10 forgotten wonders of 1980s homes

[Chuck Guzis]

On 01/01/2016 08:46 AM, Jason Howe wrote:

> I agree, I'm just north of Seattle, in Lake Forest Park.  With CL DSL
>  I'm stuck at 5MB/800K.  Honestly, the 800K uplink is the real
> killer, 5MB down isn't awful, unless I'M trying to download an ISO or
> something -- in which case I can usually wait until I get to work
> (The UW has some fat pipes). The service is quite relable -- I think
> the Arris modem then sent me is shit, but that's a different issue.

I've been with CL since the USWest days (just missed the breakup when 
they were Pacific Northwest Bell).  When Qwest picked up the company, I 
had high hopes, as Qwest's big business at the time was laying fiber 
along railroad rights-of-way.

  I'm just a few miles outside of Eugene, so it's not exactly like I'm 
in the boonies, but lot size minimum here is 5 or 10 acres, so even if
you go with the minimum, folks are pretty spread out.

I didn't get DSL until 2005, when it was finally installed as part of a 
service expansion  on a bit of land I sold Qwest--only after I received 
assurances that DSL would be part of the deal.  Otherwise, POTS modem 
service would have been 28.8-33.6K on a good day.  There are still some 
folks up the road who are *closer* to town who don't have DSL.  No cable 
here--if you wanted DSL-speed internet, Hughes satellite was about the 
only option.  Sprint offered to bring T1 up the road for $1k per moth, 
but I'm not certain how serious they were about that.

This summer, crews installed a fiber feed to the DSLAM and a bunch of 
new equipment went into the boxes.  It took them from May well into 
September, with various contractors involved.  (C2 to do the prep, like 
concrete cutting, Maverick to to the line stringing, and both C2 and CL 
to do the wire punching).  In November CL sent me an Actiontec C1000A, 
free gratis to replace that M1000 which replaced the GT701-WG for my 
"new high-speed service".  Nothing happened, and my M1000 still owrks 
just fine, but I've got the C1000A installed, hoping against hope.

So maybe one of these days.  I found out some interesting things along 
the way.  CL provides free DSL to their employees, but dings them $10 
per month for modem rental, which, in most cases, is an old Zyxel that 
hasn't been made in years.  They were delighted to discover from me that 
you can get refurbed Qwest-branded C1000As from China for about $26 
shipped. (I hate relying on a single modem, so I ordered an extra 
myself--works just fine).

CL Technical support really doesn't know very much, other than "unplug 
the modem and plug it in again"--TS appears to come out of Omaha.

Marketing knows even less than TS (appears to be out of Phoenix) and is 
not even aware of promotional deals.

"Loyalty" or "Promotions" or "Retention" or "Pricing" (they're all the 
same thing) are the people to deal with.  Not only do they seem to know 
what's happening (the guy I talked to identified the location of the 
DSLAM and its current status), but they can tinker with your bill. 
After hearing my tale of woe, they apologized for the fake service 
changes and tossed in a $15/month credit for a year for my trouble. 
AFAIK, any of the above can cut a service order.  All three agreed that 
doing a service change online was a bad idea--one of the more common 
complaints seems to be that orders get lost.

So maybe I'll get out of the 1.5/0.800 "Neanderthal" service one of 
these days.  I hope my story helps out other CL customers.

--Chuck