Why Qwest DSL is better than CableOne for an ISP (for now)
I’ve used a lot of different broadband Internet service since 2000. In 2000 I got DSL from Micron.net at an apartment. I got Qwest DSL in 2000 when I bought my house. Switched to cable in 2004 when it became available at my house. Switched back to Qwest DSL in 2008. I’ve also supported Clearwire wireless, Satellite ISPs, and data T1s from numerous providers for local businesses.
Qwest DSL is the best option right now for a residential ISP, for the following reasons:
Price:
If you can get Qwest’s fiber service, you can get 12M down, 896k up for $55/month. Qwest offers 7M down, 896k up for $38/month. CableOne charges $49 for 5M down, 500K up, or $59/month for 10M down, 1M up. I know it doesn’t seem like a big difference on the higher plans, but what CableOne doesn’t make obvious is how they throttle bandwidth. It’s the thing that made me move back to Qwest. After you download a couple of gigabytes in a day, CableOne will drop your speed significantly. It will stay slow until midnight, then go back up. Say a new Linux distro comes out that you want to download, and you’re on the 5M plan. After you download 3GB CableOne will drop you from 5M download to about 1.5M. Keep downloading, it keeps falling. At Midnight it goes back up. Even on the 10M plan, they drop your speed after downloading 5GB. At 10M you can download 5GB in about an hour. Say hello to slow until midnight. With Qwest, you get your 1.5M, 7M, 12M, or 20M all day, every day as long as you have service. I’ve downloaded over 40GB in a day and not slowed down.
Uptime:
In the past 10 months of having Qwest fiber 12M service, I have had zero downtime. DSL is typically more stable than cable. With CableOne at least every 2—3 months I would have an outage. I have actually had better uptime with my DSL than we have had with our 3 data T1s at the office (thunderstorm took out a repeater and we had 2 circuits go down). Cable is more finicky.
Network tampering/management:
CableOne tampers with your internet access. They won’t let you connect to TCP port 25 on any mail server but theirs. If they think your bandwidth is being used for BitTorrents, or newsgroups they will restrict your speed. They decide what traffic gets priority. Qwest doesn’t do that. If you pay for your service, they’ll provide it. I think CableOne has a right to do that, it is in their Terms of Service. I, as a customer, have a right to think it sucks and go to another provider.
Acceptable Use:
If someone complains to CableOne about how you’re using the Internet, they will shut you off before asking you about it. It can take from several hours, to several days to get service back. I had just travelled to Portland to set up a remote office for a client when CableOne shut off my Internet connection at home. Someone had hacked a Linux box on my home network and was using it for bad things. I called from my hotel in Portland, but couldn’t do anything about it because they shut the connection down. I was going to be there for 3 days before returning home. It really pissed me off. If they had at least emailed me before shutting down the connection I could have remotely powered down the box and still had internet at the house. Their policy of terminate first, ask questions later bothers me.
I’ve been very happy with Qwest DSL since switching back. It is the only Qwest service I use, even though my girlfriend works there. I run Asterisk at home for phone service and pay $1.50/month plus 1 penny per minute for my calls. It’s usually about $4 per month.
That is my opinion. Feel free to leave a comment if you think I’m wrong 
on July 2nd, 2009 at 8:24 am
I’ve been considering the switch for a while now. I can’t get 12MB (if I could, I woulda switched long ago) but CableOne is really pissing me off. Mainly, it’s the bandwitdh caps I hate. If you download more than 2 gigs between the hours of 12pm and midnight, the cut your speed in half. I want to get into the OnDemand stuff from DirecTV, and needless to say, I watch the majority of my TV between their monitoring hours.
Screw ‘em. I think you convinced me. I slight cut in speed (from 10 to 7MB) will probably be worth the non-monitored/capped bandwidth.
on July 2nd, 2009 at 8:26 am
Ok… I shoulda read a little closer, you basically said what I said.
Damn coffee hasn’t kicked in yet.
on September 2nd, 2009 at 4:05 am
Well, this confirms what I already believed. I had to buy a new 360, as the disc drive on mine had gone caput. I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 gigs of DLC on my old one, and I downloaded it all at once, and I’ve been getting ~45KB/s down ever since. It hasn’t reset yet, either. I downloaded it earlier today, and it’s currently 3 AM and I’m still not getting it. And to add insult to injury, I now cannot connect to XBL. Gonna make the switch ASAP.
on September 2nd, 2009 at 4:10 am
Oh, and to add further insult to injury, when I called their so-called 24 hour ‘customer care’ line, I got an automated message stating ‘The person you have called is not available. Exiting the system. Goodbye.’ The lights are on, nobody’s home, and I’m heading for greener pastures.
on October 24th, 2009 at 12:40 am
I typed Cable One versus Quest in Google and landed here. Why I typed that? Because I was extremely pissed of with this guys and looking for an alternative.
Here is my review about Cable One.
1. Their server is overloaded. I frequently get drops.
2. I do not even need to mention about their speed tapping policy, outrageous at best
3. They monitor the web sites that you visit. That is unacceptable.
4. Idaho Falls headquarter is filled with uneducated and rude folks.
5. And, many many more that I cannot recall right now.
What is the solution. Lucky, I made some research. I found cheaper service($35) with faster speed (12 Mpbs) and no tapping. Since I was ready to spend $50 for 10 Mpbs, I am seriously considering to get 20 Mpbs for $55 from Quest.
If anybody out there considering Cable One, Here is my advice. ” Stay away Cable One at all cost”. Otherwise, you will be sorry for sure. that is my experience.
on April 30th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
if cable one didnt tap speed then one person would eat up all the bandwidth in the area and other people wouldnt get it. what if some one was using all the bandwidth in you area and all you wanted to do was play WoW or somthing simple and you couldnt.
They monitor the web sites for security and legal protection. there isnt some guy at a screen watching everything you go to, a system has loaded all of the illegal sites ex: child pornography, movie downloading, illegal file sharing. when a COMPUTER sees one of these sites it gets brought to attention and a COMPUTER puts a hold on the accnt until this is reconciled. this is only UNACCEPTABLE to people who love to break the law.
on May 13th, 2010 at 12:40 am
They can’t eat all the bandwidth in the area! Unless, of course, the ISP oversells. If someone pays for 20Mbps, they have paid for the use of it. That’s it. No “hey, we didn’t sell that to you!” Yes, you did. Provide the service which is being paid for.
It’s not unacceptable to do computer security work, is it? I constantly have to remove viruses from clients’ websites at odd hours. Unfortunately the tapping thing causes problems with that - it’ll shut their website off so I can’t fix it. The tapping is also annoying because it is used to log information that should be confidential - for example, passwords, credit card numbers, etc. Sure, they say “that information is kept safe…” But that’s not often the case - people hack into insurance companies, internet service providers, etc.
on June 5th, 2010 at 11:00 am
+1 to the list of CableOne dumpers.
I’ve got Qwest starting on Monday.
I work in film production and I routinely need to upload and download large clips to off site servers, and the caps are simply ridiculous.
I’ve explained my needs to CableOne and their response was “can you set up the transfers for the AM hours”?
Yeah. That’s practical. Screw you CableOne. C’est La Vie.