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I have been a customer of Roadrunner since it first appeared here in the Tampa bay area. At first it was very touchy with dropped connections dhcp server problems etc.. However, over the past three years the service has improved greatly so I moved to Business Class. I have been on Business Class for the last two years, and as of late, the downstream speeds have continued to drop. I have a set NON - Burst speed of 2mb down and 384kb/s up, but in the past few months I've seen this speed drop and Bright House has not been able to explain this to me. Between the constant calls to technical support and the lack luster treatment, I have gotten from their senior personnel I have decided that my best option will most likely be to go to DSL. So in a nutshell if you CAN get DSL, don't waste your time and money on Brighthouse. I felt it important to keep my previous review for comparison of service and pricing. I stuck it out with Brighthouse I admit I didn’t take my own advice However Since my last update to this review I have switched to Brighthouse Residential Turbo at $51.00 per month with my “Combo Package” and have been getting very good speeds a lot of times up to 30mbps. The connectivity is very good also and I rarely get outage unless the weather is extremely nasty (I live in Fl. so we get some real nastiness) The technical support at the bottom tier is truly comical and quite possibly insulting to a long time user but sufficient for the average user. Higher tier Technical support is actually outstanding but you could pull your hair out trying to talk to one unless you go ahead and tell the tier one and two support techs what you have already done (all of which they will try to run you through again anyway but be tough, tell them what you have already done and ask them to escalate you to the next tier) Update::: It appears the BH tech support has been farmed to a regional office now that you have to go through to get your ticket escalated. So far it hasn't been to bad an experience dealing with them.. It is a good product at a competitive price I give it a thumbs up! Waiting for DOCSIS 3.0 for the higher upstream speeds I guess I'll stay on copper .until it melts. Followup comments:
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Got everything turned at the pole, came in to make sure we had a television picture, and bring the modem. He hooks it up hand me the cat5 cable to plug in, no go, so he goes back to his truck for different one, still it won't work, He says not to worry and ak me to open my cd tray to install usb drivers for the sb5101modem. Great we got online, so He was happy, so He had us sign the paper work and left. Next couple day I thought there was no I was getting 15mb download speed, so I run a speed test, and it says I was getting 4.7mb down 499kb up. So the next day I called tech support, and tell the what happened so 3 days later a different tech shows up and installs a new webstar modem, and everything has been running great ever sense. Followup comments:
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When Time Warner took it over my caps were put to 8/512. I got the full download and upload but the upload was at the 490-510. I really didn't like going from almost a full 1Mbps to half that. Time Warner then did a speed upgrade and now it is 10/1. I get the full download and upload. It is very nice download at 1MB/s+ and being able to upload at 110KB/s+. But there are now other markets getting 15/2 and you know the old adage: You can never have enough. Update on 11/14/09: Time Warner has been steadily standardizing their Turbo Tier for the whole Southern California area to 15/2. I always have the full speed of it 24/7 no matter what day or time. I had to constantly badger tech support but I finally got them to do a line quality inspection from the CMTS from the cable office to my modem. They had to readjust some line amplifiers and did some other line tweaking and now my signal is rock solid with a downstream SNR of 36+dB and power level at 0-1dBmV. The upstream power hovers from 42-48dBmV. Followup comments:
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In 6 plus years they still have not raised the price a single dime. Only now they give me 7000/500 connection for that same $50 bucks. And while I personally dont use the bells and whistles they offer now, it is nice to see Brighthouse offering them. Things like free firewalls, anitvirus, home networking, online live chat customer support, etc. I literally have no complaints. The connection is up 99 plus percent of the time and I rarely experience sluggish network performance. I really dont even think about my internet connection anymore, it is just there. Like flicking on the light switch or turning on the TV, you dont even think about it, you just know it is going to work. That is really the best compliment you can give an ISP. Update: January 12, 2005 Since my last update I have seen my speed increase from 2000/384 to 3000/384 to 5000/384. The download speeds are nice and all, but I wish they would bump up the uploads to 512. That is the only gripe I got for this past year. Oh, the RR mails servers were down once for 2 days. Almost forgot all about that. Other than that it has been pretty smooth sailing. Price has not gone up in the almost 4 years I have had the service. All in all I have no real complaints. RR through BrightHouse in Indy still ROCKS!! Update: January 21, 2004 Well, it will be 3 years this May and all in all I am a satisfied customer. Price has not changed at all. I have not had any outages to speak of that a modem reboot did not cure. There have not been any signs of download caps with Brighthouse/RoadRunner. And trust me, while my average is about 35 gig a month, I have been over 80 gig in a month a couple of times. So it seems if they have an invisible cap it is pretty liberal. 95% of the time my speeds are in the 1950+/350+ range. Once in a while you will notice a slow down but it usually is back to normal within a couple of hours. I guess my only gripe is that Brighthouse is dragging its feet on the upgrade to 3000/512 that much of the country has already seen. So like I said, all in all I'm still satisfied with the service and would encourage anyone in the Indy area to give Brighthouse/RR a try. Update: April 22, 2003 After almost 2 years everything is still running smooth. They did however change/sell/merge/rename??? to Brighthouse Networks from Time Warner without making any kind of statement to its customers. Thanks for keeping us informed! Speeds are consistantly above 1900/350. There have been no outages worth mentioning. After reading what is happening in Lincoln, Nebraska my only fears are that the 15gb download caps will come here as well. If that does happen, I will be finding a new ISP. Or unplugging from the internet altogether. I am not a "bandwidth hog", but I am not going to be forced into using my service like I was on dial-up either. Update: Aug. 25 2002 A year and a half now and all is well. Speeds are still at 1900+ down and 350+ up. No outages at all other than a couple of hours once when a serious storm blew through. And a couple signal drops that were cured by simply unplugging the modem and plugging it back in. If you have RoadRunner as an option in Indy it is the way to go. Update: Jan. 25 2002 Since the last update there has been no change at all. My speeds rock, always over 1900 down and 320 up. I have gotten some terrible speed test results here at DSLR at times, but when I check my speeds at other places immediately after a poor test here, they are always in the 1900's. Don't know why, don't care. My connection has not been down at all to my knowledge. I am very pleased at this point. RoadRunner/Time Warner has been a great experience for me. I believe the quality of service you get from your broadband provider purely depends on your local office that provides it to you. Your service is only going to be as good as your local office. Period. If your local office is a bunch of morons, then you are going to get crappy service. That is all there is to it. Maybe it is just me, but it also seems like towns with multiple providers seem to have a little better service than the towns with only one option. And remember, if you have got a good cable connection, tell people all over town about it. But tell your neighbors it sucks!!!! Update: Sept. 27, 2001 Sneaking up on 5 months service and overall I have been pleased. The last couple of months have been a seemless integration of man, computer and internet. Only problems I have had were of the self inflicted variety. Speeds 95% of the time are between 1900 and 2000 down and 350 to 380 up. July 13th: After 2 months of service I am a happy customer. I am still getting speeds in the range as previously mentioned. Have had zero problems. It seems like my old dial up connection was 2 years ago instead of 2 months ago. What we did in 25 hours a week on the internet using a 56K modem, only takes RoadRunner an hour or 2. I downloaded Windows XP RC-1, a 510 MB .ISO image, in 35 minutes. Outstanding!! Would never have even thought about downloading it with a dial up connection..... In the Indy area anyway, RoadRunner has its act together. So far. Update, 6-19-01, After my first and only outage to date, 3 days, I have some insight on a few more aspects of Road Runner. Over the phone tech support, while friendly and polite, is not very knowledgeable. Had to schedule someone to my house. A guy showed up promptly on Friday as promised. He was stumped and had to call out a senior tech. It turned out Senior Tech did some work out on the pole a couple of streets down, and had accidently cut me off the previous Tuesday. I was back up and running within 1/2 hour of senior tech showing up. The senior tech was very knowledgeable. After I told him the day my service went out he said he would be back in a few minutes. Before he was back, 10-15 minutes, I reset my modem and synched right up. When he got back he told me how it was him personally who had accidently cut off my service when installing some new equipment a couple of blocks down. I thought he took the high road by admitting to something like that, rather than make some lame excuse. It was irritating to lose service for three days, but it does not look like a habitual type of outage, just an honest mistake. I made the call in mid April to see if/ when my area was to be completed. They said May 9th at the latest. Set an appointment for the 9th. Got a call on the 7th to confirm the install date of the 9th between 9a.m. and 1p.m. The guy showed up at 9:30 a.m. Was gone by 10:15. He ran new cable from the poll to my basement, through my existing rj-45 holes already drilled in the floor. Connected modem, got signal, offered to stick around through software install. Told him it was not needed, and that was it. He was here, had me hooked up, and gone inside of 45 minutes. Outstanding!! 10 minutes later I had my PC's, hub, router and modem all running smooth. Download speeds between 1300 and 2800. Consistantly around 1800. Upload 300 to 370. And I have not even tweaked anything yet. Not sure it will matter much considering the speeds I have got so far. Can't say much about Tech support, I have not needed them yet. The modem,a 3Com cable, was free, $99 install. A bit of a stiff fee, but the speeds to this point makes it a wash. At $50 a month it has been more than a fair deal considering I paid $25 a month for dial-up. I would encourage anyone in the Indianapolis area who can get RoadRunner to jump at the chance, except for those of you who live in my neighborhood of course. Followup comments:
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My area has been testing since Jan 1 the 15/2 for premium My son is on the waiting list for Vz Fios to be available He's stuck at 3/down and averages about 1.5 vs my excellent speed-tests. Latest test --- > Speakeasy LA --- Download Speed: 14200 kbps (1775 KB/sec transfer rate) Upload Speed: 1855 kbps (231.9 KB/sec transfer rate) [wireless - laptop ] :) UPDATED: 28 Feb 2007 Still getting 15/2 - 13 months now. Latest speed results have been uploaded as attachment. No complaints  Updated 31 Aug 2007 Still no problems and 15/2 speeds. Happy surfin' in Surf City, USA :) Updated 8 May 2008 - Still surfin happy Updated 8 November 2008 - no problems except for 6 year old modem causing problems [ electric surging before it gave out ] Never one problem that going into the local office didn't fix asap. Any down time and it's been rare was due to city of HB digging up streets to upgrade access ramps to the sidewalks. Go into the local office - be polite and to the point and you won't only get the problem solved - you'll get other RR services gratis for your trouble. Updated 25 October 2009 Speeding along still Attachments:     Followup comments:
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RoadRunner Cable
(198)
(83)
Largo,Pinellas,FL
$51 per month
about 1 days
"Provides a pretty good connection at resonable Speed"
"Needs higher upload/download speeds"
"I'm staying put for now."
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