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Qwest DSL gets a speed increase in ten US States

By Tim Conneally, BetaNews

April 25, 2008, 6:55 PM

Qwest Communications, Internet, TV, phone service provider for 14 western states announced the latest speeds available in the phased rollout of its Fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) network.

Available in 23 of its top markets in 10 states (Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nebraska, New Mexico, Utah) Qwest offers the "Quantum" package for $104.99 per month that promises a 20 Mbps download speed, and the "Titanium" package for $51.99 monthly offering 12 Mbps. Both packages are $5 cheaper when coupled with local phone service.

The company's $350 million FTTN project began in October 2007 with the goal of reaching 1.5 million homes, which has grown to an anticipated 2 million by the beginning of 2009. Qwest is billing these upgrades as being "the fastest DSL service from a major US phone company," rather than more accurately billing it as "not quite as fast as FTTH."

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By Lawrence01

posted Apr 28, 2008 - 2:12 PM

The only reason you got those artifically higher speeds was due to the file size being small enough to not be throttle by Comcast. If you were to download or upload larger file sizes, or something that is continious, it would throttle back. That is what happens when I ftp to our redirect server, after about the 6-8 MB of transfer, it begins to throttle down until its is 25% of the speed. That is something that is consistant and repeatable, whether its ftp, http or whatever. If I could go with something other than Comcast, I would. I hope this company comes to my area, it can't be too soon. FT Worth has it, and I talk to people who use it and they adore it.

Score: 0

By thefalcon2k5

edited Apr 28, 2008 - 12:00 PM

I pay $46 a month with Comcast, and this is the result that I have gotten just 2 minutes ago:

Download: 29.5 Mb/s
Upload: 1.8 Mb/s

Proof ... http://www.speedtest.net/result/264940358.png

Score: 0

By improvelence

posted Apr 28, 2008 - 9:54 AM

Hah, we get like an average of 18 here for 42 bucks through Comcrap.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Apr 28, 2008 - 10:01 AM

Dunno if you meant that as an example of good or bad pricing, but...

I'd kill for that here.

For high speed it's Qwest @ $60 for 12Mbps, $115 for 20Mbps, or Comcast @ $150 for 50Mbps.

Score: 0

By charlespaugh

posted Apr 27, 2008 - 5:30 PM

This news story copy along with Qwest's marketing copy are deceptive. Qwest is not promising 20 Mbps or 12 Mpbs speeds. It is promising a maximum of these speeds with actual performance speeds of about half those numbers. How do I know? I subscribed to one of the plans and it only met half the speed "promised" by Qwest. When I contacted customer support, I was told with a laugh that these were only "target speeds" that were rarely actually met, and my money was refunded to me. Check the fine print, and you will discover that they do no guarantee these speeds or ANY speed to you.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Apr 28, 2008 - 8:03 AM

Nor does anyone else. All stated speeds are max.

DSL is worse, of course, because the farther you get from the DSLAM, the more *impossible* it gets to achieve those speeds.

For folks near the DSLAM, the speeds match posted. I have the 12mbit plan for our contractor's network. (they'd actually bumped us up to 9mbit over the winter at some point after replacing our DSL modem out of the blue)

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Apr 28, 2008 - 8:04 PM

every time I've tested my bandwidth on comcast and time warner (business) I have gotten @ or above advertised bandwidth.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Apr 29, 2008 - 8:45 AM

It's more reliable than DSL the farther down the line you go.

DSL gets horrible the farther away from the DSLAM you are. Cable tends not to degrade as badly as DSL does.

The trade-off is that DSL isn't shared, at least not as Cable is, and thus most DSL providers have not yet felt the need to implement "traffic management" techniques.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

edited Apr 26, 2008 - 3:19 PM

Prices listed in article are promotional.

Quantum (after 12 months) is ~$114.

Titanium (after 12 months) is ~$64.

896k up on both plans.

The pricing doesn't seem all that bad considering, but the upstream speeds really suck.

Qwest is billing these upgrades as being "the fastest DSL service from a major US phone company," rather than more accurately billing it as "not quite as fast as FTTH."

If it was FTTH, it wouldn't be DSL. ;)

It *is*, in fact, the fastest DSL service considering their competition (you are referring to Verizon, right?) is fiber, not DSL.)

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

edited Apr 28, 2008 - 9:59 AM

Link to qwest broken, Tim.

Mod this down when you get it fixed. ;)

Score: 0

By thefalcon2k5

edited Apr 28, 2008 - 11:54 AM

http://www.qwest.com

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Apr 28, 2008 - 1:32 PM

No, really?

Score: 0

By s0121

posted Apr 26, 2008 - 1:39 PM

Kansas, rural smaller town, ATT - SBC phone only offer dialup, and our wireless is 50.00 a month for 256/128 kbps. called affiliate for Sprint. In Kansas Tornados blow and the Internet SUKS.

Score: 0

By PostDeals

posted Apr 26, 2008 - 11:48 AM

What do you need all that speed for anyway? I guess if they are trying to curb file sharing then the speeds should be restricted. I can understand if you are business or hosting stuff but for normal home user I think 3 meg is fine.

Score: 0

By hlherron@hotmail.com

posted Apr 28, 2008 - 10:38 AM

The extra speed is great for movies on demand and gaming. Also, more people are telecommuting and the speed is necessary.
Personally, I'd like 10Mbits down and 1Mbit up and I'd be plenty happy as long as the price is reasonable.

Score: 0

By qhobbes2

posted Apr 26, 2008 - 7:18 AM

I don't like Qwest as a company but 20Mbps is sure faster than what Cox offers here. Probably can only get that speed from our local newsgroup provider though.

Score: 0

By Zee333

edited Apr 26, 2008 - 6:43 AM

£104 for 20Mbps internet? wow thats a rip off.
In the UK, O2 offer 20Mbps unlimited ADSL for £15 ($29) Virgin offer 20Mbps unlimited cable for £37 ($73) and Be Unlimited offer 24Mbps ADSL for £18 ($35) why are they charging so much for this?

Score: 0

By adento

posted Apr 26, 2008 - 3:52 PM

"why are they charging so much for this?"

Welcome to capitalism. When everyone is already charging an arm and a leg, you bump your speed a little, so you can call your services the fastest available, while at the same time pretending there's competition in your market segment. Normally "competition" works to lower prices, but in America it works in the opposite direction. Not to mention their economy has gone down the toilet and their dollar is worthless, so everyone is trying to grab more of it.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Apr 28, 2008 - 9:59 AM

Not to mention their economy has gone down the toilet and their dollar is worthless, so everyone is trying to grab more of it.

*rolling on the floor laughing*

You guys really crack me up.

"economy has gone down the toilet"

*laughing*

Ooh, that's rich. I'm going to come back to your post every time I start feeling less amused today, just for a quick pick-me-up. I get a great deal of entertainment from people who cannot tell the difference between slower growth and "in the toilet".

Score: 0

By jeffreybt2

edited Apr 26, 2008 - 10:08 AM

My Rogers Cable(Canada) bill is almost $75/month for 10Mb/s Down 1Mb/s Up :(

Score: 0

By bgdjr

posted Apr 26, 2008 - 2:42 AM

I have Mediacom in Iowa with the 15Mbit down 1Mbit up and actually get those speeds even during peak hours. Its only $60/mo too so I am happy. Wish Verizon would come her ewith their FIOS but with Qwest being the main phone company in the state I dont ever see it happening.

Score: 0

By overlandpark4me

edited Apr 25, 2008 - 10:30 PM

Qwest, the new Comcast. I could care less about the inbound pipe. It's the outbound that they screw you on. What good does 20 megs "In" do when they give you 384 K "OUT" like RR in Kansas City. They've been price fixing for years in our area, with a crap outbound and poor routing for gamers.

Score: 0

By adento

posted Apr 26, 2008 - 3:56 PM

Why do you need so much upstream bandwidth? Even if you have several people playing, I've never heard of a game that requires anywhere near 384K or above. I find most people who whine and complain about their outbound speed are the guys who download hundreds of gigabytes of pirated material from torrent sites and need a lot of upstream bandwidth to upload hundreds of gigabytes in return to keep their ratios in check.

Score: 0

By ThaCHEESE

posted Apr 26, 2008 - 5:29 PM

i only have 384k up and while true i can play most games i can not host them. on the games i can host, i cant enable voice chat. that's the reason a gamer would need better upstream.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Apr 27, 2008 - 12:30 AM

So get a hosting account at $20-$30 month. You don't need to host games from your home net.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Apr 26, 2008 - 9:40 PM

I do believe hosting a game server is against the ToS of most ISPs. ;)

Score: 0

By WeezulDK

posted Apr 27, 2008 - 12:59 PM

Hosting a dedicated server 24/7 might be, but not the occasional Quake server with your friends...

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Apr 28, 2008 - 8:00 AM

Read 'em. Most of them state running a server is against ToS. They never mention "unless it's only once in a while", or "unless it's only for a few hours".

;)

Score: 0

By DakotaSunRunner

posted Apr 25, 2008 - 9:10 PM

And of course South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana are left to the wayside as usual with poor telephone service from this company along with poor everything else from Qwest in these states.

Qwest, wake up, the people in your left out state list deserve good service also, stop doddering around. If your upgrade services go any slower, you would be in off position.

Thank God, I have high speed cable telephone and television and internet and not at their inflated prices either.

Qwest is loosing in South Dakota and probably North Dakota also, as the Cable companies offer more for less with higher speeds. That is why Qwest is trying to sell several markets out in these state or at least did try a year ago.

Score: 0

By perrywilson78

posted Apr 27, 2008 - 10:03 AM

I need a minimum of 512k up for 2 people to play battlefield 2. If I had 1 meg up I could have 4 or 5.

Score: 0

By BoiseComputerService

posted Apr 27, 2008 - 10:54 PM

One thing you might consider if you are serious about having a nice gaming server is to use Amazon's EC2. Check it out at http://aws.amazon.com I've tested the line at about 6 - 8 Megabytes per second up and down when multi-threading. You could host as many clients as the processor on the server could handle at that point. The server would probably cost up to about $75 / month for your own private server. The upload/download speeds are always consistent and I haven't been able to really max it out yet.

Score: 0

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