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bruxx
join:2003-03-12
Yakima, WA
| Re: Blarg reputation is damaged I disagree with the assessment of these reviews, I believe the biggest problem is that these reviewers suffer from unrealistic expectations.
I have no affiliation with Avvanta other than a being a pleased customer. I have been in the IT industry since 1984 and have used the Internet for work and play for almost as long, I used to live in the Puget Sound region trying several ISP's while there. I have since moved to an area where quality ISP services and support are pretty much non-existent.
For "years" I have looked for and tried for my own use and my customers, to find quality dependable ISP's with very few successes. I've been with Avvanta for almost a year now and I can comfortably say they are the finest example of an ISP I've yet to encounter. Their service is very dependable meeting the speeds offered and with low latency. They are extremely knowledgeable and pleasant to deal with, any time I have needed support they were helpful and something else that's rare today, they have been personable and not arrogant or condescending. I highly recommend Avvanta for anyone who's looking for a quality DSL provider, you will do a lot worse going elsewhere.
Lets put the events that caused Avvanta's down time into perspective; the damage caused by the weather conditions that occurred on 12/14/06 I believe have only been exceeded by the 1962 Columbus day storm that hit the Pacific Northwest which I believe is recorded as the strongest non-hurricane wind storm ever to strike the continental US.
During the 12/14/06 event wind gusts were clocked up to 100 mph at various locations taking down thousands of trees and power mains across the region, and resulting in at least 16 people losing their lives. This event resulted in the Governor declaring a state of emergency for most of the western part of Washington state, that is no small matter. Power and communications outages from the storms left over 1 million people without power or telephones bringing routine activities to a stand still, this not only effected people in Washington, but also in Oregon, Idaho as well as British Columbia. The outages left some tens of thousands of people without power or telephone service for over two weeks. My point is this was a catastrophic event that disrupted the lives of over a million people in the Pacific Northwest, and Avvanta was right in the middle of it and was off-line for less than 4 days.
I say bravo Avvanta, good job guys.
I believe the biggest problem Avvanta might have is they have grown too fast. My last conversation with them indicated they had been in the process of implementing an emergency NOC (network operations center) in a different geographic location when the storm hit catching them off-guard. It's my understanding that it ether is operational or soon will be which should alleviate this type of problem in the future.
If your looking for an excellent DSL provider, go with Avvanta, no one else can touch them.
GD | |
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longtimeblargger
@avvanta.com
| Re: Blarg reputation is damaged Your argument would be more compelling if other Seattle area ISPs were also offline for 4 days. They were not.
It appears Avvanta did not have sufficient disaster recovery in place and took an extended outage. Other Seattle area ISPs were more prepared and did not have the same issue. | |
| | bruxx
join:2003-03-12
Yakima, WA
| Re: Blarg reputation is damaged Then we agree to disagree. Based on the information I have read on record and from friends and family who lived through this, a significant area of Bellevue was dark up to Sunday night. This effected not only Avvanta but businesses, medical clinics, and some emergency and support facilities in the area. I'm told by those who experienced it first hand that Verizon, QWEST and other service providers suffered outages in and around the Puget Sound region that effected hundreds possibly thousands of home, business and government customers alike for Internet and voice services even though their out of state NOC's were not effected.
I admit it would have been prudent of them to have an emergency NOC, but since they do not have the resources of QWEST or other National providers as they are a local provider and taking into account the extent of the problems that occurred, it's disingenuous to fault them to the point of not being worth recommending to others.
If you require the level of uninterrupted service you deem so important that you can disregard any other attributes they have demonstrated, then obviously you need go with a provider that can offer that. I will keep them as my ISP and continue to recommend them to others as an excellent choice.
Best regards. | |
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