Portland, OR - Frontier - Page 53

Great find mpsan.

My concern is that Frontier basically says to MACC..."Yeah, you are correct. What are you going to do about it"? Nasty memo to follow!

exactly.....Frontier has all the power in this one.......If people don't like it, make them change. By the time that actually happens they'll just pull the plug on 12/32/11 and you're out service....

Yes, I dread 12/32/11!

I know it's inadviseable to keep my email with my ISP, but I do. Has anyone else who uses Frontier for email experienced hiccups like losing contact with the server or having to re-enter passwords frequently? It seems the SMTP server keeps dropping the connection and needs to be re-established more and more often. Never happened with Verizon in my experience. But since Frontier is now in the middle, it does. I doubt it's my Thunderbird email client as it happens with Mac Mail on my iMac as well as my PC.

I also wonder how long Frontier will be using Verizon's web facilities for billing and all other things where an internet interface is required? Maybe part of the overall strategy is to not have to develop this infrastructure for themselves for a short-lived purpose.

I know this is a little OT, but I have always seen about 25/25 on several speed test sites. All of a sudden I sometimes get 25/10 or 15/8...still get 25/25 in the mornings. However, I never had this issue before.

When I first got FiOS I always saw close to 25/25. That's because Verizon knew what they were doing, and were committed to the long term. Frontier, in contrast, merely attempts to extract maximum cash flow from existing investment.

A few hours ago I was seeing 10/20 performance. Right now it's 23/23. So it's clearly quite variable.

Still, so far it's at least as good as Comcast. But at the end of the year, when TV goes away, I see no reason at all to keep Frontier for any service. Comcast triple play, here I come!

I'm right there with you, if I decide against Directv, which is where I'm leaning now.

Well, I never have seen this before. At least one person on the TiVo site also said that Netflix has been having streaming issues. What I do get seems fast enough, but it HAD ALWAYS been 25/25. Now I see less. Still, I remember the picture quality of Comcast and the Byte Counting and I would have to see a lot more problems before I switched! I wonder if we should start a thread on dslreports specific to the Portland area?

Just a quick question about the SuperBowl sound on 512...

I watched on a big screen and a large 5.1 surround system. All was good, however I noticed that when they switched to a local ad the sound was VERY soft and hard to hear. This went on even with the 10 PM news. All other stations except ch 513 that I tried were fine. Did our local Fox station do something or am I the only one who noticed this?

Noticed it on 512 during all the commercials as well, not just locals. Actually, I consider it a refreshing change from commercials being louder than the program materials!

It was quieter on the local commercials, wasn't at my house but a friend who lives nearby also has Frontier. Thought it was much better than the alternative!

My Network stuff was OK, but the local ones were almost so soft they could not be heard. That was the difference I saw. Does that sound like what everyone else heard? I just want to be sure my 5.1 Processor is OK. Everything else sounds fine! I wonder what they did. The DD 5.1 was on, but who knows what the heck the local commercials were?

Speaking of sound issue, did anyone notice regular cut-off of sound on OPB-HD for the past few days? I noticed it on Newshour, including the recording made at 4 PM today. It seemed every 10 minutes or so, the sound went away for about 3-4 seconds without any apparent video disruption. Strange!

So, on Frontiers facebook page - I had posted a comment in regards to the price hike. An official rep had reported that frontier NEVER notified customers of this hike and it was all in the media (true as far as I can tell) and that no price hike was on the horizon. Interesting.

And yet The Oregonian had a memo direct from corporate Frontier about the price-increase. If we cover our tracks, no one will know we were here has to be Frontier's motto.

do you have a link to that? I'll fuel some fires!

Yep, right here.

http://media.oregonlive.com/business...tierLetter.pdf

Frontier is insane. Certifiably insane.

They think that people will pay them $25/mo for local channels? Given that Comcast charges $10/mo? Plus the fiber is a sunk cost. The fiber already runs past my house, the ONT is already hanging on the side of the house. I guess they aren't sending ordinary photons over that fiber, these must be US Prime, free-range organic photons.

I've got the triple play, presumably for the next 14 months. But we'll see what happens at the end of this year. Anyone want to take an even money bet that Frontier will drop TV entirely at the end of 2011?

I'll take you up on it. I think Frontier would indeed be "insane" should they decide to drop Fios TV service. For one thing, aren't they simply rebranding Verizon's offering? More to their bottom line point, a good number of their current subscribers will simply jump ship without having to pay the ETF.

BTW, I re-upped for two years just a month ago, and hope Frontier keeps the Fios TV going. If not, it will be their loss, and another provider's gain. simple as that! Now, when are we gonna get the Fox Soccer channel in HD?

I now think they'll survive into 2012 with the tv, but if they hit us up for the $30 rate increase at some point in time this year...then 12 months from that date is when they decide to shut it down.

I find it hard to believe that Frontier is exiting the TV business when they're advertising like crazy right now.

Of course, I'm sure Ultimate Electronics was advertising right up until they pulled the plug...

Frontier isn't advertising FiOS TV, they're advertising DirecTV.

did Ultimate Electronics already pull the plug here? Wow.

nevermind - I take a couple weeks off of paying attention and I obviously miss out on a massive store closure.

Does anybody know if Frontier is going to show the NASA TV feed for today's space shuttle launch? (Hopefully in HD.)

For those that care, it looks like HDNET (Channel 569) will be carrying the launch starting at 1:30. (About 15 minutes from now.)

Hello all:

For the past several days now, ch 508 NEWS has had a bright white rectabgle on the lower left. Sometimes it is off if there is news footage, but it is usually on. Several days ago I called them and the person said that she saw it too...this is NOT on SD, only HD. She knew who to contact and they said it was a decal they had to turn off. As I watched they turned it off and thanked me.

Then it came back on a day later. I called several more times and they thanked me again, but it is still there.

OK, someone else can have a turn at this!

Okay, let's have some fun with this, putting our money where our mouths are (or in this case where our keystrokes are).

I bet you $20 that, on or before December 31, 2011, Frontier says something like: "we can't make any money on FiOS TV. We will no longer offer it to new subscribers, and we will discontinue it for existing subscribers by (some date not too far later)."

You win the bet even if Frontier continues FiOS TV only as a forced part of a bundle. My prediction is they'll make an announcement discontinuing it entirely. Their longer term strategy will be to simply resell DirecTV.

I hope you're right. I think it's a very good sign that they let you re-up just a month ago. If they're reselling DirecTV, maybe it's no big deal for them to also continue reselling FiOS TV (with all the heavy lifting being done by Verizon).

Perhaps Frontier's strategy will be to effectively force bundles on people by charging so much for just TV that people will realistically be forced to take a "double bundle" or "triple bundle". I will be willing to continue my service with them if they keep bundle prices reasonable, and as long it's FiOS TV, not DirecTV, and as long as the Internet doesn't degrade any further.

The linked document didn't say anything about bundle prices.

I usually watch the 11 PM news and hadn't noticed. So I went back and checked. The Friday show has it, the Thursday and Wednesday shows were OK, the Tuesday and Monday shows were bad.

The two shows that were OK were because there was a distinct "Tire Factory" sponsored crawl at the bottom of the screen for those days.

I interrupted my daughter's Disney Channel viewing to check. When I showed her what I was looking for, her reaction was "who cares?". I agree with her. I had previously watched at least two shows with the rectangle and didn't even notice it until you pointed it out.

It doesn't seem all that "bright" to me, but I'm viewing using component output and there's probably a slight overscan. If you're using HDMI perhaps the rectangle is larger and more annoying.