[Canyon] Century Link hit-speed Internet replies

[jr_rogers at daqsystems.com]

Hi all-

I want to thank all those who replied to our request for feedback on Century Link.  Below are the replies, without the 
names, to preserve privacy. To recap, CL installed an optical fiber up Bridger Canyon in the last year and is now able to offer 
high-speed Internet. The speed depends on the customer’s distance from the fiber (really the “DSLAM” converter). The 
DSLAM bridges the copper wire signals to the fiber. The “last mile” is a customer’s existing copper wire pairs. These wires 
were originally the POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) land line but now with some electronic circuits they are DSL (the 
high-speed Internet). DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line. 

Based on the replies below we had CL install their DSL modem so we now have a lot faster service than we did with Little 
Apple. We are getting 35 Mbps with CL vs. about 5 Mbps with LA. These are download speeds which are more important. 
The upload is also faster but not as dramatic, about 1.7 Mbps vs. ~1 Mbps with LA. Since our Internet is now terrestrial 
cable instead of the LA radios, it should be more reliable. TBD.  The cost is also less, $45/mo vs. $65/mo.

John Rogers
1245 Bridger Hills Dr
406-599-0985

Reply 1:
We are about 4,000 feet from the fiber and get about 15-50 megabits downstream and about 1 megabit up. We actually 
have Little Apple as well and I set up a router to use both. LA gives us about the same downstream, but 5-8 megabits 
upstream for twice the price. And, LA is far less reliable than Century Link; LA has lots of short outages (momentary) and 
has been out for longer periods several times in the last year.

Reply 2:
We have been using the service since it was first introduced in the canyon and have been very satisifed. Speeds are good, 
reliability to date has been a non issue and cost is clearly cheaper the Little Apple. My main concern is customer service if 
we do have an issue. Little apple was great. Don't anticipate same from Century Link

Reply 3:
I am responding to your request for information about our internet.  We currently use Little Apple and while I love upporting 
a local business, I find their product sub par.  We live up Kelly Canyon with a direct view to their dish.  If we play music and 
the kids watch a movie, someone loses out.  In other words, the music will just stop or the movie becomes blotchy.  We 
have the second to highest level they offer ($99/mo). I am curious to hear the responses you get regarding this issue.  I 
would much rather support a small local business vs a large corporation but if the corporate service allows us to do what we 
need, I would definitely consider it.

Reply 4:
We signed up for Century Link as soon as it was available last June. We have had great service with them. Previous to that 
we had ViaSat, Exede. That was good also, but had problems with weather-snow-rain on the satellite dish, have had no 
problems with Century Link. Any other questions you may have feel free to e-mail me. I would be happy to help if I can.

Reply 5:
We are on Kelly Canyon with about a mile and 500 yards of copper from the fiber.  We opted for the two DSL lines and 
pretty consistently have about 17 mbps.  Very reliable.

Reply 6:
We were the very first customers to hook up to the new fiber optic cable for high speed internet (last fall, I believe) with 
Century Link. It’s been like night and day!!  We love it and have had no problems with it.

Reply 7:
Funny John should ask because I’ve been talking twice in the last few days with Century Link about much less-than-
advertised speeds.We subscribed to their fiber optic internet service when it became available last year. Our house is about 
a hundred yards from the fiber optic line along the road. On the whole it’s been fine; certainly far speedier and more reliable 
than the service we had from Little Apple. To be fair, Little Apple’s service is a completely different animal. However, in spite 
of their technology’s drawbacks, their support and responsiveness were vastly superior to what Century Link has ever 
bothered to provide for phone and internet service. Recently we noticed really erratic internet behavior. After 
troubleshooting our house’s wifi and making sure the modem and router had the latest firmware updates, our internet 
speeds were still erratic and often less than half subscription speed. Even after plugging into the modem with an ethernet 
cable for speed checks, I saw download speeds bouncing from <7 to almost 18mbps, but often right around 9 to 11mbps. 
I’d be happy with 15, but when it regularly drops to 5 or 8mbps, there’s a problem.Long story short, I had to insist they put 
a line analyzer for a day or two to track speeds. Of course this won’t happen before next week. I’ll let you know if anything 
comes of this. 

Reply 8
We live in the Ross Peak neighborhood near Bridger Bowl and based on our location the only option we had until the last 
year was Little Apple. We enrolled in their best plan at the time with advertised speed of 12Mbps which cost about $100 per 
month (I think they now offer a plan with slightly faster speed). 

We found that the actual speed varied considerably and rarely reached 12Mbps. In fact, it was often running at 5Mbps. 
When our children were in town and there was heavy internet use it over-taxed the signal and it was slow as molasses. We 
had techs to our house several times and tried various things to improve speed to include moving the satellite dish and the 
speed never improved. The signal went out completely fairly frequently due to technical issues they were experiencing. You 
need an extremely strong signal for it to work well and that will vary based on your location relative to their tower. 

When Century Link was offered in our neighborhood I believe they advertised speeds of 40Mbps. I live a good distance from 
the high fiber optics connection and knew my speed would be slower than advertised due to the “last mile” of the existing 
copper that serviced my neighborhood. I called Century Link fo inquire about the speed I could expect and they said my 
speeds would be slower than those advertised but offered to send a technician to the house to test the speed before I 
signed up for service. The technician determined that the speed coming into my house was 28-30 Mbps which was 
significantly faster than what I was getting from Little Apple and at a lower cost. 

We have found the IPS service from Century Link to be far superior to Little Apple and very consistent. The only issue we 
have experienced is that when the canyon loses power, we lose landline phone and internet service even though we have a 
generator. Apparently Century Link does not have a generator of their own to support their system in our service areas. I 
hope this helps. 

Reply 9
My own experience with Centurylink is mixed. Download speed is good (I think
we get 12-15meg). Upload is more like 1mbps - fine for email, but pretty horrible for sharing large files or video for work. I 
kept my Little Apple link, at slightly reduced speed, and use a bonding router to combine the twolines. (You can get a Cisco 
RV042 on ebay for 20 bucks, or newer onesstarting at 50 or so.) So I get about 20 down and 10 up, with greaterreliability. 
Centurylink did have a multi-hour outage at my location in
September, so I'm glad I had LAT as a backup.