The number of Americans who have broadband internet service in their home has grown from eight million in 2000 to about 200 million. Yet, millions still don't have it and one local man who does says it's not nearly as fast as it should be. So, he contacted Local 12 Troubleshooter Howard Ain for help.
Broadband internet is very valuable these days. Many, such as Larry Meeker of Sardinia, use it to run a business out of their home. But, he says, his internet connection has been getting worse for the last year.
"Back around April of last year we started having sporadic problems with the internet." He contacted his internet provider, Frontier Communications, but:"It got so bad this fall when winter started coming you couldn't use the internet at all. You would go of line every ten minutes. The speed we used to have had went down to nothing. I had speeds that was like dial up when I used to have my old dial up connection."
But Frontier told him it will cost a lot of money for the company to upgrade. Finally, Meeker threatened to file complaints with the state and me and then did so. Although I had yet to contact Frontier, it started making repairs. "Suddenly two days after your office called me and wanted to come out and do an interview the phone company called me. they told me that everything had been approved."
Meeker says it used to take 10 to 15 seconds for an internet page to load up. Now he says its going much faster. "I'm very happy that it's so easy to contact Channel 12 News and Howard Ain and know that somebody's going to at least call you and if there is a problem they're going to check it out and investigate it."
A spokesman for Frontier Communications tells me it bought Verizon's Ohio landline assets a year and a half ago and has since installed more than $90 million in upgrades. Frontier is seeing many more people using broadband internet in the Sardinia area and that's what's causing the problems Meeker is experiencing. But the company says the upgrade of new, larger circuits will be completed by the first week of February. It will help hundreds of customers by providing a faster, more constant speed, especially during peak hours.
