dmccarty - We had a CenturyLink tech show up in about an hour after reporting that our original modem died. But since getting this new combo modem/router, we've also had to start resetting the it on a weekly or more basis.
Our local website just had two long conversations about Century and the poor service and lack of service. Many people were reporting having to do daily modem resets. For the moment, we have not had to reset in weeks. We know they are updating equipment so maybe there is hope. One of the people on the website works for Century but is also gets Internet via Century. He had some very interesting comments and verified what we, and others had long thought, which was that Century was maxed out on connections and bandwidth in our area. Some people cannot even get service because Century is out of ports to physically connect too.
We had a long outage one day and when I got home from work I called Century. The wifey usually does this but she had thought the problem was in our network or in her computer. Once I got passed the script reader, the next person fixed our problem in a few seconds. There was an issue in their network hardware. As we talked, I asked if Century was ever going to update the modem we have and she said they now have a modem/router combination. I surely do not want that box since I don't trust them to be controlling the network IN my house.
We have two modems because we have always had network issues. At one point, Century was blaming the hardware, ie, the modem and our router, so they gave us a new modem. We swap out the modems from time to time to see if that helps, it never does, but it at least isolates the problem back to their network. I eventually bought a new wireless router to make sure the problems were not inside the house.
Century is spending a FORTUNE in service calls with these issues. I can't count the number of times we have had service at the house. The human service has been good but we should not be having to call as much as we did. Now, we know not to waste our time calling for a person to come to the house since the problem is in their network. We figured this out and the guy on the local website confirmed the fact. Given the number of people we have seen complaining for years, people who have had service calls to the house, it would seem that Century could have added capacity, saved a bunch of money on service calls, made more money by being able to sell service, and had a happier customer base.... On the other hand, Century is the ONLY service provider so having a happy customer base is meaningless to them since we have no place else to go...
Later,
Dan
