Experience with Earthlink cable internet service?

[skokefoe.livejournal.com]

After a couple years as a Somervillian, I've moved to the magical land of Cambridge, but still near Davis Square. I was a relatively happy RCN customer, and am now a Comcast customer who is pleased with reliability and speeds, but is annoyed by 250gb/month bandwidth usage limits and price (not interested in Comcast's TV offerings or various other bundles).

I just learned that Earthlink has cable Internet service (re-sold Comcast service?) and wondered if anyone has experience with them? I couldn't find old relevant threads here nor really anything on DSLreports or elsewhere, would appreciate any information. Earthlink advertises it as a 6.0Mbps cable connection.

*edit*
I forgot to mention, I'd happily consider other high-speed options, if people have them.

Comments

[ringrose.livejournal.com]

Our Earthlink DSL is actually leased Verizon lines

I don't find that Earthlink actually adds much over Verizon DSL. In fact, they had a snafu where Earthlink thought they were giving us one speed, while Verizon was giving us another (slower) speed. We just haven't noticed a price break worth the potential network outage yet.

If I had it to do over again I would probably go directly rather than through Earthlink, simply because when I have a problem I'll be one level closer to people who can actually fix it.

[ron_newman]

OK, but that's Earthlink DSL, and the OP is asking about Earthlink cable.

[ringrose.livejournal.com]

True, but it's the information I had.

Basically same as Comcast

[thanny2000.livejournal.com]

Long-time DS lurker, first time poster here...I have Earthlink cable internet service, have had it for several years. It is just like having regular Comcast but you can keep your Earthlink (in my case, mindspring) email addresses. I pay the bill directly to Comcast and have no contact with Earthlink beyond an occasional email newsletter or request to update my billing information from the account remnants of my dial-up account.

As far as the bandwidth limits, since I get a bill directly from Comcast, I also got the notice about the new limits. I was also irritated with the concept but have seen no actual effect on my daily usage. I'm not someone who downloads a large amount though.

As for price, I think it's the same as the regular Comcast internet-only price, or it was when I first subscribed.

In sum, the only advantage over straight Comcast is the email address consistency for me.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

Try Comcast Business. No caps, and better customer service.

Bandwith Usage Limit

[bostonartist.livejournal.com]

250 GB / month = 8.3GB per day,every day for 30 days per month. Does anyone really use that much bandwidth? Probably only 1% of users or less. I guess it could become a problem if you are doing massive online backups.

[ed4444.livejournal.com]

Consider Speakeasy DSL. The customer service is outstanding and there are no bandwidth caps (and no limitations on running servers of any kind).

They run over Verizon's last-mile copper, but after that you're on Speakeasy's relatively high-quality network.

[duneidieann.livejournal.com]

Do They serve residential customers? Their website is so business-centric.

[ed4444.livejournal.com]

Yes, I had Speakeasy residential DSL for years in Somerville and Cambridge.

They are business-centric, but they're happy to server residential customers too.

I suspect it's because it's mostly businesses that are willing to pay a little extra for the higher quality.

[read-w.livejournal.com]

Earthlink DSL (reselling Verizon) customer here, so I can't speak about the hardware. Their tech support is pretty bad. Even slightly complex problems can take a long time to solve: their first-level technical support folks know absolutely nothing, they're just reading from a script. (otoh, maybe that's true everywhere now; but in the distant past I'd get Earthlink tech support people who could actually figure things out.) And, I assume because they're an extra step away from what's going on, when there's a systemic DSL outage they rarely know about it, and start telling me what to do with my modem. (That's never worked, and it's always come back 8-12 hours later, so pretty clearly a system problem.) And one, presumably rare but I suspect telling, problem: Verizon cut off my service by mistake after I moved. It took Earthlink a week (and hours of my waiting on the phone) to figure out what happened, and then I went to the bottom of the queue (six weeks long) to get service reinstated—I assume because Earthlink had no pull with Verizon.