- Sadly, Clear was not an option because even though they have a tower just an eighth of a mile away, I'm in a natural hollow, topologically, and it interferes with the signal. No word on whether that will ever be addressed (I'm thinking 'no').
- Nope, no fiber optic in my area yet. no surprise, again, as Vancouver is basically an outlying suburb of Portland, and where I am ids on the far side of it, in an older area.
- I thought Verizon was my local DSL provider, turns out it's Qwest. I'm not as happy about that and they cannot give me the fastest service in my location, but they can give me a 7 Mbps line, 40% cheaper than what I'm paying now.
Let's talk speed for a moment. My Comcast service is supposed to get me 12 Mbps. While the connection was good, I did several tests (and just did some more, for a different time of day) and I'm averaging about 7.8 Mbps. This is a GOOD connection, and is considerably less than what I'm supposed to get. When it's not a good connection, well, I'll do a more official test tonight, but it's certainly less than this (and has the aforementioned noise issues, to boot). For the record, Comcast's test averages for Washington are 16.75 Mbps, and nationwide averaging 13.5...so yes, I'm getting screwed. With this in mind, though, paying less for the same speed I'm used to isn't so bad.
So, looks like Qwest is my main other go-to guys. With this knowledge and price ready to roll, It's time to jump Comcast's shit one last time. I'm waiting until later, however. First off, if I call and complain about a problem on the line when it isn';t happening, they'll just shrug their shoulders and say "looks fine at the moment." So, gonna wait until things are wacky and then call with the issue happening. Two, by the time I got through being on hold and talking to four different places, my adrenaline was up and I had no energy to talk to Comcast, anyway.
So, now for the end of phase one and the beginning of phase two. test speeds tonight when things go to Hell, and start getting on their case about it.
