Scheduled maintenance notifications

[madbrain]

Is there any way to get notified of scheduled maintenance notification ahead of time ?

Comcast has frequently been doing scheduled maintenance late at night, without doing any advance notification. I have had many video streams interrupted, and had to go outside to make a call to their support, only to find out they were doing "scheduled maintenance". Every time I waste time on the phone asking for a bill credit. I have asked them repeatedly over the years to notify me in these cases, and they claim they will, but they never do. This problem is one of my main reasons for trying to ditch Comcast. I'm doing a free trial of the 5G Home Internet basic service.

Does Verizon have any mechanism one can sign up to get these notifications  on the 5G Home Internet service ?

[vzw_customer_support]

@madbrain  wrote: Is there any way to get notified of scheduled maintenance notification ahead of time ? Comcast has frequently been doing scheduled maintenance late at night, without doing any advance notification. I have had many video streams interrupted, and had to go outside to make a call to their support, only to find out they were doing "scheduled maintenance". Every time I waste time on the phone asking fo r a bill credit. I have asked them repeatedly over the years to notify me in these cases, and they claim they will, but they never do. This problem is one of my main reasons for trying to ditch Comcast. I'm doing a free trial of the 5G Home Internet basic service. Does Verizon have any mechanism one can sign up to get these notifications  on the 5G Home Internet service ?

Thanks for giving our 5G Home Internet a try, madbrain. I know how disruptive those type of interuptions can be, and I rely on my home internet to have nearly 100% uptime myself. The great news is that since the same service that powers your 5G Home Internet is the same same service that keeps your cellphone connected, there really isn't any scheduled maintanence that would knock you offline like that. You can always be alerted of any ongoing issues by signing in to My Verizon to check for alerts in your area.

-Joseph

[madbrain]

Thanks, Joseph ! Cell networks do go down around here when there are extended power outages, but this is obviously not planned. It happens when dummies drive into power poles and knock them down. Unfortunately at least once a year. Even happened on Xmas eve once.

The peak speeds on the 5G Home internet service are as advertised at up to 100 Mbps down / 12 up, but I find that they dip sometimes to much lower levels, as low as 10 / 5, which is probably due to network congestion. It would make a great backup service for a faster primary ISP. Comcast has been charging $110/month for 1200 / 200 service which is obviously much faster, but comes with some outages, ie. drops to 0 / 0. I'm looking to break the contract. My Comcast gateway also died last Friday 😉 Sail internet (fixed wireless antenna on my roof) is getting about 250 / 30 speeds for $55/month or , but also has some dips occasionally like Verizon 5G, though not nearly as low as 10 / 5. Sail has also not been 100% reliable, except the few minutes of outages here and there weren't scheduled and so far unexplained. I'm also on free trial with Sail right now.

It looks like my best bet is to keep Sail as primary ISP, and Verizon 5G Home internet as backup. My pfSense router can do,load-bancing and failover. In fact it's already setup for both right now with Sail and Verizon. Which means I get aggregate speeds of both ISPs if they are both up.

That ISP combo will be more reliable than Comcast, but at lower speeds, and only $5 less cost ($55 for Sail + $50 for Verizon 5G) with autopay discount. I'm not eligible for the Mobile + Home discount as we use an MVNO for our smartphones, US Mobile. Currently we are using their GSM 5G on T-mobile networks, but will be switching to their Warp 5G service to use Verizon network, now that Verizon upgraded the towers in our area. If I was eligible for the $15 Mobile + home discount, it would be a no-brainer to keep both Sail and Verizon.