Complaint about Fairpoint internet speed [telecom]

Mar 11, 2012 1 Replies
Complaint about Fairpoint internet speed [telecom] open original image

I've been looking for dispassionate reports about the various former baby bells and their offspring, but individual rants are much easier to come by. This one concerns Fairpoint, which (among other things) inherited Verizon's former Northern New England franchise.



Terrible Speed at Night



Every evening at about 5:00 pm my Fairpoint DSL speed drops from my daily average of 6Mbps to 1.5 or less and stays at that speed till about midnight.



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Bill


That most likely means that they are probably on a remote DSLAM, and it is too oversubscribed for the backhaul link. 5:00PM to Midnight matches up perfectly with the peak residential usage hours for Internet service.

Depending on the age of the remote, it could be one fed with ATM IMA T1s, of which an 8 IMA T1 bundle is the best that they typically could do. In the olden days, having 12Mbps feeding 24 1.5M DSL subscribers would have been feasible. But if they have multiple 6-7Mbps customers on it, come peak time, that isn't going to work so well.

About the only thing the LEC can do is get fiber uplink to that remote, which can be quite an expensive propisition depending on the circumstances.

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