Pack your bags, Karolyn, we're moving to New Mexico.
Posted on 12/03/2008 8:20:10 AM PST by CedarDave
New Mexico finishes at the bottom of the heap in PC Magazine's survey of Internet surf speed.
Nevada, Virginia and Pennsylvania are home to the nation's fastest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and New Mexico, with a Surf Speed of 322 Kbps (kilobits per second), is dead last, according to a new survey just posted on PCMag.com.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
Well, somebody has to be the “slowest”, and somebody has to be the fastest.
I don’t know why I care, but I guess I’m glad my state is one of the fastest.
Tech PING!
That’s the right attitude. God Bless America.
NM-at-the-bottom-of-the-heap-again list PING!
If you want on or off the NM Ping list, please FReepmail me.
Access to the ping list is available to anyone by going to my FR home page.
Interesting study. It confirms my experience with Charter and Comcast - absolute bottom of the heap in customer satisfaction.
The DSL (won’t do cable - sorry) speeds available from Qwest right now are “up to” 1.5, 7.0, 12.0 and 20.0 mbps, depending on the package you order. However, speeds are subject to availability in your area. The only thing Qwest has available in my area is 1.5 mbps, nothing faster. The best download speed I’ve ever attained is 1.2 mbps. They simply aren’t in a hurry to bring me anything faster.
LowRider.com is my ISP.
Hey, don't tell anybody, but I just got rid of dial-up about two weeks ago...
I used to find the wide variety of customer-service-ratings-and-rants websites interesting, then depressing. Now I find them virtually useless as so many companies have outsourced their ‘service’ to mouth-breathing idiots in call centers domestic or foreign. It follows that companies employing this method provide inherently poor service since by definition there is no internal coordination or oversight. Comcast and DirecTV come to mind.
The phone queues are designed to get rid of you, the customer. The hold times are designed to get rid of you. The constant voice prompts to visit the company’s web site is designed to get rid of you. The ‘service’ reps have the usual 10 or 12-question litany that is mostly useless for them or you in answering a question.
Some bright spark decided the reps should coo soothing reassuring messages such as ‘I’ll be happy to help you with that’ even if/when the rep has no intention of or ability to resolve your issue. It’s phony, insulting and worst of all untrue because they are sitting in a call center receiving their paycheck from a third party.
Some companies have offered live chat which seems to make far more sense as one rep can handle 3-4 incoming requests but too often the same untrained dolt is on the other end hot-keying canned lines such as ‘Unplug the cable modem for 30 sec.....’
Those claiming capitalism is destroying the economy (a laughable assertion to begin with) should look at the monopolies and oligopolies like Charter and Comcast. When satellite came around the cable companies suddenly ‘discovered’ they needed to update their infrastructure. Competition and threats to their bottom line are the ONLY things these faceless organizations respect and/or fear.
I don't know what the actual speed is, but it's pretty fast if you started out with dial-up in the 90s.
Well..., it looks like Oklahoma is the 8th fastest state by speed, and Cox Cable is the second highest in cable, overall...
I could only get better if I went to fiber optic, but I don’t think that’s going to happen considering the speeds I’m already getting here (20 Mbps down/2 Mbps up)...
You said — “6MBS is smokin’ “
Well, you say that when you move up to 6 Mbps, as I did when I was in Portland, Oregon with Comcast. I thought that was screamin’ ... LOL..
Then I got Cox in Tulsa, Oklahoma and get 20 Mbps down with 2 Mbps up and now I think that’s screamin’ ... :-)
I’m thinking that Oklahoma is not such a bad place to be (the “biggest and baddest” Red State in the Republican inventory.... LOL... [every county went red in the last election, even in the big metro areas...).
AND..., our gas even went down today — now at $1.49 a gallon (but up in Bartlesville, it’s even lower at $1.41... wow!! :-)
You said — “The phone queues are designed to get rid of you, the customer. The hold times are designed to get rid of you. The constant voice prompts to visit the company’s web site is designed to get rid of you. The ‘service’ reps have the usual 10 or 12-question litany that is mostly useless for them or you in answering a question.”
You have to get “escalated” up the chain. Usually a level or two is enough to get someone who is American and knows how to speak English... LOL...
But, unfortunately, that does take time. I remember when I found out a long time ago that a speaker phone was a good thing to have for a lot of companies who put you on hold. When I first got one of those, they really weren’t out on the market, except through the phone company itself, and it was the “Charlie’s Angels” kind. So, I got that one. It had to be hard-wired by the phone company.
But, when I got it, it was wonderful. I could walk around the place and do other stuff and come back on when they were ready. I remember many calls that I had, back then, which would keep me on hold for an hour or so...
I’m lucky to have electricity.
Summery:
Comcast and Qwest,like congress, are content to screw their constituency.
Pack your bags, Karolyn, we're moving to New Mexico.
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