends
on the quality of the coax on your street; if connectors
are corroding or it is underprovisioned, it may not meet
advertised speed claims.


Cory Doctorow claims Centurylink is evil:

https://boingboing.net/2018/04/04/crooked-scumbags.html

------

BTW, for those of you in Frontier territory, they are in
deep financial doodoo, negative income with a debt-to-asset
ratio of 70; it's like having no job and owing half a
million dollars on your five-year-old economy car.

They jack up rates a dollar or so per month, presumably
to pay interest on their huge loans.  That doesn't leave
any money for infrastructure upgrades, such as increased
backhaul from the switches.  You may get gigabit service
to the head end switch, and from there to Speedtest and
Netflix and maybe Google, but not to the rest of the net.

I'm not sure what the new Oregon "net neutrality" law
will do to that.  My guess is that it will result in no
more bandwidth to the rest of the net (which costs $$$$
to implement, switch gear and backhaul aren't free),
merely less to the big guys if Frontier is required to
equilibrate speeds by the new Oregon law.

My hope is that some group figures out how to purchase
Frontier's Oregon network without assuming the debt.
Perhaps absorb CenturyLink's Portland assets when that
company is buried in class action lawsuits.  They
could call the new entity "Personal Telco" :-)

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com