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 Review by thebombs12 
Posted: a few hours ago
member for 6.7 years, 1941 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
 $36 per month
 "Great speeds and steady connection, 10Mbps down/768kbps up"
 "Experienced a few provisioning problems during the RCN/Astound transition"
 "Ultra competitive company gives customers great value"
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I am very happy with my connection with Astound. I am on their promotional plan of $36.95/month with no contracts and I bring my own modem.
I also received a speed bump since I was grandfathered into the 10Mbps download speed without additional fees from RCN, before they sold it to Astound.
Things were a little bumpy during the first few months of the RCN/Astound (Wave Broadband) transition that I was unhappy with. The first time my modem was accidentally unprovisioned by someone it took tech support 30 minutes to figure out my modem was not registered on their network. My connection was out for almost an entire day and I didn't realize this until I got home. The next time around when it happened I knew exactly what to tell the tech to look for and I was off in a matter of minutes. The rep was shocked that I knew what I was talking about before he even started troubleshooting!! :-P They explained to me that the issue had something to do with my using my own modem. Their internal system flagged it for removal but I was ensured it would not happen again.
Overall I am completely satisfied with my connection. Disruptions are extremely minimal and I never had a major outage that lasted more than an hour. This company is pretty small compared to Comcast and I get great download/upload speeds.
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 Review by g0nepostal
UPDATED: 1 days ago
member for 7.2 years, 1764 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Concord,Contra Costa,CA
$25 per month (12 month contract)
 about 7 days
"Reliable service, very few outages"
"Services servers slow, tech support is average"
"Not a bad ISP for the tech savvy, others think twice"
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I have had Astound Broadband for about two years now after ditching Comcast (Comcast had just taken over ATT Broadband, and I didn't want anything to do with Comcast). Thankfully, Concord has the option of either Comcast or Astound for its cable service, so I went with Astound.
Despite some growing pains Astound Broadband has been a pretty good (4/5 stars) ISP. It's connection reliability is excellent: I have had a total of 4 outages - each lasting less than an hour - in two years. Its routing is also not bad at all; we reach most any server in the continental United States in less than 50ms. Since my brother and I do a fair amount of gaming this is important.
When I first signed up for Astound I signed up for 1.5 Mbps down / 256 Kbps service at $40 a month, bundled with cable TV. Astound now has five different service tiers, with a 6 Mbps down / 1 Mbps up tier for $35 a month when bundled. This is the tier I am on now, and having 1 Mbps for upstream is awesome. I generally get about 92% of the rated speeds whenever I run speed tests, so I am getting what I pay for.
Growing pains for Astound are evident in its DNS servers, which have a nasty habit of going down or being extremely unresponsive. Because of this I use third-party DNS servers from Cisco and Level 3 for my DNS lookups and avoid Astound's DNS servers altogether. Also lacking is Astound's e-mail, which while good at blocking spam has a rather spartan (and confusing) webmail interface.
I've only used tech support a few times, mostly to report outages and slow DNS servers. However, each time I called I spoke to reps who appeared to be using scripts rather than being competent tech support staff. Since this seems to be a standard industry practice I won't downgrade Astound for this but will mark its tech support as average.
Overall, I'd rate Astound a 4/5. It's not a bad ISP; reliability is excellent and the prices are not bad at all. Despite its shortcomings, if you don't mind doing a little work on your own and appreciate reliability Astound is an excellent ISP.
EDIT: The monthly rate for 6 Mbps down / 1Mbps up is $25 when bundled with cable TV, and I recently had a short outage. However, given Astound's connection reliability, $25 a month is not bad at all. 
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Review by ashofmind
Posted: 42 days ago
member for 42 days, 0 visits, last login: 42 days ago
Redwood City,San Mateo,CA
$143 per month
"all one bill, the price is good"
"internet connection doesn't stay online, HD channels stutter,"
"I wish I could find better"
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The internet connection is hardly working, in fact just to write this I connected to a hotspot down the street because I cannot stay on. Calling customer service doesn't even relieve if, its almost like they can't.
HD channels often stutter or hickup, not only the sound but the picture
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Review by BigDave469
Posted: 67 days ago
member for 5 years, 25 visits, last login: 68 days ago
Concord,Contra Costa,CA
$29 per month
about 5 days
"Good, Reliable, Cable Connection"
"Poor Home Networking Hardware"
"Good value for the money for a decent cable internet connection!"
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I have had Comcast before, but I wanted to try something different. Where my residence is, the DSL service sucked because I was too far away from the switch. The phone companies should just give up on DSL because it is a broadband rip off. Cable is the best service value for the money and I am getting a very competitive price. Even when I have to pay the full price, it is still a very good value. I opted for the wireless networking option because I thought they might have some nice hardware, however they gave me a linksys box that was a worse model than what I already had. So I just gave it back to them, used my old router and am now saving for a wireless N so my new laptop can scream. At least it will have something to scream about because now I get 12x better bandwidth than with DSL. The cable modem they provided was a Moto Surfboard and that is not too bad, I think I will buy one when I invest in my networking upgrade later. You can order the service online and they dont even check your credit! So if you are a person that does not score too well at the FICO game, than don't worry. You might as well call them to place the order because they have to call you and talk to you about your order, basically as far as customer service they are just a bit above Comcast, but you don't need them once they make the connection! So all in all, it is a good value!
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Review by kenward1
UPDATED: 71 days ago
member for 8.5 years, 2722 visits, last login: a few hours ago
San Mateo,San Mateo,CA
Contract price not specified.
"????"
"Service level/quality is going down"
"I'm looking for a replacement"
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I got bought from RCN, which I was happy with. Now the quality is going down. I'm looking toward either Comcast or AT&T U-Verse. I don't know if either one of those is better or worse, but I am not very happy with Astound.
UPDATE
I've left Astound. I could not take the poor speeds and poor TV, Particularly HD, any longer.
I have signed up with AT&T U-verse and am happy with it.
4/26/08
I returned my STBs today and the reps didn't even ask me why I was leaving
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 Review by EricTheO
UPDATED: 152 days ago
member for 7.2 years, 169 visits, last login: 8 days ago
South San Francisco,San Mateo,CA
$200 per month
"Fast Connection, Good Customer Service"
"I want even more speed! ;)"
"Astound.net is providing great service."
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We have been "Grandfathered" in to Astound Broadband from the aquisition of RCN. We have had Triple-Play since day-one with RCN and the service continues to be great and reliable. We even have recieved more Cable TV channels with no increase in costs. The only thing I miss about RCN is the fact that prior to the sale to Astound they were adding "Mach 20" internet service (20000K D / 1.5K U IIRC), that would have been nice. I have a stable connection of 10000 D / 800K D. TV is great though a few of the non-digital local stations are fuzzy. Telephone service is very reliable and a good value.
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Review by NaughtyPup
Posted: 180 days ago
member for 7.2 years, 626 visits, last login: 4 days ago
San Mateo,San Mateo,CA
Contract price not specified.
"When running correctly... Speeds are fast"
"Customer Service sucks, Speeds are fast one hour and slow as shit the next"
"I haven't been happy with the service all around since Astound took over RCN."
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You can check your automated account balance when calling the 800 number even thou they give you the option too. It just goes to a recording that sounds like an answering machine. I'm starting to wonder if the whole business is being run out of someones house here locally????
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Review by blkrnbow
UPDATED: 192 days ago
member for 192 days, 0 visits, last login: 192 days ago
Concord,Contra Costa,CA
Contract price not specified.
about 3 days
"speed, reliability, reliability, reliability"
"none really"
"DAMN GOOD!"
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Kind of a tech geek so got the business package in my residence, 5 static's 6-Mps down/1.5 up (in contract). Have had about 20 minutes of downtime in 3 years, half of that was probably my own issues but oh well.
Install was freaking great, service is great. I'm not sure about the reports of slow customer service on off hours, they actually had NO tech support after hours when I signed up. That hasn't bothered me at all since I have had no reason too. Service works as expected. In some cases I would contribute my uptime with the business class but since I go through the same routers and lines all the other residences do that is not it. Really I would recommend Astound to anyone.
I had DSL prior to this and after bridge tap #5 was removed and $6 tacked onto my line I dropped that. Comcast....... Umm no. Really what I see it come down to is if you want a working high speed line and don't care if tech support is slow (since you will never have to use it) Astound is the way to go.
Other semi useful info.... Modem is a Webstar cable modem 3-4 years old (still the original one I got from them) has had to be rebooted 1X a year or so. Installers put cables where I wanted etc. Blah Blah
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Review by routerman99
Posted: 304 days ago
member for 4.7 years, 16 visits, last login: 60 days ago
Concord,Contra Costa,CA
$53 per month
about 3 days
"Speed, both up and down are good. Installation had no problems"
"Tech Support is not that good in off hours."
"Good value for broadband"
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I ordered the "Power User" service level (8Mb/768Kb) and it has worked very well for my household. The price is okay at $53/month. The installation was great.. the tech showed up on time and did the work the way I wanted him to do it. The only problem I have had is with tech support in off hours... they were a little weak in their tech knowledge the times I have called on weekends and late evenings. Overall, this is a good ISP who provides a reliable service.
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Review by hoodsmom
UPDATED: 3.2 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 33 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
Walnut Creek,Contra Costa,CA
Contract price not specified.
about 14 days
"(More or) less stable, sometimes fast"
"Increasingly unreliable, installer not Mac-savvy, limited tech support hrs., slow in peak hours"
"They've can't support as many customers as they've added."
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from Walnut Creek, Ca.
We called for Astound.net as soon as it was available in our neighborhood. The customer service rep responded promptly and explained terms of service thoroughly and clearly. She offered installation the following week, but we delayed installation for our own convenience. I did ask for a Macintosh-savvy installer - and she wrote that on the request. When the (friendly and courteous) installer arrived, he admitted that he was more of a cable-TV installer and barely knew about Windows computers, let alone Macs. He hadn't been given all the info about what we wanted installed. It was his bad luck to try installing a faulty cable modem. He had to make numerous calls to "the office" to try to get help - with marginal success. Finally, he tried a second modem - which solved the hardware issues. Then we had to configure the software. The "office" wasn't much help and I didn't know my new operating system that well. With some guesswork, we got everything running, although the following day I found out from tech support that we hadn't configured everything correctly. However, I just checked their webpage and it looks like they've added some info about configuring the system properly - although the info about Macs is pretty sketchy. We've now had the service for 2 months and I wouldn't dream of changing. Connection speed is 1374 kbps, which beats our old Earthlink (horrendously unstable) dialup service (23 kpbs on a good day with frequent disconnects). I've occasionally had brief delays sending e-mail, but otherwise our service has been great on both a new G4 tower running either system 10.2 or 9.2.2 and an older G4 powerbook runnning 9.2.2. I also ran Symantec's security scan which tests for open ports and we're rated "safe" (with file sharing off). Tech support is limited to 9-8 M-F and 9-3 on Saturdays, but fortunately I haven't had to call after the first day. Another disadvantage is that all modifications to your account (passwords, etc.) have to be made via phoning customer service. Would definitely recommend in this service area - but if you're a computer newbie, would recommend printing out the info on how to configure the system BEFORE the installer arrives.
5/21/03 We knew when we signed up for cable that speeds would probably deteriorate as the network expanded. That has turned out to be true - during peak hours (late afternoon and evenings until midnite or so), download speeds have been as low as 200 or so kpbs, with graphics loading noticably slowed (hasn't kept my kid from online gaming, however). Stability had been ok until 2 days ago when the email server crashed. We've been w/o email x 2 days. A tech told a fellow member of a local computer user's group that the server couldn't handle the volume of email. So much for the sales pitch that Astound carefully monitors traffic on its network and adds capacity as needed. As much as Earthlink's dial-up service drove me crazy, they had fantastic online support. There's absolutely nothing on the Astound site - not even a notice as to when we can expect service to be restored. If you call customer support, you get a recording saying they don't know when service will be back up.
2/14/05 I guess it was too good to be true. We've had three DNS look-up problems this week, resulting in our being able to get to only part of the internet. While Astound admits there was a problem earlier in the week, there's no guaranteed after-hours or weekend tech support, so when the problem recurred on Sunday (yesterday) no action was taken for over a day. The problem went away, they can't figure out what happened and say they didn't have a problem they know about. They say they need to have 3 people call in a 15 minute time frame to report a problem, otherwise as far as they're concerned, it doesn't exist (and if I call at noon, two other people call at 2:00 and 2:10 and I call back at 2:15 to report that I'm still having a problem, that doesn't count as 3 people in 15 minutes b/c my original call came in at noon)*. I posted a message on a local computer BBS and other people in my neighborhood confirm the same issue at the same time, but since they didn't call tech support at the same time I did, their reports don't count. This is the third major incident in the last several months. Of course our bill is higher too, probably no different than any of the other major providers in the area. I am actively looking for a new ISP.
*forgot: their website and automated phone service actively discourage customers from calling after hours and on weekends, but they will troubleshoot a system-wide problem 24/7. The catch-22 is that they need the 3 people within 15 minutes to trigger any action. Since the website and automated service implies that you're not going to get help, no one will call. Bottom line, if you are an Astound customer with anything that MIGHT be a system-wide problem (like being able to get to only part of the internet), call even if it's after hours. (4/22/05: I have heard from other computer club members that other Astound tech support staff said that there is no "3 people in 15 minutes rule." I must conclude that whoever told me 3 ppl in 15 min was lying to get me off the phone. I have (unfortunately) had several other "opportunities" to call b/c of partial DNS outages and there does not appear to be any "3 people in 15 minutes rule." When I have called during the day, I've gotten folks who have tried to be helpful but couldn't recognize what was going on and others who actually knew how to diagnose the problem. When I called after hours, the rep generally took a message, but no action was taken until the following day.)
4/22/05 I think I have finally figured out a way around the DNS lookup issues that have occurred approximately every two weeks. I just wish Astound tech support had offered it as a suggestion. I entered an alternate DNS lookup server (got the address from the forums here) as a backup to the 2 Astound servers. That took care of the DNS outage last night. So, with enough tech expertise, you could actually live with Astound's service.
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Astound Broadband
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