Our ISP Options Suck. Tell Me What It's Like Anyway... (Denver: work, house)

[enigmakairos]

So in my future neck-o-the woods, there's DSL from Qwest, Cable Modem from Comcrud, and apparently there's WiPoP from a company called Kellin Communications, based out of Larkspur.

Can anyone report to me what speeds they're actually getting (vs the maximums they advertise) from any of the above providers? This is particularly useful if you're in the Castle Rock area, but I'll appreciate info from all. I need to figure out the least evil of my options...



...it's hard to break a 15Mbps down/5 up bandwidth addition.

[Moonwalkr]

Have comcast here, SE denver metro, getting around 9Mb/s down and 2Mb/s up.

[enigmakairos]

Thanks

( oh, and in my original post, that should have been "addiction" and not addition. )

[COflower]

I live in Colorado Springs but I would think the options with Qwest should be similar in the Denver area, you can check their website Qwest High Speed Internet Services to see if it's available at a specific location.

I have the 1.5 Mbs option that running on an old Cisco modem. Actual test to a Dallas server via PCPitstop.com came to 1145 on the down and 733 on the up. Keep in mind that speeds will vary from time of day to even th next day. The nice thing about Qwest versus Comcast is my speeds are more constant because of the nature of their networks.

In addition, the value I have personally with Qwest is I have had far fewer customer service calls and when I do have to call, their CS seems to be far quicker and less likely to end up with someone having to physically come out.

I don't do a lot in terms of downloading from sources like the iPod site and such but I do web design so I have to kind of be in the middle. I work with it pretty well and knock on wood, very, very few outages since I started up in 2002. They had an A/C unit break at the CO (central office) so that sucked but mostly my internet has been extremely stable.

[enigmakairos]

Originally Posted by COflower

I live in Colorado Springs but I would think the options with Qwest should be similar in the Denver area, you can check their website Qwest High Speed Internet Services to see if it's available at a specific location.

Thanks for the info. I've already checked, and my future home is eligible for the 7Mbps service, but of course that speed depends on several factors, not the least of which is how far the house is from the CO. No one at Qwap seems to be able to give me that info. That worries me. We're pretty intensive bandwidth hogs at times (lan parties + VoIP + usually about 8 to 10 devices accessing the network at various times) and I'm accustomed to 15Mbps down, so I'm really trying to verify what folks' real speeds tend to be. My other problem with Qwap (if you don't get it, say it out loud ) is that it's DSL and they want to charge me for an installer to come out. Because it's DSL and I use my home phone wiring for my VoIP, I need a POTS splitter installed at the box, and would prefer not to do it myself since I don't know jack about dealing with bridged modules instead of a plain' ol NIU... but on the other hand, Comcrud tends to throttle their service a lot. ok, i'm rambling now.... point being, they all suck, but in critically different ways. So it's hard to choose from the dungpile.

[wankel7]

Is Fios ever coming?

[steveindenver]

I used to get 12 megs down solid with Comcast until earlier this year when they began to throttle down after 30 seconds. I suppose technically I still do get 12 megs for those 30 seconds. After that 4.5-5.