My folks, in another state, have 'cable Internet' -- they don't have
> any choice, being a couple of thousand feet too far away from the
> C.O. for DSL. A few weeks ago, the cable company did an over-night
> 'upgrade' of the head-end equipment. It was FIVE DAYS before my folks
> Internet connection worked again.
That's interesting. I'm in a relatively unpopulated corner of the Town of Apple Valley, part of the Victor Valley which is in California's High Desert region. The population of Victor Valley is around
300,000. Other than Barstow, which is served by Time Warner Cable, all of the cities here (as well as several San Bernardino County municipalities "down the hill" on the other side of the mountains) are served by Charter. Apple Valley itself has about 60,000 people living here.
I had an extremely aggravating week one week about 18 months ago, where something at my headend broke, and Charter kept coming out to fix it, and it kept breaking. Repeatedly, over the course of six days. They finally got it fixed permanently. I forget what it was.
It was aggravating because I was telecommuting to work at the time, and my job description primarily involved working online. :)
But since then, Charter's been rock-solid in this area. It's gotten to the point that if I have a problem, I assume it's my el-cheapo SMC Barricade router* -- and usually, that's a correct assumption, and rebooting the router fixes the problem.
**SJS
*I don't know if all Barricades suck. Mine does, but mine's the bottom-of-the-line model from about three years ago, and I bought it for $30 new, so I don't really expect much out of it.