Bad Service
I've been a Shentel customer for around three years. While I was happy to pay the plant extension fee to build out to us (over $5,000) and happy to pay the monthly fee of $252/month for internet service (Gigabit, Unlimited Data), which was later lowered to $135, it was only acceptable if we had a good, stable internet connection. We both work from home and rely on the internet, having both a primary and a failover 5G connection that our routers automatically switch to when there are issues.
Unfortunately, Shentel is no longer our primary connection as we had to cancel their service within the last month. For about six months it has not been reliable. We constantly had to switch over to our secondary internet service due to momentary outages and frequent packet drops. Latency was also rather high from the Redwood CMTS. We have switched our primary provider to Starlink, and while we have slower speeds, the connection is not only more stable but has less latency than Shentel did.
The Shentel infrastructure in our area is a very dated system of hardline coax directly to the CMTS in our area, not HFC where there is fiber to the node as is typical with most cable providers, which I believe contributes to the problems. Additionally, Shentel has been focusing on deploying fiber in other areas in the local markets (as well as in other markets through GloFiber).
Additionally, their DOCSIS networks are not very secure, as they are not using BPI+, which means your traffic could be viewed by malicious users on the DOCSIS network, while I understand traffic should be SSL encrypted from the sites you are browsing this basic protection should still be inplace to provide layered protection. They are also not updating the firmware on the cable modems, which is another major security hole.
While it's understandable from a business point of view why they wouldn't want to invest in and properly maintain this old coax system as it's not only expensive to maintain but also harder to properly troubleshoot and diagnose RF problems (along with finding good RF techs) compared to modern GPON systems, it is what is in place today, and what they extended when I paid. There seems to be no plan in place to fix the plant or replace it with GPON or at least fiber to the node as a stop-gap.
I've never in my life experienced this many problems with a cable company. On top of that, I do not believe they have good tools in place to properly monitor the coax plant. They are using BBX, which is much more limited than what the bigger companies use. Tech support always just brushes you off, saying there are no problems. For example, Starlink has proactive monitoring and specifically informs you about any issues. Shentel doesn't even have basic status monitoring portals for customers. You must call, but typically you are just told to reboot your modem, and they see no issue.
When Shentel fixes their coax plant or, at this point, gets GPON to my address, I will return as a customer. My last request asking them to monitor the area, or even my connection specifically long-term in some manner before I would reconnect, was completely ignored. Until Shentel decides to fix their infrastructure, I will not consider returning as a customer. I believe they may be more interested in selling off their legacy markets at this time based on how they treat these markets.
30 de maio de 2024
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