Cable and High-speed Internet Choices

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Murray on January 17, 2008 at 5:01pm

I bought my first house last may at the age of 22. Before that I had lived in an apartment for about 4 years where I had the bascily qwest phone line and DSL provided by Earthlink c/o Covad. I almost never had an issue with it execpt for a few issues that turned out to effect 98% of the whole city.

But when I moved and went to move my earthlink service to my new house, I found out that the area my house was in could not be served by Earthlink or any DSL provder for that reason due to really crappy Qwest infrastrure issues in the area. To make it short, the fastest connection I could got on DSL would have been around 256kbps, which is not much faster then dial up, and would have never feed my addiction to the internet. I did for a quick second think about Comcast, but I hate Comcast with a passion and really all cable companys with a passion for that matter.

I have a friend who owns Lobo Internet ( http://www.lobo.net ) which is a local ISP (Internet Service Provider) here in Albuquerque. I asked him what they had in my area, telling him that I could not get DSL and would not do business with Comcast. He said that they had two wireless base stations in my area area and gave me the two locations (I think they have 10+ just in Albuquerque with another 5 or so in and around the metro area, aka Rio Rancho and such, and I know they are trying to get more online too).

One of the locations I did not have good line of sight to due to a freaking big tree on my neighbors yard (so I could not cut it down), but I did have direct line of site to the other base station, which happens to be located on top of the Albuquerque Marriott Pyramid North. So now I have a really great connection (around 2 mbps) coming off the top of the Pyramid.

In the 7/8 months that I have lived in my house I have not once had an issue with my internet connection. Once I got on to Lobo Internet for internet, I dropped Qwest like it was a bad date as fast as I could. I now use my cell phone as my only phone and am very happy about that.

As for pricing, I would not know, since I get the friends and family discount. The only thing about wireless service is the start up costs can be high since the cost of the eqiupment needed is not that cheap. Lobo Internet also has other forms of internet (like DSL and ISDN lines too). They are very well priced and if you all call their office at (505) 832-4444, they will be more then willing to help you out.

Also the best part about Lobo Internet is they are a local company, so if you do ever have issues you know you are going to talk to a warm living person who also lives in the Albuquerque metro area. None of this out-sourced tech support crap.

As for TV, I have Dish Network and love them. I have a two tunner DVR with them, and the everything pack and if I remember I think I only pay around 100 dollars a month for every freaking channel that I will never watch, plus all the music and movie channels. For the most part Dish Network has great support and are more then willing to help, plus their local techs if you ever do have an issue have always been very helpful and have gone above and beyond what they needed to do.

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Permalink Reply by Robert S. on January 18, 2008 at 1:56am

I do Qwest for home phone/DSL and DISH Network for satellite TV as to not give the evil empire my triple play money.

I think the best thing coming might be wi-fi and wimax, but I'll have to see it to believe it in Albuquerque considering the problems/messups going on to the northwest in Sandoval County. I believe Albuquerque chose a system that provides very basic service to everyone and you can pay for more premium uses (presumably at least more bandwidth than basic service).

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Permalink Reply by Morgan on May 14, 2008 at 4:57pm

I'm wondering if anyone else is in the same boat as me... I ONLY want internet. Comcast is telling me $59.95/month. That seems insane. Has anyone found anything reasonable for just internet? Besides free Flying Star... I need internet at the house.

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Permalink Reply by Robert S. on May 14, 2008 at 5:06pm

that's how things are. Comcast, Qwest, etc. will ream you if you dont' do bundles.

I wish I could have Qwest for internet and use a prepaid cell phone for phone, but Qwest was so bad that it was just about as economical to do hard wire phone and internet bundle from Qwest than to have Qwest DSL alone.

If you need internet at home, see if you can prod the city of Albuquerque to get their wireless internet in place quicker (I don't know how far along that project is if it's even been started), look into satellite internet (still quite pricey) or you may just have to settle for bundling with a provider of your choice unless we can get a DSL-only competitor franchised that would have more reasonable internet fees than the current providers offer for just internet.

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Permalink Reply by Erika Ruth on June 2, 2008 at 9:11pm

If you don't like going with one of the big players, you don't have to go with Qwest, you can use any ISP you would like. We had really really good luck with LBdsl.net They have had great service, and were with them for years. We could call 24 hours a day, or send an e-mail at anytime, and they were super quick to respond and easy to deal with. We would use them again in a heartbeat, but our new house can't use DSL. I don't work for Lightening Bolt DSL, but my husband is quite the geek, and we have really been thrilled with the service. We paid $10 a month for a home line, and got our DSL through a different company, never having to deal with Qwest for anything internet related. (It has to do with the BabyBell stuff, (The non-monopoly on DSL))

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Permalink Reply by imouse1 on May 15, 2008 at 12:01am

If you have an e-mail account with CNM you can access theirs if you're within 100 yards of their building. Now, in theory you're not supposed to do anything that requires alot of bandwidth but... }=D Also, if you just happen to live in the UNM area you can get some pretty good free internet access that, you know, should only be used for school purposes. But there's also no sign-in procedure so that means that your security is going to be compromised from the first connection so shy away from anything that you're putting passwords into (unless those accounts don't matter in which case whatev). lol

But Comcast pretty much is looking to (and excuse my language) rape your wallet. You know that handy bend in there? There's a reason that wallets were designed that way and Comcast knows it. We originally were going to sign up for JUST the internet with no cable and it was going to cost us more than if we had the cable... I'm not even talking comparitively speaking, it was only $40 a month (at the time) to have internet and cable but $50 a month for just the internet. Needless to say, if you don't stay on top of your account holder they're also going to talk him/her into extra features. I'm not even sure how this happened, but my account holder called in a complaint and came out with HD TV access when we didn't even have a box or HD TV. So after the box rental and the flat-screen purchase, we now pay over $200 a month for crappy HD TV that lags out and is pixelated to all hell with a box that is confused about the times so you don't even record all of your show unless you allows yourself a 10-minute bumper on either side (which means you can't record shows sequentially unless you LOVE pixellation).

Hope this helps and it's not too much rambling :S

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Permalink Reply by Dr Dan on May 14, 2008 at 7:00pm

I'm living with dial up, so I know nothing of what you speak
what do you mean by going over 250 GB?

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Permalink Reply by Robert S. on May 14, 2008 at 7:04pm

comcast has a bandwidth usage limit, rumored to be 250 GB and I think that's per month. It's more than enough bandwidth for most users but too little bandwidth for excessively heavy internet users.

my gut feeling tells me it's too little considering the multimedia available nowdays. I should monitor for curiosity my bandwidth usage on qwest for a day to see how much my MLB.TV internet service uses when I watch a parts of several ballgames a night.

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Permalink Reply by imouse1 on May 15, 2008 at 12:05am

Do you know anything about that lawsuit that was put out against Comcast for monitoring internet usage? One of the complaints was bandwidth usage and another was content monitoring. I heard something about it on the news but when I went to look it up on KOATV or KOBTV4 the story was mysteriously gone.

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Permalink Reply by imouse1 on May 15, 2008 at 12:03am

HALLELUJAH! Finally! Anyone else have the problem where you're having internet issues at random? Like all of your bills are paid up to date, you just waxed your modem for full efficiency and you're sitting down to your favorite show when...your cable goes out? Or you're on the internet enjoying your favorite game (my vice is World of Warcraft) and just your internet goes out even though your cable still works? Or is it just the paradox that is the 87123 (which is not between 87122 and 87124 for all of you Comcast workers >.< )?

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Permalink Reply by Brendan on May 14, 2008 at 6:15pm

If you want to support a local business, there's nobody better than Southwest Cyberport. They are one of the premier ISPs in New Mexico and I had the pleasure of working for them almost a decade ago (And still keep my email there). You won't find better customer service or more honest people anywhere.

Also, why buy TV access? Pop some rabbit ears on a digital tuner and you'll get 6-7 PBS channels. Usually if I can't find something there that's interesting, it means I'm not actually interested in watching TV. YMMV.

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Permalink Reply by Robert S. on May 14, 2008 at 6:23pm

sounds like a qwest bundle is still cheaper than getting qwest dsl through southwest cyberport. I checked SWCP and saw that they mention qwest dsl charges will show up on your phone bill (meaning it sounds like you need to have a hard-wired qwest phone to get the DSL rates SWCP has negotiated with qwest).

a qwest phone/internet bundle is definitely cheaper than a comcast bundle (and comcast plays games with their bundle - very cheap bundling for the first few months and then expensive bundling beyond that).

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