Pioneer Internet Has a Monopoly & is Rationing Internet Access

I held out until recently getting DSL from Pioneer for this reason, that they are a monopoly. I realize now that we just should have stayed with dial-up because, in my opinion, it is not much faster, especially during certain times of the day. When a person is promised a certain speed for a certain amount of $$, then that should be at least 95% of the time, not say, 10%. That is what we are experiencing and we, I mean my son and I, who uses a lot of bandwidth playing video games, downloading, etc. Pioneer's excuse is that if you are sharing a connection, that one computer can make the other computer slower because of what the other one is doing. What the heck? It just doesn't seem right. If this is how it's supposed to work, please put me in my place, because as I see it, Pioneer is the ONLY DSL company there is in my city of Newcastle, Oklahoma, and they should be giving me the speed package I purchased, all the time, not just when they want to give me that speed.

reply to post by Anonymous ATS

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Normally the dsl speed in newcastle is great. Regardless of what time of day. As of aprox1 1/2- 2 mos ago the dsl speed in Newcastle has taken an extreme hit...specifically 7AM to 1AM. I have numerous tickets in with them and they are aware of the problem. They have told me that they have tickets into one of their providers. I believe Calix simply because it seems as if the DTV is stealing bandwidth from the DSL lines. From what I see the area effected is mostly Newcastle, but also parts of the Tri-City area as well. Once the problem is fixed, however, u should be pleased with the dsl speed even with gaming on another machine. I have had their dsl for over 3 years and this is the first time I have been disappointed with my bandwidth. My biggest concern is wondering how long, if ever, pioneer will see the issue corrected. I have also read on-line of this issue hitting Comanche and other rural areas where Pioneer is the provider.

First off..thanks to all who have brought this problem with Pioneer DSL to light.

I live in Grandfield,close to the border of Texas. I've had Pioneer DSL for three years..I have one phone and the DSL line..no DTV service.
I first started noticing problems about six months back or so.Watching any streaming videos has become very frustrating. Where there were no problems before..now watching a thirty minute streaming video is interrupted every few minutes with pauses for buffering..that's if it doesn't stop completely part of the way through.Even a three minute or less Yahoo news clip is interrupted at least once during viewing.

From what I gather from this forum..calling Pioneer is a lost cause..but i will just to add my complaint to the many already lodged with them.

btw..Pioneer had dug up the streets here a few years back and laid fiber optic cable throughout..and I'm only two blocks from the central distribution office here in town.

Again..thanks to all who have contributed to this forum to let others know they are not alone with this problem.

I'm in Blanchard, Oklahoma (also on PLDI) and my latency was hovering around 600-700ms in WoW last night as has been for a while (that i've noticed). I think every now and then I get down into the green (

Heh, a monopoly? Hardly. You can still get dial-up, you can still get cell-wireless internet, and you can still get satellite. You can't expect other internet and TV providers to come in and construct their own superior infrastructure just in the name of good competition; it isn't profitable. Essentially: sucks for you that you're in an area with poor quality high speed internet. Be glad you're not in one of the areas with NO (wired) high speed internet. If you don't like their terms, switch to one of the other options. If you're too addicted to mid-cost poor quality high speed wired internet to switch away from their service, then they're clearly within the right to charge that much, because you're clearly willing to buy it.

While there's something to be said about customer loyalty, which they're certainly not winning here, if they are a better deal than your other options, which are becoming increasingly affordable, then you've got nothign to complain about.

The internet isn't a life-essential. It's a luxury product. Something that isn't available everywhere, not even in the USA. It wasn't even around in most places 10 years ago. if you don't like how things have gone, go back to dialup.

reply to post by Sublime620

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The equipment can be much cheaper than that, the service IS $60 a month, and it may not be worth it, but it is an option. Also: it's a fair bit faster than dial-up, but still not up to DSL/Cable speeds.

I have been a customer of Pioneer Telephone in Comanche, OK for about four years. At times I have been somewhat satisfied with the DSL service, but there have been long periods where I become extremely frustrated. I can tell you that here in Comanche, OK it FEELS like a monopoly. There was a cable TV company here 5 years ago, soon after I moved here Pioneer bought the company, shut down the service, and removed all of the wiring and equipment. Pioneer is truly the only option if you want TV or internet through wiring and into your home. I have a bad view of the southern sky, so satellite is not an option(I tried Dish, and even they agreed my signal strength was ridiculously low, i would lose the signal on CLOUDY days). The only wireless option is, guess who, Pioneer.....and only if you are in an area NOT served by their DSL service. As a gamer, I have no choice but to pay the 50 bucks a month and then have months at a time go by where I cant play online because my latency is so high the xboxlive servers drop me. I've heard about the bottleneck in Texas, the IPTV issue, and other possible causes, but now, in june of 2009, I can't even get a good download from their HQ in Kingfisher. the connection constantly stops and starts. I cant even stream MUSIC, forget abot video. I did a speed test from Fort Worth and got 240K. this goes on all day, and there are about 4 hours where the connection is decent, from about 1 to 5AM. Damn me for having to get up and go to work in the mornings! They truly dont seem to care. I'm supposed to get 3mb down and 628k up. Never happens.I could ramble on and on but I'd probably start going in circles. Big Price, Bad Product, NO OTHER OPTION. Call it what you want......

I will bet that the areas that are having problems are areas where AT&T has
AT&T wireless Internet service.

You are in a turf war where AT&T wireless Internet is trying to build customer base by choking there competition.

I lived in a area of Calif where Verizon was the phone company and all the local Internet companies were dial-up (too small of towns spread over to large of a area for cable companies to ever string cable.)

When Verizon started offering Internet all the dial up Internet companies started have problems with there system hanging up and taking 20 to 30 minutes to reconnect.

We traced all the problems to Verizon adjusting there phone company switching units to cut off the dial up so that people would switch to Verizon internet at between twice and three times the cost.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord

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Even worse, when they want you to pay them to allow users to access your site. Which is what they eventually want. For the site owner to pay them for user access, pay them for a faster connection from their users, and to still collect from their users on the other end of the candle.

mover! Glad to see you here contributing to the discussion as we have spoken via email about this over the past year or so.

I actually stopped playing a couple of months ago, so I only having "surfing" analysis to contribute but I can support what you're saying from that viewpoint. About a month ago service went in the crapper again. I actually thought to myself last week "i bet there's no way I could be playing my toon these days", so you have confirmed to me that everything went south again.

Also, you are confirming that they are right back to their old game of throttling during certain hours of the day if your service actually gets better from 1 to 5 am, but then during primetime goes to hell. That's just how it was before when I started this thread!

I fear we're just the poster children for what is yet to come for more of the country...P2P users will suffer greatly if this practice spreads.

[edit on 6-30-2009 by Valhall]

How can I say "you haven't got a clue what you're talking about" in a nice way???

Oh, I can't. There, it's said.

[edit on 6-30-2009 by Valhall]