am investigating getting internet while I am down there, but have gotten mixed reviews as to the effectiveness of C&W... is it really that bad? I have also heard that the school's isn't that much better.

And what is this whole thing about them selling more bandwidth than they had available? are they doing something to remedy the situation, as I imagine it can only get worse.

Thanks for you help

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~CD

The short answer is yes, C+W is that bad. The benefits of a monopoly...

Please don't get me started... Yes, it will be the worst customer service rep experience that you will ever have, yes it will take weeks upon weeks to get activated after multiple phone calls and run arounds, yes they will screw up your bill every single month requiring you to spend hours in their office straightening it all out. I would probably have never done it if I knew the headache that C&W was going to be, and I'd cancel it now and go with dial up if I wasn't already sharing the connection with a few students. I literally have to spend a good hour in their office every month straightening out the bill and that's a huge improvement from the problems I had with them back at the beginning of our service agreement.

Yeah, we signed up the week before class started...and we JUST NOW got our wireless YESTERDAY. And dialup? USELESS! It told me it was going to take Thirty seven years to download a movie from I tunes.

There is a reason it is called "Cable and Useless"

Phone/internet/cellphone service here isn't about choosing the best-it is about choosing the company that sucks the least.

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cable and wireless...AKA cable and useless

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so how do ppl keep up with the dls of small files....like tv shows or mp3s?....

am i gonna miss 5 months of grey's anatomy....??? pls no comments about where I'm gonna find time to watch em even if I can download, because I FIND time....i am multitasker extraordinaire hahaha.

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~CD

Yes, customer service sucks as bad as what people say here so I won't ramble on that.

Once you get the DSL service up, the Internet access is fast enough to download stuff off the net without much problems. It's fast enough to stream (sort of) sports highlights. It's fast enough to get all those pdf's and ppt's that are put up for class.

Please note that complaining about dial-up taking too long to download stuff is unfair because by its very nature, dial-up is slow. Dial-up is slow anywhere in the world simply because these speeds rarely exceed 20-30k, even if your modem is rated for 33.6 or 56k. Although dial-up is slow, it's a nice backup if the DSL goes down.

The Internet on-campus tends to be better than the off-campus Internet access in the sense that the speeds/bandwidth are higher without you having to pay extra. Reliability on-campus and off-campus can be inconsistent, although this term, Internet access on-campus has been pretty good so far.

Most of the Internet problems on-campus are actually problems associated with the school's network setup and not C&W. The on-campus routers are frequently overloaded (they use routers that weren't designed for this sort of heavy load) so it made it seem like Internet access was down.

This problem is supposed to be fixed in Bell Hall, esp if you use 802.11a, because they upgraded those routers so there shouldn't be any connection issues in Bell. The routers in Bourne Hall aren't as upgraded as the ones in Bell because I noticed that when everyone starts trying to connect to the router, the router gets bogged down and I sometimes lose connection completely. Again, note that this does not mean that the Internet access provided by C&W to the rest of the world is down... it merely means that people could not connect to the school's router to even get access to the C&W connection. I don't know if they upgraded routers in the superdorms. Connection speeds tends to slow down when there's a lot of people up in the study rooms. Internet access in the library has been pretty good for the most part.

Note: When people say on-campus Internet, they typically refer to the Internet access provided by the school without you having to pay extra. No rooms on-campus have Internet access specifically for your room so some people get Internet access specifically for their room. In that case, this Internet access where you pay extra (and coordinate with C&W independently of the school) functions like any other off-campus Internet access. It just so happens you live on-campus. I hope that clarified more than confused.

Long story short... once your Internet is setup, the Internet access will be fast enough. You just have to be patient/persistent with C&W to get your Internet installed and running.

[Don't know about the oversold bandwidth issue... doesn't mean anything but the first time I've heard about it was on these boards...]

The DSL down here is like 1st gen DSL compared to what we have back in the states. SLOW... 128 and 256K lines to start out with which is comparable to old ISDN lines back home. It's fast enough to download something at a somewhat decent speed, but only if you have the line to yourself. To put things in perspective, we pay the same amount down here for what you would pay for a "at least" 2-6Mb line back home. I'm sharing a 512K line with 5 people including myself and you just can't download things like movies and music with that sort of bandwidth and keep everyone happy. I generally have to become "internet nazi" to prevent everyone from doing lots of downloading because it just kills Skype calls, Angel, and anything else that you might be trying to do online at any particular time. I also don't do any recreational downloading myself to be fair to the other people that are sharing the line with me. I'd recommend doing all your downloading before coming down here or trying to do it at school. The DSL really is slow compared to back home.

c&w (the former Grentel) is the last bastion of the communist regime. Whe i was there, ever call you made where no one picked up?> they charged you a minutes cost. Dr B ("your pelvis is looking at me!") taught me to go down and comment and sure enough, instarefund. so keep an eye on your bill.
steph

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Steph
If you get a warning, put on yer manpants and stop whining about it.

wow....charging even when no one picked up...thats messed up...
beside keeping an eye for a phone bill....keep an eye for any bills in gnd...especially if u live off campus...some landlords rip students off!

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