I am not sure you noticed my first comment. We only have two choices
for ISP in our area. Centurytel or Charter.
We had Charter. Their cost for the bottom level of service is
unacceptable. We went with Centurytel as the only other alternative
and we are on the base level of service with them.
Charter is no better in this realm I have them for home service.
If we are out for a day or two that is acceptable.
In many areas of the country you are very limited on your
alternatives (if you have any) one of my members lives in town, and
must use satellite for ISP as neither the Cable nor phone company can
provide her service.
That is the norm in about 80% of the US.
Stewart
At 07:23 PM 12/23/2008, you wrote:
First thing to underscore is that Centurytel should be used for internet
connection only -- not for any other service. Their terms of service
clearly demonstrate that they are not interested in providing these other
services.
There are many ways to get these other services from good providers so
you should not put up with these turkeys. The good news is that once you
are on the 'net you have access to a world full of choices. Some of them
are very good choices and not expensive, sometimes even free.
Strategically, you want all your other services provided by someone else
so that you can drop this service at a moment's notice if they should
displease you in any way. (If enough of their clients were to do this you
would find that their quality of service would eventually improve.)
Do their terms of service make any promises about the quality of service?
How quickly do they promise to restore degraded connections? What kind of
a refund can you expect for degraded service? Can you conduct your
business given the quality of service they guarantee? I suppose that for
a church being down for a few days may be acceptable.
If that would not be acceptable you may want to consider downgrading to
an inexpensive service level from Centurytel and getting the same
low-level service from the other provider. Then get a router with 2 WAN
ports. Connect each port to each provider's router. If one goes down you
will still be connected via the other provider. The router will balance
your traffic across the 2 WAN ports if they are both working and
automatically switch to one port is one is down.
*************************************************************************
** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy **
** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ **
*************************************************************************
Rev. Stewart A. Marshall
mailto:[email protected]
Prince of Peace www.princeofpeaceozark.org
Ozark, AL SL 82
*************************************************************************
** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy **
** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ **
*************************************************************************
