[Discuss] Local ISP Recommendations?

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey (blu))]

> From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On
> Behalf Of Kent Borg
> 
> I am looking for ISP recommendations. In Somerville.

When I lived in Somerville a few years ago, the only choices were Comcast and RCN cable. We had both, and while customer service is shitty for both, RCN seems to be considerably less evil in opposition to net neutrality, bring your own hardware, and stuff like that. I don't know if you can get a static IP, but you can use dynamic dns. I use FreeDNS. Be aware that all the ISP's that I know of will block inbound access when/if they feel like it.

In Arlington, we have Fios, and I expected it to be much greater than comcast/rcn, but it's not. I daresay the signal quality is probably better on fios (fiber optic leading to the house, and then coax splitter from the basement, instead of coax splitting at the street) and the uplink speed is probably better (30Mbit symmetric), but aside from that, it's the same old shitty customer service and shitty internet, with boat loads of frustration anytime you need to deal with them. Still provided by an evil company. I daresay verizon is even more evil than comcast - one of our experiences on verizon was the "channel realignment," where they took away half our channels in the middle of the 2yr contract, and when I argued with them for hours over the phone, I eventually caved in and agreed to pay the extra $5/mo to get our channels back - and then they slapped us with a $400 early termination fee on the first contract, while enrolling us in a *new* 2yr contract at the higher rate. They have earned all the bad karma the world can deliver them.