Oh Qwest. I want to buy services from you. I want to be able to recommend you to my family and friends. I want to believe that you understand this market. When you released fiber to the home in Minnesota I thought that you finally understood. Alas poor Qwest, you are still a fool.
While Qwest does offer fiber to the home, they cap the upstream bandwidth at less than 1Mbps. That’s right, you have FIBER TO THE HOME with less than 1Mbps upload speed.
$45.00 a month is not too bad for bandwidth in this region. Problem is that Upstream bandwidth is just as critical as downstream bandwidth. I think that Qwest assumes that all consumers are stupid and will only look at the bigger ’20Mbps’ number and the price. Well that’s why I’m writing this post. If you don’t know what the numbers mean, let me just say that when it comes to bandwidth *all* of the numbers are important! You want a high download speed, a high upload speed and low latency. All of these things combined will get you a good Internet connection. While I’m at it allow me to suggest using OpenDNS.com as well. You would be surprised at how much a slow DNS server will impact your browsing experience and OpenDNS is very fast and very free.
For those who have a choice between Comcast and Qwest fiber in the Minneapolis area, allow me to guide you towards Comcast. No, I don’t work for them nor do I get a kickback in any way. I’m just sick of Qwest completely and totally missing the mark when it comes to bandwidth. While more expensive, Comcast does offer a 30Mbps down, 5Mbps up service for $63.00 a month with other Comcast services. Now that is a lot more than most people want to spend and I still take issue at the upload speeds, but it is at least a step in the right direction. Many people will go for the $55.00/mo package which is 20Mbps down and 4Mbps up. Notice that it almost the same price as the Qwest unbundled package, same download speed but over 4x the upload speed (comparing apples to apples it would be $45.00/mo from Qwest with a bundle and $55.00/mo from Comcast with a bundle).
I can say with confidence that the Comcast bandwidth BLOWS AWAY the Qwest bandwidth from every angle. While Comcast claims 20/4 service in reality I have seen more like 20/6 which means that I can upload at around 6Mbps. They seem to under promise and over deliver, at least in this market.
I know that every Comcast market is different and your experience may vary, this is just my experience with Comcast in the SW metro area of Minneapolis. I just hope that Qwest gets on the bandwidth bandwagon soon and starts offering competitive service to Comcast. I would love to get 50/50 service in my home via Fiber so I can start using next generation Internet applications. Qwest, you have a golden opportunity to convert a large amount of users to your service. Start showing some initiative!
896Kbps upstream. Qwest, I’m actually insulted you think I’m that stupid.
Comcast has been pretty negotiable on price lately. They knocked 50% off their price for me for 6 months with a quick phone call.
I’ve been annoyed with Comcast’s service for a while, though it isn’t bad, but apparently it wasn’t their fault, it was their installer’s fault. They came out to my parent’s house, tweaked something in the line, and poof, they went from about 5mbps down to 15mbps (which is actually faster than the ethernet-over-powerlines that runs it to their PC can handle).
It is pricey, but I’ve got the same issue you have with Quest down here in Iowa. With Mediacom, they also don’t understand that yes, I do want to upload things to the interwebs (imagine that). My service is 8mbps down and 0.25 up. 0.25 UP!! Really? A youtube video takes hours to upload, which is a major difference from when I’m at school (Iowa State and other Iowa Universities ran their own fiber across Iowa a few years back because Internet2 felt like bypassing the state, now Internet2 wants to buy space on the lines from them). At school I get awesome speeds up and down which is really nice.