Disappointed with CenturyLink

Recently the weather was a bit odd; extremely humid and warm for winter. It turns out that apparently this does very bad things to our phone line. Our internet has been terrible; phone calls nearly unusable.

Hard to believe? Take a listen…

That just me holding my iPhone next to the phone receiver. On a clear dry day, it’s quiet and normal.

But how’s my DSL? Glad you asked. SNR Downstream around 6-10 dB (which seems pretty bad). Dozens to hundreds of retrains a day. (On a clear day SNR is fine and it really doesn’t retrain.)

So, of course we called CenturyLink. They sent someone out… two days later. Yeah, weather had cleared. Yeah, “everything was fine”. Sigh.

Happening again today. Called again today. They’ll send someone out… Friday.

On the same call today, I’m told:

  • It’s probably my modem, because it’s old (but it seems fine on clear days)
  • It’s probably my modem settings (but they’re unchanged since CenturyLink set the settings many months ago)
  • The line is clear
  • The line is not clear

Really, really frustrating. Not sure I have any hope this will ever be fixed, unless we just get “lucky” and have humidity problems that coincide with a technician visit.

UPDATE (6 days later): As far as I can tell, the technician never came last Friday. Voice line still sounds just as bad. Terrible internet.

UPDATE (6 days and a few minutes later): Checked “Where’s My Tech” and it turns out my December 26th visit got quietly moved to December 30th. Sigh.

UPDATE (6 days and a few hours later): Yep, it happened. Over the last few hours humidity dropped to 60% and the line is clear, voice and internet. Both were unusable 3 hours ago. So grumpy.

UPDATE (yet later on the 29th): Clear voice line and seemingly good S-to-N on the modem, but modem reports connection speed is about half of what I pay for.

UPDATE (Dec 31): Well, no one showed up. Again.  The “commitment” to Dec 26 became a “commitment” to Dec 30 and is now a “commitment” to Jan 3.

UPDATE (later on Dec 31): Nothing much interesting, but did see a SNR of -5 dB… haahaha!

UPDATE (about 4pm on Dec 31): Some progress! @CenturyLinkHelp jumped in and a couple of hours later a tech called me saying that he’d found and fixed bad wiring on the phone pole. Voice line seems clear now, as does SNR, but DSL speed is pretty low, so a little more work to be done.

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