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Review by m0unds 
UPDATED: 12 days ago
member for 6.7 years, 161 visits, last login: 12 days ago
 Albuquerque,Bernalillo,NM
 $55 per month
 about 7 days
 Qwest
 "Price is reasonable, hardware was free, speeds are good"
 "horribly uncoordinated install/order process"
 "qwest is a good deal, but not necessarily cheaper than cable"
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I ordered my DSL line from qwest.com on 3/26/09. The order itself went without a hitch; I received my confirmation email which included instructions to monitor my order status using qwest's "myaccount" system. (the email said to register to view status) After attempting to register for "myaccount" with the naked DSL phone number I was given, I found out that myaccount is only available to qwest subscribers with active service in one form or another. so i had no way to track the status of my order. this was a bit distressing to me because i've had DSL from two CLECs previously, and both had status pages that let you check nearly any aspect of the process from provisioning to truck rolls and what have you.
after waiting 24 hours and still having trouble getting in to myaccount, i contacted support via live chat (which is handy) and was told that it was only available to current subs and i was not eligible. i went on dslr to try and find an order status URL, but the only available one is no longer accessible. i attempted contacting qwest again on monday to get the tracking number for the modem (i live in an apartment and it's easier for me to use quantum to notify me of delivery than try calling the office to verify delivery) and they didn't have one for me. i tried again on tuesday (3/31) and was able to get a tracking number, but it was not valid so i had to re-contact them again to get the correct one. the modem arrived on 4/1 like they stated it would, and i hooked it up and had it ready to go between the window of 0800-1700 that i was given during the order process.
1745 rolled around and the line still wasn't active and i had a funny feeling something was wrong, so i contacted support once again to find out what was going on. i found out from the tech that the order had not been placed in the workflow for the day and had not been completed. they stated they would add it to the evening workflow and it should be available within 2-3 hours. if not, the tech said, i should either call support or use the online chat. i waited 5 hours and contacted qwest again via chat because the line still wasn't up. the tech informed me that the repair order they'd used to invoke the service initiation had been completed but there was an "order problem" and i'd need to call sales in the morning (4/2).
i called sales at 0800 on 4/2 and first spoke to a sales rep who checked the order and said there was nothing wrong with it and had me hold while he transfered me to the repair department. every person i'd spoken to until this point had been extremely pleasant and as helpful as they could be. the representative from the repair department, however, was a cold, rude woman who transferred me mid-sentence to another department. this final woman was excellent and took very good care of me, apologizing for the situation and she was able to escalate the issue and get it taken care of. the issue was something with the pairs they had allocated in the RT having issues. the agent took care of getting dispatch notified to complete the install today and gave me a time of 1600 for completion. at 1609, my line was active and provisioned at 7168kbps.
I do have a feeling, though, that if I hadn't been as persistent as I was, that I would still be waiting for someone to figure out what the heck is going on. For that reason, i rate the install coordination low. I'll revisit my review in a while, once I've had a chance to use it a bit and see if I'm still feeling pretty good about it.
i ran a speed test and got right around 6000kbps/500kbit, which is within the spec for the line. i did a few traceroutes to servers i manage and to some gaming servers i play on, and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of jitter on the line. coming from Comcast, who had in the last 2 weeks gone from great to horrendous (loss, latency, jitter, etc) to a nice stable DSL line was great. first hop latency is a bit high due to interleaving, but i contacted support again to the get line placed on a fastpath profile and had a ticket submitted to have it completed on my first attempt. so far, so good.
Subscribed speed: 7mbit
CPE: Actiontec M1000 (not all that great)
Location (there is a crazy lack of reviews from NM residents): Northwest Albuquerque (Ellison & Golf Course area)
*EDIT 4/9/09*
After evaluating the connection for a week and dealing with actual tech support reps via their online chat system, I've given them a higher rating for reliability and for tech support. I submitted a ticket via online chat to have interleaving disabled on my very healthy line. It was completed this afternoon and interleaving is disabled. First hop latency went from 30ms to 6ms. I'll revisit my review again in a few months.
*EDIT* 11/8/09
Qwest made FTTN available at my location and I immediately bit and signed up for the 12mbit tier. The install (at the CO and their network) wasn't completed by 1700 on the install date, but a quick chat with Qwest online fixed that. Unfortunately, my line developed some serious issues and my VDSL circuit was only able to sync at 6.5mbit. After bringing the internal wiring up to code, I'm running at 12.1mbit and am happy. I'll continue using Qwest for the foreseeable future.
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Review by bendold
Posted: 12 days ago
member for 4 years, 24 visits, last login: 12 days ago
Pocatello,Bannock,ID
$44 per month
about 7 days
Qwest
"Internet is always up and at the advertised speed."
"Internet speed varies on location and no plans to upgrade."
"Reliable internet that doesn't monitor your bandwidth usage."
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I have had qwest DSL for over 8 years now. I have been very happy with the quality and speed of it. The only issues I have is the spotty roll out of faster speed DSL. I can get 5 to 12 mb cable internet in my area but only 1.5mb DSL. I will never use cable for the fact they monitor your bandwidth usage and I download and upload a lot. When you call or talk to qwest they have no idea of when they may upgrade your area to a faster speed.
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 Review by sammysnake
Posted: 18 days ago
member for 7.8 years, 2547 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Salt Lake City,Salt Lake,UT
$41 per month (24 month contract)
about 3 days
Qwest
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I've been with Qwest now for a few days over 4 months and I couldn't be happier. Same speeds as I was getting from Comcast but cheaper. I'll update aging a few months down the road.
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Review by questionable
UPDATED: 25 days ago
member for 4 years, 714 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Phoenix,Maricopa,AZ
$40 per month
about 3 days
Qwest
"Good speeds, Good Price, Good reliability"
"Tech Support transfers blindly, Billing issues"
"Overall great service"
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I considered Cox cable but i know that if you use too much bandwidth they yell at you and threaten to cancel.
Speed is 3/1 for 36 a month.
The did mess up on the order but that was because i was canceling my Phone service at the same time
received a 2wire 270 and a rg200c
Update: July 16 2009
Currently still on 3/1 for 36 a month. Still have the 2wire 270D and the RC2200c (Used to have Qwest Choice) I'm sad to say that they dropped the TV portion of my service. I have been told that I am going to be receiving VDSL2+ instead of the ADSL2+ which will allow up to 40/20 speeds. I got to say that I love that idea. Will update my review when I get the new Service to let you know how everything goes.
Updated Oct 26th 2009
Had Qwest hook up 7/5. Tech was at my house at 11 am and left a little after 11:30. Connected my 2 other computers without a single problem and set my port forwarding to the best of my knowledge with the Q1000. The will be calling today to tell me what other speeds I'm provisioned for. Line tests from Qwest and Speedtest.net are getting 6.6ish down and 4.7ish up. Dslreports get much lower.
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 Review by hortnut
UPDATED: 31 days ago
member for 4.1 years, 1025 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Vancouver,Clark,WA
Contract price not specified.
Qwest
"Seems solid so far"
"None so far that I can see"
"Visiting a relative and hooked up wireless router to DSL for Laptop access"
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10/22/09 - Relative no longer lives at address that had Qwest DSL. And now has Comcast. But Fios is being installed in their Apartment Complex. Since I am unable to delete, will part with this update.
The DSL worked fine at this location, the problem was with the Wetware clicking on every pop up and surfing at questionable sites that then crapped out the computer. That relative is not in the new location.
end
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At home I am with Comcast and normally connect on this Laptop Wirelessly. Currently I am visiting a relative and brought a wireless access point and am accessing Qwest DSL via that means.
No problem so far, though I do see that I would be disappointed if I were to be downloading large files.
Streaming video from You Tube and downloading a 25 meg file seems to work great in Firefox. No choppiness in the video. Opened up cbs.com and am watching Jericho at same time in IE. Seems ok.
Laptop - Dell C610 - P3 @ 1.2mhz, 1 gig Ram, Netgear 54g equipment. Old but still workable.
BTW - I was working for USwest/Qwest in Tech Support in late 90's/early '00's when DSL was first deployed in Phoenix and then throughout there whole territory. Supporting Win3.11, 95/98, NT and Macs [yes Macs will run on Qwest and DSL] at the time.
It was actually easier to troubleshoot a Mac then a PC!! But most techs were afraid of Macs.
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Review by CCafe
UPDATED: 36 days ago
member for 9.2 years, 777 visits, last login: 36 days ago
Des Moines,Polk,IA
$65 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
Qwest
"20Mb in some areas!"
"A lot of areas where they like to advertise upto but really limited to 1.5 -3Mb"
"For the money it works and uptime is only affected by accidental line cutting."
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Update: Making the switch back over to Mediacom. Sick and tired of Qwest promising they will get to my neighborhood. They have been making the same promise for the last 3 years that they will upgrade our DSLAM so we can accept higher speeds. Have been told several times that right down the street they've upgraded and they can get up to 20Mb service.
Qwest, just another cherry picker!
Mediacom is giving me an introductory rate of $39.99 for the first year of service. Service will start at 12Mb vs my current 1.5Mb.
1.5Mb just won't cut it when I want to download a movie or a television show. Heck even my PS3 updates are past the point of being tedious. Everything has grown larger over the past few years except Qwest. They are happy with their service and have no problem telling the world that their customers don't want higher speeds.
Get with the program Qwest!
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 Review by Shenigami
Posted: 37 days ago
member for 263 days, 69 visits, last login: 17 days ago
Denver,Adams,CO
Contract price not specified.
"DSL services are the best that I have had"
"Cutomer service not the best but getting better"
"I've had Qwest services for many years and never had any issues."
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I have never really looked into other options for DSL because I have never really needed to. Monthly price is about $40 for the 7meg package. They had everything ready to go buy the time I had my Actiontec router. I hear people complaining about slow ISP's but I have never had that issue. I play online games and have never been disconnected due to ISP issues.
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Review by Brisk
UPDATED: 44 days ago
member for 6.3 years, 771 visits, last login: 39 days ago
Colorado Springs,El Paso,CO
$30 per month
about 4 days
Qwest
"Good connection."
"Poor support in the Colorado Springs area."
"Alright service if you don't care about latency."
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New Review (2009-)
I had enough of the outrageous rates of Sprint Mobile Broadband, so I switched back to Qwest's DSL in June '09. Installation was easy, I had service before though, so that could have made things easier. I ordered about June 3, and my service was activated June 5.
Seems like a good deal at $30/mo for 1.5Mbps/640Kbps for one year (two-year contract with a $200 early term. fee for price-for-life), excluding equipment that has a rental fee of $5-8/mo. (I have my own Qwest-branded modem, so that wasn't a problem.) I was given a self-install kit at a local mall kiosk, with the information required to set-up my service, except for the ADSL username and password. Still a great improvement over a few years ago, even though they make you install some un-necessary software and more experienced users need to call Qwest techs to get their ADSL password to set-up their service the way they like. The only real complaint that I have is that they don't pay attention to this area. And, unfortunately, as DSL and EVDO are the only services available here, Qwest has us by the leash. I advise you to get the best deal out there, which, in Colorado Springs is Comcast. For those of you where Comcast is not an option, Qwest is alright, if they maintain your lines. I have had no fewer than 4 separate techs out here to stabilize my line over the years, one who cut my service levels to 640k/256k, without my permission. I had to talk to them over the phone to get this resolved.
But overall, It's been alright, considering that the lines are over two decades old and I'm about 3 miles from the central office. I can only wish that they will add a remote terminal here, for better service.
Old review (2004-2006)
Update two: When my noise margins started dropping last month, I called Qwest about it and they said there wasn't much they could do. I guess they were joking, because two days later they sent out someone who checked the margins and cut some old line saving a few dBs. Then he suggested installing a homerun jack and actually re-wired an existing jack with a homerun jack for free. (It's normally $99 for a new one.) Margins are amazing now, a steady 24dB down and 25dB up, near-perfect.
I'd like to thank Qwest for doing all of this repair work at no cost. They still won't remove interleave but this is nice too.
UPDATE: It's been almost seven months and still no sign of megabit service in this area. The latency has been getting worse lately. On the upside, I have continuously used around 60GB (total upload & down) a month with no complaints from Qwest.
Had to get my Actiontec replaced in November. I sent them back everything including cables and the adapter, and they only sent me a modem. They told me it was a simple mistake and sent me everything with the second shipment. Both modems were sent free overnight delivery. They even credited me $7 for the almost week-long downtime (it was thanksgiving so overnight shipping wasn't really) and the dial-up service was excellent during that time.
I plan on moving in the next few months, and I'll make sure I have my choice of CLEC DSL and Cable. While Qwest has been good, it's just not for me.
The Qwest...
I finally gave in and ordered Qwest Basic DSL, their lower-speed 256/256 tier. The new RTs being built was a big factor in my decision. You can see all of the new terminals being built at »www.qwest.com/disclosures/netdis···dex.html
(Free excel viewer required, you can get it at »www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta···ylang=EN)
They update it with new terminals all the time, every couple of days in fact. Hundreds of terminals are on it already. Know your CO's name and see if they plan on building an RT for it, then MapQuest it's address.
Hopefully I can get the higher speeds next month when a remote terminal powers up just half a mile from my house.
I'd only recommend their lower-speed tier if you can't get cable or their higher-speed tier, 1.5/896.
Cost for line - $15
Qwest.net Basic service (without E-Mail or Webspace): $6.99
Modem rental: $3 (Recommended, since Actiontec modems have been reported as crap and as long as you lease it, it's their problem.)
Because the login is PPPoA used mostly in Europe until Qwest brought it into the states, most every DSL modem
out there doesn't support Qwest DSL.
So it's their equipment or nothing, unless DSL is beating cable badly enough in your area to support shops carrying DSL modems.
You don't get E-Mail or Webspace with Qwest.net, but it frees you from MSN's limitations...which I won't begin to go into. MSN sucks, trust me. I had their dial-up for a month.
For your webspace and e-mail, you can buy a domain and get cheap hosting for
$3 to $9 a month plus the yearly domain fee. Or you can just use angelfire and G-Mail if you want something on the free side.
Installation --
I canceled my Covad DSL service on the 13th and ordered Qwest DSL the same day.
The modem was supossed to be here on the 28th, but I got it yesterday (24th). My line isn't supossed to be active yet, but it is. Everything was done ahead of schedule, and all of the customer support reps were located on this continent. Extra brownie points for Qwest! Who knew? They have earned my trust again.
The only snag here is when I called Qwest for an update and they said my phone service was being transfered. It was actually the DSL service being transfered. I spent nearly an hour on the phone clearing things up, when the problem didn't really exist.
If phone orders and DSL orders look too much alike, they should revamp their ordering system.
The modem comes with all of the trimmings, though it isn't the most reliable modem on earth if you ask other Qwest customers. USB, 802.11G Wireless and Ethernet all standard with 4 filters. I easily slipped it into the network with my Linksys router and was running in 15 minutes.
Connection --
The connection has been rock-solid. I don't need to swap the lines (see previous reviews) to keep sync anymore.
I haven't really had the connection long enough for a good review, but when I see a problem I'll update this.
My only problem is that I should be able to have near latency-free gaming connections with someone in my own town using have same ISP right? Wrong. A direct Qwest connection in Colorado Springs is 150ms. That's unheard of, I have better latency to NYC than I do to my own town. The interleave otherwise isn't all that bad, 40ms to my first hop versus 30ms with Covad. But then again, my Covad connection had to travel to Denver 90 miles away for a first hop. 110 vs. 90 on most game servers. Not bad, in comparison.
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 Review by UHF
UPDATED: 46 days ago
member for 7.5 years, 2997 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Independence,Buchanan,IA
$29 per month (24 month contract)
about 1 days
Qwest
"Great upload and download speeds, awesome price"
"Some website are blocked, Email sucks (uses Hotmail)"
"Great value"
| Pre Sales information:
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(ratings match consensus)
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DSL was installed and working on time. Download speed is 5000, I'm getting very close to that in speed tests (around 4600) and seeing uploads of around 750 (896 advertised).
For the first two years I had service I had no issues. Now I've been down for almost a week due to a bad Qwest cable somewhere in their outside plant. They missed the first repair window while claiming they had fixed the problem, when I called back they told me it would be at least another 3 days before they could look into my issue.
The email accounts are through Hotmail, I am not using them since I already had Gmail. There are no POP3 or SMTP servers available that I've been able to find.
I have not needed to use tech support yet.
Update: I'm now starting on my 4th year with Qwest DSL. I've had one other outage caused by major flooding in downtown Cedar Rapids where the DSLAM is located. I don't blame Qwest for this at all, as they did everything they could to keep service up, but when the river came up so high and so fast they decided to pull the DSLAM out and move it to higher ground to save the equipment. The location of the DSLAM ended up under water a couple hours later.
Recently a critter chewed through the phone cable outside the house on my side of the NID, Qwest came out and fixed it at no cost, even though it was really my problem (and I'm the one that ran the wire unprotected outdoors). It had taken out my dial tone but the DSL kept right on trucking even with a broken wire.
Even with faster cable speeds available I am not inclined to change providers. I'm happy with Qwest DSL.
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Review by stripes182
Posted: 49 days ago
member for 346 days, 56 visits, last login: 13 days ago
Denver,Denver,CO
$53 per month
about 3 days
Qwest
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My new Qwest 12/896 line was installed about twelve hours ago, and I must say this time around things went much more smoothly than the last time I gave Qwest a chance. My install was delivered on-time and without problems. The 12mbps download is speed testing at about 10.6 consistently. Ironically, the further my test site is from my location, the better the results. I'm very happy to report that my initial opinion of Qwest is dramatically improved compared to my previous attempt to install DSL. So far, so good.
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