Verizon has made it very clear that they have no interest in maintaining or upgrading their aging, legacy copper-wire networks. If they were replacing them all with fiber that would be one thing, but according to residents and officials in at least 16 New Jersey towns, that’s not what’s happening. Instead, municipalities are just seeing their entire communications infrastructure left to rot, to the point where you can’t even make a phone call on a rainy day. [More]
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At Least 16 NJ Towns Left With Failing Phone Service While Verizon Dithers On Repairing Copper Wires
By 1.7.16
Why Your Cable Company Doesn’t Always Know If Your New Address Gets Service
By 5.26.15
There’s a story we hear far too often: someone is buying a house. Before they put any money down, they do their research. They call the local cable/Internet provider to make sure they can get broadband service at this new address. They double-check. They triple-check. They search the property for wires, call back, and make sure they’ll be okay. Then they take out the mortgage, move in, and… surprise! There’s no broadband service after all, there won’t be any, and now they’re up a very expensive creek. [More]
ISPs Are Mostly Delivering The Speeds They Advertise, Just Not Consistently
By 6.18.14
What does it mean when a cable company advertises “blazing fast Internet” or download speeds “up to 15 Mbps”? Does that mean all the time for everyone, or just an average? And how far from those “up to” speeds can an Internet service provider be before they have some explaining to do? [More]
Verizon Brings Fake Grassroots Campaign To New Jersey To Claim Support For Not Bringing Real Broadband
By 4.17.14
New Jersey might not be that large a state, but its geography and its dense population make it easy to understand how running a broadband connection to 100% of residents could be a cumbersome and expensive project. So what’s a corporation stuck with a twenty-year-old public interest obligation to provide those broadband connections to do? Create a fake tidal wave of public support for their attempt to weasel out of it, of course! [More]
Comcast Officially Files for TWC Merger, Claims Broadband Competition Is Fine Because You Have A Smartphone
By 4.8.14
It’s a big day for Comcast: not only did they win a big old golden poo this morning, but also they formally took the first step in the regulatory dance that stands between them and their purchase of Time Warner Cable by filing a mountain of paperwork with the FCC. The massive document contains all of Comcast’s explanations for why the merger is the best idea ever… and it’s a doozy. Let’s take a closer look at their arguments, shall we? [More]
AT&T Cuts My DSL Line In October 2012, Promises U-Verse That’s Still Not Here
By 2.25.13
Brie would like U-Verse service from AT&T. Well, that’s not quite true: she had DSL until five months ago, when she reports that the company disconnected it without notifying her first and said that they would be laying fiber and connecting her house soon. By “soon,” they meant “January.” Then they needed another six weeks. Six weeks later…well, that’s when she wrote to Consumerist, so you can guess how that turned out. AT&T isn’t really in a hurry to connect her to the Internet. [More]
Verizon Has No Idea Whether I Get FiOS Or DSL, Keeps Billing Me After I Cancel
By 1.9.13 — Updated: 1.10.13
It’s bad enough to get the runaround for something as simple as transferring your Internet service from one address to another. But when you cancel that service because your provider is incompetent, you would at least hope to stop being billed for service you never received. [More]
Verizon Needs To Sell Me Slower DSL So My Slow Connection Can Get Faster
By 10.12.12
Fred pays Verizon for DSL service, but his home Internet speeds are now slower than a crawl. This changed after technicians were in his neighborhood fixing the lines. When he called to complain about the slowdown, he was told that his connection was so slow because it was too fast, and they would have to downgrade his account to a slower speed so it would stop being so slow. No, this doesn’t make any sense. [More]
Cancel Crappy AT&T DSL Service, Get Billed For It Anyway
By 6.25.12
Beware, Michael warns Consumerist readers. Beware of handing over access to your bank account–that is, your debit card number–to companies that might auto-bill you. For services that you’re no longer receiving, and never really in the first place because the connection never worked properly. Michael had been an AT&T customer for DSL, but never had very good connection speeds. So the Death Star offered him great incentives to upgrade to U-Verse. He did, but the promised rebates never came. He offers this cautionary tale about putting your debit card information in the hands of a mercurial public utility. [More]
Frontier Bills For Phantom Phone Line For 5 Months
By 6.8.12
Back in the cold days of January, reader Chris moved away from FiOS territory. It was very sad for everyone involved, but he and his household moved on, subscribing to DSL service from Frontier. One DSL line just wasn’t enough Internet tubes for his household, so they looked into getting a second line and modem, but they couldn’t have a second “dry loop” DSL line. They had to get a phone package along with it. Chris was happy to hand over his money for this service, but Frontier was not so happy to hand over his modem so he can actually start the service. They never sent it, but keep billing him for the service and equipment anyway. [More]
AT&T Telling DSL Customers They Have 45 Days To Upgrade To U-Verse
By 5.31.12
UPDATE: A rep for AT&T confirms to Consumerist that while the forced upgrades are occurring, it is only happening to customers in select areas. [More]
AT&T Upgrades DSL Customer To U-Verse, Slower Internet, Static
By 5.16.12
Cameron moved recently, but not all that far away. Just to another apartment within the same building. Not so bad. He’s been an AT&T DSL customer for six years, but the Death Star wants to wean customers off DSL and get them onto U-Verse. Cameron was told that he couldn’t be reconnected to DSL down the hall, so he upgraded to U-Verse. Only the upgrade is more of a downgrade. To lower Internet speeds and static on the phone line. [More]
Lawsuit: Verizon Sold Me A DSL Plan It Couldn't Deliver
By 4.16.12
A Verizon customer in California says the telecom titan screwed her over by selling her on a higher-priced DSL tier that it should have known could never possibly deliver the promised speeds. [More]
Verizon: If You Want To Upgrade Your DSL Service, You'll Have To Get Local Phone Service Too
By 4.4.12
Our inbox is currently being flooded with complaints from angry Verizon DSL customers who found out today that if they ever want to change or upgrade their service — even if they simply want to move across town — they’ll soon have to add Verizon local phone service. [More]
Business's DSL Still Out 1 Month After Account Breach
By 10.7.11
Derek tells Consumerist that someone contacted AT&T and canceled his business’s DSL account. Which is interesting, because that person had no affiliation with Derek’s business, didn’t have any of the account information, and really shouldn’t have been allowed to edit the account at all. Did that stop AT&T from letting the person end the business’s Internet access, resulting in early termination fees? Guess. [More]
When Asked If They Care About The Customer, AT&T Rep Allegedly Curses Customer Off
By 9.1.11
After trying several times to get through to customer service to get her bill adjusted, reader C was finally connected to the right department. Problem was that no one was talking to her, but she could hear their personal conversations in the background. She then asked loudly through the receiver “Does anyone at AT&T care about the customer?” Allegedly, she heard back “**** you,” a laugh, and someone saying, “she can call all she wants, she’ll never get through.” [More]
Boost Your WiFi Signal With A Beer Can
By 8.5.11
Stressed out because your WiFi is too slow to get your work done? Crack open a cold one. Then dry it, slice it, and mount it on your router’s antennae. That’s right, you can boost your wifi just by doing some simple surgery on a beer can. [More]
AT&T Will Only Fix Your Vanishing DSL If You Buy Their Modem
By 7.18.11
Tonly lives in a deluxe condo building in the sky. Unfortunately for him, high-density urban living and AT&T DSL don’t mix. He waited three months for sweet, sweet Internet access because, as AT&T explained, all of the ports for the building were full. Just a few months later, his access cut out for no clear reason. The most logical explanation is that the line to his condo was switched off by mistake during another customer’s install. Easy enough to fix, isn’t it? But Tony owns his modem, and AT&T is using that as an excuse not to fix the problem. [More]
