ISP Downtime

[joetexas]

What is the name of your state?
Texas

At what point does downtime or internet connectivity issues (like extremely slow connections) of an ISP (Internet Service Provider) exceed reasonable expectations and move to becoming a legal matter? I'd rather pursue other means than legal however I can't seem to get resolution to the ongoing problems. If I'm not framing the question correctly please advise and I'll add whatever information is missing.

My current ISP, Cebridge.net (rebranding to SuddenLink) cannot seem to keep my connection up for more than a day or two at a time. I paid nearly double the residential rate for business class service which advertises higher connection speeds and faster response time if the outage does not affect an entire area, this has turned out to be good in that the CSRs seem to give me a little more attention however the downtime is getting excessive. I've started logging the start and end times of downtime or issues like my current issue for the last two days where my speed is 1/4 of what is advertised when I signed up. On the flip side most of the outages are said to affect my entire area so I'm at the mercy of the techs. On almost all outages I'm given no indication of when service will be restore and am just told to keep testing my connection. It has gotten so extreme I'm looking at abandoning my home office and getting an office rental in town until my rental agreement has expired (another 8 months).

[URL="www.cebridge.net/cebridge/legal/sla_hsi_customer.pdf"]Cebridge.net Service Level Agreement[/URL]

[demartian]

It states in that SLA you have that you will get a day credit for every time the service is lost for more than 4 hours a month.

Do you have a contract with them? Does it have additional info on what they cover?

If they are that bad, I suggest you get a new ISP.

[joetexas]

Originally Posted by demartian

It states in that SLA you have that you will get a day credit for every time the service is lost for more than 4 hours a month.

The problem is that it isn't usually consecutive hours, an hour here and an hour there.

Originally Posted by demartian

Do you have a contract with them? Does it have additional info on what they cover?

No, I went month-to-month because I wasn't going to be in this rental for more than a year. As of now I have not received any contract that I know of.

Originally Posted by demartian

If they are that bad, I suggest you get a new ISP.

Oh how I wish it were that easy, they are the only wired ISP I can get here. Since I spend most of my day working from a home VPN connection wired is my only option.

[demartian]

No Cable Modem or Dish options available?

[BelizeBreeze]

Originally Posted by joetexas

Oh how I wish it were that easy, they are the only wired ISP I can get here. Since I spend most of my day working from a home VPN connection wired is my only option.

Check out Verizon or Spring Mobile Broadband.

[joetexas]

Originally Posted by demartian

No Cable Modem or Dish options available?

In most cases Dish won't work with VPN connections (too much latency). [url]http://compnetworking.about.com/od/vpn/f/vpnandsatellite.htm[/url]

[joetexas]

Originally Posted by BelizeBreeze

Check out Verizon or Spring Mobile Broadband.

Verizon does not service my area (rural) and in the case of Spring Mobile if you're talking about Wireless Broadband it is available however they won't do a short term contract and the equipment costs are pretty high for only 7 more months. If I average in the costs of the equipment and paying an entire year contract I'd be paying over $400/month for high speed.

I do appreciate everyone offering up alternatives to high speed connectivity however the question is the liability of the ISP, can they just do whatever they like with uptime and continue to charge me whatever they wish as long as they keep most outages under 4 hours? As I have no legal training, at what point would they be liable for bad service. If someone can provide specific cases and maybe somewhere I can research them online I'd appreciate it.

Thanks.

[The Occultist]

In order to take them to court over this, you would need to hire a lawyer anyways, so you should speak to local attorneys and see what they think.