Ask Slashdot: Holding ISPs Accountable For Contracted DSL Bandwidth 345
mcleland writes "I'm not getting the bandwidth I paid for from my DSL connection. My '3mbps' fluctuates between about 2.7 during the day down to 0.1 or 0.2 in the evening according to speedtest.net. Let's assume DSL is the only viable option for broadband at my house and I can't really move right now (rural area, on north face of the mountain, no cable service, very poor cell coverage). This was discussed 6 years ago, but I'd like to see if there are any current thoughts on whether I'm just stuck or if there is some way to make the ISP hold up its end."
Call the ISP (Score:5, Informative)
You are only "guaranteed" what you are getting. However, I have been in that boat, and there was a physical problem. Just call your provider, explaining what is happening. If they have 24/7 support, wait until it starts happening, then call them -- so when they test it, they will see the problem.
Unfortunately, for me it took three different calls. The first call the technician came out and just swapped out some hardware. Elapsed time for him: Maybe half an hour. The second time they checked the wires from the house to the modem, and gave me different hardware ("that other one has problems with some old wiring").
Finally, with the third guy to come out, he traced it to some intermittent problem with wires. He swapped pairs from the house to the box (or the box to the DSLAM, can't remember exactly), and from then on my downloads quickly went up near the maximum and stayed there.
If you have already called the ISP and you got one of the responses above, you can always call back and complain again. They do seem to track that you called before, and will try something different. I was with BellSouth / ATT, so your mileage may vary. (I keep using past tense; I upgraded to U-Verse when it became available, and the speeds are great).
Ya be persistent with the calls (Score:5, Informative)
Not obnoxious, but keep calling each time you have the problem. Eventually they'll be able to track it down. If there's no problem and that is just "works as expected" they'll eventually tell you that too. In that case, maybe look at a new provider.
I had intermittent droupouts with my cable, which they always seemed to have trouble seeing on their end. Finally after a number of calls a technician was dispatched who found errors on the line. He put in the appropriate ticket and said "Call me directly in a week if it isn't fixed." It wasn't, I called he came back, tested and found errors again, and went back to the ticket. It got fixed.
It is possible that your DSLAM just has a tiny line to it and lots of people and is getting overloaded, but I find it at least equally likely there is a problem. However you have to make them aware of it, and you have to keep calling when there is a problem. Remember two things:
1) You are dealing with low level call center people who don't know what the fuck is happening. Their troubleshooting ability is limited, and who are discouraged from escalating things if there isn't a problem. Hence the need to get multiple data points with multiple calls.
2) Most people are morons and the problem is firmly on their end, so the ISP is inclined to disbelieve you from the beginning, hence the need to work at convincing them through multiple calls and documentation.
Read the contract you've signed (Score:4, Informative)
Especially the fine-prints
In many cases, the ISPs include "best effort" in their fine-prints so when their customers complain of the ridiculous low bandwidth that they are getting - like your case of 0.1mbps - them ISPs will tell you that the package they sell you, the 3mbps speed, is meant to be "Best Effort"
Re:The answer was the same 6 years ago: (Score:5, Informative)
It works in the US too, file a complaint with the FCC I got great results when I did it.
I work for an ISP (Score:5, Informative)
First let me say, I don't want to defend your ISP, they are most assuredly one of my employers competitors. So yes, they suck, switch to us... but I wont tell you who my employer is... so whatever. The point being, I'm not trying to defend the industry here, I'm probably one of the biggest advocates for what your complaining about at my company and I'm not shy to bring it up with executives. But if you had a better understanding of the situation it might help you improve your situation and possibly relive some of your anger.
US telecommunications companies have been task with bringing broadband to rural areas by both the FCC and the President himself. They are under constant pressure to increase broadband availability to customers. Just a few years ago it was well under 50% of people had access to broadband. Now it's well over 90%. Recently the broadband stimulus package basically paid ISPs to put in even more rural broadband. For an understanding of how much it cost I think they invested around 8 BILLION dollars and that raised the percentage of the public capable of getting broadband by about 2% to 3% The cost is enormous.
Now, you may think that's great... and it is. But there is a problem with that. In your case you live on the side of a mountain. I would love to live there myself, you probably don't have a lot of neighbors and having broadband out there is a great thing. But networks are called networks for a reason. You'd at the end of a loop... that loop leads back to a DSA along with all of your neighbors, and then that DSA has a trunk that leads back to the CO along with all the other DSAs in your area. So what's the problem? Distance. Depending on the service you have, there is a limited distance that you can be from that DSA to actually get any service at all. This distance also limits the number of people that DSA can serve because their homes must be within that distance to get service. In areas like you describe, I've seen DSA's serve as few as 10 homes. When you're dealing with a phone line that's not a big deal. Strait dialtone fits on a relatively cheap card, and when trunking back to the CO uses a fixed, almost unnoticeable amount of bandwidth. Then you have the local customers come in and want internet. The ISP says no. Then the local government gets involved and DEMANDS internet... the ISP still says no. I've even seen local governments file (and lose) lawsuits trying to force the ISP into these situations. Then the Feds come and offer to pay for the DSL cards and the new truck... well ok... if you're going to pay for it.
Now you have a DSA with 10 customers on it, 5 wanted 3MB service, the feds paid to have 2 T1 lines installed. That will work, and they likely wont have any bandwidth problems. Fast forward 3 years. You now have 10 customers on the DSA, they ALL have 5MB service and ALL have netflix accounts. Hence the situation you are in. The customers demand the ISP upgrade. Those 10 customers combined are paying about $350/month total. To add more trunks to the DSA will cost $300k. It's not hard to do the math there... it's not going to happen. So then they go to the local government and ask them to complain again... the local government says "You have internet, what are you complaining about?" and the feds? They got their 95%+ served number for the next election, they don't care about you.
Your only hope is your ISP. Period. I absolutely guarantee your service agreement was worded in such a way that your speed is not guaranteed. It probably says something like "Up to 3MB of data!" etc... What you can do is get a local technician out there on a service call... talk to him about your DSA. He'll likely tell you. How many other
Re:Call the ISP (Score:4, Informative)
I agree with this. As the employee of a small ISP, we don't know about problems if someone doesn't tell us. Almost all of our point-to-point links are wireless, and we don't know about something getting out of proper alignment without customer feedback to help us find the issue.
Granted, ISPs oversell, it's the nature of the industry, but there's a rough formula they use so that 90+% of the customers don't notice. We always tell our customers that peak use times will result in lower speeds for many sites, and we can't help that (because we can't). When they're seeing dismal bandwidth at random times, it's worth investigating.
Re:The answer was the same 6 years ago: (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Live with it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Call the ISP (Score:4, Informative)
There are lots of free and open source monitoring tools that can help determine if something is out of alignment. SmokePing [oetiker.ch] would probably be incredibly helpful you your situation. Nagios is another popular monitoring tool. Netdisco could help with inventory and topology mapping. It's worth spending a little time getting a good monitoring solution set up so you can be fixing the problem before the phone starts ringing.
Re:The answer was the same 6 years ago: (Score:5, Informative)
That probably wouldnt work: When you pay for a 20mbps or whatever cable, dsl, satellite, whatever connection, you are generally paying for last-mile bandwidth. Unless you have a contract saying otherwise, theyre not promising you upstream bandwidth, including if their own core routers are overloaded.
Check your bandwidth to the first hop (if you can figure out how to do that)-- if its what they promised, then theyre holding up their end of the bargain. If thats not acceptable, find a less overprovisioned ISP.
Re:The answer was the same 6 years ago: (Score:3, Informative)
Not being enamoured by republicans and tea party doesn't imply he's a fan of democrats.
A != B doesn't imply !A = B, even if you're so far off to the side that you only see black and white.
As for your other question, how about this [thehill.com]?
Granted, it's not much, and democrats and republicans are both so far out on the right side from a global perspective as to make them near indistinguishable, but at least the democrats seem "less worse" than the republicans when it comes to Internet questions.
Re:Read the contract you've signed (Score:5, Informative)
You're absolutely right.
The only time you're going to see otherwise is if you have a commercial service with reliability spelled out in the contract. The whole CDR thing is nice. I pay for 500 Mb/s, they don't provide 500 Mb/s, I can bitch and get reimbursement for time that it isn't available. They'll jump through hoops to resolve it or lose some serious revenue.
One residential customer, one of many, with "best effort" spelled out in the contract, they don't care much if the contract is lost. More importantly, there's usually a binding contract for a period, which they did not violate. So a month into the contract, they aren't servicing as expected, you're SOL. You still owe the term of the contract or the penalty described in the contract for early termination.
The only way they care is if there is an embarrassment. Blog it, talk about it, make lots and lots and lots of noise. Then they might just do something. Not necessarily though. They may also sue.
The best choice is probably to consider other options. The range with wifi, using narrow beam high gain antennas and amplifiers is pretty good. Then he just has to figure out how to get high enough to get line of sight to somewhere that he can get service. It's not rocket science, but it does take a bit of science. :)
There are FCC restrictions to consider. I won't give further advice since I'm not an expert, and haven't had to do it lately. I'll just say that I've had good luck going miles with easily available consumer grade gear, and a strong signal at both ends. The hardest part was making sure I got the right connectors for the devices I already had.
Here [ebay.com], here [ebay.com] are a couple hints. :)