I recall my sister and her husband trying CenturyLink and it being unbearable, although we live in Woodbury where the highest rate you can get is 1.5Meg. Maybe their 7Meg offering would be better, if it's available for you. Comcast recently hit me with that same increase (same promotion that ended even) -- If you do end up being able to successfully haggle with Comcast, you should let me know! :-) I attempted it the other day with no success, unfortunately. Good luck with your search! -Andrew On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 1:20 PM, Jeremy MountainJohnson <jeremy.mountainjohnson at gmail.com> wrote: > Good afternoon, > > I was on a promo for Comcast (30 MB down, known as Blast), and called > to get service downgraded since my promo ended and the price nearly > doubled. The guy wanted to charge me a fee to downgrade (I have no > contracts with them)- I pushed back but he wouldn't wave it so I plan > on speaking to a manager later. I have been putting off shopping for > Internet providers since I last tried Qwest DSL in 2008 (it was no > where near the speed they advertised when I was living near downtown, > so I stayed with Comcast). The audacity for Comcast to charge for > downgrading service, combined with their already high prices has > pumped some motivation into me to look at broadband providers again. > > Is anyone using Century Link or USI Wireless? I don't believe we have > any other options in Minneapolis for broadband (Clear doesn't appear > to be an option for my usage). Unfortunately I'm on the wrong side of > 35W for USI fiber to be option. I don't do video streaming (aside from > short news stories) but may pick this up again in the future at some > point. I occasionally work from home over VPN, which makes me a > little nervous with USI and the reviews I've read. At our house we > mostly do a lot of intensive web browsing and publishing, ssh (inbound > and outbound), and a small amount of RDP traffic outbound, light > gaming (Steam), and occasional large downloads (mostly Linux iso's / > packages, and Steam games). I do use CrashPlan in Linux for frequent > backups, so anything capped low (like Clear 4G) could present a > problem- no worry about longer upload backup times, it runs as a > service in the background and I can throttle it. > > How has USI been recently? Is it worth even trying? I'm in south > Minneapolis and the nearest node is two blocks away, which is another > potential drawback. Does anyone have Century Link that could provide > some feedback about it? > > Someone also mentioned Clear 4G recently. My concern with that (and > the other providers) is capping bandwidth, which everyone does to some > extent, but Clear seems really low (40 GB), which might be a problem > with CrashPlan. > > Thanks in advance for any suggestions / feedback. > > -- > Jeremy MountainJohnson > Jeremy.MountainJohnson at gmail.com > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list