By Andrea Bertozzi Santa Monica
Failure to connect Editor: I direct the Applied Mathematics program at UCLA and am a Santa Monica resident with significant need for consistent high quality Internet access from home.
I am following up on the article in the Santa Monica Daily Press today regarding complaints with Time Warner Cable (“Cable causing friction,” Dec. 22, page1). I live on 17th Street and have TWC’s high speed Internet service, which was switched over from Adelphia.
I have had intermittent problems with service interruption during business hours, typically for several hours at a time. This has been happening at least once a week for the last month or so since the switch over.
I conduct a significant fraction of my work for UCLA from my house, as well as run a small business out of my home office and the service interruptions have been a problem for me.
I am ready to switch to FiOS service as soon as it is available on my street. Cost of the service is not an issue for me as it is covered by my business. I need consistent and high quality service in order to function.
Frankly, before the switch, Adelphia was not much better. I had trouble with them too. However the problems seem to be a bit worse now with TWC, in that they are consistently having service interruptions of the Internet for several hours during business hours. I have called their help number and get a recording saying that there is a service interruption in my area. I am asked to press a button to receive an automated phone call when service is restored. This is the same message Adelphia used to use. So far TWC has never called me to report service is back up, even when it is up. Adelphia never did much better — in fact they used to call to say service was up when it was not yet up. So I’m not sure which is worse... failure to call or calling and reporting something fixed when it is not fixed.
For $45 a month, one should be able to get consistent quality service without long interruptions during business hours. Neither Adelphia nor TWC has been able to deliver this. I am hopeful that the new FiOS service will be more stable.
Also for the record, I had TWC Internet service in North Carolina up until 2003 when I moved to California. I did not have the problems there that I am having here in California.
I would be grateful if the city could “lean” on these people to improve their service. Also I would be grateful if you could get FiOS rolled out quickly so that there is an alternative to cable modem for high speed service. DSL was never an option for me because of the slower download speed.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 26, 2006. Read the original PDF.