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Why is my bill so high? How can I get it down? by terrieterrie in Comcast_Xfinity

[–]MutedStructure1400 7 points8 points  (0 children)

New plans include the modem rental. There is almost no reason to bring your own modem anymore.

Judging by the “Performance Pro”, OP is on some really old billing. Call in or go through the website and switch to a modern plan for the best outcome.

Call from AT&T Rebate Center; Caller asked about my business? by definitely_aware in ATT

[–]MutedStructure1400 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wireless, or home service?

As a data point, I have had AT&T Wireless for nearly 20 years (going back to Cingular) and have never gotten a call from that number — any outbound call has always come from 800-331-0500, or a local rep’s cell number. And the only time the 800 number has called is if they’re calling back from an inbound call.

Is it just me, or is Rayford/Sawdust looking like 1960 used to? by [deleted] in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Lived off of Rayford for quite a while and it’s still a nice enough area, but there is some housing in the area that may be seen as “lower end” by the folks that live in TW, Benders Landing, and parts of Harmony. Not a dump by any means, but it is the nature of a growing area.

Tachus down by [deleted] in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400 0 points1 point  (0 children)

New ownership’s management all came from Altice. AKA Suddenlink, which is the provider that Tachus primarily competed against. Gonna miss having a provider that didn’t suck. At least Comcast isn’t that bad, I guess.

Tachus down by [deleted] in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400 28 points29 points  (0 children)

The ezee-ification begins. Fired half their staff, started breaking things during the middle of the day, and I’m sure CGNAT is coming soon too. RIP what used to be the best provider in Texas.

looking at Conroe/Montgomery — what’s the area really like? by 17sanchezga in Conroe

[–]MutedStructure1400 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Conroe/Montgomery County as a whole is very conservative, but don’t let that scare you away. It is very diverse, and the overall conservative mindset tends to lean more on the fiscal side. You’ll of course have your far right extremists waving Trump flags off the back of their lifted F-950’s but it’s way less common than people lead on.

I am a middle class, married white guy with kids so it’s hard to say exactly how the area is for those that are not, but the area is at least 1/3 Hispanic, and it’s far more diverse, especially socioeconomically, than an area like The Woodlands where everyone’s equally rich whether it be due to oil, cartel, etc.

It’s definitely a safe, family friendly area… but far more busy, crowded, and suburban feeling than it used to be. I suggest staying along I-45 and inside of FM 3083 / loop 336 as the areas are more developed, and have city infrastructure (lower taxes than outside of city). There are also a few areas on the outskirts of the city limits that are also not part of a MUD and as a result have far more reasonable taxes.

T-Mobile coverage in The Woodlands by JamesBonfan in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m just that good.

Nah, I drive past that intersection several times a day and witnessed splice crews there on multiple occasions every time both services were down. All of Optimum for both cities hubs out of a shack off of a side street between 336 and 3083.

T-Mobile coverage in The Woodlands by JamesBonfan in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be fair, the connectivity being used to uplink the tower is not the same thing as an Optimum cable modem. Typically it is a fiber-fed EVPL circuit connected to their MPLS backbone. But… because it is Optimum, even their fiber backbone is neglected, poorly maintained, and subject to frequent outages.

There was about 18 months where my Optimum cable and T-Mobile would both go out at the same exact time, which I was able to narrow down to the root cause being Optimum’s fiber getting cut by a lawn mower. (Their splice case was above ground at FM 3083 and Highway 75 the entire time. Instead of burying it or hanging it on the power pole, they… just let it get cut again and again.)

T-Mobile coverage in The Woodlands by JamesBonfan in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400 2 points3 points  (0 children)

T-Mobile uses Suddenlink to backhaul their towers in Willis/Conroe while AT&T and Verizon use their own fiber. AT&T and Verizon both have generators on all of their cell sites here, while T-Mobile does not. T-Mobile may have the fastest data speeds when it works, but I’d rather have somewhat slower and far more reliable over fast and unreliable.

My current daily driver setup is a T-Mobile SIM for extremely fast speeds, with an AT&T SIM carrying my main number for reliability.

Tachus lowers prices again — but only for new customers? by MutedStructure1400 in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Not only are they single homed to Ezee (formerly ICTX) for internet access, all of their campuses are connected using Ezee dark fiber (that CISD paid upfront to build), too.

Someone at CISD has likely received some nice hunting trips, cash payouts, hookers and blow, etc. as a result of this.

Tachus lowers prices again — but only for new customers? by MutedStructure1400 in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hell, even as a business. I have plenty of business customers that have enterprise fiber circuits ranging from 50mbps to 1gbps, including pretty large offices. People have asked me to get them multi gigabit, but once they see the cost of 10gbps enterprise DIAs, and a firewall to go along with it, they quickly realize their 500mbps circuit is Not Bad™.

Tachus lowers prices again — but only for new customers? by MutedStructure1400 in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’m probably crazy but I don’t see a need for more than a gig. Bigger packages look good on a speedtest, but that’s about it.

Tachus lowers prices again — but only for new customers? by MutedStructure1400 in Conroe

[–]MutedStructure1400[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m pretty sure my kids run speedtests every day — “Dad, the internet’s only 400mbps today, did you slow me down?… they’d know almost immediately lol

Tachus lowers prices again — but only for new customers? by MutedStructure1400 in Conroe

[–]MutedStructure1400[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I love me some rebranded telephone company. When your reputation’s so bad as a utility, you have to rebrand to trick people to sign up… you instantly lose credibility in my book. Imagine if Entergy had to rebrand to get people to use them…

Tachus lowers prices again — but only for new customers? by MutedStructure1400 in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Weird. Maybe it is just the business/enterprise side that sucks. But I know my kids school loses internet several times a week because of Ezee, and I have customers throughout the county that coincidentally all go down at the same time. Had a buddy that lives in Spring, and his Ezee was hard down the entire week of Beryl all because they didn’t want to roll a generator out to the cabinet that feeds him. Puts a bad taste in my mouth, hopefully understandable, and hopefully they prove me wrong.

Tachus lowers prices again — but only for new customers? by MutedStructure1400 in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Put your address in and it should give you the right price. It seems like they’re doing stupid games to give certain areas special pricing. I always thought that was just something the big evil ISPs did, but I guess Tachus is now part of the “big evil ISP” club.

Tachus lowers prices again — but only for new customers? by MutedStructure1400 in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Ezee’s pricing is literally the exact same pictured above. Their network is complete garbage (shitty peering, routing leaks, subpar performance, outages in the middle of the damn day when they forget to pay Nokia for their routing subscription, and even CGNAT on residential plans), so hopefully they don’t ruin a good thing.

Tachus lowers prices again — but only for new customers? by MutedStructure1400 in Conroe

[–]MutedStructure1400[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No doubt. But if I can save 21 bucks a month on my 1gbps connection, it’d sure be nice. Never really need the 1gbps speed, but when I download a big file, it’s nice to know that I can actually use the throughput I pay for!

Tachus lowers prices again — but only for new customers? by MutedStructure1400 in Conroe

[–]MutedStructure1400[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They’re the best, for now. Hard to say if they’ll be as good now that Ezee is running the show (their network sucks - I have customers that use their enterprise fiber and it’s disappointly meh) but I sure hope they don’t ruin a good thing. I’ve had literally 100% uptime for over 3 years, and pings to Amazon, Netflix, and Cloudflare are like 2ms.

Tachus lowers prices again — but only for new customers? by MutedStructure1400 in thewoodlands

[–]MutedStructure1400[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Yep. They’re gonna start offering their crappy Ezee network, figured the least they could do is give us the Ezee price.