Our Fairpoint DSL Tale of Woe

When your broadband speeds hover near dialup speed, as ours have been doing recently, it’s clear that something needs to be done. The question is, what’s left?

We have two Fairpoint DSL lines here at the house: one for the office, and one for our personal use. Neither connection has been reliable, but the personal DSL connection is slow enough to be effectively unusable at present. Here’s a graph of the average bandwidth per day from February 21st through today.

Doesn’t look too bad if you don’t squint and actually look at the Y axis. But here’s what happens when we adjust for context, making the scale relative to the bandwidth our connection promises: 1.5 mbps.

Our average daily bandwith last week – .2058 mbps – is approximately 1/7th of what we’re paying for. You know how DSL providers boast a connection that is “up to 27 times faster than dialup?” Ours, on average, is about three and a half. Wednesday of last week, it was two.

Clearly, there is a problem somewhere. I don’t believe it’s our local equipment, as we’ve been through multiple routers, some supplied by Fairpoint, others by us. We’re told that the noise levels on the line are fine, and we’re right around the corner from the CO so to speak. We’ve been through the traditional support process with Fairpoint. Three times, actually, with two different technicians. Everything they have tried, collectively, has failed. Our bandwidth remains terrible.

Unfortunately, we have no real alternative bandwith options save satellite, which is not attractive, and cellular data, which is cost prohibitive for our bandwith needs.

Anybody have any suggestions? Or can anybody from Fairpoint actually look into this enough to identify the problem? Because I’m getting tired of calling support over and over to no effect.