Review by sideband 
UPDATED: 65 days ago
member for 8.4 years, 120 visits, last login: 11 days ago
 Redwood City,San Mateo,CA
 $29 per month (12 month contract)
 about 3 days
 "Great presale and tech support, solid connection"
 "Possible poor install quality"
 "A solid connection with speeds as advertised"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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I had DSL for eight years of good quality service until I lost my pair. Six months of degrading service from that point made me decide to switch. My choices were Astound and Comcast. I had a prior bad experience with Comcast (TCI at the time) which immediately eliminated them so Astound it was.
I made several pre sale calls to ask various questions about prices, services, and the use of my own cable modem. The support people were friendly and informed. In cases were they didn't know the answer, they immediately got it from someone else in the office.
I signed up for the service on 3 September and was able to get an install appointment for 6 September, which was shorter than their normal time frame of about five days. Since it was a Saturday, the window was 8 to 5. Weekday windows are only two or three hours.
The installer showed up an hour and a half before the close of the window. He very patiently fished the cable through the tree and hedges in my yard. The connection at the poll is exposed, just the bare connector screwed into one of the ports. The unused ports have an outer sleeve on them that looks like it should remain. The one at the house is male to male without a ground. My old Comcast connection was grounded. I don't know if either of these connections are standard practice these days. It's my only concern.
I had already installed the internal cable and my own Motorola SB5101 modem so all the installer had to do was call in the MAC and I was up and running. The connection bounced a few times in the first hour or two, but settled down after that. I ran a few speed tests from this site and got 5680 and 5692 Kb/s download and 967 and 962 Kb/s upload. I have their 6000 Kb/s download, 1000 Kb/s upload package. Strangely, the San Francisco test site which is about 30 miles away gave much slower results.
When I came in one morning a few days after the install, the connection was down. The cable modem said it was connected so I twiddled a few things before calling tech support. I got through quickly to someone who spoke clear English and didn't ask a bunch of inane questions like the first level support in India for AT&T does. AT&T second level support and their tech were great, however. He was able to immediately look at my connection and reboot my cable modem, which fixed the problem. He even saw my router behind the modem and could tell the make. Scary. When I asked him about the cable connection the installer made, he couldn't answer. It's not surprising as this isn't his area of expertise.
The connection has been solid since then. I listen to Internet radio. It runs all day without dropping. I also do daily Internet backups. The 1 Mb/s upload is nice improvement over my DSL of 374 Kb/s or thereabouts. Here are the stats from my Motorola SB5101:
Frequency 735000000 Hz
Signal To Noise Ratio 37.4 dB
Power Level 8.7 dBmV
Upstream Value
Channel ID 4
Frequency 24816000 Hz
Power 36.0 dBmV
I use other providers for my DNS, email hosting, web server hosting, and Usenet so I can't speak to any of the services provided by Astound. I also didn't sign up for cable TV or phone services so it's a bare Internet connection.
After two weeks of connectivity, I'm quite pleased with the service. There are no or very few other users in my neighborhood so it remains to be seen if the throughput will hold up when there are a lot more. As long as you don't live on my block, I highly recommend this service.
Followup comments:  
Hazy Arc
join:2006-04-10
Greenwood, SC | 6 kb/s down and 2 kb/s up? Are you on their dial-up tier? | |
|  | sideband
join:2000-07-02
Redwood City, CA | Re: 6 kb/s down and 2 kb/s up? I have 6 Kb/s download, 1 Kb/s upload. What's their dail-up tier? | |
| | | WizBomber
join:2007-10-17
Cary, NC | Re: 6 kb/s down and 2 kb/s up? I think he means 6 Mbit/sec Down and 1 Mbit/sec Up, according to the company's website. | |
| | | | sideband
join:2000-07-02
Redwood City, CA | Re: 6 kb/s down and 2 kb/s up? Yeah after lunch when my brain was more alert, it clicked what was meant. I'll correct it. | |
| smg9779
join:2008-10-23
South San Francisco, CA | is this still possible? Is it possible to split the cable internet line and run one line to your tv and get free basic cable tv from astound? | |
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