Zoom high speed internet

[nixon]

I've got a chance to get away from dial up internet. It's through the local cable company. The phone ,cable ,and intenet service will be provide by them for less than I now pay for dish tv, dial up ( which I really hate ,but haven't had an alternative) ,and phone service.
If any of You currently use zoom , would You share Your thoughts and experience with me ? Thanks, John

[bczoom]

That's what I have (if you're referring to Armstrong's "Zoominternet").

As for support and service, they're absolutely fantastic. If they can't fix something on the phone, they'll normally have someone out the same day. Next day happens but it's rare unless you call late afternoon.

Except phone (They don't have phone to my knowledge but when they do, I'll be getting that as well), I have everything they offer.

I have their "Zoom 500" or whatever they call their fastest service. Using toast.net performance tests, it's normally in the top ISP's for speed.

For the TV, they offer all the different movie channels. Even with their recent price hike, it's still reasonable. You also get digital music channels and such.

They recently added "On Demand" service. Although Cinemax, Starz and Showtime haven't been fully implemented, HBO is pretty well loaded up. This allows me to pick any movie, start it whenever I want and pause/RW/FF... I think you have 24 hours before it deletes itself.

As for cost, here's what I have:
High-speed internet
47 movie channels
47 music channels
16 HD channels (more added regularly)
150+? regular channels
Cable modem
3 digital cable boxes (required for movie channels)
8 e-mail boxes
Taxes, FCC user fee...
$135-140/month.

[OregonAlex]

Nixon,

how much is their phone service? You might save a little more money using someone else for your internet phone service. No one says you must use the phone service from zoom. Many companies who offer a flat "unlimited" phone plan are not doing you any favors. You can make long distance calls for about 1 to 1.3 cents/min to anywhere in the US. If you do the math, you will normally come in way under what you would pay for the unlimited flat rate.

How many minutes do you think you use per month? Look at your phone bill. I now typically pay about $13/mo for my internet telephone service. Which includes keeping my phone number and all outgoing calls at 1 cent/min. A call in number will cost you about $5-8/mo including all taxes and fees. Then you pay as you go for all out going calls with no additional monthly free. I use two different providers for outgoing. One for 1 cent/min and another for 1.3 cent/min. So I actually use three different companies.. One for incoming calls, and two for outgoing. Those so called unlimited plans are quite expensive in comparision. For the difference between, $5-9/ mo you can make a heck of a lot of calls at 1 cent/min before you get to a $30 unlimited plan. Roughly, 2500 minutes. That is a lot of talking!!!
We use about 500 min per month. So $5.00 worth. $8 + $5 = $13 total.


I have my own UNLOCKED analog telephone adapter, which allows me to pick and choose internet telephone providers as I see fit. Actually, I am running my own PBX (Phone Branch eXchange) in my house and have it maintain my dial plan rules, but that is another story.

I recommend what ever internet telephone service you choose you try to find one which lets you use your own UNLOCKED telephone adapter. Otherwise you will be stuck to whatever rates zoom wants to charge you, including overrage charges and international rates. Plus you can normally pick up your calls while at work on your computer.

If you do decide for one of those unlimited rate plan..and dont care about an UNLOCKED adapter, and would rather not buy your own.. take a look at Sunrocket. I believe they want $199/year for unlimited US long distance and much of western europe. That works out to around $16.59/mo. that includes all the fees. Probably quite a bit cheaper then what zoom offers.

[Junkman]

If you live in a developement and can get a large group of people to join together in a group, where everyone pays one central person that remits the money, then you can usually get a very good group deal. I was able to piggy back on the campground that is next to me and expanded cable TV and high speed internet with Charter cost $300 a year paid in advance. I was paying $55 a month previously.

[nixon]

Brian, That's exactly the same thing I'm looking at . (Well actually the wife is looking at )
They do offer a phone service now.
Alex , Thanks , I'll run Your suggestion by SWMBO . It makes good sense.
Junk, I live in the Sticks . No neighbors within even decent shooting distance :)
But thanks for the suggestion nevertheless.
All I know is that I'll be glad to be rid of the dial up "service" I have now . They sucked when We got it 5 years ago,and have gotten worse. But they were the only game in town so to speak .

[bczoom]

Originally Posted by nixon

They do offer a phone service now.

John,

They've had it but until recently (and I just found out a minute ago), I would not have been able to keep my existing phone number.

Brian

[nixon]

Just an update. Had the service installed . What a difference it makes !! Access to web sites is super fast, and I can use the phone . The cable TV offers all the channels I had with Dish ,plus on demand movies,and a few HD channels . Another plus is it won't get blocked out during heavy weather as did the satellite system . Looks like I'll have to get a New TV ,my current one is a 1983 RCA console :) All in all I'm super pleased with it . And it is less expensive than the separate services I had with the phone, dish and dial up isp.

[bczoom]

Glad to hear it's working well for you.

After I got it in the living room, it expanded quickly... I've gone through a lot of coax in the past couple years...

[Doc]

Congrats Nixon!

Sure wish they'd hurry up and run the cable 200' to the pole in my yard so I'll be on high speed!

[nixon]

Originally Posted by bczoom

:

After I got it in the living room, it expanded quickly... I've gone through a lot of coax in the past couple years...

That's one of the things I thought about when I had my house built . All the bedrooms and living room were wired for cable and phone in at least two places .
I also ran an extra underground conduit from the utility pole to pull cable /wiring through. Unfortunately ,I didn't think to cover the ends . It's full of Ice,so the cable will have to be rerouted when the conduit thaws Live and learn !

[buy_25]

Originally Posted by nixon

That's one of the things I thought about when I had my house built . All the bedrooms and living room were wired for cable and phone in at least two places .
I also ran an extra underground conduit from the utility pole to pull cable /wiring through. Unfortunately ,I didn't think to cover the ends . It's full of Ice,so the cable will have to be rerouted when the conduit thaws Live and learn !

That is a lot of wire, time etc when wireless is cheap, easy and jsut as fast..

I know I have had broadband for 6+ years and it is getting slow at 8 MB download... I have Direct TV (every channel you can possibly get with DVR) and still not enough. What do you want when 500+ DVD gets old...

[bczoom]

Originally Posted by buy_25

That is a lot of wire, time etc when wireless is cheap, easy and jsut as fast..

Mike,

I believe John was referring to cable for TV and phone line. He didn't mention internet in that post.

[buy_25]

Originally Posted by bczoom

Mike,

I believe John was referring to cable for TV and phone line. He didn't mention internet in that post.

Phone lines? Again washed time in my eyes but that is me. TV's are great but every room is a little over kill since the future is wireless in homes. To much tv kills...

[OregonAlex]

Originally Posted by buy_25

That is a lot of wire, time etc when wireless is cheap, easy and jsut as fast..

if you have the option to run conduits and wire now.. do it!! don't kid yourself. Wire will be faster, cheaper if the additional labor involved is minimal. What Nixon did was the best thing to do. I don't belief for a second that anyone with the know how would turn their nose at wiring up their house for low voltage signaling and speaker cables, in favor of wireless, if the sheetrock was not yet up.

Doubt it was all that much labor as I am assuming the trench was already open for laying electrical and phone lines. A little pricey for the conduit but no where near the labor it took to have the trench dug in the first place.

To bad wireless has a limited range and is based on line of sight.. which doesn't like to go through trees and hills. And it will always be slower then a wire. Unless they figure out a way to make air is a better conductor then copper.

Originally Posted by buy_25

I know I have had broadband for 6+ years and it is getting slow at 8 MB download... I have Direct TV (every channel you can possibly get with DVR) and still not enough. What do you want when 500+ DVD gets old...

How fast is your wireless? Have you done a test on the WiFi LAN to make sure the problem is not the wireless? btw, I am sure you know the Wifi speeds just like normal Ethernet wired rates are in specified total physical layer bandwidth, not net throughput.. right? The overhead of the wireless protocol itself is almost half of the bandwidth on say something like 802.11g. So to market 802.11g 54Mbit as being almost half as fast as 100Mbit wired ethernet is a bit misleading. It is more like 1/4 the speed without any noise and signal problems. Also note.. anyone running wiring in their house will be happy to know that if they ran CAT-5e, it is good for 1000 Mbits/sec. Unfortunately, CAT-5 (without the "e" - for Enhanced) is most likely only good for 100Mbit/sec. Another bonus about the same CAT5 cable can be used for either phone or ethernet. I know some product which use it for video instead of RG-5 or 6.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11g

[buy_25]

so now I have toworry about my wireless going outside?????? I do not take my laptop outside. For inside a house, wireless is the future as I stated before. Pulling wires is nice it you have time energy etc; but, why. When a $59 linksys can say more time and money. the days of me pulling wires etc are over. Add router, a card in laptop and be off. 10 minutes of pc time of 10 hours of pulling cable. Another problem I see if you pull all this wire and in 5 years, 90% of the wires are outdated. Routers are cheap and so it pc items.

Right now my download is over 6.1 MB on my laptop. My 2 other pc's (mine) are over 8 right now. It is fun to test all three out. Best is seeing which one can burn a DVD the fastest. 8 minutes is my best.

[OregonAlex]

Originally Posted by nixon

That's one of the things I thought about when I had my house built . All the bedrooms and living room were wired for cable and phone in at least two places .
I also ran an extra underground conduit from the utility pole to pull cable /wiring through. Unfortunately ,I didn't think to cover the ends . It's full of Ice,so the cable will have to be rerouted when the conduit thaws Live and learn !

Nixon,
It is cool tat you ran two phone jacks to most rooms.. Have you considered converting one of those jacks in each room to Ethernet? what kind of cable did you use? did you wire to a patch panel or did you make the same mistake I did and ran all the telephone wires in a daisy chain. I ran seperate Ethernet wires in a star fashion, but I guess I should have just ran the telephone the same way too. oh well.

[OregonAlex]

Originally Posted by buy_25

so now I have toworry about my wireless going outside?????? I do not take my laptop outside.

sorry Buy_25.. I was thinking you were commenting on Nixon running "underground" conduit as being too expensive. I guess you don't think that was a bad idea after all.

[OregonAlex]

for me.. I do both wired and wireless.

Wireless,
Inside: if was not smart enough to run an ethernet jack to where I wanted it or if I need to be portable. Most things other then my laptop don't need to be portable. In most cases the wireless connection will be more expensive and slower then a wire.
Outside: If I need to connect two buildings together, like the house and shop(s) and I was not smart enought to dig trench it "right" the first time. Or perhaps you have an outside wifi device like a video camera or a driveway gate. Or perhaps you are being nice and sharing your broadband connections with the neighbors.

Luckly, I did at least this right the first time on this property. From the street.. 1/4 mile to the house and between house and shop (100 ft). Two CAT-5e and 2 RG-6 in each trench.

[buy_25]

Originally Posted by OregonAlex

sorry Buy_25.. I was thinking you were commenting on Nixon running "underground" conduit as being too expensive. I guess you don't think that was a bad idea after all.

no need to be sorry. Anything underground is cool! :)

[bczoom]

John,

What do you think of the phone service?

I'm thinking of putting a phone line on it.

Where does it connect? I hope it's where everything comes into the house as I don't want to back-track through the modem.

Brian