My new ISP is Wireless Beehive (wirelessbeehive.com) and so far I am quite satisfied with them. I am paying $39.95 monthly. My Frontier bill was $44.95. And my speeds are faster so far. With Frontier I got 1900 Kbps down and about 280 up. I just tested my new connection at Speedtest.net and it was 3379 down and 1033 up. That is a great improvement so I am very happy, especially since they have no bandwidth cap.

I would urge any Frontier customers in Elko to consider switching to Wireless Beehive. It requires an antenna on your roof and you need to be within range of their transmitter on Elko Hill, but they test it before the install and if there isn’t a good signal they won’t install it and there is no charge. If they install it there is a $49.95 installation charge which appears on your first bill. But there is no contract. It is month to month.

I have a screen capture of my speed test results at http://classicrockradio.org/speed.jpg .

I can see them exempting any services you buy from them, effectively locking out the likes of DirecTV from the Frontier network.

http://www.frontieronline.com/5GB/

“We all love the Internet, and Frontier is committed to offering you all the bandwidth you need and want to take full advantage of the Web!”

And here is the canned response: (Not very encouraging)
——————————————————————————

Thank you for contacting Internet Technical Support.

I have forwarded your comments onto management.

Frontier is in the process of establishing reasonable usage guidelines
to insure our customers experience the very best service.

At the present time, we are not measuring or monitoring our customers’
Internet usage, nor is there currently a penalty (either monetary or
termination of service) for exceeding 5GB combined upload and download
consumption during the course of a 30-day billing period.

We have not been advised if the 5GB usage target will be increased, or
when we will begin measuring or monitoring customers’ Internet usage.

Please keep your eye on our Acceptable Use Policy, posted at:
http://www.frontieronline.net/terms/Residential_HSI_Terms_and_Conditions/.
If any changes or updates are made to this policy, they will be posted
online.

Hope this helps, but if you have further questions, please reply
directly to this email.

Sincerely,

Mike

——————————————————————————-

So, instead of being forthright. I guess they just want us to keep hoping they change the AUP.

Compared to Frontier, used car dealerships are less sleazy.

I know it’s rhetorical but if they “are not measuring or monitoring our customers’ Internet usage”. How did they ever figure 1.5 Gigs is a typical useage?

Truly does anyone in this market know the broadband options that are available. To me being a DSL customer, I will wait this out until my contract expires in October to jump ship to give myself enough time to find the next alternative.

Since it appears everyone will cap and according to a tech. support kid I spoke to the other night, comcast supposedly provides their customers a cap of 250gb /month. That sounds like plenty for my family.

Has anyone begun checking out the other options and lend a thought on the next better alternative?

I would like to thank this site and all its’ contributors for letting the information to be shared. Better to know than not.

At first, our service was fine. In fact, I was impressed with speed testing results. At times in my location, they almost delivered what I had been seeing on RoadRunner. Then something changed. After quite a few e mails and several phone conversations with one of their tech supervisors, the problems remain unsolved. He admitted to me that what were were seeing was a capacity problem. Too many customers hooked up to the CO and also he said that the fix would be for Frontier to install new lines between their CO’s in this area and that this was going to cost them some bucks to get accomplished.

You might try e mailing some of the folks at the following website. This is where I started when I was trying to get my 30 day grace period ….

http://www.frontieronline.com/customerservice/

We unfortunately just re-upped our contract three weeks before this dumbass cap was posted on Frontier’s TOS, or we’d flat cancel. Attempts to call Frontier have left us with half hour hold times, so we haven’t spoken to anyone about opting out or flat cancelling.

I am very much not looking forward to arguing with a CSR about this, especially (as you’ve just documented) they’re going to try to tell me this is for my OWN BENEFIT. Ugh.

Can anyone who successfully dealt with a CSR and was granted written proof of exclusion or penalty-less cancellation post their CSR or extension or something, so we can talk to someone with a brain?

We really appreciate the work you’re doing here Phil.

I have also heard from some TW people who are relieved I am not targeting them, but I’ve always said the moment TW tries to impose a 20 or 40GB cap on us, our attention will turn to them in a New York minute.

What is such a shame is I have historically defended Frontier, praised Rochester Telephone, and have rooted for them to succeed in providing a real alternative for those who wanted to spend a little less for broadband. But when they make foolish decisions like this, it’s obvious they have nobody in upper management who has the first clue what the broadband marketplace is like these days, and why a cap of 5GB is something even the cable industry wouldn’t dare to impose.

No provider, IMHO, should be looking to usage caps as a solution to the required investment in this marketplace. Innovation has always saved us from the sky is falling scenarios in the past. I have every confidence it will solve this problem as well. I remember when people panicked about 56k modems being the ultimate limit, or disk drives that could never exceed 20, then 40, than 120, then 500gb. But innovation and customer demand come together and solutions are found.

I understand Frontier is, competitively speaking, an also-ran in the national Internet provider list and they will never be able to enjoy the economy of scale a Comcast or Time Warner can enjoy. But they also aren’t encumbered by the bureaucracy either, and could outmaneuver a lot of the competition if they were smarter.

I don’t want people to think this is a “Beat Up Frontier” blog, because it’s not. One of the last pieces in this series will be our effort to put our heads together and help Frontier see its way past the reactionary approach to bandwidth management and, hopefully with the experience of those of us who’ve been online for more than 20 years now, along with customers and ex-customers like yourself, we can hold our own focus group and bring forth some positive ideas for Frontier to succeed in ways that represent a win for them and a win for their customers.