Phone/Internet Service

[Jks3369]

What company do you use? Are there any other options other than Comcast?

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[trickycoolj]

CenturyLink is the traditional telephone provider, their DSL internet leaves a lot to be desired and is slow. If you work from home via VPN, stream lots of multimedia (Netflix, Hulu), or do online gaming (Xbox Live, PSN) it’s not enough.

Comcast has the city approved monopoly on Cable TV and Cable Internet (they also provide VOIP telephone but keep in mind that doesn’t function in a power outage). Comcast has the best internet speeds and will cost you somewhere between $30-60 for just internet. You can ask for their unadvertised $16 “Limited Basic Cable” if you don’t care too much about TV.

Clearwire has citywide wireless internet, I’ve heard very mixed reviews by neighborhood depending on location, trees, topography. Last I talked to them they had a no-penalty trial period to determine if the service functioned properly in your home but I nixed the idea when I heard the performance with Xbox Live was lackluster.

There’s another much smaller cable company (Broadstripe?) but I don’t think it services West Seattle but I’ve heard tons of complaints from my friends in Lower Queen Anne and the International Dist about how awful it is.

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[sam-c]

why oh why is it so hard to find decent internet service in a city like Seattle. it’s ridiculous.

after this weekend, we’ve been trying to figure out which internet service to switch to. Clear has been so unreliable lately, and the modem just spent the past weekend blinking….. blinking….blinking….blinking…..blinking….blinking….. never could get it up and running. started working again Monday (1 bar). attempted to go visit them at Westwood but they are no longer there. (couldn’t figure out their customer service # w/out internet.) will have to write that number down if we don’t find something better.

sounds like century link is slow but it sure has gotta be faster than Clear.

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[JoB]

in some areas of West Seattle.. Comcast and Clearwire are the only choices..

we tried clearwire but when they arbitrarily changed the way their towers were set up, we lost coverage and it took months to get them to release us from our contract with them.

we now use comcast and ooma for VOIP phone. yes, we lose the phone when the electric is out.. but still have cells for back-up…

i am sometimes tempted to put a hard wired phone back in.. but the notion always passes before i do anything about it.

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[MrsL]

We use Centurylink for our landline. (We decided we needed this still – my cell coverage in the house is spotty (Tmobile) and my husband rarely turns on his cell (Virgin mobile) when at home.) We have Clear for internet. Like Sam-C, our modem had chasing bars for periods of time during the weekend. When the finally stopped it was slow. We have a friend in Greenlake who use Clear hotspot and they’re happy with that. However, they may be in an area with more/better Clear towers. We are thinking about Centurylink for internet but haven’t made an effort to do it.

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[PLS]

We got a clear hot spot when we were renting near Fauntleroy last year. It’s a great backup but I wouldn’t use it for day to day. Nice to take on the road with you or to lunch or wherever if you need to work.

My wife and I both work from home and demand lots of bandwith and stability so we have Comcast for internet. A year ago I hated them as it was up, down, up, down all the time. Seemed like weekly they were out for hours. They have made improvements though and – at least here in Belvedere – are very stable and fast. It ain’t cheap ($60/month if i get basic cable for $15) but when your jobs depend on it that’s what you do. Centurylink’s speed was too much of a joke to consider.

Our home is in the middle of an AT&T cell phone service Bermuda Triangle, so we need a landline, too, as backup and that’s through Centurylink. Relatively cheap insurance and we sometimes forward the cell phones to it for convenience.

Talk about distributed … AT&T, Clear, Centurylink and Comcast all taking our money. Whew.

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[TanDL]

We’re just about as distributed as PLS… :)

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[Ken]

CL now has 20mg service available in DSL as long as you make CL your ISP. (probably available in certain areas, but historically mine was the end of the line for upgrades (Highpoint))

it’s fast (18.8Mbps avg)down and kinda slow (.896Mbps) upload. The upload is still faster than the t-1 lines used in the 90’s (and the current tier of budget DSL) when used symmetrically. Another 10.00 a month get you a 5.00 Mbps upload speed.

I am pretty sure none of you use a fraction of the speed you are paying for from comcast. I switched all my servers over to hosting or tunneled ipv6 to move to the 20meg tier.

BTW: NO down time this year. (I have apps that record ping times to my hosted servers.)

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[WSLifer]

@Ken – glad to see your comments. Many people don’t know that CenturyLink has been improving the infrastructure and the speed of DSL you can get does vary by location, so you may be in an area that can get super-fast and just not realize it. It’s worth a call at least since it’s really competitive with Comcast rates and can be bundled too for discounts.

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[lazybeard]

I’ve been using Comcast Business service for internet for a couple of months now and I really like it. Being on the business side, it does cost a little more but you get a service level agreement (SLA) for downtime. I resisted as long as I could not to have Comcast but I recently moved to Alki and they were my only viable option (I had CenturyLink ‘fiber’ service in Highland Park and LOVED it).

You can “bundle” the Business service as well, but I opt not to as I don’t watch TV or need a home phone.

Good luck.

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