US Telco Support > Frontier Communications > MI deployments 1/10/11 lots of new areas....

reply to jackson123

Re: MI deployments 1/10/11 lots of new areas....

reply to thorataz
my speeds have been really bad lately. gonna call frontier in the morning. i have the dry line that $50 bucks its suppose to be 7meg but this weekend there has been some kind of issue.

reply to thorataz
Learned a month or two ago about availability in the Coldwater/Union City area. Had a tech come down and setup a new drop from the road, and ended up with 1.5/.15 (modem reports 1788/172), not horrible, but pretty low upload. Attenuation (41.7/56.1) suggests I'm around 3km from my CO box.

Only concern seems to be the latency... it tends to be 45-50 ms to the first external hop, but most speed sites report it at 75-90 ms. Is this normal?

You would normally see 1/2 that BUT it all depends on what is going at the local office. Once you are on the internet back bone it all depends on how far you are going before you hop off again.

Smith can give you a hand if you have any more questions.
Post in his speed/latency thread -
»[Internet] For anyone seeing speed issues....

reply to SuperSpy
Hey SuperSpy,

I'm from the same area as you.. I'll be sending you a PM with some info about our local setup.

-TimJ

reply to thorataz
Well, I received some interesting news today...

Grass Lake has been lit up with new 12MBps service!
I got a call tonight from a Frontier Representative who told me that my line qualified for the new ULTRA service.

I signed up almost immediately - best part is, it's only going to cost me an additional $10/month in order to double my speed

I encourage everyone to call as soon as they can to look into this. It sounds like Frontier is ramping up their new technology to what it is fully capable of now that things have settled down. There is no installation fee and I have been told that the service should be live as soon as tomorrow.

I'll let everyone know as soon as I get it with screenshots of the speed test.

WOOHOO!!!

Congratulations. I just wish they would finish the connection in the Linden area like they said they would a year ago. Still scraping by on a poor 3g connection.

reply to NekoSaur
WHAT??? NO way!!!

I just made my annual call to Bill Sharp and left a message. I *still* have a temporary cable from the box to our house and would REALLY like it buried before winter (it'll have been there a year in October). I also asked about getting CO to upgrade our speed over 3Mbps!!

DANG! I hope we get lucky, too!

OK, I called Frontier's 888 number and they told me the max I can get is 3MB. Which I have. I am NOT happy.

All we need to get faster up here -- WITH fiber under Mt. Hope -- is for the CO in Grass Lake to update their frickin' equipment!!!

... or just turn up the speed. The CO I'm sure has plenty of capacity on the internal network to handle the higher speeds. The fiber backbone connecting it will probably be the issue however.

I just spoke with Technical Support.

Apparently they use a process of building a list or a petition as to how they upgrade speeds. In other words just because we have the fiber AND the box, they won't bring ASDL2 unless my neighbors call and ask/demand it. This is CRAZY, the box is nearly full!

That's news to me. I'd love to get ADSL2+ on my line and some higher speeds, but right now the current ADSL Card I'm on works fine and Frontier really doesn't offer anything higher than 3Mbps to residential lines anyways, so there's not really a point. I'm sure (or hope!) they know folks in my area want higher speeds on the DSL though. I've heard there are some ADSL2+ cards installed in the DSLAM back at the remote but there's one or two of them at most in the entire shelf. Probably replacement modules for blown ones or for those really far out from the days Frontier stopped using AdrenaLines in this area before they went to another product.

reply to ShellMMG
Thats crazy that they have not buried your line - its been a year!
My parents on Reithmiller Road just got Frontier installed yesterday and managed to get 3Mbps. They were also told that this was the fastest speed available for the time being. They ordered the service in JUNE and just had it installed yesterday. They got a letter from Frontier after 2 missed installs in July and were told that because of an engineering issue, Frontier was unable to install service and were waiting for a port to free up - i.e., there were no physical plugs left to install their service.... what?!?

The ADSL2+ service has been going great - no issues yet. I was able to speed test today at 11.59Mbps down and 1.98Mbps up with a ping of 38ms - just about as fast as the line will allow.

It was interesting to see the tech install the equipment when he first came over. He was provided with a new type of router (Comtrend) and had NO idea how to configure it. There were absolutely no instructions given to him by Frontier, just a modem/router in the box with a power cord. It was kind of comical. I felt bad for him! He had to call Frontier and argue with tech support on how to get this thing running. Even support didn't know the specs or config settings. We FINALLY figured out together (thank God I know networking) that the router's IP address was not your typical 192.168.0.1, but was instead 192.168.254.254. We couldn't even get in to configure it and Frontier was no help.

Once we got in it was fairly straightforward. We pretty much hung up on tech support because the guy was being a little confrontational and not helpful. I took over the laptop at one point and basically just said "please don't be offended - just let me do it." It was up and running 30 seconds later. LOL.

The tech told me that I was only the second install in Jackson county and that I was definitely a guinea pig for this install. Overall he did really well with the very little info he had.

Apparently with the right equipment Frontier COULD potentially install multiple ADSL2+ lines to your home with this type of CO box and bond them all to give you insane speeds. He told me it would be very, very expensive though and is mostly reserved for business.... but, it IS possible

Haven't got my first bill yet - there are rumors that Frontier dropped the modem rental fee with this bonded plan, which would basically offset the increase of $10/month. Double the speed for roughly $3 sounds good to me!

I'll let you know!
Hopefully they upgrade that box soon!!!

reply to ShellMMG

OLD Bill

NEW Bill

Please, PLEASE ask your parents to call Frontier and ask for the 12Mb service. Have them talk to their neighbors, too!

I put in a word to the CitPat, asking them to consider the Frontier bonded line for a story in the paper. I also left a note on the Grass Lake Schools Facebook page and am looking for every other outlet I can. I may even go to the Waterloo Township board meeting. I'll probably have our business partner print up a couple of BIG signs and stick one by the box.

I *knew* that blasted box is full. As long as they heed the note our installer put on our naked loop line and don't reassign our port I won't take any heads off.

My parents did ask the techs about the increase in speed by upgrading the box - they told them the same thing that they told you. I honestly think it is just a stall for time on Frontier's end. Even with all of the ports full they are still going to need to spend some big cash to get that box swapped. The ironic thing is that there WAS a new DSLAM CO sitting there early last year that they decided to move somewhere else for no reason.

I can tell you that at least from my experience I did NOT call Frontier to request this new service. They called ME! I am constantly looking for new service opportunities from Frontier and had no idea it was available. I am also relatively certain that nobody in my area requested increases either (I highly doubt the locals around me know what bonded ADSL2+ is) :P

It sounds like this is just a natural increase in speed offered by the DSLAM CO. According to the recent Frontier Q4 call, the box is technically capable of 16-20Mbps per subscriber (bonded) with no major changes in architecture and is planned to be "ramped up" over the next couple of years to full speed. Good strategy on Frontier's end to ensure that families keep increasing their bill with no other costs to Frontier!

We'll see what happens. Maybe Frontier will be present at "Heritage Days" Saturday in Grass Lake - might be a good chance to get some face time!

reply to ShellMMG
I will get right on calling frontier tomorrow about this. Even though I doubt it will do any good since I'm pretty sure I live further out in grass lake than ShellMMG does.

reply to ShellMMG
UPDATE: I was having problems with my DSL line on Friday. Sometime between 10AM and 3PM it started either working or disconnecting, with the internet light off, flashing or red. I placed a trouble ticket and was told it would be fixed within 24 hours.

Today Jeff out of the Grass Lake CO came and checked things out. He was able to repair our service AND escalated a drop! FINALLY! We've been working with a temporary line across our front yard since last October. It'll be nice to mow down the strip of weeds.

Now...about ADSL+2...

Jeff says we're the "perfect candidates" if Frontier upgrades the MUX. The cabinet is FULL but is provisioned for a maximum of 3Mb down. I have a very good ping and service is consistent, but things get bogged down when both kids are home and hubby wants to watch streaming video (buffer...buffer...buffer) and am pushing for that lovely new bonded service. Jeff did say that there's "a lot of gremlins" in deploying the new bonded service because of the equipment Frontier uses; it's inconsistent and they're dealing with multiple modems. ADSL+2 in Grass Lake is seeing deployment downtown, out to Fishville Rd. and Wolf Lake, but I want it tooooo! (whine whine!). They'd probably have to put in a new, bigger box because with bonded service it requires THREE slots next to each other (ex. port numbers 30, 31, 32), currently not feasible with a packed-full MUX. When they come to do the permanent installation and we get rid of our temporary connection we will be READY for ASDL+2 and just need to make a phone call.

If there are a multitude of bugs, it may be a good idea to wait until they fix them. I'm not nearly as technically savvy as NekoSaur and wouldn't be able to help with configuration. I'll have to ask my son if he has any experience when he gets home, but he's more computer hardware than networking.

PLEASE continue to ask for bonded!! If it's only $10 more a month that's a HUGE bargain...it would even help the resale value of your house. Yes, I'm coming up with every reason to make the call!

reply to NekoSaur
NekoSaur, the story on that vanishing MUX is that it was a *duplicate* box, accidentally installed prior to deployment because the work order from Frontier said it was needed. That's why they took it out.

Maybe they should've left it. Or maybe they'll put a nice new one for bonded ADSL in it's place? Wishing wishing wishing...!!