Pioneer Internet Has a Monopoly & is Rationing Internet Access

Originally posted by metaldemon2000

spent tons of money in their infrastructure and hired premium techs. These days barely any money is spent on infrastructure and most telecom companies hire techs for as low as 10 dollars an hour.

Wrong

You have deregulated telephone service to thank. Its a known fact that all phone companies that were once monopolies

Judge Green broke up the monopoly, if their were so many monopolies then how does one prove a monopoly existed.

Is your provider the same company that owns the lines? If so hound them to get your lines checked by their field technicians and when a tech comes tell them you want your line conditioned better for dsl service.

Wrong and this was proven in the landmark court case by the ranchers at ruby ridge. They condition lines which make it Cheaper NOT better.
Do they pass the savings on to the customer?

NOPE

If your provider does not own the lines, switching to another dsl provider will not solve anything since the service will be carried over the same line as you are on now.

other tips

- you could be experiencing inside wiring issues, check jacks for green corrosion on the pins

- make sure there are filters on ALL non internet using devices such as phones and call display units and make sure the filters are connected at the right polarity

- security systems disrupt dsl, ask your security company to filter it,

- too many phones and too many fax machines increase line capacitance and disrupt service.

This is sort of like telling her to read the instructions or to see if something is plugged in. All well and good but I am sure she has looked into all that as I did while I went through this hellish nightmare.

You indeed did the same thing as your post conveys further down but the most compelling argument is in Vals last post regrading the anti trust

NOW THAT is interesting

- Con

Right. I guess I could take the time to list the various machinations that have taken place in this house over the past almost 12 months to show you how we have eliminated the problem being anything up to the Pioneer office in my town (which I will repeat is only 2 blocks away), but can't you just trust that in almost a year my tech-savvy son - (who has been calling Pioneer on their lies all along btw and I thought he was wrong!!!) - has pulled every trick in the book to verify we don't have a problem on our side?

And can you not accept that there are 2 more data points in this town to consider??? This town is only about 1 mile across in diameter (anyway you want to cut it), so if you lived on one end of town and the office was on the other - you wouldn't be more than one mile away (but this is impossible because the office is dead-center in the middle of the town!)...so we need to get that part straight. Now, we have my situation. And we have my son's situation and he is about 6 blocks away from me (about 4 blocks from the office). He has fiber optic straight off a trunk line - same degradation of service. Then we have mr. mover on the dslreports page. I have no idea where he lives in town, but he has NO IPTV through Pioneer, just DSL and he experiences the same degradation of service during prime time. I have shown that in my house alone the IPTV affects my DSL in more than one way (speed and apparent packet loss or "buffering" if you will). If the IPTV affects my DSL in my house, then the entire IPTV load on the system in this town affects the entire DSL stream in this town.

Simply put, when Pioneer says that the IPTV does not go on the same line as DSL - they are lying! I have ONE phone line into my house - I guess the second one is a magic invisible line.

Now - that's all within my little bitty town here of about 2000 people. To get straight the average income in this town is below the national poverty line. So take those 2000 people and figure that down to be about 1000 or less homes (higher percent of elderly couple live here so the average family size is probably on the lower side). Of those less than 1000 homes in this town I am probably not off by a Gallup poll error band to say that 50% can either not afford ANY service from Pioneer other than a phone line, OR are elderly folks that still have attennae so they only have phone service! Of the remaining 50% I would split that again to about 50% (no more than 75%) being able to afford anything other than TV service. So we're down to about 1 out of every 4 houses in this little town requiring a full package deal and using DSL internet. That apparently is overloading the whole town....hmmm

Let's step away from my grease spot in the road and go to Kingfisher, Oklahoma which is the headquarters for Pioneer. Kingfisher is about 90 to 100 miles north of us. Here is what the Pioneer customer from Kingfisher posted on dslreports about 24 days ago (just about the same time my service degraded to the point P2P activities could no longer be performed):

Lately, as in within recent months, the connection quality of Pioneer DSL has taken a hit, and there seems to be no acknowledgment from Pioneer of any problems at all. I have spoken with them both as a home customer using a personal DSL from my home, and a business customer using a static IP from my place of work, and there is yet to be any resolution to this problem. The infuriating issue is that I have been told by not one, but two different techs that there is "nothing they can do" if the problem isn't within their own network.

It is very possible that the problem actually isn't within their own hardware, because their own speedtest set seems to show beautiful performance. However, trace routes show that packet loss begins to happen right at or shortly after leaving their boarder router. I have provided them with this information and many speedtests from various sources, but they seem to have no interest in trusting any test other than their own and refuse to take this seriously. This is a problem that is potentially effecting all of their customers and they are sitting on it because there is no urgency from fear of losing customers, because they are the only provider in the area.

If they are indeed having issues that are beyond their own network, they should at least make an attempt to speak with the individuals who seem to be the source of the problem and try to get this multi-month issue resolved instead of dropping it with a shoulder shrug every time I call them about it.

This man 100 miles from me and right next to the HQ has been experiencing the same problems, has noticed the same issues, for the same amount time, as me. And he has been treated by Pioneer the same way as we have. And he is pointing out the same monopoly-based problem we face right now and why - whether the problem lies outside Pioneer or inside Pioneer - some one IS decreasing DSL internet free-flow and it is Pioneer's responsibility to either confess they are, or find out who upstream is doing so. We are not just customers, we are members - they are required to disclose to us.

I'm not sure trying to get me to run the traps again at my residence is going to fix my town's problems or this customer's problem 100 miles away from me and right next to the main office of Pioneer. At this point it is no longer me fighting to get my service corrected - it is a community thing. Pioneer needs to make right for ALL their DSL customers they have shorted.

[edit on 4-30-2008 by Valhall]

reply to post by Conspiriology

Originally posted by metaldemon2000

spent tons of money in their infrastructure and hired premium techs. These days barely any money is spent on infrastructure and most telecom companies hire techs for as low as 10 dollars an hour.

Wrong

I am? I guess it would be hard for me to know what wage i had to start at when i began employment at the largest telephone company in Canada. Sorry my mistake. Actually it was $12 but whos counting some of the smaller companies start at $10. And we spend tens of millions less a year on infrastructure, we get the reports and repair and edevelopments plans.

Judge Green broke up the monopoly, if their were so many monopolies then how does one prove a monopoly existed.

Because each service area is divided up, for example, in Canada, Bell Canada had owned at one point most of the countrys service aside from the provinces that were govt owned. EVen when bell was down to only controlling the service in Ontario and Quebec they were still considered to be a monopoly because no other companies were allowed to provide service in their territory on their equipment.

Wrong and this was proven in the landmark court case by the ranchers at ruby ridge. They condition lines which make it Cheaper NOT better.

What i meant is that when a tech is sent out to do a dsl repair we have to make ALL conditions right to provide the maximum attainable speed. There is a method we use on the distribution cables when the capacitance is high known as "cut to clear" or "cut dead ahead" we use this as a method of individually conditioning lines per repair order.

You indeed did the same thing as your post conveys further down but the most compelling argument is in Vals last post regrading the anti trust

You canot begin to understand how many different variables can affect dsl stability there are things only the technicians such as i who work on it everyday can understand. There is only so many things you can just tell someone to do over the phone or on the internet. What i am trying to say is 90% of ALL DSL ISSUES require a field visit, bottom line, dont let the tech support push you around. What i was stating in that post is that just because the speed is slow does not necessarily mean that they are being ripped off but rather that there may be in issue that needs to bbe looked at and untill an experienced tech ( preferribly one who isnt going to fluff the job) inspects the line at the prem there is no way of knowing whetrher it is a line or servicing issue or a case of fraudulent activity.

You can trust the word of the field technicians ( at leats where i am from ) we like to think of ourselves as the good guys of the telecom industry and we are just as frustrated with the companies BS as they have been cutting wages, benefits, pensions, and adding more workload and unrealistic expectations of us for years. We have smaller companies who are always cutting our grass by hiring dime a dozen techs and doing shoddy work which we have to go back and fix at our companies expense. Our company retailiates by putting the weight on our backs and tries to cut more costs to compete. Are you aware that we are supposed to apologise to the cuustomer for the #ty experience they had when calling our repair line? Its a bloody nightmare.

Anyways i just thought i would clarify a few things for you. We know what you go through as customers, always request a field tech it usually solves more problems than anything dont even try the troubleshooting process, it is designed to frustrate and confuse you. They would actually rather lose you as a customer than send a technician to your house. Before they moved our call centers to India ( paid 5 dollars CDN/hr) the tech support agents in Toronto were paid on average 7 - 10 dollars more and hour than the field techs. 50% of the techs in my area ( 20 or so guys ) are paid under 20 dollars an hour. Average wage of a tech support agent in toronto ( or even the people who took the regular calls ) 20 - 25 bucks an hour. THIS IS NOT A JOKE.

Simply put, when Pioneer says that the IPTV does not go on the same line as DSL - they are lying! I have ONE phone line into my house - I guess the second one is a magic invisible line.

It is on the same line, and the receiver ramps up the capacitance on your line and kills your DSL speed.

ok some facts about IPTV. first of all, IPTV data streams flowing on the ADSL line have NO impact on high speed data. The fact that you believe this gets worse at so called "peak TV watching periods" is a coincidence. With IPTV, it doesn't matter if someone is watching tv or not... the data is flowing to the set top box anyway. even at 3am, just as much video data is flowing as is flowing at 6pm. what you are more than likely seeing is congestion on the internet backbone connection of Pioneer. peak internet usages match peak tv viewing times. understandable when you think about it. possibly at&t is having some bottleneck problems at Oklahoma city but i doubt it. Sounds like pioneer has just out stripped (oversubscribed) the capacity of their backbone connection(s). They may be unwilling to pay more for a bigger pipe, or they may be having difficulty getting a bigger pipe established. I don't understand why they wouldn't just say so tho.

Originally posted by metaldemon2000

Simply put, when Pioneer says that the IPTV does not go on the same line as DSL - they are lying! I have ONE phone line into my house - I guess the second one is a magic invisible line.

It is on the same line, and the receiver ramps up the capacitance on your line and kills your DSL speed.

Not correct. It sort of is an invisible line. It's called a virtual circuit. logically distinct from the iptv streams. with it's own carved out capacity. capacitance has nothing to do with it. signal to noise ratio does. this occurs from trying to run the ADSL line at too high of a speed. but when a bad signal to noise ratio begins to affect the dsl line, it isn't just targeting the high speed data portion of the line. it affects the entire dsl circuit. you see this as problem on tv long before you see it affect the slower high speed data vc...

Originally posted by Shadoew
I don't understand why they wouldn't just say so tho.

Right!

I understand that the IPTV is coming in all the time to any IPTV receiver that is online irrespective of whether the TV is being watched or not. But I also understand that if I take the IPTV box offline my DSL speed increases and the fluctuations go away. That's now proven.

I agree with your speculation that what is happening is that Pioneer has over subscribed and is either unwilling to pay the next level fees or is having problems with the upstream.

I received a phone call today from a top level technical support person with Pioneer. We had a good talk. We got past a lot of BS. We at least came to an agreement that his customers know that a speed test is not a full test of QoS and that his customer can see that Sprint is screwing him headed east and AT&T is screwing him headed west, but that also appears to be some issues in his internal system. He explained that they have tickets into "all 3 of their upstream providers" as well as a separate ticket to Cisco...so it appears that we have hardware issues and upper level provider issues.

I believe we are honing in on the upstream being the choke point. And you are right to wonder why "they don't just say so". There was a lot more said in this phone conversation that I'll just not make public at this time, but suffice to say that they have acknowledged at a higher level that there is a systemic problem and they have elevated the priority of the problem. I explained in the phone conversation that if my service improved the next step I would take would be to contact the Pioneer customers I know have voiced the same problem (i.e. gamers from Kingfisher to Comanche) and I would find out if their service had improved because it wasn't just about my service anymore. I think this "cooperative" needs to get back to acting like one instead of a corporation and get their customer-members involved in addressing and solving these problems.

By the way- I got a return call today on a request for quote on a T1 - I thought it interesting as I spoke with this lady to hear her say as she talked about what was available "Oklahoma is owned by AT&T"...when you think about many of us defining our ability to affect our world, and our empowerment on a global basis by how rapidly we can stay in the know and obtain information, hearing that ability be labeled as "owned by AT&T" is scary.

[edit on 4-30-2008 by Valhall]

sounds to me like they have just done a poor job of planning. they can blame it on their backbone providers i guess but i really doubt that is the issue. UNLESS, they are purchasing a lower quality internet backbone service, which still makes it pioneer's problem. if it was systemic to AT&T or Sprint all ISPs that they serve in the okc area would be suffering also. it is possible on an ip based dslam to get More bandwidth per vc by turning off one or both set tops. but they are prevented from "encroaching" on bandwidth of other vc... so while it seems that the iptv stream is having a positive effect by turning it off... it can't cut down or invade the high speed data stream. that is a technical flaw in the design of their system or they would be able to control that as well....

reply to post by Shadoew


I know but waaaay more than that can affect it. Not just SNR, capacitance plays a big role too as does distance from the slam whether from a remote or CO. Also older neighborhoods with bridgetaps galore, cable troubles, wet cables, high AC inductance, the list goes on.

certainly all cable pair defects cause problems, but they manifest themselves as high unacceptable sig/noise. that is the point i was trying to make. not very well obviously! if the pair is good and you get good speed tests to pioneers local speed test server, problem is in the backbone.. capacity problem or hardware problem or both. and i bet money they know it...

Originally posted by metaldemon2000


Anyways i just thought i would clarify a few things for you. We know what you go through as customers, always request a field tech it usually solves more problems than anything dont even try the troubleshooting process, it is designed to frustrate and confuse you. They would actually rather lose you as a customer than send a technician to your house. Before they moved our call centers to India ( paid 5 dollars CDN/hr) the tech support agents in Toronto were paid on average 7 - 10 dollars more and hour than the field techs. 50% of the techs in my area ( 20 or so guys ) are paid under 20 dollars an hour. Average wage of a tech support agent in toronto ( or even the people who took the regular calls ) 20 - 25 bucks an hour. THIS IS NOT A JOKE.

Well I wish you were HERE! I used to get 52k on my dialup for years then one day all the phones lines in my area went dead. 3 days later when they finally came back on I haven't been able to get above 32-36 k and thats on a good day. I had technicians out there they checked everything no answers. I have never had a problem with the guys that do the work so forgive the discontent, they have always been very nice and would always take the time to explain things.

Why everyone in the suits and ties in addition to some of the customer service slayers are so inept with their conflict resolution skills Ill never know. Perhaps it is like I said, they are the only thing I can get out here and it will be 2009 soon where we will fall further behind in this regard where third world country already have a better infrastucture than we do. I have been on the damn dsl waiting list 9 freakin years now and STILL they say "soon" when I ask them when they will offer it in my area.

It isn't like I am in walnut grove ya know or mayberry.

Whatever they did when they cut our lines and fixed it, it has never been the same since. I get terrible connection just terrible.

I had to quit school and as a software developer working out of my home it was bad enough when it was good connection at 52k but now,, I have to copy all my work to CD's and drive them 80 miles into town.

I mean jeez when the hell are they ever going to get on the ball here. This country paid over 200 Billion dollars to have those antiquated copper lines replaced by 2007. That was the deal the Government made with the telecoms so they could charge all those "other" service fees which they promised to finace the upgrades.

Investigations into that deal have revealed they renegged on us and NO ONE knows where the dan money went.

When you know this crap is going on with Corporate America in addition to that garbage called FISA,, man it makes you feel so ashamed of this country it's very depressing.

- Con

[edit on 1-5-2008 by Conspiriology]

If you go to the home page of dslreports.com Pioneer Telephone Cooperative is now "in the spotlight". Yet another customer has come forward.

www.dslreports.com...

[edit on 5-1-2008 by Valhall]

reply to post by Valhall


I can't see it! Link me to the article?

(Nevermind - looks like it just got changed to charter pipeline?)

Can you link me to the forum it gets discussed in? Whenever I do searches I get nothing or it says I don't have permission.

(Nevermind again, google ftw)

Pioneer Reviews

So there is a review section and not a forum section - is that correct?

[edit on 1-5-2008 by Sublime620]

Let me know if this works for you...

www.dslreports.com...

Originally posted by Valhall
"Oklahoma is owned by AT&T

Actually, that's kind of an understatement. Eventually, all Internet traffic hits an AT&T pipe. That's why the NSA went to AT&T for its snooping program.

Originally posted by MrPenny


Actually, that's kind of an understatement. Eventually, all Internet traffic hits an AT&T pipe. That's why the NSA went to AT&T for its snooping program.

You're really making me feel better.

reply to post by MrPenny


Not I. At least until AT&T buys Qwest - I'm good.

reply to post by Sublime620


I have bad news for ya'....

Unless you have a magical browser that doesn't make DNS requests for high level domains.......AT&T backbone baby......

reply to post by MrPenny




I don't think I have a magical browser.

(But my tracerts have never shown any AT&T activity - am I missing something?)

[edit on 1-5-2008 by Sublime620]

reply to post by Conspiriology


The failure to bring fiber to everyone is happening in Canada as well. I have heard rumours of "fiber to the prem" but so far only high rise apt buildings get them and also select few neighborhoods (rich ones). If your out in the rurals forget it. If you are near a cell phone tower there is wireless internet providers that have several services. There is EVDO, cell tower receivers on your house, portable modems that run off the cell network, and satellite internet. All usually operate in and around 3 MB and at LEAST one of those services should be available to you, though it is quite expensive to get setup.