CenturyLink Internet Speed Stinks (Phoenix, Chandler: 2015, apartment complex, neighborhood)

[WriterDude]

Hi Everyone,

Okay, so I'm the dummy. I believed someone who said that Cox and CenturyLink were roughly comparable, and certainly that CenturyLink didn't stink on ice. We never once had a problem with Cox - during a storm, we had a few hours of outage, but no biggie, and everything was lightning-fast, almost stupid-fast.

We moved to Chandler, and in our new place we only had CenturyLink as an option, but we figured that would be okay. I work at home, and Internet performance is important. We knew moving in that CL only offered 20MBit service, while Cox offers 50MBit service. When the setup guy was doing the setup in our new place, he said CL was just about to finish a major upgrade that would provide at least double the speed, so we figured that would be fine. We also knew that CL costs almost as much as the super-speed Cox connection. However what we didn't know was the real problem.

First off, their wireless device is flaky. It had a long weird password, so it took hours to set up all of our devices on their wireless. However, then the phones started dropping off of their wireless at unexpected times. I didn't realize it until we got a notice from Verizon that we'd used up 75% of our data plan. Basically, when they dropped off the Wi-Fi, they'd just continue on the cellular data. Great. I ran a hard cable from their modem to our old Apple AirPort base station, and connected everything to that for Wi-Fi. Boom, problem solved.

Secondly, 20MBit is apparently only possible if you sacrifice leprechauns and sprinkle unicorn dust on your modem. Speedtest says we're getting under 13MBit downstream and less than 1 MBit upstream. That makes it extremely challenging to work from home, and ping times and performance in routine things like online games are terrible.

I'd never think of Internet service as a deal-breaker for an apartment, but apparently it can be. Because of these problems, we have to consider relocating again, less than two months after we got here.

I realize this is just a long rant. As I said up front, I'm the dummy. I should never have believed CenturyLink, but after my experience with Cox, I just assumed the service would do what they promised. I'll be satisfied if even one person reads this and is moved to exercise caution or reduce their expectations if they're moving to an area where their only option is CenturyLink. Or if someone from CenturyLink happens to read it and is motivated to do something to improve their infrastructure and stop offering service speeds that they can't actually provide.

[stevek64]

Did you contact Century Link and let them know of your less than satisfactory experience? If it were me, I wouldn't give up/move until I at least exhausted that step and give them a chance to offer some troubleshooting for you in an attempt to offer you more speed.

On your end, don't underestimate the difference in speed you can gain/lose with different routers, wireless cards in devices, etc. I'd at least try a new wireless router that has good speed ratings and maybe trying a USB wireless adapter as opposed to your internal wireless card. Try a 5 ghz band as opposed to a 2.4ghz card if you are fairly close to the router(made a huge difference in speed on a laptop of mine). I use an Asus RT-N66U with an Asus dual band wireless usb adapter and get excellent speed vs some other products/combinations I've used. Though before you change out any of your wireless equipment, I'd first try just plugging in your pc/laptop(if that's what you are using) directly into your router via the lan port to see if the wireless end of your setup is causing some speed issues. You are in an apartment with probably lots of wireless activity going on and this alone could cause some speed issues/slowdown. Changing your wireless channel on your router is also worth a try as I'm guessing it is still set at factory default, along with all or most of your other neighbors which will cause interference city for you.

[ElleTea]

How long ago did you start service? They have a window in which you cancel, no penalty. (30 days, maybe?)

I have had no issues going from Cox to CL. CL has been much better for me. No issues setting up all of our devices, speeds have been fine even though it is lower than Cox advertises. Much better all around, I'll never go back. I have all around less stress in my life not having to dealing with Cox month after month, issue after issue.

Hopefully you can get it resolved.

[cherrylimeade]

Hmm. We're in exactly the same boat -- just moved to Chandler to an apartment complex that Cox doesn't serve. Apparently Cox had a contract with the previous management company and the current company couldn't get service without some enormous expense or something.

I just ran Speedtest.net and got 20+ Mbit on my desktop, and 10Mbit on my iPhone, not sure why the disparity.

We were worried about just having CL, but it's turned out to be the least of our gripes (but that's another story).

[PNWGuy]

How is 13mbit down and 1 mbit up limiting for you? That is pretty decent, imo.

[chaparrito]

Count yourself lucky. Out here in the sticks they are my only option and all I can get is 5meg service. It's generally close to that. Once in a while it'll bog down and I have to restart my router. I can get cable, which is supposedly up to 50meg, but to get a decent price requires bundling phone and TV and I'm trying to get OUT of bundles, not into new ones. The whole thing is a giant annoying racket no matter who you sign with as far as I can tell.

[Zippyman]

I'm in North Phoenix & I've been running Centurylink for about 18 months now. My neighborhood did the "upgrade" at about the same time I signed up. I'm on a 40 meg plan @ $30/mo & it's been fine for me. I bought my own modem & never even tried using the wireless portion of the modem/router (we already had a wireless network setup that ran fine using dd-wrt). We've never had any problems with the service, though we have had some issues with the wireless network, mostly because there are so many wireless devices in the neighborhood.

I certainly feel your pain, but you should know that Cox isn't perfect everywhere in the valley - I dumped Cox because I couldn't even maintain a netflix stream at the lowest setting consistently (on 40/50 meg service, which should be super-easy to do).

[LBTRS]

This is typical of those that switch from cable to DSL. The vast majority of people regret the decision after making the switch. Cable internet is almost always better than DSL. Very rarely do you find someone who is happy with the switch.

This can be easily seen by reviewing reviews online between the two.

[Zippyman]

Originally Posted by LBTRS

This is typical of those that switch from cable to DSL. The vast majority of people regret the decision after making the switch. Cable internet is almost always better than DSL. Very rarely do you find someone who is happy with the switch.

This can be easily seen by reviewing reviews online between the two.

lol, it isn't 1991 anymore, and DSL isn't vastly inferior to cable. Cox and Centurylink both have (well-earned!) awful reviews online & your choice is a pick of "lesser evils" - I had a lot *more* problems with Cox than I have with Centurylink (actually zero problems with centurylink so far) so there is no "regret" on my part for firing Cox - they cost more, and they sucked more in my neighborhood, ymmv.

[LBTRS]

Originally Posted by Zippyman

lol, it isn't 1991 anymore, and DSL isn't vastly inferior to cable. Cox and Centurylink both have (well-earned!) awful reviews online & your choice is a pick of "lesser evils" - I had a lot *more* problems with Cox than I have with Centurylink (actually zero problems with centurylink so far) so there is no "regret" on my part for firing Cox - they cost more, and they sucked more in my neighborhood, ymmv.

Lol, ok post your DSL speeds and lets see if mine makes yours look "vastly inferior".

This is in prime time and in 2015...



Look at the reviews on DSL reports and you'll see that cable gets an overall better rating than DSL. Cox gets better than CenturyLink but overall cable has better reviews than DSL.