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Estragon Review by Estragon
Posted: 28 days ago
member for 6.4 years, 2783 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Greenville,Hillsborough,NH
 Contract price not specified.
 about 45 days
 "It exceeds my expectations"
 "It isn't FTTH @ 100Mbps"
 "Fairpoint wants to provide the service, and its employees are trying hard"
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I first called Bell Atlantic about DSL in fall of 1998. In fall of 2009 Fairpoint finally delivered it.
It's 1467 Kbps down and 342 up. It's not heaven, but it's our only option here.
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robherz Review by robherz
Posted: 72 days ago
member for 8.4 years, 60 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Brooklin,Hancock,ME
$33 per month (12 month contract)
about 10 days
"Good presales support. Good speed, solid connection so far."
"Slow to send DSL modem"
"So far, so good -- Great for rural Maine"
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This is the first year DSL is available to our private road in coastal Maine. Despite problems others may be having despite being officially prequalified, our connection has been excellent so far (about 2800 down/720 up). This is life-changing for this area, where we couldn't even get decent dialup access previously.
First 6 mo are actually $10/mo.
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tschmidt Review by tschmidt
UPDATED: 153 days ago
member for 9 years, 5098 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Milford,Hillsborough,NH
$29 per month
"Decent speed and relaibility"
"PPPoE instability"
"Happy with the service"
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6/23/2008 Verizon sold wireline assets including DSL in VT/NH/ME to FairPoint communication. As a long time Verizon DSL customer had been on annual contact to reduce cost. With some trepidation called FairPoint about contract renewal. Much to my surprise was told there is no annual contract and I was grandfathered at contract price. Was told “Tax recovery fee” of $1.45 was being eliminated.
Last part of my annual DSL renewal ritual was to ask for upgrade from 1500/384 to 3000/768. Each year my house magically moves farther away or closer to the Central Office. Rep said distance is 12,600 feet (with bridged taps) too far for 3000/768. Said system allowed him to request upgrade (at no cost just like Verizon). Said it would not change until Monday. Was skeptical but had nothing to lose. Sure enough on Monday modem (Netopia 3346N) was syncing at 3360/864. Margin is down quite a bit as expected to 24/10 dB from 31/23 dB and transmit power is up. Did a few speed test benchmarks: 2875/725 kbp/s. Was hoping to be upgraded to ADSL2+, as it improves performance over long lines, but that did not happen.
6/22/2009 UPDATE One year anniversary with FairPoint. We were spared worst of the problems when FairPoint converted from using Verizon systems to their own. Email was a problem for a few days but as I do not use ISP email was not a big deal. Speed has been consistent. Have not had any problems sending and receiving email from my hosted domain. As with Verizon have occasional problems maintaining PPPoE session. However PPPoE session disconnects seem to occur less frequently with FairPoint.
FairPoint announced they will not include Usenet access for VT/NH/ME DSL customers. Seems to be a trend with broadband suppliers scaling back on Usenet access.
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Vermont DSL Review by Vermont DSL
UPDATED: 212 days ago
member for 212 days, 0 visits, last login: 212 days ago
Saint Johnsbury,Caledonia,VT
$29 per month
"Always works/ low latency/ never had an outage"
"none"
"cheap and rock solid broadband"
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Have had DSL from Verizon and now Fairpoint for several years. I used to play online and never experienced lag like many of my friends on cable do. I qualify for 7 meg. but dont really need it. They also said when the new core network is up and running, many places will be seeing 20-40 meg. services.
Fairpoint wants expansion versus Verizon's planned failure of rural areas. Nice shinny new Fairpoint trucks are all over the North country doin lots of pole sets and running fiber/copper. Time will tell but clearly fairpoint has the right idea of customer service despite the loads of negitive press as of late. You only hear about the small minorty of problems but never the mass of error free services.
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tlnh Review by tlnh
UPDATED: 227 days ago
member for 227 days, 0 visits, last login: 227 days ago
Derry,Rockingham,NH
$15 per month
about 14 days
"PRICE & our DSL service stayed up even during the great ice storm!"
"Occaisionally interupted DSL service when the phone rings or is answered"
"Great service for the price! ;-)"
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I have stayed with Fairpoint DSL (formerly Verizon) primarily for the price. $14.99/month. Verizon dumped everyone in NH, ME & VT over to Fairpoint. Speed is as advertised & the only significant problem we encountered was during the Verizon to Fairpoint transition. Westell model 6100 is OK. I wonder if that is the source of the occasional problem when the phone rings or is answered. I performed the self installation with no problems. Our DSL service stayed up even during the great ice storm! We had no power or Comcast cable TV yet our phone & DSL was up the entire time. I was able to watch internet based entertainment on my Laptop (charged by our generator) for the entire 10 days we were without power & cable TV. The rest of my neighbors have Comcast broadband. They had no service for over a week! Fairpoint DSL has been good service for a good price.
Followup comments:  peteg1955
join:2009-04-11
Fairfield, ME
| Piss poor fairpoint Glad your happy with them. I'm paying $43.99 per month for a dry loop(no phone,dsl only). My service has been going down hill for the past 6 weeks. I was at 1.5Mb/s to over 2Mb/s and now I'm at 750Kb/s down and upload is 200 to 350 Kb/s .. The service simply sucks..and good luck getting a tech on the phone average wait is 40+ minutes..and they can't seem to fix it. Time to go back to cable. | |
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JTY Review by JTY
Posted: 1.2 years ago
member for 5.4 years, 2465 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Ellensburg,Kittitas,WA
$74 per month (12 month contract)
about 6 days
"High reliability, and a good price."
"No self-install."
"Good deal for the money."
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I have Fairpoint's Full House bundle, which includes 3Mb DSL, local phone, 120 minutes of long distance, voice mail, etc. for a little under $74 including taxes.
The install process went pretty smooth, although I would have preferred a self-install. Their technician brought his own laptop to configure the DSL modem/router and to verify that it was working. In addition, they had me verify that my laptop to could connect via the router.
Since having the service installed, I have yet to experience any outages, or major performance issues. Although, I have only had the service for 5 months.
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karlmarx Review by karlmarx
UPDATED: 1.3 years ago
member for 3.1 years, 1284 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Nashua,Hillsborough,NH
$65 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
"Fast Speeds (15/15) Great Price"
"Incompetent Installer"
"For 65 buck a month, I can't complain"
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Originally had Comcast 8/768 for about $60.00/month. That just wasn't good enough, so I called Verizon, who gave me the runaround about FIOS, until I finally got someone who said it was now a Fairpoint Area. Ordered Fairpoint Fios on June 24th, and scheduled install for the 30th. They gave me a window of 8:00 AM to 12:00 noon for the installer to show up.
June 30th: 9:00 Am : Fairpoint installer arrives. He takes about 3 hours of tinkering, before he said something was broken, and he had to pick up a new part.
June 30th: 1:00 Pm : He finally got it installed, but was completely incompetent when it came to setting up the computers. Took an hour to install the 'welcome to fairpoint' CD, which I SPECIFICALLY told him I DID NOT WANT INSTALLED. But when he was done, ran a speed test, and got 15/15 as promised. Once he left, I unistalled all the crap he put on my PC, ran a new wire so I could put the modem where I wanted it, and got everything working the way I wanted it. Still stuck with a crappy Veriozon Labeled Wireless modem, but it does what it says it does.
All in all, slow install, crappy software, but GREAT speeds. I'm VERY happy to be leaving comcast FOREVER~ NO CAPS! No limits at anything I've tried. Torrents run a 1.8MB/sec download, and 1.8MB/sec uploading
Followup comments: 
DaveBrooks
@ChicVNA.com
| FiOS from Fairpoint? So Fairpoint was able to hook you into the existing FiOS line on your street, and you've got FiOS speeds?
Dave Brooks, Nashua Telegraph (dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com)
»nashuatelegraph.com/fairpointwatch | |
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karlmarx
join:2006-09-18
iraq
 ·Fairpoint Communic..
| Re: FiOS from Fairpoint? Yes, it was a fairpoint installer, but all the equipment still says 'verizon'. Even the modem label, bios, etc, all read verizon. I'm not saying it's not worth it, by all means, if you CAN get it, get it. The routing is MUCH better than the 15 odd hops I used to get before I even SAW outside of comcasts network. Right now, first hop is Verizon, and yahoo is only 6 hops away. All the web pages load faster, and the download speeds meet all my expectations, AND, the upload speed is ALSO at 15mb/sec.
Hey, if the installer had completed in the '2 hour' estimate they had told me, I would have given them a much higher score.
--
The happiest countries are the most secular. The struggle AGAINST corporations is the struggle FOR humanity! | |
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happy with fios
@verizon.com
| Re: FiOS from Fairpoint? Was this installation in Nashua or in another town? My fios installation went smoothly and my experience was pleasant. The technician installed several devices in my house in just under 4 hours and for what he had to do the time seemed justified. Now I am waiting for the video. | |
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karlmarx
join:2006-09-18
iraq
·Fairpoint Communic..
| Re: FiOS from Fairpoint? Umm, don't think there will ever be video over fios. well, I've not seen any indication that fairpoint is working on it. I REALLY wish they would.
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The happiest countries are the most secular. The struggle AGAINST corporations is the struggle FOR humanity! | |
| | | | | STPitcher
join:2008-07-24
Litchfield, NH
| Re: FiOS from Fairpoint? I'm in Litchfield, NH... Fairpoint installed my FIOS yesterday.
They took, I guess 3-4 hours... I wasn't timing it. Seemed a bit slow, but I wasn't at all disappointed. (hower, they were there about 2PM, whereas, I'd been promised 8-12 AM!)
The guys did tell me that... and I think they implied this may not be past the rumor stage... Fairpoint does hope to offer video (i.e. TV) in New Hamsphire... even suggested a timeframe of perhaps 6 months.
Further, they said Fairpoint wasn't going to use Verizon's video technology, but would be trying TV-over-IP. Never heard of it, but I'm game!
- stp | |
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vzfiosrox Review by vzfiosrox
Posted: 2.3 years ago
member for 4.7 years, 38 visits, last login: 2.2 years ago
Petersburg,Rensselaer,NY
$45 per month
about 5 days
"Nice Local People. When There Is A Problem They Go Out Of Their Way To Fix It."
"None.."
"Only Option For My Area. Very Good Company And People."
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Info to start with.. I live in Rural Upstate New York. A town called Petersburg, NY. I am now 4,000ft from the local CO. I am on the last CO that the phone company has. CO Petersburg is linked to CO Berlin, CO Stephentown, CO New Lebanon, and finally to headquarters in Chatam by fiber optics. Taconic (Now FairPoint) has one of the most amazing backup plans out of any company ive seen especially a rural one. New underground fiber optics feed all CO's separately so that in the case of line damage the underground cables can kick in and continue to serve us. FairPoint DSL is the only HSI option besides satellite in this area.
Packages as of 7/06/2007 :
basic - 128kbps/128kbps $34.95/month
standard (my plan) - 768kbps/256kbps $45.95/month
premium - 1.5mbps/512kbps $99.95/month
all of these have about 3-5 dollars more of charges.
Starting about 2002 our local phone company Taconic Telephone offered DSL for $45.00 a month for a 512kbps/256kbps package which was not bad for 2002. I was getting 200kbps/200kbps from that. We were then upgraded for free in 2003 to 768kbps/256kbps. It stayed like this to present day. In todays ever changing internet world, speed is everything. I wrote a letter to the CEO/President of FairPoint. FairPoint has owned Taconic since 1900. This year they decided it was to be called FairPoint and the subdivision number is 651. We'll after writing a letter stating that these speeds were crap for what we paid, I got change. The local office called me up and said that the President of FairPoint had called and they were going to negotiate with me. They said that they had no clue people wanted more speed because no one had ever complained that it wasnt fast enough. They said they had to make assumptions as to what the people in this area did on the internet. As following their company promise they are taking a risk. Using me as a test subject over the coming months they will increase my speed to 1.5/512 (where it is now) then to 3/?? (couple of weeks) and maybe 6/??. They will then test their old network to see if it is capable of handling 8,000 customers at these speeds. they currently have 8,000 customers who basically all subscribe to the $45 plan. These speed increases would be free to all customers. A new pricing tier would be developed. It will be a couple months before it gets rolled out because it has to go through marketing and other departments. I am also talking with the company about leaving the 128k/128k or 256k/256k plans and offering it @ $10-20 per month for low income families or elderly people or people who just want always on and be able to use the phone line but dont care about speed.
Lesson is. you have a voice. let it be heard. People dont always know things unless you tell them. This company cares about its customers. They are making changes that are at the companies expense. This shows that they really want to keep the customers they have and encourage new ones to come.
FairPoint is an example of an exceptional company with exceptional employees.
Followup comments:
UpstateNYFan
@taconic.net | Wow. Power to you, man. Dude, you're my hero. I've been stuck with the $45/month package for 786/256 kb speeds, and I have long thought that this was outrageous.
If this goes through, dude, you have earned my undying respect. | |
| | vzfiosrox
join:2005-02-12
Tampa, FL
clubs: | Re: Wow. Power to you, man. were still testing. but were expecting september-november sometime.
itss gonna be awesome! | |
| | | dszabo
join:2005-12-31
Pine Plains, NY | Re: Wow. Power to you, man. Well, I couldn't take it anymore. I finally caved and went for Optimum Online. I'm getting 15/2Mb for the same price. | |
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VZ leaving
@verizon.net | DSL is good,,, but at what price I have Verizon DSL in Vermont. 3.0 Mb service is $30/month. It is very reliable since I am close to the CO. I really wonder what will happen if/when Fairpoint takes over. | |
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Review of Fairpoint Communications
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