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Frontier Communications Delivers F-Minus Broadband in Ohio; ‘Upgrades Will Cost A Lot of Money’

Phillip Dampier January 23, 2012 Broadband "Shortage", Broadband Speed, Consumer News, Frontier, Rural Broadband, Video 4 Comments

Courtesy: WKRC-TV Cincinnati

Frontier Communications’ DSL service to some residents in Sardinia, Ohio has been progressively slowing down to the point Speedtest.net rated one man’s connection an “F-Minus.”

Larry Meeker’s broadband service from Frontier achieved speeds of just 190kbps — about four as fast as traditional dial-up Internet service.  Upload speeds reached just 1kbps.  When Meeker called Frontier Communications to complain about the lousy broadband speeds, he reports Frontier didn’t seem in any hurry to improve his service.

WKRC-TV TroubleShooter Howard Ain reports Frontier had done little for Meeker initially, saying “it will cost a lot of money for the company to upgrade” the broadband facilities in inherited from an acquisition from Verizon Communications.

Frontier changed its mind when Ain indicated the company’s broadband woes were about to be a feature item on WKRC’s 6pm local news.  Meeker also told the station he was preparing to file a complaint with Ohio’s public utility regulator.  Just a few days before the report aired, Frontier called Meeker to tell him improved service was on the way.

Meeker reports it used to take 10-15 seconds to load even basic web pages over Frontier’s DSL service.  But after the company began work on Meeker’s connection, pages are loading much faster, usually after 1-3 seconds.

The Sardinia man noted the best way to get action out of Frontier might be to call the media to get the company to do the right thing.

“I’m very happy that it is so easy to contact Channel 12 news and Howard Ain and know that somebody is at least going to call you and if there is a problem they are going to check it out and investigate it,” Meeker told the station.

A spokesman for Frontier Communications blamed the old owner — Verizon Communications, for inadequate broadband facilities in place to serve Sardinia and surrounding areas. The company says it is spending $90 million on upgrades because people are using the Internet a lot more in the area.  New circuits bringing additional capacity are anticipated to begin service by the second week of February.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WKRC Cincinnati Broadband Service 1-18-12.mp4[/flv]

WKRC TroubleShooter Howard Ain covers Frontier’s lack of performance in Cincinnati suburb Sardinia, Ohio.  (2 minutes)

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Smith6612
Smith6612
12 years ago

The slow-downs in my area are becoming a yearly occurrence. It’s always during the Winter months where they hook more people up but everyone is also trying out new toys. Frontier doesn’t really seem to plan for future capacity at all. Wish they’d change that. I’ve spoken to my Frontier contact, and he’s told me some numbers we can’t even speak of because they’re so bad. Alarms should have been going off at Frontier’s NOC ages ago about the constant problems, that’s how bad it’s gotten. Of course, the problem is no longer local to us. It’s out in Rochester… Read more »

DJ
DJ
12 years ago
Reply to  Smith6612

A friend of mine had Verizon before they took over not far from here, he was getting 6Mb easily with Verizon at a fraction of the price. Once Frontier took over he was down to 1 – 3Mb if he was lucky, and at other times below 1Mb.

He like everybody else complained, Frontier told him the network must be overloaded and to try again later like it was not a problem.

Smith6612
Smith6612
12 years ago
Reply to  DJ

I know how that is. Lately Verizon’s been doing the same nonsense to their DSL network as well. I routinely visit the Verizon forums and DSLReports, where almost every thread these days for DSL is about slow-downs at night, or dropped PPPoE sessions because equipment hasn’t been fixed for weeks. All they get is the runaround of rebooting and wasting modems until I stop by, tell them to leave Verizon alone and to let me direct them to my internal contact to Verizon who fixes things in no time (basically, seconds). Every time he’s worked on a slow speed issue,… Read more »

FrontierSucks
FrontierSucks
12 years ago

Frontier internet f*****g sucks. I used to have Verizon internet and it was perfectly fine. Then after they switched to Frontier everything got bad. Frontier internet is horrible. Its too slow to play video games online or stream movies/videos. Lastly, the give you some s****y modem/router that makes your connection even slower.

My final words: F*** FRONTIER. GET ROAD RUNNER

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