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Old 07-29-2007, 06:23 AM
 
20,793 posts, read 61,139,611 times
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Does anyone use Frontier for their cable, internet and/or phone? We have them for phone but charter for cable/internet and have had nothing but problems with Charter. I want to switch but I am concerned about going from Cable to DSL for internet and going from cable to Dish Network. Tell me the good bad and the ugly about your service. I would like to hear about Dish network service in general even if you don't have the others.
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Old 07-29-2007, 09:03 AM
 
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We have all three services from Charter: cable tv, internet, and telephone. We haven't had any major problems with the tv and internet. However, their telephone service has been pathetic. If we weren't moving away, I would be returning to Frontier for my telephone service. I have often wondered, like you, about the quality of Frontier's DSL.
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Old 07-29-2007, 10:22 AM
 
Location: Twin Cities, MN
638 posts, read 3,116,875 times
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I had Comcast for cable and TV and Qwest for my phone. Qwest couldn't or wouldn't fix the fuzzy phone lines, so I switched to Comcast with the phone and I love it: the sound is very clear all of the time.

But I'd been upset with the frequent blue screens, "tiling" (those small square boxes on stopped pictures), and "One moment please" messages on the TV for no apparent reasons, so in June I switched to Dish Network for that and am mostly happy with it. BUT the Weather Station doesn't give local weather every eight minutes (like we got on Comcast); and we still get "tiling" during heavy rain storms; but have had no blue or blank screens thus far. Of course, we haven't had much bad weather either during these past 2 months; so who knows what the Dish Network would be like if the weather had been bad. The other thing is that the channels are spread over a larger range of numbers (basically 2- 500) than cable is, so you do have to enter them on the remote rather than hitting the "up-and-down" channel-surfing button.

I've had no experience with DSL, so can't help you with that. Sorry.
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Old 07-29-2007, 01:32 PM
 
156 posts, read 790,911 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BubblesMomMoo View Post
We have all three services from Charter: cable tv, internet, and telephone. We haven't had any major problems with the tv and internet. However, their telephone service has been pathetic. If we weren't moving away, I would be returning to Frontier for my telephone service. I have often wondered, like you, about the quality of Frontier's DSL.
We just moved to the Minneapolis area in early June so I don't have a long history with Frontier but I can tell you I am NOT impressed with their DSL service. It took them 2 visits to get it hooked up properly and they double charged us (we're still trying to work that out) and the server seems to be down frequently IMHO. To top it off, if you have a question their tech service will try and hook you $20 to answer your question. The phone service is fine but I personally would not recommend Frontier for DSL.
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Old 07-30-2007, 09:56 AM
 
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Before switching a couple months ago, we had Frontier for phone and Internet and Charter for cable. Now we have Charter for all three services. The main reason why we switched was to bundle our services to save money, and because I did not want a dish through Frontier's bundled service. Here is how I think phone and Internet compare:

- Phone (Frontier): I was not very happy with Frontier's phone service. We had a bad phone line, or something, because we had the most unusual issues with our phone line. The biggest problem was that we had a quiet phone line and was often susceptible to line noise (possibly from the DSL?). The unusual problem that we had was that every once in a while, we would receive voicemail messages, usually lasting around 2-3 minutes, in which it sounded like our phone line called another person, the person would pick up the phone, say "Hello?" a few times, and then hang up. (I have no idea how this is even possible!) Sometimes our phone would ring, I would pick up, and the same thing would happen where it sounded like our phone line was making a call, but when the other party would pick up, the other party could not hear me. And other times we would not have a dial tone. Maybe it was a crossed wire somewhere, I have no idea. These were very strange issues, but some fault lies with me as I never had Frontier look into the problem (though I had already decided to switch when these strange issues arose). I also did not like that Frontier made customers sign contracts.

- Phone (Charter): I would say that Charter digital phone has been better. I can better hear the other party and the other party can better hear me because the line is louder and more crisp. Unfortunately, sometimes outside callers get a busy signal when calling our line (which shouldn't happen because we have call waiting and this has happened when we have been out of town), and there is no voicemail notification on the line. I haven't been too happy with our phone service (including cell phone service), but Charter has been better.

- Internet: Charter has been much better than Frontier. Once again, I may have had a bad phone line, which may have caused the DSL to have trouble. When DSL was working, the speeds were fine and content loaded quickly. There were many times, sometimes occurring daily, when there were lag times in connecting to the Internet via DSL. Often I would have to wait a couple minutes before I was back online and able to use the Internet. A few times I had to reset the DSL modem (turn off and turn back on) to reconnect to the Internet. Very annoying. I have not had any trouble with Charter Internet so far, though I have only had service for a couple months. I am much happier with Charter Internet.
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Old 07-30-2007, 05:40 PM
 
20,793 posts, read 61,139,611 times
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Great so basically it is either bad or worse for my choices. We had our old phone, internet, cable through one company in our old town and in 7 years NEVER had a problem with any of them. We have had Charter out 4 times and none of them have fixed the problem. Now they want to run a new cable line under our driveway but we have been with patchy service for 2 weeks and it will be another week and a half before they can fix it. THEN I called to see why they jacked up my bill $40/MONTH and why a NEW customer with 3 services can get them for a lower price then an existing customer with a perfect pay history can get for 2 and they can't seem to do anything about that either. Having frontier would save us $80/MONTH over charter but if the service is just as bad it might not be worth switching. I wish we had another option.
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Old 07-30-2007, 09:40 PM
 
118 posts, read 387,598 times
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Maybe Frontier Internet will work for you if you are already happy with their phone service. I just know that our line was bad to begin with, so maybe you would be fine. Is there any way to take Frontier Internet for a test drive? And many people rave about satellite TV.

One option to cut your bill with Charter is to threaten to cancel your service. They have retention plans that, at least temporarily, will drastically reduce your monthly cable bill. That's what happened when I informed them that the antenna in my garage worked and that I was planning to cancel my cable.

Another option is satellite-based Internet, though I think that this is still pretty pricy.

One last option is to go with cell phones only for phone service, assuming that you already have cell phones. Some people have safety concerns regarding cell phones, but with E-911 technology, 911 dispatchers can trace the origin of the call even from a cell phone. You can cut out the landline that way.

Aside from those options, you could be out of luck. Before I had moved to the south metro, I had never heard of Charter and Frontier. They both seem fine, but I think that I preferred Qwest and Time Warner (not that TW is an option anymore).
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Old 07-31-2007, 05:07 AM
 
20,793 posts, read 61,139,611 times
Reputation: 10693
We haven't had any issues at all with our phone from Frontier. I just wish we had more options. We had 2 cable companies in our old town and that kept the prices down too. Our phone, internet and cable in our old town ran $70/month compared to $180/month here--it is just ridiculous!
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Old 07-31-2007, 02:47 PM
 
3 posts, read 27,367 times
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Default Charter is horrible....

I used to live in FL and just moved to Rosemount. In FL I had Comcast. I had no problems. I can't even describe my problems with Charter...I had to be on the phone with them for over 500 minutes to just get set up. They did not show up on 3 occassions. They tried to charge me a full month when I had no service.

I will never use charter again. Dish is not the best either..but anythings gotta be better then Charter.

The ONLY thing I can say to any of you is...in lakeville there is a charter office. NEVER call Charter. Go speak to the ladies there. They're nice.
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Old 07-31-2007, 03:41 PM
 
370 posts, read 899,940 times
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I asked this sort of question a while ago but never got much so I'm glad to see this get answered here. We were Bellsouth/DSL & DirecTV in Hollywood Florida but I was thinking to do the Comcast thing here (Orono). We may not even do a landline and stick with cellular for now.
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