I got tired of Comcast phone, internet, and TV, but especially the price (need to downprice everything).



Qwest has a great bundle for $80 total (taxes included): home phone unlimited, Internet at 12mbps, and DirectTV (I opted for 2 HD DVRs).



Took my monthly cost down from $150.- to $80 alltogether which is almost 1/2, sweet!



Comcast promised high speed internet, but it's really a shared pipe, as soon as the soda factory folks come home the cable gets saturated at 5-9PM, and then the HD TV quality is compromised (pixellated frames). I've not seen downloads that is even near 40mbps, mostly it's 3mbps max.



Problem is the installation booking is 2 weeks out (I guess it's popular).



Hopefully my router won't fry like carl's the first time I go watch porn and do some fapping



Anyway ... just wanted to share.

Is that a "for the first 6 months" thing or is that the real price?

Only the Qwest's price is the first 6 months thing ($20 becomes $40 in 6 months, which still isn't bad compared to Comcast).



ETA: oh a con is the DirecTV requires a 2 year contract, just like a cell phone (no biggie for me).

so after 6 months it will be $100 for interwebz, tv and home phone line?

Qwest internet sucks balls

I could not play Modern Warfare online on the Wii at the same time she was on the laptop. On a good day the best download speed was 1.3mbps

QWest DSL is about the only thing that sucks as hard as my ISP.

We have fiber out here ... up to 12mbps down, 896kbps up.





After the 6 months are up, I can downgrade to a lower speed to maintain the price, my needs are simple



After a year I switch back to Comcast as a "new" customer just for the Internet if I don't like Qwest.



Though I'm hoping by then FIOS has come around as another franchise for my area.



 

I did that awhile back, it is bullshit. And you can look forward to a real headache when you try to split them back up. GET Jessie NOW.

I'm watching the quality of service like a hawk for the next 21 days, if it's good I'll keep it and let Comcast net and TV go.



Otherwise, well ... I'll report back if I remember to (probably in the form of a rant if it doesn't go well).

Had DSL before and will never go back to it.  I love my Comcast service.

ETA: Did my speedtest.net while still on Comcast.



Renton server got me 20mbps.





Baltimore & Miami servers got me 9mbps.





Those are really great speeds in the middle of the day, at night comcast crawls.





Wonder if qwest does the same?

 

I'm pretty happy with qwest and direct tv but the laptop does slow down mw2 on my xbox when the wife is on.

Qwest DSL is my only option for internet, short of satellite.  It works OK.  Actually, it works pretty damn good for out in the sticks.

Reporting back.
For a 12mbps / 896 kbps line, it works as advertised (did my speedtest.net tests).
Setup was uh ... ummmmm 3 days worth of rant from me, but that was due to the my specific requirements (which I consider simple actually), I just need to be able to browse, get mail, serve a web page, and use apple's wireless airtunes (this one requires apple's Airport Extreme basestation, and where the trouble of the tribbles come in).
Long story short, mainstream typical setup (i.e. you replace your basestation with Qwest's modem router/wireless) is really brain dead simple, take it out of the box, follow the instructions, you're done. This gets you a mini LAN (PK5000 modem has 4 ports in the back), and wireless turned on and secured.
To solve my setup, I had to set the modem into Transparent Bridging (somewhere in the Advanced Setup -> IP Addressing sub menu). WARNING: you will never be able to see your modem addressable with an IP address anymore once you do this (unless you do a hard reset which is magic that I don't know).
Then plug in the Apple Extreme base station into the back of the PK5000 modem. My base station is set to share a public address, and to dial-up with PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet), so you absolutely must know the userid and password to connect (or call the repair/tech support service if you don't know it).
Again, as you can't see the modem and doesn't initiate the connection, you must use/create a PPPoE connection from your base station (or your PC/Mac if your PC is connected directly to the modem).
Note that I have tried the simple standard QWest modem setup, and set the PK5000 modem to port forwarding, and my Apple basestation to  also bridging (i.e. only function as a wireless router). Neither solved the various problems I had (practically killed Youtube, mail, and other functions due to speed issues). I believe the issue is in the interaction between PK5000 modem and Apple's base station
For reference QWest DSL technical support # is 1-888-777-9569 (they must like the wide body Boeing 777 )
Yes, and I am sure that I'm the first one to encounter this problem and offer this solution. I googled really hard and did not found any solution that was close (apart from finding out that you can set the dang modem to transparent bridging).
Oh and another thing that slows QWest down is that after a long session of idle DNS request activity from your connection they drop you off the load balancing DNS server bank. When you start browsing, the pages you hit (or any application) you hit will be slow as molasses until you get assigned to a DNS server bank. After that the browsing and application response times are really fast.
In the browser, you see this phenomena as "Looking for <yoursite here>" in the status bar that goes for about 5-10 seconds. I browse and my email is on early in the morning, late night, and sometimes odd hours. So I'm hit with molasses frequently (but sounds like others are experiencing this as well).
That just means I have to setup a script that does random name resolution requests every 5 minutes or so.
Also another issue, sending mail takes a noticeably longer amount of time, given the 896 kbps upload speed.
This might be the twig that broke the camel's back for me.
ETA: more technical details added.





Summary:





- Upload speed, DNS lookup times broke this deal for me


- In absence of the above the solution with Apple Airport Extreme is to


 - Set the Apple Airport Extreme to Share a Public Address, and dial up using PPPoE (need qwest DSL userid & password)


 - Set the PK5000 modem to Transparent Bridging mode (WARNING as above, you'll need technical support to bring the modem back to normal mode)
 

Moving to Directv next week.  Keeping my comcastic high speed.  Even after the 2 year special rates with Direct, we'll still be saving $50 a month on our total TV+Internet bill...

Yeah, fortunately I still have my Comcastic Internet service. So I will be dropping Qwest Internet and Comcast TV instead. Won't be a bundle anymore, let's see how they figure that one out price wise.