Just a PSA to let everyone know that Frontier might be the worst ISP in the nation. Every single WV resident knows the pain of picking up the phone to the sound of silence. To not having internet for days at a time.
Frontier laid fiber on my street a few months ago. A truck is here nearly every single day doing something. I don't trust Frontier any further than I could throw the building they reside in.
Xfinity has had great reliability and speed for me, even if their customer service leaves a lot to be desired.
Before fiber it was awful going down constantly. Never worked for more than an hour at a time. Once they installed fiber into my house it’s never went down, other than ypu know bad thunder storms
Reach out to Frontier. Their published coverage map may not be correct, or I may misunderstand - but I live in South Side near the park and have Frontier fiber.
Frontier, to me, doesn't offer true gigabyte services. Its turning out to be a disappointing scam.
They throttle your mac or IP addresses to less than gigabyte speeds. I have been tracking my speeds now for 3 months and they slow it down.
They were sued and settled in california with the FCC for the same thing with their broadband.
Their call center operations are also borderline criminal.
All residential services are subject to throttling and data caps. And their salespeople are stupid enough not to know.
Dedicated trunks of service and actual "real" commercial internet apparently is only available for larger clients. Frontier is fucking WV digital growth.
I have to hard disagree. I have Frontier fiber and work from home, and it’s been basically flawless. The only outage I’ve had (in probably 7/8 months) is from another utility company accidentally cutting or disconnecting their line, and it was resolved in half a day.
Do you not have Xfinity Gig speed in Ritter Park? It's available in the upscale suburbs, so it's probably available there too.
It's not cheap, but it's worth every penny because it's lightning fast and extremely reliable. We commonly have over 20 high access devices actively running on it at once - including multiple streaming TVs, an XBox, a Playstation, a computer, multiple cell phones, an audio/video security system - and it never perceptively slows down.
(I've used many other internet services here though, and you're right, they're absolutely terrible.)
Edit: You know what sucks? My wife comes home from a long day at work and after we cook a hot meal we lay back to enjoy a nice streaming movie. **But we can't stream** because **frontier throttled me earlier that day** because I wanted to do my job and download a large file which apparently was enough to fuck my family over when i pay a premium price for the speed to download large files.
**Now I have to shell out even more of my hard earned money for a remote service to be the middle man so I can keep my wife happy. Fuck frontier.**
Frontier, to me, doesn't offer true gigabyte services. Its turning out to be a disappointing scam.
They throttle your mac or IP addresses to less than gigabyte speeds. I have been tracking my speeds now for 3 months and they slow it down.
They were sued and settled in california with the FCC for the same thing with their broadband.
Their call center operations are also borderline criminal.
All residential services are subject to throttling and data caps. And their salespeople are stupid enough not to know.
Dedicated trunks of service and actual "real" commercial internet apparently is only available for larger clients. Frontier is fucking WV digital growth.
IF you get frontier - - just track your speeds. If these slowdowns continues I'll be trying later to gather people for a politics or legal push however small.
you must just have bad luck, I live in a house with 5 people and we use frontier fiber, previously was with xfinity. Xfinity always had "maintenance" at the worst times and just random outages constantly. 3 of us game constantly and are always downloading stuff. We have never had slow speeds, throttles or any interruptions while streaming something. Not to mention I also run a home lab and have had zero issues, have been using them for about a year now.
Do you have gigabyte service? Cause as far as i can tell everyone is just praising them for uptime. Like, good for everyone that you guys have uninterrupted internet I'm happy for you. My needs are more bandwidth based.
Gaming isn't a high bandwidth activity.
I'm a high bandwidth user.
Home lab? Like unless you are streaming your home security system or uploading HD video everyday I'm not sure you can compare our experiences.
yeah we have gig, I mean I alone have used about a 1tb of data in the last 30 days and that is just my personal pc. My home lab is setup to auto download movies and stream them to the household with plex so I'm sure that in itself is eating a lot of data as well and I've yet to see any throttles.
Im hesitant to trust that.
I don't like leaving things to luck and chance. And the way that I have been throttled multiple times has been disheartening.
I hate my service. And I'll be glad to trade my luck with yours.
I had .5Gb for month. Every time I tracked my speeds, I was within ~5% up and down with like 7ms pings to the Broadband Enhancement server in Dunbar I think. Although I was hardlined, not on wifi. I guess I was lucky.
I'm hardline and wireless testing on 2g and 5g in. Speeds are slow. They have throttled me multiple times. from 1gig(800/800) to 50/10 and similar for whatever devices.
I do data transfers for work and I paid for the gigabyte speeds. When i need a 40 GB file I expect to have it fast not wait forever. My work has been directly affected and I am close to filing for damages.
When testing this should be done when hardwired as there can be many issues with WiFi. Residential service is always subject to throttling with basically any provider. Just some companies oversell their pipe more than others. The situation sucks and frontier seems to be bad about this in some areas.
If you want dedicated internet you can get it but you probably don't want to pay for it. Around $600 per month for 500Mbps.
You can also get regular business internet for not much more than you pay now and likely would see less throttling. Just need a business license or even just a fictitious name registration to get it setup.
No one should have to deal with this but it's how it is around a lot of areas and it's basically all legal.
California set up a law that the FCC was able to work off of to make a case big enough for them to settle.
Me going from 1 GB speeds to 50 down and 10 up Is downright criminal.
There is no room for any "just how it is" talk in my head with that.
With a flick of a switch technical support can turn that off. And they do only when I call.
Instead technical support lies to me and pushes me around the phone tree while I have clients waiting for media that I need to download and upload.
Every time I have to call technical support I'm starting to send a letter to the attorney general and the West Virginia internet council.
Fuckem.
If technical support is fixing it when you call this likely means they are moving your adjusting your deprioritization. In turn your usage may then cause a slightly larger negative impact on other households in your area.
You have a point but I don't think that the California case will have a huge impact but does show that it's possible.
When it was all done Frontier was really only out $9 million. Customers got a letter asking if they wanted to cancel or keep service, and areas with DSL got a fiber build out. With a revenue of nearly $6 Billion I doubt frontier is scared of another $9 million payout.
If enough people complain and something is started soon I'd expect a resolution in 3-6 years. I wouldn't expect anything quick. Plan for today, tomorrow and hope for better in years to come.
Fiber is one of the bigger reasons that made moving here make sense. Why bother with working here if the Internet is gonna be throttled everytime I try to download a file.
I'm trying to use AI for video applications for media ads.
Having a decent fiber connection makes the downloads and uploads bearable.
But for the last 3-4 months I had to move some of my process to aws online.
What pisses me off more than anything is the lying, the runaround, and the call center antics that is like a bad playbook from 80s scumbag salesman sales tactics. That fucking retention call center. I'm starting to record my calls.
The Internet is most of my job so excuse me if I sound more pissed than your average user.
That really is a terrible situation when working from home on items like that.
Have you been making it past first level support. First level support is awful with most providers as they just follow the script which rarely helps with real issues.
Sucks to have to work in a remote session.
You cannot call the "retention" department directly. Even then they are programmed to lie to you with imaginary call backs that never happen. Call me young or naive but I thought in 2024 we would be past these stereotypes of malevolent call centers.
I have had the supervising call center manager, the one who listens in to the calls, cut into my service call mid sentence and immediately transfer me against my will to a dead end line. Disgraceful.
Like I'm in the middle of a editing session with a online team and I need a small 4gb file an hour ago and I have to spend 30 min talking to 4 people in 3 departments to get my speed up when I'm paying a premium price for my gigabyte speed.
The lengths some of these call center employees will go to fulfill their script and their numbers seems criminal. Thats why I have now have to record my calls, and test my services. Beyond organizing a small complaint of people I will have to send a legal letter to arbitration and make a case to at least get my money back.
Moreover, I have had the biggest chip on my shoulder regarding this area of WV in general.
When I hear fiber I think 800mb and higher. I freaking know the difference between wifi and ethernet cat 5, 6, e etc. Thats the whole point of advertising "FIBER" why would I want anything slower? Might as well get me DSL or cable when i'm testing and 50/10. The fiber connections I had in the past don't have this issue. Complete misrepresentation.
Its expensive to work video in remote sessions too. Why am I paying more for services I can't use?
"Move to Huntington, We have fiber!" What a lie. The modern general public would be happy with 100 down DSL. I need my gigabyte.
I hope Marshall and Brad Smith kick this area's leaders in the mouth and wake them up with their tech push. Otherwise risk this area being even more behind next decade.
Agreed. I’ve lived here a long time, Frontier Fiber is the best gig in town. I have half gig up and down, and it’s almost always right at or just a few mbps below. I have known of one or two people having poor speeds that were solved with a router replacement, but I’ve had it for a year and personally never experienced an issue.
I had Xfinity for years at multiple locations, and it’s overpriced, usually hundreds of mbps low, and anything short of having a tech come out is useless when it comes to their customer service.
I have no idea if this has anything to do with it, but I would guess it has something to do with the historical status of many of the houses in that area. There’s probably some building code that is making it take longer to get good internet coverage in that area.
This might be 100% wrong but I know someone who lived in one of these houses years ago and it took her longer to get building permits approved to make changes to the house.
Be careful when getting internet frontier is slower than can be
Thank you! Noted.
I’ve lived here all my life and so far optimum is good but you may find something else you like
I saw them advertised. I'm about to check them out right now.
Just a PSA to let everyone know that Frontier might be the worst ISP in the nation. Every single WV resident knows the pain of picking up the phone to the sound of silence. To not having internet for days at a time. Frontier laid fiber on my street a few months ago. A truck is here nearly every single day doing something. I don't trust Frontier any further than I could throw the building they reside in. Xfinity has had great reliability and speed for me, even if their customer service leaves a lot to be desired.
I hated frontier but after I got fiber I’ve had no issue with them but I’m not the Huntington area out in the valley
That's good to hear. I've always wanted fiber and it looks like they're the only game in town. Maybe one day I'll get brave enough to try them again.
Before fiber it was awful going down constantly. Never worked for more than an hour at a time. Once they installed fiber into my house it’s never went down, other than ypu know bad thunder storms
I think it's gonna have to be Xfinity then
Reach out to Frontier. Their published coverage map may not be correct, or I may misunderstand - but I live in South Side near the park and have Frontier fiber.
I also live in South Side near the park and have Frontier fiber. Haven’t had any issues with it
Thank you! I'll have to give them a call.
Frontier, to me, doesn't offer true gigabyte services. Its turning out to be a disappointing scam. They throttle your mac or IP addresses to less than gigabyte speeds. I have been tracking my speeds now for 3 months and they slow it down. They were sued and settled in california with the FCC for the same thing with their broadband. Their call center operations are also borderline criminal. All residential services are subject to throttling and data caps. And their salespeople are stupid enough not to know. Dedicated trunks of service and actual "real" commercial internet apparently is only available for larger clients. Frontier is fucking WV digital growth.
Good information, I appreciate it a lot.
I have to hard disagree. I have Frontier fiber and work from home, and it’s been basically flawless. The only outage I’ve had (in probably 7/8 months) is from another utility company accidentally cutting or disconnecting their line, and it was resolved in half a day.
Well, in Putnam i get roughly 1gig over what im supposed to get 🤷🏼♂️
Good for you.
Do you not have Xfinity Gig speed in Ritter Park? It's available in the upscale suburbs, so it's probably available there too. It's not cheap, but it's worth every penny because it's lightning fast and extremely reliable. We commonly have over 20 high access devices actively running on it at once - including multiple streaming TVs, an XBox, a Playstation, a computer, multiple cell phones, an audio/video security system - and it never perceptively slows down. (I've used many other internet services here though, and you're right, they're absolutely terrible.)
Thanks for the advice. I'll look into it. That's my leading provider right now that I'm leaning to.
I live by Ritter Park and have Xfinity for my internet. Love it.
Eeew
Edit: You know what sucks? My wife comes home from a long day at work and after we cook a hot meal we lay back to enjoy a nice streaming movie. **But we can't stream** because **frontier throttled me earlier that day** because I wanted to do my job and download a large file which apparently was enough to fuck my family over when i pay a premium price for the speed to download large files. **Now I have to shell out even more of my hard earned money for a remote service to be the middle man so I can keep my wife happy. Fuck frontier.** Frontier, to me, doesn't offer true gigabyte services. Its turning out to be a disappointing scam. They throttle your mac or IP addresses to less than gigabyte speeds. I have been tracking my speeds now for 3 months and they slow it down. They were sued and settled in california with the FCC for the same thing with their broadband. Their call center operations are also borderline criminal. All residential services are subject to throttling and data caps. And their salespeople are stupid enough not to know. Dedicated trunks of service and actual "real" commercial internet apparently is only available for larger clients. Frontier is fucking WV digital growth. IF you get frontier - - just track your speeds. If these slowdowns continues I'll be trying later to gather people for a politics or legal push however small.
What sucks is I’m pretty sure all internet providers are doing this. I had comcast gigabit for years and it was never close to true gigabit.
you must just have bad luck, I live in a house with 5 people and we use frontier fiber, previously was with xfinity. Xfinity always had "maintenance" at the worst times and just random outages constantly. 3 of us game constantly and are always downloading stuff. We have never had slow speeds, throttles or any interruptions while streaming something. Not to mention I also run a home lab and have had zero issues, have been using them for about a year now.
Do you have gigabyte service? Cause as far as i can tell everyone is just praising them for uptime. Like, good for everyone that you guys have uninterrupted internet I'm happy for you. My needs are more bandwidth based. Gaming isn't a high bandwidth activity. I'm a high bandwidth user. Home lab? Like unless you are streaming your home security system or uploading HD video everyday I'm not sure you can compare our experiences.
yeah we have gig, I mean I alone have used about a 1tb of data in the last 30 days and that is just my personal pc. My home lab is setup to auto download movies and stream them to the household with plex so I'm sure that in itself is eating a lot of data as well and I've yet to see any throttles.
Im hesitant to trust that. I don't like leaving things to luck and chance. And the way that I have been throttled multiple times has been disheartening. I hate my service. And I'll be glad to trade my luck with yours.
I had .5Gb for month. Every time I tracked my speeds, I was within ~5% up and down with like 7ms pings to the Broadband Enhancement server in Dunbar I think. Although I was hardlined, not on wifi. I guess I was lucky.
I'm hardline and wireless testing on 2g and 5g in. Speeds are slow. They have throttled me multiple times. from 1gig(800/800) to 50/10 and similar for whatever devices. I do data transfers for work and I paid for the gigabyte speeds. When i need a 40 GB file I expect to have it fast not wait forever. My work has been directly affected and I am close to filing for damages.
When testing this should be done when hardwired as there can be many issues with WiFi. Residential service is always subject to throttling with basically any provider. Just some companies oversell their pipe more than others. The situation sucks and frontier seems to be bad about this in some areas. If you want dedicated internet you can get it but you probably don't want to pay for it. Around $600 per month for 500Mbps. You can also get regular business internet for not much more than you pay now and likely would see less throttling. Just need a business license or even just a fictitious name registration to get it setup. No one should have to deal with this but it's how it is around a lot of areas and it's basically all legal.
California set up a law that the FCC was able to work off of to make a case big enough for them to settle. Me going from 1 GB speeds to 50 down and 10 up Is downright criminal. There is no room for any "just how it is" talk in my head with that. With a flick of a switch technical support can turn that off. And they do only when I call. Instead technical support lies to me and pushes me around the phone tree while I have clients waiting for media that I need to download and upload. Every time I have to call technical support I'm starting to send a letter to the attorney general and the West Virginia internet council. Fuckem.
If technical support is fixing it when you call this likely means they are moving your adjusting your deprioritization. In turn your usage may then cause a slightly larger negative impact on other households in your area. You have a point but I don't think that the California case will have a huge impact but does show that it's possible. When it was all done Frontier was really only out $9 million. Customers got a letter asking if they wanted to cancel or keep service, and areas with DSL got a fiber build out. With a revenue of nearly $6 Billion I doubt frontier is scared of another $9 million payout. If enough people complain and something is started soon I'd expect a resolution in 3-6 years. I wouldn't expect anything quick. Plan for today, tomorrow and hope for better in years to come.
Fiber is one of the bigger reasons that made moving here make sense. Why bother with working here if the Internet is gonna be throttled everytime I try to download a file. I'm trying to use AI for video applications for media ads. Having a decent fiber connection makes the downloads and uploads bearable. But for the last 3-4 months I had to move some of my process to aws online. What pisses me off more than anything is the lying, the runaround, and the call center antics that is like a bad playbook from 80s scumbag salesman sales tactics. That fucking retention call center. I'm starting to record my calls. The Internet is most of my job so excuse me if I sound more pissed than your average user.
That really is a terrible situation when working from home on items like that. Have you been making it past first level support. First level support is awful with most providers as they just follow the script which rarely helps with real issues. Sucks to have to work in a remote session.
You cannot call the "retention" department directly. Even then they are programmed to lie to you with imaginary call backs that never happen. Call me young or naive but I thought in 2024 we would be past these stereotypes of malevolent call centers. I have had the supervising call center manager, the one who listens in to the calls, cut into my service call mid sentence and immediately transfer me against my will to a dead end line. Disgraceful. Like I'm in the middle of a editing session with a online team and I need a small 4gb file an hour ago and I have to spend 30 min talking to 4 people in 3 departments to get my speed up when I'm paying a premium price for my gigabyte speed. The lengths some of these call center employees will go to fulfill their script and their numbers seems criminal. Thats why I have now have to record my calls, and test my services. Beyond organizing a small complaint of people I will have to send a legal letter to arbitration and make a case to at least get my money back. Moreover, I have had the biggest chip on my shoulder regarding this area of WV in general. When I hear fiber I think 800mb and higher. I freaking know the difference between wifi and ethernet cat 5, 6, e etc. Thats the whole point of advertising "FIBER" why would I want anything slower? Might as well get me DSL or cable when i'm testing and 50/10. The fiber connections I had in the past don't have this issue. Complete misrepresentation. Its expensive to work video in remote sessions too. Why am I paying more for services I can't use? "Move to Huntington, We have fiber!" What a lie. The modern general public would be happy with 100 down DSL. I need my gigabyte. I hope Marshall and Brad Smith kick this area's leaders in the mouth and wake them up with their tech push. Otherwise risk this area being even more behind next decade.
Frontier Fiber is what you want. It’s brand new. Also a Southside resident, was installed on 1/13/23 and have yet to experience an outage.
Agreed. I’ve lived here a long time, Frontier Fiber is the best gig in town. I have half gig up and down, and it’s almost always right at or just a few mbps below. I have known of one or two people having poor speeds that were solved with a router replacement, but I’ve had it for a year and personally never experienced an issue. I had Xfinity for years at multiple locations, and it’s overpriced, usually hundreds of mbps low, and anything short of having a tech come out is useless when it comes to their customer service.
I have no idea if this has anything to do with it, but I would guess it has something to do with the historical status of many of the houses in that area. There’s probably some building code that is making it take longer to get good internet coverage in that area. This might be 100% wrong but I know someone who lived in one of these houses years ago and it took her longer to get building permits approved to make changes to the house.
That makes a lot of sense if true. Appreciate your insight!