who uses century link for internet? (house, neighborhood, live)

[willc86]

Hey all! currently using comcast and they are charging me $70 for 40mbps connection.

im thinking of doing century link for $40 on 20mbps.

how do you like century links internet? has it been stable? do you have connection 99% of the time? on top of that, comcast hasnt been very stable for me and randomly get slowdown speeds

[Vision67]

I've used Century Link DSL over copper for about 10 years. I signed up for 40 mb/s and I usually measure about 25 down/ 4 up speed on the wireless connection between my laptop and the modem. I think that's amazing speed delivered to the modem by a copper twisted pair.

Your speed will depend on how close your house is to their fiber optic hub in your neighborhood; mine is fairly close. I think their web site will give you an estimate.

As for reliability, it is excellent. It rarely goes down and when it does, I just re-boot the modem. That always works.

When I quit Comcast, they specified 10 mb/s and I was getting as little as 256 kb/s. Their tech could not fix it. Their customer service was beyond awful. In my neighborhood, Comcast delivers their signal on a co-axial RG-6 cable loop that includes many of the neighbors. That means your speed may vary as a function of what your neighbors are doing.

Comcast my have more modern capabilities in your neighborhood, but the thought of even making a call to them makes me nauseous.

[Mike Ryan]

Ditto about being close to the hub. I initially had CenturyLink and the tech told me the most I could expect was 7mb/s. Usually I had under 1mb/s. Switched to xfinity promptly.

[vnodak]

I have Century Link and am very happy with it. No issues really. My neighbor has comcast along with a land line and she pays more than I do and in the few months she has lived here, she has had nothing but continuous problems. I have not heard one good thing about comcast in years either.

[otowi]

I think Comcast has been getting better and have had no problems with them in recent years. But I definitely recommend going in person to one of their service centers for service rather than on the phone - the phone system is terrible.

[mtngigi]

I like to complain about Comcast/Xfinity - because I hate monopolies. That said, I agree with otowi that their customer service is getting better (but it can be hit or miss). Some reps are just better than others.

I have to have high-speed because I work from home and send and receive very large files on a regular basis ... DSL doesn't cut it for me. It can really depend on what you need to do, and if you have the patience for slower speeds.

[dr.frog]

I'd been using Rise Broadband wireless for several years, but this past summer their service went totally kaput for me and they were unable to fix it, so I switched to CenturyLink. It's been OK. The main problem I've had is that my modem sometimes resets itself in the middle of the night. I have persistent connections (ssh tunnels) open to remote machines for my job, so I notice when I get disconnected. I'm paying for 12Mbps service, but I just checked it with speedtest.net and got 17.64 down/ 0.55 up. So it's plenty adequate for streaming video and downloading large files, but pretty slow for upload.

Comcast does not serve my neighborhood, so the only other option for me is a cell phone hotspot; that's fine if all you do is read e-mail and some light web browsing, but not cost-effective for video.

[JohnCurtisEstes]

Just got CL 40/5 in Briargate (near Research/Austin Bluffs). I was very happy w/ Infinity 10 mb speeds for $29.99 but the promo ended and they would not renew it. With CL they at least have me at $29.99 for a year so I tried it.

I get maybe 5 mb down on a consistant basis- I have only seen above 10 mb a few times on speedtest.net. I have my own new modem so that is not the issue, just very poor speeds in my area of town.

I would go back to Infinity in a heartbeat!

[Kar54]

FWIW, I have it in Mountain Shadows. Been waiting for years to get the 40mb service. The bandwidth fluctuates from hour-to-hour. For example, one day we can watch Netflix and have it load, no problem. Day two, it cuts out during a program. The next day, it won't connect at all.

[otowi]

Originally Posted by Kar54

FWIW, I have it in Mountain Shadows. Been waiting for years to get the 40mb service. The bandwidth fluctuates from hour-to-hour. For example, one day we can watch Netflix and have it load, no problem. Day two, it cuts out during a program. The next day, it won't connect at all.

Wow, that's disappointing. I can say with Comcast for the past several years I haven't had to worry about Netflix not working (same for other streaming video).