A little known erstwhile awesome thing in Wallingford is that Interconnection offered $80 per year broadband via Clear wimax to anyone with a student in the house, meaning if you had a kid in school you qualified. Yes, no need to be poor, you get semi-broadband Internet for less than $7 per month! Yeah, only about 3 MBPS, but still, $7! Fortunately, it’s not too late to switch to far more superior options such as compareyourbusinesscosts.co.uk/.
Well, the cheap times end in November. Sprint bought Clear and stabbed wimax through its sputtering heart. There’s still cheap options out there, but they all seem to require that you fill out reams of paperwork testifying to your poorness, like having a free and reduced price lunch student in the house and having income below the poverty line. See here for your options if you qualify: http://www.seattle.gov/tech/LowCostInternet
If not, you are left to choose between CenturyLink (aka US West / QWest), or Comcast (aka XFinity). I checked out Frontier and Wave and other Seattle broadband providers, but they either aren’t in Wallingford or are business-only providers or only service condos, like Regatta. I guess some people might be able to get by with a cellular data plan, but they all cap your monthly usage so they don’t make sense for home use, especially if you stream video. Please tell me if I’m wrong and there’s an option other than CenturyLink or Comcast.
Assuming we’re stuck, which participant in the oligarchic duopoly is less evil? Which fleet of executive yachts are we going to pay to fuel up? Decisions, decisions.
As has been noted by a few readers, CenturyLink has been installing fiber in Wallingford. Michael Kucher writes:
Out my window Corliss at 43rd I can see a truck with a cherry picker on it. The cherry picker is holding a guy up in the trees at cable height where he is using a sort of bobbin to spin wire around the existing phone cable that holds the new fiber-optic cable up. I talked to the guy and he said that they’re hanging two cables on Corliss one with the 144 pieces of fiber and the other I think he said with 72 pieces of fiber. Asked when it would be done and he said 3 to 6 months. He said another crew would come in and fuse the glass together at each joint. Then when they’re done, Centurylink would come and connect the cable to each house or apartment. The contractor doing just the cable-stringing part of the job is called Track Utilities from Meridian, Idaho. He said the fusing of the glass already begun a few blocks west of here.
For now, CenturyLink maxes out a 7 or 12 MBPS in our neighborhood. I contacted CenturyLink and they’re only copping to adding gigabit Internet to the U-District and Green Lake, but they won’t tell me what the boundaries are for that and they aren’t saying anything about plans for Wallingford and they won’t give me a service map or plan. I expect Michael knows a lot more than their press people, so if gigabit is your thing then register for notification here: centurylink.com/gigabit.
Comcast goes up to 250 MBPS already, but of course you’ll pay for that privilege, and the bandwidth is shared with your neighbors so it declines when a lot of people are online at once. Comcast also has worse upload speeds than DSL, although CenturyLink doesn’t publish upload speeds in our area so I can’t be sure. I would think that if working or playing Bubble Cash on my phone then CenturyLink is better than Comcast because of the better upload speeds.
In terms of cost, here’s the numbers I see out there now. Introductory rates are a favored tool of the evil duopoly to hook you on product so they can gouge you, like a free shot of heroin, so they are filtered out. Let us know in the comments if there’s a way to game the system long term. Maybe switch back and forth between providers every couple years? A decade at $50 a month is $6,000 I’d rather spend elsewhere:
| Download Speed | Comcast cost per month |
CenturyLink cost per month |
| 3 MBPS | $40 | $44 |
| 7 MBPS | $50 | $49 |
| 12 MBPS | NA | $54 |
| 25 MBPS | $62 | NA |
| 50 MBPS | $67 | NA |
| 105 MBPS | $79 | NA |
| 150 MBPS | $115 | NA |
| 250 MBPS | $150 | NA |
| GBPS | NA | Someday? |
It’s possible to get by with a lot less bandwidth if you have a router with Tomato, DD-WRT, or some other decent bandwidth management firmware. Your router should let you favor certain forms of communication over others and favor certain devices over others. Nobody wants to be on a VOIP call, then have some computer start syncing google drive or downloading an update and interrupt the call, and nobody wants their kids’ streaming to get in the way of their work. Better routers, not throwing money at bandwidth, is the best solution for that.
We’re thinking of going with CenturyLink at 12 MBPS with a good router. We’re also wishing the city would provide broadband for everyone, something like 10 MBPS for free based on a property tax, then with the option to pay in increments above that for faster speeds. That would be kind of progressive, right?
Anyhow, back to reality, do you have any tips or tricks for gaming the system?
CenturyLink’s online signup form does offer an upload speed “customize” option, from the default 896 Kbps to 5 Mbps. Not sure that’s an option for all possible upload speeds, didn’t used to be anyway. We’re on an old plan with 1.3 Mbps or something like that for download, and the upload speed does test out, e.g. 0.87 Mbps. Devices that back up data to “the cloud” can be a pain, though that’s another thing that seems to vary from one modem/router to another With our old one, congested upload from bulk traffic seemed to more or less lock out downloads and small up traffic, e.g. DNS queries, but the current CenturyLink modem seems to manage priorities better.
I just was in Germany. They pay 30E or $36 a month for unlimited mobile phone access and less for high speed internet home connection. Why the high expense here? For high speed, it is a monopoly, not a duoloply, in Wallingford. Don’t understand why…healthy competition is no longer in the equation for the select few corporations I am guessing.
RE: “switch back and forth between providers every couple years?”
I’m with Comcast on the $65/mo for 50Mbps plan – I called last week and mentioned that someone from CenturyLink had stopped by offering a similar plan for much less (true), and they sent me to their retention department, where someone quickly offered me a break to $45/mo for the next year.
Still expensive, but it was a five minute phone call to save $240 over the next year. So really, I think just the threat of switching to the competition can get you back close to the introductory rates…
The fiber optic installers have been on Wallingford Avenue the past week. My husband spoke to them, and they said “soon” for available service. We found that with old, plaster-covered walls wi-fi signals don’t travel well and a good router is necessary to get the signal on all floors. And then you need a faster speed because, even with a good router, the signal does degrade going floor to floor. And if one of you is working from home, you need a speedy connection. Comcast knows it has you and can charge … a lot. Sigh.
Thank you all for this very helpful post and the informative comments. Would you please suggest a router or routers that have the desirable characteristics mentioned? Thank you.
I’m in Wallingford and just switched from Comcast to Centurylink. They are now offering 40 MBPS up/down – I gather it’s fiber all the way to the street, then runs into the house over the phone line. I’ve been quite satisfied so far and have generally found it to be faster or the same speed than my supposedly 50MBPS Comcast connection I had previously.
I’m at 35th/Meridian
On municipal broadband — there’s an organization pulling for it, http://www.upgradeseattle.com. They hope to make it another utility like water or electricity. Recently in the news after a city study on the matter, http://www.seattle.gov/broadband/broadband-study. That study makes it look pretty expensive, but just skimming, it looks like it’s about 1 to 10 Gb fiber – 1 Gb is assumed to be a starting point. It seemed likely to everyone that not enough people would be willing to pay, to make it fly – they’d need 43% buy in at $75/month. That seems like a lot, don’t know how much of that is paying off initial costs over what time frame.
Anyway, per the utility analogy, it isn’t obvious that anyone would get free broadband. Is my water, electricity etc. free if I don’t use very much?
Jon, great to know about Century Link fiber service. I’ll check into it.
Dale, we have an Apple AirPort Extreme. It’s in the basement (where the modem is / where my husband’s office is), and the signal two floors up is great.
Thank you, Chris
The FCC recently ruled they can no longer call it “High Speed” internet service unless it’s at least 25 MBPS. This recent PBS 9 minute science show segment is extremely informative, like the fact greedy Comcast sued Chattanooga, TN, twice to stop their City from offering Gig hi speed connections: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science-jan-june13-broadband_03-21/
Thank god for the recent “Net Neutrality” FCC ruling or the duopoly would stick it to us even more. Seattle is going to study it again but I have grave doubts they can overcome the lobbyists $: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-activists-push-for-city-run-high-speed-internet-service/
I believe Comcast gave quite a bit of money to our current mayor. While our previous mayor was in full support of the citywide Internet.
Eric, thank you *very* much for this posting — all your detective work saved me a lot of time. I’m grateful! And very heartened to hear fiber is on the way — we saw the same truck putting up cable on Densmore Ave., between 45th and 46th.
As to experience: We’re on CenturyLink for our DSL connection, and have been for a long time — though with an ISP other than CenturyLink, Drizzle.com. Drizzle used to be locally-owned, and back in the day, knew how to work with Qwest (remember them?) to deal with connection problems.
However, Drizzle has been acquired, and then acquired again (it’s acquisitions all the way down…). The service has gotten worse (frequent outages on the PPPoE connection), and the support has been off-shored.
For those who have CenturyLink as an ISP — how is the service? E.g., internet outages, etc.?
Thanks in advance!
My wife & I have had CenturyLink as our ISP since it was Quest. We had their modem/router die once after 13 months old with a 12 mo. warranty so it cost us $100 to replace with their WiFi Motorola 3342 which has lasted several years but their tech recently checked all our signals from our Fremont condo to their U-Dist. “local office” computer by Hardwicks where it connects to the internet fiber optic trunk-line. After being w/ Ma Bell for 30 years the Clink just upgraded us to 20 MBPS for free (actually $9.95 mo. + $30 landline bundle) which their Speedtest weblink: http://internethelp.centurylink.com/internethelp/speedtest-q2.html
says should actually get us only 16 MBPS & another 2 Megs less with WiFi instead of ethernet cables. But after this upgrade we only average actual 7 to 8 Megs of WiFi download (10 Megs today!) with 0.8M upload speed after our upgrade from 5 Megs. Clink’s field Tech claims it’s our old combo modem/router slowing us way down. We don’t stream much so it’s quick enough for us. Unlike our Comcast TV cable & my Mom-in-law’s Comcast phone that frequently “breaks”, our shared Clink DSL & voice landline has been extremely reliable except once when a “Last Mile” copper wire internet booster transformer on top of a telephone pole on Stone Way went on the fritz which they quickly traced/fixed when we were only to get 1 Meg. I don’t trust Comcast to do anything other than gouge (we also have to call Clink’s “Loyalty” dept about every 6 months when they too try to sneak/creep up our bill but they always find a new special low rate).
My suggestion for saving money…make sure you really need the speed you’re paying for. If you regularly stream HD movies, maybe you need the higher speeds. Otherwise, you’re likely paying tens of $ a month to save a couple milliseconds for some web page takes to load. Most of the slowness you experience probably isn’t related to the ISP anyway…it’s server issues, or addressing issues or a host of other things. The ISPs love to upsell speed, speed, speed, but for a lot of people, even 3Mbps is more than enough.
I have DISH satellite and really hate Century Link and Comcast for the usual reasons, so when DISH said they were offering internet (faster, more, better, cheaper, etc.), I took the leap. The irony is that they use the Century Link lines, but I’ve had better, faster service so far and it’s kind of nice having my bill bundled as well as paying less for everything than before.
We have been using nwlink, which is now Easy Street, for years with no problems and good connection. But since they have been taken over by Easy Street we have been experiencing nothing but potholes. We are unable to connect to a quite a few internet sites. I really don’t understand why some are a problem but not others. We are going to start looking for a new ISP.
CenturyLink is still only offering 7Mbps on Woodland Park around 40th.
I went with Comcast Business because it will avoid the incoming data caps they are talking about.
If your school/library has been providing the devices/connectivity on the CLEAR/WiMAX network they have an alternative. Not targeted at consumers though:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/10/prweb13006531.htm
I’m still using Comcast. won’t grizzle here about the service, etc. A neighbor pointed out that changing servers would mean changing the e-mail address with every site, person, etc. who has the Comcast one now. Anyone have info on how to deal quickly and easily with changing our e-mail address with all and sundry when we change servers?
Quickly and easily probably don’t apply here. Smaller ISPs will keep your email alive if you leave, and forward it, but Comcast doesn’t have to do nice, classy things like that. Make sure to tape your conversation with the Comcast rep when you close your account, just in case it’s worth posting. When you’re ready to move, consider getting an independent email that you can use with whatever ISP, so you won’t have to change again.