Quote:
Originally Posted by dlmbt
Because they are severely over loaded and are showing signs that they cannot handle the volume. The services are reflecting this. You may be getting great service but there are those who are not. And because there is a monopoly the consumer has no choice but to complain because they can't go elsewhere to receive the service they are paying for. Just like the ones who are getting good service, they all should be getting the same quality. Or at least have the option to receive the same quality elsewhere.
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Comporium runs 5 different networks:
- Old Rock Hill Telephone DSL network over copper POTS
- Old Rock Hill Telephone Cable network over COAX
- Comporium Fiber to the Home network over fiber
- Comporium Metro Fiber (dedicated business service) over fiber
- Comporium Backhaul Fiber (serving the above 4 and other telephone companies in the area like Verizon and Sprint)
The top 3 are the different ones a given consumer can be on. And the service experience will vary depending on which one of those you're on and how long ago that particular segment was installed.
DSL is what it is and Comporium has said it does not plan to further upgrade that network beyond ADSL2.
Most of the people I hear complaining are people who are on the Cable network and still using a DOCSIS 2.X cable modem. The switch to DOCSIS 3.0 cleaned up a lot of the issues people were having in Fort Mill and Rock Hill. Dunno if it had any effect on Indian Land since I don't know many people there. There are however still old segments of coax in every area which can be problematic.
Comporium has been working to upgrade the entire service area from a 600Mhz coax plant to an 800Mhz coax plant. And then they'll go to 1Ghz. 1Ghz is required for full utilization of the bandwidth DOCSIS 3.1 can provide.
It's a pretty arduous process because back in the RH Telephone days, the goal was to cover as much of the York County population as possible, as inexpensively as possible. So the engineering from back then didn't take into account the density of population the previously rural areas of York County would end up with over the next 20 years. That translated into huge nodes and long, underamplified runs of coax backbone.
Comporium is a different company today than Rock Hill Telephone was back then. Comporium is slowly but surely replacing the old coax and connections out in the field to support smaller nodes and get rid of the old, unreliable coax. As they're doing it with their cash flow, instead of taking out a huge load of debt, it's not something that will happen in every area simultaneously. I know from the techs doing the work that they prioritize the areas where the most complaints are coming from.
Speaking of complaint tracking... Last year Comporium switched to a new technician dispatch and issue tracking system. Before, maintenance was done based on what people could remember and paper maps. Now issues are being tracked electronically.
As such, if you have issues, you need to be sure to call in - and keep calling in. And make sure your neighbors are calling in! That's the only way you're going to show up on the maintenance hot list.
Don't be afraid to escalate the issue if techs have been out to fix the same issue multiple times. All you have to do is ask "How can we escalate this issue to the Engineering department?" on the phone. There is 1 person ultimately responsible in each geographic area for field maintenance and the phone support folks know how to get a message to that person.
Unlike with Time Warner, all of these people - techs, engineers, support, etc. - live right here in the area. So treat them like neighbors and you'll get MUCH better results. If you're a butthole to them on the phone, they're going to treat you like the neighbor no one answers the door for. Some of the most ardent complainers online suffer from anus erectus syndrome (they're uptight a$$holes). I'm always neighborly to all the Comporium employees I interact with and I've never had an issue that wasn't promptly resolved.
Now to the 3rd network... fiber to the home. This network is the one you basically never hear anyone complain about - unless someone digs through their fiber or a piece of hardware dies in the neighborhood terminal. [My neighborhood terminal, that refrigerator sized lawn box somewhere in the neighborhood, had a card burn out in it... twice. I think it was a York Electric power issue.] The fiber to the home network is basically rock solid aside from the occasional hardware failure.
I've had ZipStream here in my fiber to the home neighborhood for a year and 2 months. It's only been down hard once in that time - see aforementioned card burnout comment. We had one issue 6 months ago where a kid in the neighborhood was being DDOSed by 10Gbps of traffic - which completely filled the 10Gbps backbone coming into the neighborhood - after he made an butt of himself in some XBox game. Before ZipStream, I had 100Mbps Elite for 4 years with a similar number of issues - basically none other than planned maintenance.
Fiber to the home is what is getting installed to pretty much every new development. Comporium hasn't announced a rip-and-replace of all the existing COAX network but I'd say it's inevitable at some point. It doesn't make financial sense for them to keep running 3 different consumer networks forever. I suspect the first network to go will be the DSL network - since there's fewer people on it. Those folks will get moved over to a mix of COAX and fiber. Might be another 20 years before the COAX network starts getting replaced with fiber but I know it will happen during my lifetime.
For now, if you're on the COAX network and are having problems, remember... be neighborly and persistent. Escalate as needed - i.e. every 2 trouble calls for the same thing w/in a 3 month period.
As for people bitching and moaning about Comporium... it's what people do!
People do the same thing about Time Warner and AT&T. If you go by the Public Utility Commission stats, Comporium has way fewer complaints on a per customer basis than either Time Warner or AT&T (an order of magnitude less in fact!). So I suspect what you're seeing is the echo chamber effect. It just looks like people complain all the time when in reality it's really just a superminority of Comporium customers who vocally complain all the time.
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Comporium Monopoly
