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this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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Get a business line, if you plan on staying at your current residence for longer than 3 years. Usually you can get it for a few dollars more than a residential line, and it'll not have a data cap, plus they're going to have a 99.99% SLA for uptime...and you're not going to be getting some script reader if you have issues.
What they really need is competition.
%100 but they bought our gov and keep competitors out. Its really a shit system.
Last time it didn't help.
Then municipal competition.
If you have a business line you’re still 100% getting a script reader. They just come without a foreign accent.
Unfortunately mostly true. I worked for Charter Business, and was told I was "being too helpful". They only want people who read off the script. I moved over to the CCST group before they killed that off. I'm so happy to be away from there, that place was soul sucking.
I don't know how I would react to being told that other than staring at them incredulously and fighting my instinct to say something along the lines of "you're complaining that I'm doing my job TOO WELL???!?"
Yep, they didn't want people that think too much. They want drones to read off scripts and fake empathy when theit service is out(again). It wasn't as bad in CCST(complex coax support team), since my interactions were very rarely with end users(VARS, large national businesses and other carriers). But they got rid of that department and have the REP1(new people) handle that service and put us back on front line phone support. None of the CCST customers were happy about the degraded service from unknowledgeable and untrained support staff. I had an interview to move over to Enterprise Fiber, but skipped that and just completely quit without notice.
The place is structured to make sure nothing ever gets past the status quo. I had multiple engineering tickets closed out for probable network routing issues(on our end) because no one wanted to look into it. If you have any more than signal issues and something a modem reboot won't fix...good luck getting a problem actually addressed.
That is disgusting. Too helpful? Jesus christ congratulations leaving that place.
I had an enterprise fiber side that I just bailed on and quit the place without notice(or another job lined up). It was genuinely soul crushing andi don't regret my decision. Granted 3 years later I make more than double the pay with less headache.
When I supported the network at work, with many ISPs across the US... It depends on the Telco.
Comcast Business, was hand down the best Telco when it comes to business lines from my experience. At&t and Verizon were the script readers, having to argue everything to get them to do anything. Many of the cable companies, just had terrible everything. CenturyLink was very good, but awful support portal.
Can confirm, when I was doing that forever and a half ago, Comcast actually never gave us trouble when we called them, but anything having to do with at&t or Verizon was like pulling teeth
The worst was one site who was serviced by neither of them, but our last mile provider interlinked through one of them, who linked through the other (I don't remember the order of interlinks) to get to our actual ISP and into our datacenter/WAN. We had issues upon issues upon issues with that site's connection, and it was the interlink between those two that was the culprit. It was easy to narrow down, and easy to fix, but getting them to actually fix it took months of us screaming at our last mile to scream at them louder since we weren't their customers and they both refused to talk to us because of that.
It did get fixed but it took probably a year and a half of fighting before they finally updated the interlink.
I already pay over $100 per month, and a business plan would be around $350 per month. Fuck Comcast.
I had comcast business class for many years at my old house. When I downsized to my condo, I'm at the mercy of the HOA. They have comcast communities and I can't get business class. Its not terrible but I had to pay $20/mo to upgrade to 1000mb down just to get decent upload speeds. I wish we had a local company USI, that sells fiber internet for very reasonable prices and no data caps. My son's building has it. I moved my plex server to my friend's house who is on USI as well just to keep my bandwidth consumption down.
I have USI for the first time after having delt with charter my whole life. It just worked. I plugged my router into the wall and the cat5 jack that was already laid in, and it just worked. Within seconds of opening my account. As advertised.
Usually charter sends some asshole who's definitely sober and not on any lists to do awful things to your wall. Then the speeds you do get are just straight criminal.
Love my USI. It's the way an ISP should be. Now if we could just slice the price to something more reasonable.
At my son's place, the person that was renting from the previous owner did not use the provided USI but instead paid for CenturyLink, USI had to come and rewire to the patch panel in the utility closet. The tech was great.
At least yoi are not at mercy of managment company. I don't know how in USSA, but here before ammendments to Communication Law, you had to initiate general homeowners meeting and vote to allow ISP to place their equipment in condo/multi-flat unit/whatever you call it. The hardest part was not getting votes for it, but getting enough people to vote.
If I could get that for $43 a month out the door sure, but that is not happening from FIOS anytime soon.
Maybe if you are in the $100+ a month crew it’s a few dollars more, but I do doubt that.
Give them a call, you'd be surprised what the business line crew will do to get customers. I had a line for $60 a month that was unlimited. Doesn't hurt to check and haggle.
Verizon does not do data caps on FIOS.
I'm curious where you are that a business line doesn't cost more than a residential one because in my area it's three times as much. I am fortunate enough that I get symmetrical gigabit for $90 a month and although they don't promise static IP my IP has not changed in a while.
If I wanted to get a real static IP I would have to upgrade to a business line It would cost $280 a month.
In the 3 different states that I've lived in, each has had business lines that allowed me to haggle with them, granted I was slightly outside of the city and I'm sure they had way less business class customers, they did haggle with me. 3 years is all I had to commit to, to get the price down to sub $100. One location I was paying just $60.
Residential is $80/Mo for me. A business plan when I last looked was $200/Mo. Wish I lived somewhere that had options other than spectrum.
Damn that sucks, yea if you have multiple options, then you usually have a lot better luck. Try going to your local business branch and meet up with your account rep. You'd be surprised at what they will try to do to get you as a customer.
I wish that were the case out west.
None of my local ISPs have data caps on regular home internet plans. Y'all just need better ISPs.
100Mb symmetrical fiber is about $40-50 and Gigabit is about $80/mo from ours
Sounds lovely.
You are aware that most of us in the US don't actually have options like that, correct? I'd dump my ISP in a heartbeat if those plans were available to me.
I'm quite aware of the ISP situation in the USA and it has been worse at each home I've lived in before. I've had shitty AT&T connections at 4 homes with no other options there. Things have gotten much better in the last 5 years overall. Fiber is rolling out all across the country from local utilities like phone and power. Look for your local options, and avoid the big companies.
As someone 10 minutes outside of a major city, my (slow, unreliable, expensive) options are:
Americans are entirely at the whim of ISPs and what areas they determine are worth investing infrastructure in.
Damn that sucks. I live about 100 miles from the closest major city and have 2 options for fiber, plus those other options
This is big "stop being poor" energy.
^^ This is big "irrelevant comment" energy.