Angry Janesville Man Barbecues Slow Modem

[Ian]

I saw this link over at HardOCP. Someone needs to get that crazy mofo a cable modem or something.

http://www.channel3000.com/news/1773494/detail.html

Sadly, my wife teaches in Janesville. (No, I'm not kidding either)

[KuoH]

Lol...my company has dozens of 2400-9600 modems just collecting dust. Should I use steak or BBQ sauce on them?

KuoH

[eFrisky]

That's enough to make me cry... I really feel for that guy, suffering with all that rage inside him, and a damn slow modem.

Go look at the poll they put up next to that story. Now, if everyone who voted in that poll were to donate only $0.05 (or five Eurocents) then he'd have enough to get himself started with a decent cable/adsl connection...

Someone should register www.gettheangrymanadecentconnection.org and start collecting for him.

[BillyG]

I remember when I bought my 56K modem! (US Robotics) I was very excited - I was connecting at 48-50 kbps (wow real fast) to earthlink every day.

But my neighbors decided to add another phoneline, so GTE (now Verizon) digitally multiplexed my line (digitally encoding it so they can add more connections) and they cut the bandwidth, because 56K only works with analog phone lines. Now I was getting 26.4 to 31.2 kbps.

I couldnt do a dammed thing about it - called the company to complain and they sent out an redneck who didnt know anything about modems and computers. He said the phone line worked fine for voice calls and thats all he cared about. I was so mad I almost threw a rock through his truck's back window as he drove away.

I was SO happy when I got my cable modem hooked up last year!

[cfitz]

I had a similar experience. Everything was working fine, I was getting 51.3 kbps, and then the phone company "upgraded" the neighborhood. No more high-speed dial-up for me - I'm lucky to get 28.8, most of the time I get 26.4.

A couple of weeks after the "upgrade" the phone company sent me an ad offering to hook me up with ISDN (yeah, right! ) Coincidence?

cfitz

[KuoH]

The "upgrade" was to add more capacity by compressing the voicestream, I think they called it "pair gain". It essentially combines two phone lines into one by halving the bandwidth of each. Voila! Instant modem speed reduction, since 28.8k+ connections require the full bandwidth. In my aunt's case she was lucky to get 21.6k, in a neighborhood with new copper and a short run to the CO, and even that was flaky.

The suggested remedy was *not* to complain about data transmission speeds going down, but complain about problems with voice quality or fax transmissions in the hopes of getting Bell to remove the pair gain on your line. They pretty much ignored any complaints regarding data speeds, but there were regulations regarding voice quality and faxing.

KuoH

[BillyG]

I had a similar experience. Everything was working fine, I was getting 51.3 kbps, and then the phone company "upgraded" the neighborhood. No more high-speed dial-up for me - I'm lucky to get 28.8, most of the time I get 26.4.

A couple of weeks after the "upgrade" the phone company sent me an ad offering to hook me up with ISDN (yeah, right! ) Coincidence?

cfitz

Not really - There was a story in the Dallas Morning News last year about local phone exchanges being maxed out because more people are getting second phone lines for the PC. Dallas-Fort Worth switched to 10 digit calling because of that.

In my neighborhood our phonelines/electicity/TV cable is buried underground so the prospect of Verizon digging up yards to install a new main cable or fiber optic line (which I hear isnt 56K compatable either!) would be a huge hassle. It's cheaper for them to "pair gain" multiplex phonelines than installing more cables to handle the traffic.

I just hope more people see the benifits of a high bandwidth connection and switch over. Two of my neighbors got cable modems the next day after they came over and checked out my connection!