Moved further from the switching office, now service is slow..now what?

[Toobusy]

My daughter moved from in town (town of 4,000 people) which was right near the Verizon switching office to 3 miles away.  Now the High Speed Internet Enhanced DSL is so slow, they can barely stream a movie. It continuously buffers.  They have 2 smartphones, 2 laptops and stream movies.    When they lived closer to the switching office, they had great internet speeds.

When the installer came, he said their outside line needed to be replaced.  He then took their excess lines, rolled it up and stuck it on the fence.  It's coiled up and just hanging off the chain link fence.  They thought he was coming back to replace the line (underground) but he never came back.

So, is there anything that can be done when you move further away from the switching office and your speeds slow down like that?   They have considered switching to Suddenlink but with their new data caps, no way.  Also, Suddenlink is more  than Verizon.   They love Verizon but this service is unacceptable.   They pay for 1.3 - 3 mbps but are lucky to get 1.2 mbps..I've seen it say .7 while a movie is buffering.  They don't offer the higher tier here so we can't just move up a tier for better service.

 If Verizon replaced the line, would that make any difference or is it still all about the distance?  If Verizon were to come out and replace the outside line, does my daughter have to pay for that?   Any thoughts???

[Telcoguru]

DSL works to 18,000ft give or take. Just over 3 miles is the limit that it works at. The nature of DSL is the further away from the Central Office the lower the speed. The 3Mbp sevice works to around 12-13,000ft so she is to far to get that service any longer.

[gs0b]

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@Toobusy wrote:

If Verizon replaced the line, would that make any difference or is it still all about the distance?  If Verizon were to come out and replace the outside line, does my daughter have to pay for that?   Any thoughts???

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In short, with DSL it's all about the distance.  If it's a very large coil of wire, that may be contributing to the mess, but it's unlikely.  Note that the path the line takes from a home to a central office may be much longer than how you'd fly, walk, or drive there.

The other issue could be a wire pair that is in poor condition somewhere along the path.  Switching pairs may help if that is the case.  However, you still can't overcome distance.

Good Luck.

[smith6612]

If Verizon comes out to replace the line, anything from the NID attached somewhere to the home back to the central offices' switching gear is covered by Verizon. It's the inside wiring that your daughter will be charged for if the tech does any sort of significant work to it.

I would also find out if your daughter's address is being virtually served, or in other words is coming out of an RT. Sometimes, DSL service is not possible out of a CO due to distance or trunk capacity, and Verizon will place circuits onto Remote Terminals instead. If she's coming out of an RT, there could be a few things up besides poor line quality, especially if the RT is old or is in a rural area.