Will this be the year of death for the pseudo broadband? For years, companies such as; Verizon, Cricket, T-mobile, and Sprint have been advertising what they call broadband. The service by definition is broadband, but the recent e-mails we have received from viewers show that their services are not consistent with the definition. However, the cost for their services far exceeds most true broadband carrier’s costs. True broadband has a minimum 200kbps connection. We have complaints that users were not getting consistent connections even close to what was promised. What’s the excuse?
Traffic jams, peak times, and a plethora of other excuses are blamed for the degenerate service. The infrastructure has never had a major overhaul, and the aforementioned carriers were betting on dual band service in the future.
Even with dual band, the service could not compare with newer, faster services like wimax. This is not a paid advertisement for any Wimax carrier; we just want to show how consumers were getting raked over the coals for sub-par wireless internet services.
For most users of cell phone provided wireless services, it was a necessity to be connected “on the go.” The rest of users, who just wanted to try it out, quickly found themselves canceling the service. We had a complaint from one individual who said that when he could connect, that it was comparable to dial-up service. The carrier he had was Verizon, and when he discussed this issue with them, they stated “peak times are often slower, and you might just be too far away from the tower.” They had also mentioned that an external antenna may help boost the signal for this user. With the massive roll out of Wimax there is no need for external antennas.
“Unlimited Usage” is another fallacy we have found to be used widely by some companies, but if you read the terms of service closely you will find that their unlimited comes with a 5 gig cap, and you will be charged for any excess use. Here is an older article that proves the so-called unlimited usage http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/07/verizon_unlimited.html
Furthermore, some of these companies restrict certain types of usage. For example, if a company hosts video conferences, and uses streaming media for presentations this would be a direct violation of what is called “acceptable use” Streaming media is apparently a no-no as it “hogs” bandwidth.
We have looked into the Wimax future, and so far the only item we cringe at is the 2 year agreements. They do provide a month to month service as well, and hopefully they will leave this option available as the subscriptions increase.
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