Cuomo

New York’s telecommunications providers are up in arms over Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision to yank permanent deregulation for the “digital phone” industry (otherwise known as “Voice Over IP/VoIP”) from his budget, even though the phone service is already deregulated in New York.

Now Verizon Communications and Time Warner Cable are claiming that without the deregulation they already enjoy, innovation, investment, and competition will be stifled.

“Verizon is very disappointed that New York’s lawmakers, who want the public to believe that New York is open for business, will not be acting on this important measure to modernize the state’s outdated telecommunications laws in this year’s budget,” Verizon spokesman John Bonomo told the Albany Times-Union.

“It’s about new technologies, it’s about new services,” echoed Rory Whelan, regional vice president of government relations for Time Warner Cable. “We want New York to be at the forefront of where we roll out our new products and services.”

That notion has left consumer groups and telecommunications unions scratching their heads.

“They are saying that this is going to open the flood gates to more investment,” said Bob Master, political director for one chapter of the Communications Workers of America, which represents Verizon workers. “It’s ridiculous.”

Master says Verizon has been abandoning and ignoring their landline network for years, preferring to invest in Verizon Wireless and its limited FiOS fiber-to-the-home service which is available in only selected areas of the state.

New York’s Public Service Commission has largely not regulated competing phone service since Time Warner Cable first introduced the service as an experiment in Rochester.  As part of then-Rochester Telephone Corporation’s (now Frontier Communications) “Open Market” Plan, competing telephone companies could offer landline service in the company’s service area, so long as Rochester Telephone received the same deregulation benefits.  Only the cable company showed serious interest in providing home phone service, which it first delivered using traditional digital phone switches phone companies like Verizon and Rochester Telephone use.  Time Warner later abandoned that service for a VoIP alternative it branded as “digital phone.”

Time Warner’s “digital phone,” as well as Verizon’s own VoIP service sold with FiOS, have co-existed regulation-free.  Consumer advocates suspect the push to deregulate could eventually benefit Verizon more than cable operators, because it gives the phone company the right to question why any of its telephone services are regulated.  Verizon’s FiOS fiber-based phone lines do not operate on the same network its still-regulated landlines do.  Verizon, along with all traditional phone companies in New York, are subject to “universal service” guidelines which assure even the most rural New Yorkers have access to reliable telephone service.

But Verizon, like most traditional phone companies, sees substantial investment in “modernizing” legacy copper-based networks as an anachronism, especially as they continue to lose customers switching to cheaper cable providers or wireless phones.  The company recently declared its fiber optic replacement network, FiOS, at the end of its expansion phase.  That leaves the majority of New Yorkers with a copper-based telephone network companies only invest enough in to keep functioning.

Diaz

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., joined many New York Assembly Democrats in strong opposition to the bill, which Diaz thinks undercuts New York consumers:

If this proposal were to become law, all consumers would lose out. For starters, customers would not be able to bring service complaints to the Public Service Commission, as they currently can with traditional service. Additionally, there would be no way for the state to set standards for quality or for service in underserved regions — meaning that customers could get stuck with exorbitantly high rates or be unable to obtain service at all in some areas of the state.

Verizon FiOS, one of the main options for VoIP coverage, has now been installed in many regions of the state, including most of downstate. However, Verizon has chosen not offer the service in upstate cities like Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Utica. The result is both a virtual monopoly for the cable companies in those areas and another blow to lower-income working families who live in cities. That’s precisely why the state should be able to guarantee common sense regulations for VoIP service.

The problems with deregulating VoIP service are multifold. While traditional phone companies pay into a fund that supports “lifeline” phone access for elderly and disadvantaged New Yorkers, VoIP providers would not have to. We do not have to guess at how things would look if the state gives up its right to regulate internet phone service — we can just look at the states where traditional land line service has been deregulated. According to a recent survey of 20 states that have seen land line deregulation, 17 of those states have seen rate increases. We simply cannot afford that, particularly when our fragile national recovery is just beginning to take hold.

Verizon appears undeterred by the governor’s decision to pull the deregulation measure from consideration in his budget measure.  Bills to deregulate continue to float through the Republican-controlled Senate and Democratic-controlled Assembly, but New York’s legislature is notoriously indecisive and slow to act.  Time Warner’s Whelan believes the best chances for the deregulatory measure will be in the GOP-controlled Senate where a similar bill passed last year.  Verizon says it will continue to push for the bill in both chambers.

“We intend to continue pushing for this important measure, and for other measures that will benefit the state’s consumers and businesses to keep up with technological change and help the state thrive and succeed,” Bonomo said.

West Virginia continues to be broadband challenged, with or without the help of Frontier Communications’ DSL service, which continues to be criticized for being woefully “oversold.”

Now some of Frontier’s most frustrated customers have found Facebook, and hope to encourage the company to deliver better speeds through their Fix Frontier DSL Now page.

Customers are especially peeved in areas where they are sold “up to 12Mbps” service, but cannot break 1Mbps during peak usage times when inadequate infrastructure cannot support customer usage demands.  Some are taking their complaints to the West Virginia Public Service Commission:

I am a long-time subscriber to Frontier Communications’ “High-speed Internet Max” DSL service. I live in the Frankford, West Virginia, telephone exchange (304-497-XXXX), which is an area that has always been served by Frontier. We never had Verizon service at my home.

When Frontier installed DSL service in our area, we immediately cancelled our satellite Internet service and signed up. Initially, we had business-class DSL which was very satisfactory. Later, we discontinued our business operation and downgraded to the residential “High-Speed Internet Max” DSL service. That remained quite satisfactory until about a year and a half ago, when service quality deteriorated to the point of being unusable.

During the evening hours, we generally log download speeds of anywhere from 150kbps (0.15MBPS) to 450kbps (0.45MBPS) , with around 300kbps (0.3MBPS) being the norm. This is barely adequate for accessing a static web page, and is totally inadequate for common tasks such as watching a video on YouTube or even streaming music. Speeds do improve, sometimes into the range of 1500kbps (1.5MBPS), in the middle of the night and the afternoons, when we are generally asleep or at work, but are consistently unusable during the evening hours when we are home.

Customers pay around $40 a month for this level of broadband service, and customers calling for assistance are being told to wait:

I have called Frontier’s tech support and opened numerous trouble tickets. Each time, a technician will come out to our house, test the line, pronounce it “perfect” from the house to the switching station, then explain that the problem is lack of bandwidth. Sometimes they say the bottleneck is in Bluefield. Sometimes they say it is between Marlinton and Ashburn, Virginia. In other words, Frontier does not have enough bandwidth available to meet customer needs.

The last time we put in a trouble ticket, the technician didn’t even come to our home. He just called and said he would put the ticket on the stack with all of the other ones, and perhaps the problem would be solved in a couple of years. A couple of years? Yet, I am constantly bombarded with ads asking me to buy Frontier’s high-speed DSL service at rates as low as half of what I pay.

As Stop the Cap! has reported previously, Frontier has acknowledged the problems in West Virginia and promised backbone upgrades to handle the influx of new customers, particularly those adopted from Verizon Communications in 2010 when the company purchased their landline network in the state.  But a schedule of promised upgrades disappeared off Frontier’s website, and according to our readers, continues to be overdue.

The loudest complainers are offered $5 monthly service credits for their troubles, but customers don’t want the money, they want something that actually qualifies as “broadband service.”

Here is how you can tell where your problem might be:

Technical Line Fault Symptoms (these can be corrected by a local technician’s service call to your home)

1. Consistently low speeds that do not vary much with time of day or on weekends;
2. Weather-related service interruptions or slowdowns – poor quality cables, fittings, and other problems are often most visible during the wet spring months;
3. Loud hum or static on your voice line when making or receiving calls;
4. Hearing conversations from other customers on your phone line;

Oversold Broadband (these problems require Frontier to regionally address problems that affect a much larger group of customers)

1. Dramatically reduced speeds during evenings and weekends that consistently speed up later at night or during the workday;
2. Similar speed-related issues affecting friends and neighbors in the same neighborhood or community;
3. Pages that do not load completely, time out, or require refreshing to load properly;
4. “Tracert” reports that indicate certain upstream connections Frontier uses to connect to its national network are timing out or require multiple attempts to get through.

Won 1.1 million new customers in 2011

Comcast and Time Warner Cable collectively picked up more than 1.5 million new customers in 2011, with most of the growth coming from dissatisfied DSL subscribers seeking better broadband speeds.

Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG) found the eighteen largest cable and telephone providers in the US — representing about 93% of the market — acquired 3 million net additional high-speed Internet subscribers in 2011. Annual net broadband additions in 2011 were 88% of the total in 2010.

The top broadband providers now account for 78.6 million subscribers — with cable companies having over 44.3 million broadband subscribers, and telephone companies having over 34.3 million subscribers.

Stalled growth

Despite AT&T’s position as the second largest Internet Service Provider in the country, the company only picked up 117,000 new customers in 2011.  In contrast, Time Warner Cable, with 6 million fewer customers, added almost a half-million new broadband subscriptions last year.

Frontier Communications, which made broadband a primary target for expansion, has not seen considerable growth either.  The company only added just short of 38,000 new broadband customers last year, almost all getting DSL, often at speeds of 1-3Mbps.

Other key findings include:

• The top cable companies netted 75% of the broadband additions in 2011;
• The top cable companies added 2.3 million broadband subscribers in 2011 — 98% of the total net additions for the top cable companies in 2010;
• The top telephone providers added 750,000 broadband subs in 2011 — 68% of the total net additions for the top telephone companies in 2010;
• In the fourth quarter of 2011, cable and telephone providers added 765,000 broadband subscribers — with cable companies accounting for 82% of the broadband additions in the quarter.

Now serving 10.3 million

“Despite a high level of broadband penetration in the US, the top broadband providers added 88% as many subscribers in 2011 as in 2010,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “At the end of 2011, the top broadband providers in the US cumulatively had over 78.6 million subscribers, an increase of nearly 25 million over the past five years.”

Americans are increasingly treating broadband as an essential “utility” service, as fundamental as electricity or clean water.

The majority of consumers who lack the service either consider it irrelevant in their lives (a factor that increases with the age of the surveyed respondent), cannot obtain service from their provider because of their location, or cannot afford the service.

Sources: The Companies and Leichtman Research Group, Inc.
* LRG estimate
** Includes LRG estimates for Bright House Networks, and RCN
^ Totals prior to Time Warner Cable’s acquisition of Insight completed on 2/29/2012
^^ LRG estimate does not include wireless subscribers
Company subscriber counts may not represent solely residential households
Totals reflect pro forma results from system sales and acquisitions
Top cable and telephone companies represent approximately 93% of all subscribers

Frontier Communications left dozens of businesses in the city of Rochester without phone service for well over a week because of a flooded cable the company struggled to repair.

Frontier says a flooded manhole along Interstate 490 was responsible for the outage, which primarily affected customers in the Park/Meigs Avenue District in southeastern Rochester.

But businesses are wondering why it took more than a week to bypass the damage and get phone service restored.

“We haven’t been able to get calls at all,” Stacy Ercan, owner of Stacy K Floral told WHAM News. “They have to forward our calls to the cell phone. But the cell phone can only answer one call at a time, so we’re definitely missing calls.”

“I’ve called 27 times in the last week [about the outage] and every time I get a different answer,” reported another business owner.

Some businesses say the Frontier service outage cost them more than inconvenience.  One owner reported up to an 80% drop in her business while others complained they were unable to process credit card transactions.

WHAM in Rochester covers Frontier’s extended service outage that afflicted customers in southeast Rochester for over a week.  (2 minutes)

Frontier Communications faced unhappy investors Thursday after announcing it was slashing its dividend nearly in half in an effort to raise money to sustain the company’s cash flow and reduce its debt.

The company’s earnings fell 8.1% as customers continued to leave for the competition, seeking better service and lower prices.

The poor earnings results and the dividend cuts delivered a one-two punch to Frontier stock, which slid to $4.20 a share, down 16 percent in the last three months.

Among Frontier’s biggest challenges remains the quality of its broadband service to customers.  Where competition exists, Frontier DSL continues to lose the speed battle, and recent junk fees padding customer bills, including a “High Speed Internet surcharge,” and increasing modem rental fees have alienated some customers.

Frontier’s chief operating officer and executive vice president Dan McCarthy told investors 83 percent of Frontier’s service area has access to the company’s broadband product.  However, fewer than 20% of Frontier’s customers have access to speeds as high as 20Mbps.  Only just over half can access the Internet at 6Mbps.  Many of Frontier’s customers can only access lower speed service (66% can choose 4Mbps, 76% — 3Mbps, and the rest 768kbps-3Mbps).

“We’ll be investing throughout the year to improve speed-reaching capability in all our markets,” McCarthy told investors on a conference call last week.

In the second half of 2010, Frontier is expected to increase the amount of Ethernet in its middle mile network, which McCarthy expects will allow the company to deliver faster speeds over VDSL2 and VDSL2 bonding as means of driving both speed increases in the residential and the commercial markets.

However, Frontier’s preoccupation with an internal system conversion, to integrate its acquired Verizon service areas with the rest of its network, has stalled much of the company’s marketing.  Promotions, in particular, have been anemic over the last several months and will likely remain that way until later this year.  Where competition exists, cable operators have successfully been picking off Frontier’s customers.

• Broadband and satellite TV additions are down, in part due to the lack of promotions and marketing;
• FiOS video losses continue as the company shuns its fiber video service in favor of satellite TV cross-marketing;
• Line loss rates remain very high: 8.3% of Frontier’s customers disconnected their landline service in the last quarter, 5.9% in areas that were not acquired from Verizon.
• Once customers leave, they rarely return.  Churn rate of Frontier customers coming and going is at just 1.6%.

As with similar Verizon landline sales in the past, initial revenue growth from acquired customers starts out high, boosting revenue numbers and often the value of a company’s stock.  But the heavy debt load incurred from acquisitions and ongoing line losses to the competition eventually take their toll, and Frontier’s revenue now reflects the reality of a company trying to sell more services to a declining number of customers.

Morningstar notes the company’s debt problems are significant:

Frontier has struggled to bring leverage down and hasn’t successfully placed new debt since closing the Verizon transaction in 2010. Management has talked about taking care of the $580 million maturity it faces in early 2013 for the better part of a year, with no result to date. Yields on the firm’s existing debt have increased over the past year, despite the sharp decline in Treasury rates.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services reduced its outlook on the company from stable to negative, noting the competition is increasingly hurting Frontier’s capability to raise revenue.

The company’s decision to slash its dividend in an effort to reduce debt has created consternation for some investors who stuck with the company when the share price was above $7 and the dividend was declared safe for two years.  Neither seems to the be case any longer.

CenturyLink runs specials on their website that offer extra savings when ordered online.

Your $50 monthly broadband bill has been burning a hole in your wallet and you think there should be a cheaper price available somewhere, right?

The answer is, for most of us, there is.  You just have to look.

The most expensive Internet access around comes when you buy broadband-only service from a provider.  Both cable and phone companies have been incrementally punishing their “broadband-only” customers for years, tacking on $5, $10, even $15 to the price because you have chosen not to bundle broadband with other services the company sells.  It is not unusual to see some cable companies charging $55-60 for standard Internet service.  When you call to inquire, they are sure to begin aggressively upselling you to a bundled service package, arguing you can add cable TV and phone service for $20-30 more a month.  That sounds like a better deal, unless you honestly don’t care about either service.

Welcome to the world of marketing, where the “value perception” is key to driving the average revenue collected from each subscriber higher and higher.  You end up buying services you probably would not have considered, but because they seem so inexpensive when compared with the price of the service you are interested in, why not?

Phone companies do the same thing, but many of them also love to bury hidden charges in the fine print and commit you to 1-3 years of service to guarantee the advertised price.  Companies like Frontier Communications may pitch DSL service for just $15 a month, but keep reading and you will discover the taxes and fees raise that price substantially.  In fact, that particular phone company is notorious for charging substantial modem rental fees and what they call a “High Speed Internet” surcharge.  To get the lowest price from them, you will be a Frontier customer for at least a year, depending on the promotional offer selected.

Frontier redefines "value": This attractive looking offer "fine prints" the $6.30 modem rental fee, is for service "up to" 1Mbps (so much for "high speed"), has a one-year service commitment with a $50 early termination fee, and does not include unspecified "taxes and surcharges" which run extra.

You can break free of the marketing circus by concentrating on finding the best possible deal for the service(s) you really care about.

1. Check advertising offers on television and in newspapers, but always read the fine print;
2. Visit the website of each local provider and look for “Internet-only” offers that may deliver extra savings, but only when you order online;
3. Call providers and ask them about their various deals and inquire “is this the best offer you have right now?;”
4. Use search engines and type in your provider’s name and words like “deals,” “offers,” or “promotion.”  Third party authorized resellers may have an offer that works better for you.

Sometimes you can get excellent results playing providers off each other.  Try contacting the social media representatives of different providers in your area to unlock hidden deals, and more importantly, customer retention offers.  One Rochester reader of ours got Time Warner Cable to open negotiations to keep his business with this tweet:

Getting ready to schedule my @TWCable disconnect after rate increase – should I go with @dishnetwork over @DirecTV or vice versa?

He received a substantial retention offer within hours of alerting Time Warner of his discontent (he’s also a rabid hockey fan, and the ongoing MSG-Time Warner Cable dispute made satellite an attractive alternative.)

KNXV in Phoenix helped residents in that Arizona city figure out who was cheaper, CenturyLink or Cox Cable.  And what about using mobile broadband for a home broadband replacement?  (3 minutes)

Ethernet over Copper is becoming an increasingly popular choice for business customers stuck in areas where companies won't deploy fiber broadband (Graphic: OSP Magazine)

With Verizon and AT&T effectively stalling expansion of their respective “next generation” fiber and hybrid fiber/coax networks, and independent phone companies fearing too much capital spent improving their networks will drive their stock prices down, telephone companies are desperately seeking better options to deliver the faster broadband service customers demand.

The options over a copper-based landline network are not the best:

• ADSL has been around for more than a decade and is highly distant dependent. Get beyond 10,000 feet from the nearest switching office and your speeds may not even qualify as “broadband;”
• DSL variants represent the second generation for copper-broadband and can deliver faster speeds, but usually require investment to reduce the amount of copper between the customer and the switching office;
• Fiber networks are more expensive to build, and some companies are using it to reduce, but not eliminate copper wire in their networks. But companies traditionally avoid this solution in rural/suburban areas because the cost/benefit analysis doesn’t work for shareholders;
• Ethernet Over Copper (EoC) is increasingly the solution of choice for independent phone companies because it is less expensive to deploy than fiber and can quickly deliver service at speeds of up to 50Mbps.

Unfortunately for consumers, EoC is typically way above the price range for home broadband.  Most providers sell the faster service to commercial and institutional customers, either for businesses that have outgrown T1 lines or where deploying fiber does not make economic sense.  Some companies have tried to improve on DSL by bonding multiple connections together to achieve faster speeds, but Ethernet is quickly becoming a more important tool in the broadband marketing arsenal.

With phone companies pricing EoC service from several hundred to several thousand dollars a month, depending on the speed of the connection, they hope to remain competitive players against a push by the cable industry to more aggressively target business customers.  In more rural areas, phone companies lack cable competition, so they stand a better chance of success.

Fierce Telecom‘s Sean Buckley published an excellent series of articles outlining the current state of EoC technology and what phone companies are doing with it:

• AT&T: Inherited EoC from its acquisition of BellSouth, and barely markets it. Instead, AT&T uses it as a quiet solution for challenging customers who cannot affordably be reached by fiber.  AT&T will either deliver the service over copper, copper/fiber, or an all-fiber path depending on the client’s needs.
• CenturyLink: No phone company is as aggressive about EoC as CenturyLink. When CenturyLink acquired Qwest, interest in the technology only intensified. EoC is a CenturyLink favorite for small businesses that simply cannot get the speeds they need from traditional DSL.  Most EoC service runs up to 20Mbps.
• Verizon: Verizon’s network is the most fiber-intense among large commercial providers, so EoC is not the first choice for the company. However, it does use it to reach multi-site businesses who have buildings and offices outside of the footprint of Verizon’s fiber network/service area.
• Frontier: In the regions where Frontier acquired Verizon landlines, EoC has become an important component for Frontier’s backhaul traffic. EoC has been deployed to reach cell tower sites and handles broadband traffic between central office exchanges and remote D-SLAMs, used to let the company sell DSL to a more rural customer base.  Frontier looks to EoC before considering spending money on fiber service, even for commercial and institutional users.
• Windstream: EoC is the way this phone company gets better broadband speeds to business customers without spending a lot of money on fiber. Small and medium-sized customers are often buyers of EoC service, especially when DSL can’t handle the job or the company requires faster upstream speeds.  Windstream markets upgradable EoC capable of delivering the same downstream and upstream speeds and can deliver it more quickly than a fiber project.
• FairPoint: Much of this phone company’s EoC efforts are in territories in northern New England acquired from Verizon.  FairPoint targets small and medium sized companies for the service, especially those who have remote offices or clinics that need to be interconnected. FairPoint has also gotten more aggressive than many other companies working with ADSL2+ or VDSL2 to deliver faster broadband to office buildings and complexes more economically than fiber.
• SureWest: This company is strong believer in fiber to the premises service, so its interest in EoC has been limited to areas where deploying fiber makes little economic sense. In more out-of-the-way places, EoC is becoming a more common choice to pitch businesses who need more than traditional broadband.
• Hawaiian Telcom: HawTel uses copper-based EoC to provide connectivity across the diverse Hawaiian Islands.  Speeds are generally lower than in mainland areas, partly because HawTel still relies heavily on traditional copper-based service. But fiber-based EoC is increasingly available in more densely populated areas.

Broadband life in Frankford, Greenbrier County, W.V. may be slow, but few customers of Frontier Communications thought things could get even slower.  And then they did.

Stop the Cap! reader DJ has been frustrated with the performance of his phone company — Frontier, that took control of Verizon’s landline network across the state.  Verizon rarely got the hopes up for customers waiting more than a decade for broadband service to reach them.  Dana Waldo, Frontier’s senior vice president and general manager did, telling West Virginians Frontier would propel the Mountain State from its current rank of 47th in the country to the top 5.  Achieving that goal seems unlikely when the company quietly reduces some customers’ broadband speeds.

“We are on the High Speed Max plan which gives us, or should I say gave us 3.5Mbps,” DJ shares.  Although his phone line supported that speed, Frontier’s congested network could not, especially at night when speeds dropped dramatically.  It took several months for Frontier to upgrade local facilities in the county to better manage the broadband demands of customers who pay $110 a month for DSL and phone service.

Frontier representatives promised the Pocahontas Times further upgrades were on the way by February of 2011, DJ says. February came and went and promised speeds of 5Mbps never arrived and Frontier representatives told DJ they didn’t know a thing about a 5Mbps broadband plan.

Fast forward to last spring: Frontier’s website suddenly advertised speeds up to 12Mbps.

Frontier's Mysterious Upgrade List

“I first contacted them through their Twitter account and was told I could receive 8Mbps, went through all the processes and a few days later I was told I [already] had the maximum speed available for my area and nothing was ever done,” DJ writes.

The Phantom “Network Upgrades” List

More discouraging to DJ was the surprise appearance of a Network Upgrades listing on the company’s website that again promised better days for customers in states like West Virginia.

“The geniuses at Frontier listed us as Frankfort instead of Frankford but either way we were listed to get upgrades at the end of [this past] November,” DJ says. “The date came, the date passed. Never once did I see a Frontier truck out working. I still found myself [with] 3.5Mbps and after being lied to about upgrades for the third time in a few years I was ticked.”

Frontier representatives would later wonder where DJ obtained the Network Upgrades list, which has since disappeared from the company’s website.  Stop the Cap! has an archived copy here (PDF).

The worst part of DJ’s story came on Jan. 24, when Frontier reduced his speed from 3.5Mbps to 1.3Mbps without notice or explanation.  Frontier, the phone company that provides free speed decreases for customers, is not part of any marketing plan DJ knows about, so he began calling the company for answers.

“I was told my speed would be fixed when “upgrades” were complete,” DJ reports. Later that day, after a series of complaint calls, his old speed returned, leaving him right where he started in 2010.

“There is no excuse for that kind of treatment and it has been going on for years,” DJ says. “It’s a shame we can’t get anything else; Suddenlink literally stops serving just down the road with 10Mbps service — sad.”

[Updated 3/26 2:31pm ET:  Changed piece to reflect unincorporated Frankford is actually in Greenbrier County, not Pocahontas.]

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.

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