Review by iansltx 
UPDATED: 36 days ago
member for 1.8 years, 359 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Golden,Jefferson,CO
 $56 per month
 about 14 days
 "Relatively painless install, MUCH faster speeds than Qwest"
 "Caps, price increases, could be faster"
 "Could be worse, especially considering there is really no competition here..."
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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12-1-08
The Zoom modem has been humming along with no problem, though I'm on my second WRT310N (first one bricked after I tried to repair a performance issue). Not terribly happy about the caps...
Then the letter came...$2 increase per month on the cost of internet service. For any of you unfamiliar with the term to use to describe this practice, the correct phraseology is "nickel and diming to death". Seriously, they're making enough money and gaiing customers...
Then again, what can I say? Comcast delivers 100% of advertised speeds 24/7 where I am, Qwest doesn't...Qwest feels more like a "shared system" where it counts than Comcast, who by the way is still rocking like it's 2005 with DOCSIS 1.1. The alternative to paying $65 for Comcast's service is waiting patiently for files to download over a connection that at best barely breaks 4 Mbps on Qwest. The telco would have to put in FTTN to compete with Comcast here, and even then speeds are iffy from what I hear.
Bottom line: where areyou gona go? It's a lesser-of-two-evils thing.
10-5-08
Yesterday I called Comcast to switch over service from their provided cable modem to one that came in the mail (Comcast->FRGP router->school but still 20-30ms "first hop" when doing a traceroute inside the VPN is impressive. On the other hand, I'm literally a stone's throw from the network room of the school, but not close enough to use their WiFi :/
8-19-08
OTHER OPTIONS
1. Cellular broadband (all of the "big three" have high speed data here, but that's expensive and slower than terrestrial broadband...and Millenicom is the only one with no caps)
2. Wireless from Wispertel, but they don't seem to have good deals and I'm very mistrustful of wireless operations, with their high setup fees and generally subpar performance. Plus, they top out at 5 Mbps down.
3. Qwest (see my other review) has DSL service here, however their highest speed ($47 a month for dry-line) is aa mere 5120/896 connection, provisioned as such. So performance is much lower in real life and latency is high due to interleaving. No FTTN = no higher speeds.
PACKAGE OREDERED
Renting a modem right now for $3 a month on top of their higher tier of internet, which is 8/2 w\PowerBoost here. As can be seen, it's a heckuva lot faster than Qwest's highest-end offering here. The price is rather high though, still trying to work it out: $53 a month (plus modem rental) for the first six months, then $63 a month thereafter. I could care less about added features, I just want the highest speed possible, especially with uploads, hence the choice here.
ORDER\/INSTALL PROCESS
Order process over the phone wasn't too bad, though I'm not happy about paying a $50 installation fee. Wait, there's little to no competition. Guess that's standard are. Anyhow, I scheduled the installation for 8-10 am this morning (this was two weeks ago when I ordered).
The tech arrived at a minute or two before 9 a.m., and due to wasps in the cable box took about 25 minutes to get everything set up outside. Another 25 minutes inside and I was up and running. I messed up my wireless router a few times so it took awhile to get that up, but that was my fault (this was done after the tech left). The guy was nice enough, but wanted to keep his hands off of as many things as possible, and seemed hurried to get to the next appointment. But hey, he knew enough of what he was doing that the service got set up in a timely manner. It's just annoying how Comcast had to do a professional install" whereas Qwest, with no previous DSL service, allowed for a $10 self-install.
EQUIPMENT
I provided my own router (Linksys WRT54G v8 w\DD-WRT). Comcast is renting me a Scientific Atlanta WebStar DPC2100R2. Seems to be decent at internet performance, but is totally locked down as to setup stuff (only one screen, status, accessible) and it looks like it's gonna run hot. Speaking of equipment and installation, Rx/Tx power levels are 11.2/35 at the moment, with Rx hovering between about 10.6 and 11.4, maybe less variance than that but within spec. The tech mentioned it being on one end of the spec but it works fine so I'm not coplaining.
FINAL COMMENTS/SPEED TESTS
I'll update this review when I get more information about the service through use.
Traceroutes reveal a strong Comcast backbone in the area (then again Denver is an internet hub so of course). Pings to Google are pretty (but not completely) consistent at 60ms or so. My school, whose OC-3 connection goes into an aggregate connection that includes a large Comcast pipe, has ping times that vary from 9-21ms, mostly in the 9-12ms range. Perfect for VPN; that's less than first-hop latency on Qwest.
Download speeds look to be about 13.5 Mbps with PowerBoost, tapering down to around 9.8 Mbps when you average download speed over a 100 MB file, which isn't too bad, though ads say PowerBoost runs up to 16 Mbps. Though the website wants to say something different. Uploads look to be solidly at 2.2 Mbps, though Mozy as of yet doesn't seem to like the connection so I don't know how the speeds will be when PowerBoost wears off, or peak time rolls around. Maybe I'll try a different modem...$3 a month renting a modem that's 20ish on eBay is a ripoff.
One thing's for sure: VoIP works great. No packet loss, minimal jitter...though TCP Forced Idle looks like the connection could go a fair bit faster than what it is right now.
Guess that's it for now, will update when new info comes in.
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