When someone knocks at my door at dinner time, I groan. I’m not buying what they’re selling, and as a rule, I don’t “give” at the door (I prefer to do my research through Charity Navigator or the like, plus the economics of door-to-door fundraising means that a significant chunk of my donation would go to the fundraiser, rather than the cause.)
But tonight, I got a surprise. Fiber!
Yes, the long awaited deliverance from Comcast hell has arrived: CenturyLink fiber optic internet service is now available in Wallingford, with speeds up to 1 gig (I have no idea why you need a connection that fast, but, I mean, 1 gig!) And even if you don’t need quite that blazing fast, you still finally have a reasonable alternative to Comcast. I signed up for the 40Mbps.
I tweeted the photo of the door-to-door CenturyLink saleswomen, Mawria and Fedea, and received a warning from Allen, though:
@wallyhood fiber is gigabit, i.e. 1000mbps. If they are selling the 40mbps bundle and using the phone jack, it's DSL.
— Allen M. Murray (@allenmmurray) October 28, 2015
This had me a bit worried, so I followed his link to this article in the Stranger which claims CenturyLink is being deceptive about what they call “fiber”. When I asked the women from CenturyLink, plus the CenturyLink rep on the phone, they all assured me that no, it really was fiber this time: the article is from April, and they just rolled out fiber in this neighborhood two weeks ago.
I’m not 100% sure I believe them, but I guess I don’t really care what the technology is, as long as I get the speed I want at a reasonable price.
Right?
As you know, we look out at you from our front yard. Roughly halfway in between our two homes, we have watched countless CenturyLink trucks park and technicians hoist themselves up onto poles in front of the Stanford School. We did the 30-day trial because we hate Comcast and don’t want to give them any more money… but today we still have Comcast. With CenturyLink, we had internet connectivity issues. I’m not a technical expert by any means, but I believe that no matter the “fiber,” if it’s coming through a phone line, it will never “fiber” quality or speed.
From what I’ve read on the neighborhood pages on Facebook, a lot of people have been complaining about CenturyLink and their poor customer service and deceptive practices. Since I work from home (and use VOiP for business calls), I need reliable service. I opted to pay for business class internet through Comcast over 8 years ago and haven’t had any trouble with their service. Unlike the regular Comcast internet, I don’t have slow speeds during peak times. Plus, they have a 2-hour window to come out and fix any issues (twice in 8 years, a filter or something failed out on the pole and had to be replaced). I pay a bit more, but it beats worrying about connectivity issues.
A couple years ago they were pulling some stunt in some areas calling a modified DSL service “fiber”. But it’s really fiber this time. They were doing the same canvassing last month up in Greenwood where I live. The 40mbps or 100mbps options are just a rate-limited over the same tech for slightly less money. It’s definitely not being sent over a “phone line” — rather, your original copper ends up disconnected and they actually run your house phone over the fiber line (kind of like what happens when you switch phone service to Comcast). Any Internet issues are probably due to the routers and other equipment they run at the central office on the other end. Which could very well be garbage. I’ve found Centurylink ne Qwest ne US West to be relatively stable over the 17 years of DSL I’ve had (with a few notable exasperating disruptions).
A few years I went for this deal from a nice guy at the door. He “sold” me on Century Link’s better deal, faster, cheaper service. I regretted it after about 2 days and was seriously pissed off for the entire 2 years. The service was worse than we had before with Comcast, and the customer service was some of the worst I’ve ever experienced. I will never use Century Link for anything — and if they ended up being the only deal in town then I’d go without.
Why are these people going door-to-door to sell this service? Considering all the scam artists out there whose method of choice is trying to separate you from your money by going directly to your door at, as Jordan said, dinnertime, and usually hitting you up for magazine subscriptions or charitable donations or roofing offers, etc., why would Century Link try to drum up new business this way? Sending out offers by mail seems more cost effective and safer. Having someone come to your door at night would be alarming. My mother has DISH satellite service and some young man who wasn’t wearing a uniform came to her door last week at 7:30 and said he had to get inside her house to check her DISH equipment. Thankfully she wouldn’t allow him in and a call to DISH assured her it was a scam and that they would never send a technician to anyone’s house at night, especially not one not in uniform and without ID. The police received several calls about this guy, too. So I’m not sure why Century Link thought this was a good way to sign people up to this service.
I live in Wallingford, but work in Ballard. I deal closely with all sorts of service providers (as part of my job for my clients).
I do not know if the situation with Century Link is the same in Ballard as it is with Comcast. Century Link keeps telling my clients that they get spotty interest service at our location because our “cables are old”. They did pull some shady business by telling out clients that it was our responsibility to upgrade the cables. That is entirely false.
A few years ago, Comcast put forth the effort to upgrade the cables in our part of the neighborhood and our clients can get the fastest Internet they offer.
I have yet to see Century Link do the work/modifications to increase the reliability of Internet at our location.
I would be wary of their promises at this point in time.
We’ve been on DSL for quite a while. There was some grief years ago because our connection at the central office was on some old relic equipment. We use an alternate ISP, so CenturyLink for the line only. I don’t doubt they’re as bad as anyone, though I think individual techs we’ve dealt with were actually pretty good. Comcast has an equally poor reputation, so in the end unless you want hold out for Sawant’s municipal broadband, there’s no really good option.
When I last looked at upgrade options, they had 12Mb etc. download upgrades where they’d give you the same rather pitiful upload speed, but you could get a higher upload fee for an additional monthly charge. Upload is data transfer TO the outside world – for example, if you are backing up to “the cloud.” It could easily be less than 1Mb, even if you’re at 24Mb download. Now they don’t seem to be saying, for 1Gb or the rate limited alternatives, and of course there’s no upgrade option. They just say upload speed is “amazing”, but not why it’s amazing. Anyone happen to know, what’s the upload speed for 1Gb download?
Per CenturyLink’s website Gigabit is available (at least at our North Wallingford address). Thanks for posting…have been waiting for this forever!
Yes, it’s fiber. They have been installing it up and down the streets (that’s what those big tan boxes are on the light poles). We had it put it and they pulled new wire (fiber) from the street to our house. They are not using existing lines.
It’s definitely fiber.
We got gigabit installed last week. The day before the install, someone from centurylink ran a new fiber optic cable from the pole through a conduit to the phone box at our house.
The installer replaced the existing box with a slightly smaller one and installed a modem in our garage for the internet and the phone. I was assured that no drilling was going to happen but that wasn’t true.
He also installed a wireless router in our basement. We had to pay for that router but I suspect that I could use my existing router.
FWIW, Century Link is pulling the darn-nigh-scam where each service tier (40 Mbps, 100 Mpbs, or 1000Mbps) has a base cost per month, with a one year contract. But you can choose to pay $5-$10 MORE each month to “lock in your rate” by signing a two year contract. Soo.. Century Link locks in a customer’s business for two years, and makes them pay _more_ for the privilege? For a commodity that by all rights should have a falling price? Absolutely outrageous.
Another “bad service provider smell”: Century Link carefully hides any mention of upstream bandwidth, only listing the download speeds. I didn’t dig hard enough to find the answer there, but the fact that they apparently are trying to hide upload speeds seems problematic. For many users it’s absolutely critical (need to VPN into work now and then?, or log in to a home system remotely?), and from experience with other providers, this presages Century Link not playing well with users who dare to use their internet connection in both directions. :-/
John – Actually Comcast does the rate lock fee now too [ if you look for it ]
I’m over in Fremont, and have been a CentryLink DSL customer for one year. Upgraded to fiber (into the house) a few weeks ago, and switched from DirecTV to Prism. The download speeds I was getting on DSL (40GIGS), is the same I’m getting on fiber. I could pay more and get more (60 GIGs), but 40GIG is more then enough. The upload speeds did increase from 5GIG to 20GIG.
The install process was not easy, as they have to bring fiber into the house – so depending on where your router sits, it can be a complicated install. In my case it took two days. The tech was very nice, and the service has been reliable.
I ‘m getting 1GIG (or maybe it’s 5GIG) down, as you need that speed to get Prism, but what they offer for Internet access speeds changes block-to-block.
I had CenturyLink reps at my house six months ago trying to sell me on fiber. They swore that I would get 40Mbps and put me on the phone with someone to make the appointment. The person on the phone said, no I would only have 7Mbps. The reps said well, the fiber will be installed any day now and then I would be upgraded to 40Mbps then. The website still says 7Mbps. The reps said installation would be free, person on phone said it would be $99. I’ve heard they throw in tons of other bogus charges too.
So yeah, they seem pretty dishonest.
I checked for my own house right near 45th / Woodland Park Ave N. Still not available yet, customer service couldn’t get me an ETA either.
If it sounds like it is too good to be true, it probably isn’t
I would be interested to hear how this goes for people in comparison to Comcast. I called today and they have installed fiber where we are at 45th & Latona. This is intriguing at the very least. I was quoted about $100/month for 100MB/sec internet after the promotional period and about $144/month for 100 MB/sec and the prism TV with about 140 channels (essentials package). These prices are discounted in the first 12 months to $60 for internet and $100 for both.
oh for geepers sakes. Who cares if it is fiber, copper, cotton or chocolate/ Going door to door..??? Selling promises which are not the same words or terms when you call customer service. Grow up folks fishy is fishy. Ive been hit up twice by their door to door promises and watched their interesting eye catching ads on tv.
However customer service does not sell the same thing and THEY BILL YOU. THEY BILL YOU not fo rthe low rates with promises of good service and connections on cotton, cable, DSL, chocolate or fiber.. but for the inflated rates they will reluctantly explain which are promotions which increase by 30 or more % after one year. Oh yeah there is also an up front install rate. I recall 80.00$ plus tax.
FISHY is as FISHY does.
I
We now have fiber in Tangle town. It is much faster than than DSL and faster than than the coax that Comcast runs to our homes. I talked to the fiber installers and they point out that you share your Comcast cable with neighbors and hence at night your Netflix slows down. One or two folks streaming Netflix would do well with 100 Mbit service. Add more people and online gaming then 1000 Mbit would be best. Check here for online pricing http://www.centurylink.com/fiber put in your zip code. Phone and Internet for 100 M service is $191 for install and $98 per month. 1000 M $191 for install and $128 per month. I just a techie not a Century Link fan boy 🙂
I am not sure about their Prism tv, I plan to put up an antenna. Hope this helps
Chuck,
Wondering if you’re still happy with CLink fiber in Ttown. Have high speed CCast but sometimes stutters at night (like when streaming music at parties).
I have CAT5, modem and router in house. Was told they’d only have to run cable to outside box. Was this your experience?
Thanks!
Rick
We got 1G fiber installed a couple days ago. I’ve measured ~930 mbps down and up at speedtest.net with ~3ms ping times. Pretty happy so far.
The pricing seems a little better online. They’re definitely pushing Prism – their new TV service (which we didn’t get).
After suffering with DSL speeds of 12mbs for years from CenturyLink I was excited about fiber being installed. I called earlier this week to sign up for 100mbs, but after 30 minutes being bounced around, here is what I learned. First, a national rep told me it would cost $60/month. Then I got a local rep who told me that my particular service areas is “groupedon(?)” which means that PrismTV is also available. AS a result, I have two options: 1) pay $98/month for TV service I don’t want with 40mbs internet; or 2) pay $150/month for 100mbs internet. I told them this is ridiculous and he said it was pricing set by corporate. Clearly they are trying to get people to switch from Comcast by pushing their TV service. But Why would I pay twice as much as I’m paying now for slightly better speeds and TV I won’t ever use? Instead, I checked Comcast and got 75mbs for ~$50/month, which is essentially what I am paying now for 12mbs. Install is on Sunday, so we’ll see. I’ll reconsider if they bring internet only fiber prices down to what they are offering in other Seattle neighborhoods (where they don’t offer Prism TV). In the meantime, they are losing a lot of business, and in my case, a 5 year customer.
If the modem connects to a telephone line it is DSL not fiber. Also the landline telephones typically need to have filters connected to them which are sort of ugly. Other than that the only advantage of fiber is higher bandwidth and usually cable TV offered over the same connection. If you aren’t interested in high-bandwidth or cable TV over it, it is of little consequence that DSL is being used.
See RC and maybe Brian above, who leave the impression that the same fiber optic drop serves for network, and telephone and TV if you get those. Via modem. It evidently isn’t ADSL, but I’m in the dark as to the actual protocol. Fiber optic is supposed to be way better than ADSL in practice, because along with the higher ideal data rate, it isn’t subject to electro-magnetic interference, water, etc. And it’s apparently closer to symmetrical, with good upload speed. So I’d be a little more confident that an upgrade to say 40Mbs would actually deliver. But that said, it’s rather costly, and sounds like it’s a little messy too what with pulling cable inside the house.
One of reasons CenturyLink and Comcast get away with what they do is that responsibility for regulating various aspects of each of their business is split between different state and federal agencies.
From the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission
http://www.utc.wa.gov/consumers/Pages/whenToCallTheCommission.aspx
we learn that they regulate landline telephones service but that the FCC regulates Cable.
VOIP is regulated by the WA AG http://www.atg.wa.gov/utilities-regulated
who also handles complaints about telecoms and broadband. In fact, telecoms are the most-complained about sector year after year, while broadband remains in the top five. See:
http://www.atg.wa.gov/top-consumer-complaints
To further complicate matters, solicitation call complaints are handled by the FTC.
The AG admits that they count complaints to decide how to focus their limited resources. So, finding the right place to complain about bad service or deceptive practices and filing that complaint is one way to tame the service providers, especially if enough people do so.
So, if you think the door-to-door contractors are misrepresenting the terms and conditions, get names, times, details, and any paperwork and go to:
https://fortress.wa.gov/atg/formhandler/ago/ComplaintForm.aspx
Just checked their website for our area (35th and Wallingford) – still showing DSL and pushing DirectTV, so higher speeds and Prism isn’t available.
I guess the fiber hasn’t come this far south.
Would be nice to have an alternative to Comcast.
It is fiber, for real. It is here. I’ve got the 40mbps service – which the other comments are correct _can_ be done over DSL (though only if you are very close to the CO). However, in order to install it, CenturyLink had to have fiber run from the street to my house. There was a little mix up there, but they came out and did that (3rd party contractor) and I looked at what they ran, and verified that, yes, it is a whole new cable, and that yes, the end of it is a fiber optic connector. The first fellow just knocked on the door to let us know he would be working outside the house.
Then they send someone on-site to do the in-house install, which includes a “modem” (really a fiber1GbE Cat5 transceiver) which they tell me “stays with the house” but is installed inside the house. And a router, which includes 2.4Ghz + 5Ghz wifi, and a few 1Gbps Cat5 ports. It also includes a VOIP jack, which the installer assured me would “not get used if I wanted voice service” – they would actually add yet another box for that (VOIP terminal adaptor), since they didn’t want to use the one on the router itself for some reason.
The “Prism TV bundle” actually cost me about $10/mo less than just broadband, and included the router, which would otherwise cost $10/mo and free install, which would otherwise cost money. Basically – they are REALLY pushing TV hard. I have no interest, but I do like the discount. If you opt for the TV install, it seems the installer is basically required to install a TV box that is wired with ethernet (Cat5) to your router. Plan for that. And required to actually hook it up, set a few settings and walk you through using it. Plan for that too. I think it is a reasonable trade-off for the discount(s) involved, though now I will have to remember to cancel TV service when (after my 1 year term) it starts costing more money.
I immediately turned off the 2.4Ghz & 5Ghz wifi – I’d rather use Cat5 everywhere, and no wifi whatsoever, but even in the best case a router in the far corner of my garage is not the best to distribute wifi around the house. Also I fundamentally don’t trust provider-supplied wifi. Comcast’s “share your wifi with other Comcast customers” deal is pretty sketchy on a variety of levels. (If you do want to do this, many wifi APs have a mode to let you do this more safely)
What physically do they have to do to install this? Do they need to drill through from the outside, and then run the Cat5 wiring?
Thx
Pretty much. They run fiber to an ONT box which outputs to ethernet (Cat5/Cat6). That ethernet connects to a router (which they provide, but you could probably use your own) which authenticates onto the Centurylink network (PPPoE). Their router provides both wifi and wired ports.
The ONT box can be installed inside or outside, but it needs to be powered. I think the typical install has fiber running into your house to an ONT box installed inside (along side their router). The installer was pretty flexible about doing it however I wanted though.
In my case they installed the ONT box inside. Fiber was run from outside to inside by pulling it in through with some old phone copper from the phone box on the outside of the house. So no new holes were drilled.
The installer told me that the modem for the fiber optic cable had to be inside the house because the box and the power supply are not water proof.
Unfortunate since there was power right next to the outside box
Thanks for all of the technical details and what to expect during installation. Did those of you who got the new CenturyLink service also cancel Comcast? I am curious to hear about how difficult it was to get Comcast to cancel your account: did they make you jump through a lot of hoops and give you a hard sell to remain a customer?
I had equipment to return to Comcast, so I went to their store near 130th and Aurora and cancelled in person.
Other than the long wait (30 min), it was easy. No push back at all once I actually got to the counter.
I called Comcast customer service expecting a long drawn-out process but it took less than a minute to cancel.
They offered to drop my rate by $30 a month but I told them I wasn’t interested.
November 3, 2015
Dear Centurylink Customer Support
I am very disappointed and dissatisfied with Centurylink. I originally signed up in April of this year and was promised fiber optic Internet service to my house.
Last week, two sales people from Centurylink came to my residence and asked me if I wanted fiber optic Internet since it was now available. I told them that I had been waiting since April, and that fiber optic Internet was the reason I signed on with Centurylink. When I told them that I had Directv they told me they could not sell me the bundle with Prism TV and that I could call Centurylink directly and they would install the fiber to my home.
So last week, I chatted with Centurylink to get the fiber installed.
I ended up calling the Retention and Loyalty number and spoke with someone who identified her self as Terrisa. She told me she could start the process and that a tech person would be at my residence on November 2, this past monday.
Monday came and no tech arrived. I called back the Retention number to check on the problem. I was told that they had no record of my order or request. Terrisa apparently totally dropped my order.
I requested to have my fiber optic installed only to be told that I don’t have it at my residence!!
Someone is uninformed or just lying!
Please look into my situation. I feel I’m being very patient, but right now I’m ready to cancel all services as I believe Centurylink has not upheld your end of the contract.
Please make this right
Sincerely
Quintin Woo
I know absolutely nothing about any of this, except the fact that I have Century Link, and my internet is super fast. A couple neighbors have Comcast, and are not very happy. Not sure why.