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High speed internet in Church Hill?
04/16/2010 6:44 AM by John M
Matt wants to know: “What’s the best high speed Internet option in Church Hill?! No fios, what do I do?!!!”
Comcast cable modem is the fastest you’ll find in the Church Hill area.
Comcast works pretty well for me.
Anybody use Clearwire?
My Comcast works fine…
We get fios on Q Street near Oakwood, and it is much faster than our previous provider Comcast.
2 cups and a spool of twine.
Verizon works great for us. Never had an issue.
Most of Church Hill is stuck using Comcast. It sucks and I hate them. Sure, the internet is fast, but the customer service is horrible and they always manage to screw something up.
We use Comcast. I’ve had Clearwire and it’s ok but really not even as consistently fast as DSL.
There is FIOS in some areas of the neighborhood but it’s already got as many subscribers as they built for so you can’t sign up until someone else stops their service.
I use Earthlink DSL. It’s okay, pretty fast – customer service is okay, not great, but not nearly as bad as Comcast.
How about y’all set up an open mesh network? Use Covad DSL (bonding two lines would give you plenty of bandwidth/throughput) since sharing doesn’t violate their TOS agreement and mesh WiFi gear from Open Mesh and make all of Church Hill a wide open mesh network. Did that for Richmond Free Wireless a few years ago (still have some nodes running along Grace St.) but the timing wasn’t right back then.
Just an idea. 🙂
Move to Fulton Hill. Our Fios is smokin’
Comcast cable modem should be significantly faster than DSL. Certainly not as fast as FiOS, but it’ll be the best performance you can find in most areas of Church Hill.
I agree on Comcast customer service… it’s actually quite important to have a solid understanding of the technology personally so that you don’t have reason to call Comcast unless the problem is absolutely on their end… and in cases like that, I’ve found it helpful to pinpoint the problem myself and do half the job for them… all they have to do is fix the problem on their network when I identify it for them.
@#11- I occasionally see “Richmond Free Wireless” in the available networks, but I never knew what it was.
I had Clearwire when I moved up here, but it sucked. We now have Verizon and it works well enough. I wish fios was available.
We had Clearwire. It was fine for email. They had significant limitations on bandwidth. If you want to watch videos or game, comcast is a better option.
Cavalier is the cheapest, and I’ve never had any issues with it. I would only recommend it if you can be your own tech support, however (like #13 said)
Do not use Clearwire up here, it is the worst. very poor signal, very slow downloads and on a cloudy day forget about it.
Try contacting Samuel Martinez with Access Technology. His cell phone number is 757 696 0847 or the office is 804 355 9999. I had a LOT of trouble with comcast as far as getting them out to my apartment and customer service and stuff.
We’ve had Access Technology since 1998 and have been satisfied – their customer service is live and local.
I have fios, and it’s like the speed of light for me.
Churchill has both Comcast and FiOS available. Both are pretty quick up in the hood.
clearwire is awful, and so is the customer service. HOWEVER, supposedly starting this spring they are supposed to be getting faster. it is definitely the cheapest though, if that is a determining factor.
FIOs is not available if you live on Broad and towards the river, at least according to the local guy I talked to. Does anyone have it in the vicinity of 2100-2300 block of Broad, Grace or Franklin? The guy told me if I heard of any neighbors close by having it he should be able to push it thru for me.
We currently use Verizon.
I have Fios, and have had it for over two years, but I live across from Chimbo. park.
It would make sense to me that you could get it there, if we have it up here.
I was told by the guy who installed mine, they started at the bottom of the hill…and worked their way up.
Therefore, I’d think you can get it.
You can either call verizon or go to
http://www.Verizon.com, and enter your address.
They have a map on their site, and it’ll tell you everywhere it’s available in the area.
I do it for all my rental properties, a lot of my tenants like it.
I love it, it’s very fast…but I do have the quickest version. A lot of my work is done from home, and the office I work out of has comcast. It’s not nearly as fast as Fios…I’m only speaking from personal experience.
There are some people who’d disagree I’m sure.
You cannot get Fios on any part of Grace between 23rd and 28th. I tried to get it when I moved here and was told it would not be available in my area any time soon.
I know the center of Church Hill cannot get Fios as I have friends at 29th and Leigh and 24th and O. Our Fios installer told us that it had something to do with which station your home phone went through. Our area in Church Hill North gets it as our home phone goes through a station on Williamsburg Rd while other parts of Church Hill go through (700?) E. Franklin Street. I don’t know how true that is, but that was his explanation 2 weeks ago.
James,
You’re exactly right..I just checked the map. DSL is only available over there..wow, I’d hate it.
I use Cavtel (cavalier) because they have bundled DSL and LD telephone for only $50 a month. It’s not the super-fastest (I average around 3.5 MB/sec) but it’s cheap, and enough to stream Netflix HD to my TV through a roku box without glitches. which is about the most demanding application I need, speed-wise. If you are somewhat tech savvy, you can actually have a real grown-up conversation with their tech support folks to have them tune your connection for optimal performance while you’ve got them there on the phone. I don’t know how they’d be if you need real hand-holding. The biggest problem with Cavtel is the wait time to get service initiated, but after that its smooth sailing.
#11, I would be highly interested in free wireless in the area. In Fl they have started the programs you’re talking about in many large cities. How do we go about implementing that program? I thought it just took a tall antenna in a central area and we can all use it. I allow my neighbors to use my wireless so they don’t have to pay any cable company since the service is poor, slow, & too expensive. I think four of my neighbors are using it. It’s the only way know to get back at the cable company. If you can #11, please give more details for wireless for all.
I like this topic but we need to stop this high speed chasing in our neighborhoods. The police were chasing someone yesterday on E. Marshall St.
I moved in a year ago on Broad and 31st and FiOS is available. Check with Verizon again as they may have expanded into your area recently! Go to this website and type in your address to see:
https://www22.verizon.com/Residential/FiOSTV/Check_Availability/Check_Availability.htm
Thank you anon #32 for the link. FiOS is not available on Broad between 25th and 26th. They tried to sell me DirectTV instead. Oh well….
anon, it is def not available on most of Grace before Chimborazo Park.
While we are on the subject of providers… any suggestions to eliminate Comcast Cable TV? Where our house is and where the satellites are positioned, we can’t get Dish Network because of trees and buildings. Any other alternative?
I went to the Verizon site to find the map but can’t find it. Anyone know where on the site to find it?
Steven,
Get them to mount the dish on your roof. You’ll probably have to call the supervisor to do it, but they will do it. They have a special platform for use on metal roofs. It is how we got our Direct TV, even though at first they refused to mount it on the roof.