Well, I finally ditched Frontier DSL in favor of the high speed internet offered by Spectrum. For a long time DSL was sufficient, and relatively cheap, but more recently the quality was suffering, and I was rebooting our router nearly every day. Download speed tests were sometimes showing less than 1 Mbps. Compared to Spectrum's approximate 200 Mbps. I kept getting offers to bundle Spectrum internet with my existing TV subscription, for 49.99 a month for the first 12 months. From what I can tell, it goes up 20 dollars or so a month after that. I was paying, with taxes and fees, a little over 50 dollars a month for the Frontier DSL (up from when I was paying around 35 a month).
The Spectrum equipment was delivered within a couple of days, and I had very little trouble setting everything up. They have a pretty good video for self-installing. Activation took just a couple of minutes, and from then on everything just worked. I, of course, changed the router's name and password right away. I am now enjoying excellent connections with zero downtime so far.
My biggest fear, quite frankly, was having to call to get the Frontier canceled. You have to talk to a real live person, and they work in the Retention department, if that gives you any clue. They obviously are going to try to keep you as a customer. I nicely but firmly indicated that I'd gone to another provider, and wished to cancel my DSL. I reaffirmed that another time or two during the conversation.
I must say, over the years I have had good DSL service and pretty good tech support. Also, the person from Retention handled my cancellation professionally and promptly. I was never put on hold. My router was so old that they said there was no need to return it. I received a confirmation email right away.
To the best of my knowledge, DSL over a phone line can never really compete with a signal coming in over coaxial cable. So far, I am glad that I made the switch.
