Frontier Communications has found a new way to make a little extra from customers who disconnect their Internet service.

According to a document obtained exclusively by Stop the Cap!, Frontier will charge a $9.99 “Broadband Processing Fee” for new customers shutting off their Internet service starting Nov. 1. Customers that order Internet service from Frontier after Oct. 1 are supposed to be notified about the new fee during a review of their order. Existing customers are not affected.

This fee is above and beyond any early termination fees contract customers may face for ending service before the end of a service contract.

According to Frontier, broadband services subject to the new fee include:

• DSL
• “Simply Broadband” (broadband-only service)
• FiOS Data
• Frontier Satellite Broadband
• Frontier Tandem (VoIP)
• Wi-Fi (Commercial accounts only — basic, sponsored hot spots, etc.)

Suddenlink is throwing a hissyfit over Frontier’s aggressive advertising.

Now come on, you are both pretty… slow that is.

Suddenlink Communications is crawling mad that Frontier Communications has been hammering the cable company over their broadband speeds, which PC Magazine this week proclaimed were nothing to write home about. The cable operator successfully challenged some of Frontier’s ads with the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

The group recommended Frontier cease making claims that its DSL service offers “dedicated” lines to the Internet in contrast to Suddenlink, which forces customers to share their connection with the whole neighborhood.

Frontier claims Suddenlink’s network can bog down during peak hours, while Frontier makes sure customers consistently get the speeds they pay for.

Many of the ads targeted customers in West Virginia, who regularly tell Stop the Cap! neither provider competing there offers particularly good service.

“Is Frontier kidding?,” says Shane Foster, a former Frontier customer in West Virginia. “I was supposed to be getting up to 6Mbps service and I was lucky to get 1.5Mbps at 2 am.”

Foster says he believes Frontier oversold its DSL network in his area, with speeds slowing even further during the evening and weekends when everyone got online. While Frontier may not require customers to share a line from their home to the company’s central office, congestion can occur within Frontier’s local exchange or on the connection Frontier maintains with Internet backbone providers.

“The technician sent to my house even privately admitted it,” Foster tells Stop the Cap!

Foster switched to Suddenlink, but he is not exactly a happy customer there either.

“Their usage caps suck, the service is slow, and their measurement tool is always broken,” Foster shares. “West Virginia doesn’t just get the bottom of the barrel, it gets the dirt underneath it.”

Frontier Communications says it has been making improvements in West Virginia and other states where it provides DSL broadband. Some areas can now subscribe to 25Mbps service because of network upgrades. Foster says he would dump Suddenlink and go back to Frontier, if they can deliver speeds the rest of the country gets.

“Sorry, but 1.5Mbps is not broadband and with their prices, tricky fees and contracts it is robbery,” says Foster. “They need to clean up their act and I’ll come back. I hate usage caps with a passion.”

Frontier says it will appeal the NAD’s decision. But Frontier might do better advertising its broadband service as usage cap free — something customers consistently value over those running Internet Overcharging schemes.

PC Magazine has declared fiber to the home service America’s fastest broadband technology, and among larger providers, Verizon’s FiOS once again took top honors for delivering the fastest and most consistent broadband speeds.

Over the past nine months, the magazine’s readers have been conducting regular speed tests using their personal broadband connections. The magazine found fiber optics remains the best current technology for delivering cutting-edge broadband service, with an average speed rating for FiOS reaching 29.4/16.7Mbps. Since PC Magazine readers were subscribed to various speed tiers while conducting the tests, the magazine’s ratings do not measure the fastest possible speeds on offer from different providers. Verizon’s most-popular service bundle includes 15/5Mbps service, heavily weighting Verizon’s speed rating which is capable of even faster speeds with their 50-300Mbps premium service tiers. But on average, consistently fast speeds kept them in the top spot.

Cable broadband technology was the second-best choice, depending on how cable operators implement it. Cable companies depend on a singl, shared broadband pipeline in each neighborhood. DOCSIS 3 upgrades allow a cable operator to vastly expand that pipeline by “bonding” several channels together to increase the maximum bandwidth. Cable operators that combine the latest technology with the smallest number of customers sharing a connection do the best.

Midcontinent Communications (better known by customers as Midco), achieved first place nationwide. The company, which serves customers in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Wisconsin, took top honors with an average speed of 24.7/4.4Mbps — the best of any cable operator.

Ratings sometimes show the level of investment made by cable operators in their network. A sudden boost in average speeds is a sure sign a cable operator is rolling out network upgrades. A speed decline can expose a cable company trying to oversell an already constrained network. Charter Cable, which has routinely gotten poor ratings in Consumer Reports’ rankings, showed dramatic improvement in PC Magazine’s ratings, achieving third place with an average speed increase from 15Mbps to 18.5Mbps. But while the added speed is nice, the company’s usage caps are not. Conversely, WOW!, which achieved top scores in Consumer Reports’ ratings, scored towards the bottom of PC Magazine’s tests.

Comcast, which last year trumpeted its high rankings in controversial ads claiming to deliver the fastest broadband in the nation has now been overrun by both Midco and Charter. Comcast Xfinity is now in sixth place, hardly the fodder for any future ad campaign.

Cox Cable actually lost ground since last year, with average speed now down to 14.8Mbps. The bottom four: Time Warner Cable, Mediacom, WOW!, and Suddenlink — are all hampered by slow upload speeds and more anemic “take-rates” on higher speed broadband plans with the speeds on offer. With fewer premium speed customers, average speed ratings take a hit from the larger proportion of customers sticking with standard service.

Phone companies barely appeared in the magazine’s top ratings. AT&T’s U-verse could not even make the top-15. While 25Mbps was adequate when U-verse was first deployed, the broadband speed race has quickly overshadowed the company’s fiber to the neighborhood service, which still relies on home phone lines and antiquated copper infrastructure in the immediate neighborhood.

Phone companies still offering traditional ADSL on almost all-copper networks turned in even more dismal results — most too low to rate. Only Frontier’s adopted FiOS network kept them in the rankings in the overall broadband “slow zone” in the Pacific Northwest, along with CenturyLink’s acquired ADSL2+ and bonded DSL networks built by Qwest.

ISPs that perform poorly typically criticize the methodology of voluntary speed tests as the basis for speed and performance ranking. Most criticize the apparent lack of consistency, random sampling, the possibility rankings may be weighted in certain geographic areas, and may mix a disproportionate number of customers with standard or premium level speeds to unfairly boost or diminish average speed rankings. But overall, PC Magazine’s rankings show some technologies superior to others. If a customer has a choice, finding a fiber to the home provider is likely to provide an improvement over what the cable company offers, but the differences between phone company DSL and cable broadband are even starker.

The FCC speed test program, conducted by SamKnows, takes more regular snapshots of broadband quality from volunteer panelists. Your editor’s home broadband connection from Time Warner Cable is profiled above, showing results from January-September 2012

Frontier Communications is targeting promotional offers to customers that have been impacted by cable service outages and rate hikes, despite having a relatively poor service record itself.

Frontier president and chief operating officer Dan McCarthy told investors attending the recent Goldman Sachs Communicopia Conference the company was pulling out all the stops looking for surgical marketing opportunities.

“People don’t wake up every day, and say, ‘I want to switch broadband providers.’ It’s really about finding what is that lever to pull. Sometimes it’s a message at a key point — it could be during an outage, it could be during change of prices for them. It could be there are some substandard speeds that are being offered,” McCarthy said. “We are looking at what is the right mix of messaging and promotional offers that really allow us to do that. I think you’ll see us be pretty aggressive in that area,” he added.

But Frontier itself has had plenty of service problems, and was the only major Internet provider in the country to have lost ground in a July FCC report measuring broadband quality. The company continues to face extensive service outages when fiber cables are cut or copper wiring is stolen by thieves. Recent storms this past summer disrupted 277 Frontier central offices in the Carolinas, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The repair work, including overtime and equipment, is expected to cost the company at least $15 million.

Frontier reports it expected to replace at least 167,000 feet of damaged or stolen copper cable and purchased 203,000 backup power generators to keep central exchanges up and running during extended electric outages.

This week, a major service outage struck customers in parts of Ft. Wayne, Ind. after an accident severed an important cable.

A number of customers in Frontier service areas have already disconnected their landlines with the company, but where cable companies do not provide service, Frontier reports it is having success selling a standalone DSL product it dubs, “Simply Broadband.”

“We are seeing success in attracting and retaining customers with this product and it is having a positive impact on our Q3 residential customer counts,” Frontier reports in an SEC filing.

Frontier has also recently announced speed boosts in several states that can deliver up to 25Mbps DSL service to certain customers.

They may not have the fastest broadband experience around, but Frontier Communications is trying to find an edge in the market delivering innovative services that will keep you satisfied with your service. The phone company today unveiled Frontier Games, an all-you-can-play PC gaming service.

In partnership with Exent, the new service will offer unlimited access to more than 2,300 PC games, including Family Feud, Slingo Supreme, and King’s Bounty for $14.99 a month. You can enjoy casino games similar to those available on UFA บาคาร่าออนไลน์.

To be fair, most of the available games are not titles one would clamor for on their home game console, and many of the titles seem to skew towards the very young and those in their 40’s on up. However, with categories for arcade games, card and casino titles, and role-playing, there is plenty to experience, including options for exploring a diverse range of interests, from gaming enthusiasts to fans of แพลตฟอร์มสปอร์ตบุ๊คอย่าง UFABET.

Why is Frontier getting into the online gaming business?

‘We’re excited to expand our partnership with Exent to launch an enhanced Frontier Games and provide customers with access to the best casual games from around the world,” said Melinda White, executive vice president of revenue development at Frontier — her title says it all.

To maintain a competitive edge, Frontier is seeking to differentiate itself from being just another Internet Service Provider. If the company can offer additional products and services not available from the cable competition, customers may think twice about switching providers.

All of the games are designed to work well regardless of connection speed — an important factor for a rural landline company that routinely sells 1-3Mbps DSL service in smaller communities.

A 14-day free trial is available from the company’s sign-up page. We found many of the games offered rudimentary graphics and certainly could not compete with some of today’s most advanced console games, but the joker123 casino and card games we sampled worked fine for the casual player. With the prevalence of “free online games” scattered across the web packed with adware (or worse), https://leveluppcasino.com offers a safe alternative for anyone looking for a spyware free experience.

Parental controls are also available, and the library of games is regularly refreshed. If you’re diving into the minecraft world and want to explore additional features, including riding animals, here’s how to make saddle on minecraft. This can add a new layer of excitement to your gameplay while ensuring a safe and enjoyable experience for players of all ages.

CenturyLink, also an Exent partner, developed their gaming service slightly differently, throwing in several free Exent games as a promotional tool. Verizon also offers the gaming service for the same price Frontier charges.