I've been on a Cox bundle for digital TV, internet, and basic telephone since 2004. My rates have been climbing every year amd i'm pretty irritated.

For premium digital TV, a DVR, basic phone and 12+mb internet, I'm paying almost $180/mo. That's nuts. It started out at $100.

My residence is qualified for 50mb internet. To get TV I need to get DirecTV. For the same price of $180/mo, I can get 50mb internet, basic phone service, 3 HD receivers and one is a DVR that allows me to stream recorded shows to any TV. For the first year, I get a $60/mo discount towards tje DirecTV.

The value is there, but how is the quality of the internet? Has anyone made the switch? Is your DSL experience just as good as cable, or better?

For TV, I'd go Direct TV all day long... internet though, I"m a pretty big fan of Cox internet, haven't been able to find anything really comparable.

Avis wrote: I"m a pretty big fan of Cox

hehe

I dumped my cable/sat tv this year and just use hulu/netflix

I never had a house phone

Everyone I know who switched from cable internet to dsl hates it

Well, there is xDSL and aDSL one max out at 12mb. The other goes to 60mb. Those who had 12mb max suffered because the upload was really bad.

For me, I would have 50mb download and 5mb upload. That's pretty sweet!

i have qwest for my internet 20mb download but upload sucks big time right now not even 1mb but that is suppose to go up higher as they improve the fiber optics.

I have the upgraded fiber optics and the DSLAM is 200yds from my house. Super close!

We have DSL in the past. I did not like. Too slow for my needs. Now you guys who upload videos I can't see how you can stand it.

defibvt wrote:We have DSL in the past. I did not like. Too slow for my needs. Now you guys who upload videos I can't see how you can stand it.

that is my issue right now with uploading big files. i use wetransfer a lot for 1 and 2 gig files and it is half the night or getting something up to you tube takes hours. downloading it is just awsome 20mb and blam it is done. i am not sure how much i will stay with qwest. i had cox back in 2000 01 but the hub i was on was horrible and the down time was just not worth it. i have had hardley any down time with qwest but then cox may have everything fixed by now and plus i am in a new area. just a pain to switch the bundles that i have now.

Man, if you have the 20mb speed, you should have the 5mb upload option. Have you contacted Centurylink about this?

yes i have it is an issue in my neighborhood there is some updating that needs to be done

Saturday, I decided to volunteer my uncle's house and test CenturyLink's highest DSL service. 40Mb downstream and 20Mb upstream. Install is suppose to be on the 12th of this month. If it rocks my socks, I will switch my home service. I was a bit irked when the sales agent said, "We guarantee an up-time of 99.9%, and a connection speeds at up to 80% of selected plan". 80%?? So, if I am paying for 40Mb, I am guaranteed only 32Mb? Oh well, that's still 2x faster than my current 16Mb speed with Cox and the uplink is 4x better than my current 5Mb speed.

let me know how that is also. i finally have my issue taken care of and now have a 5mb up. they said it was a programming issue on their end. they did credit me three months so that was a little something for my trouble. yea and that 20% is the norm i have notice with them when i run speed tests. i am still happy with the speeds now i have been doing a uploading and it is so nice to have what took 15-30mins ia now donein less then 2-5mins.

So, I ended up installing the 40Mb upload / 20Mb download package and it seems to be pretty close to the speeds. I ran several Speedtest.Net trials over the last few days and I've been averaging 37Mb download / 15Mb upload. Of course, I used the Phoenix server for the best results.



Just goofing around, I uploaded a 3.7MB photo to photobucket, and it took about 1.2 seconds.
I went to Microsoft.com and downloaded Windows 7 Service Pack 1, which is a 1.3GB ISO file. It averaged out to 17Mb (2.1MB).

I have 6months to try it out, before the rates jump from $30/mo to $70/mo. The only issue I have right now is a hardware issue. The ActionTec Q1000 router/modem they sent me is giving me trouble when connecting over wi-fi. I'll probably have to hardset the security info, instead of using the WPS button.

Well, after almost 2 months of testing, I can confirm that, if you live close to enough to the connection point, CenturyLink 40M/20M is pretty darn fast! The only issue is that to save money over Cox, you still need to bundle with several services. Also, there was 2 outages during the test period, and the modem/router had a few hiccups to where the wireless lost connectivity. A simple power cycle of all devices resolved this issue each time.

So, I am still up in the air with this. I'm not saving money by switching from Cox. What I get is more HD channels, more receivers, the ability to watch my recordings at ANY of my TVs, and better than average internet speed. After the promotional period, I would actually be paying just a few dollars less than Cox. The downfall is the 2-3 year contractual commitment with DirecTV.

So, the number crunching continues and the big decision to make. Well, at least now I can go to Cox and say with some truth and authority, "I've been with you for 6+ years. Do be better or I'm outta here!"