Very slow DSL in Redondo Beach, CA

[buggsy1]

I'm posting on behalf of a friend whose English is not too good.

They live in Redondo Beach, California (near Los Angeles). They pay $17.99/month for Verizon "High Speed Internet" (nominal bandwidth not known to me). The measured bandwidth, using OOKLA Speedtest and SpeedSpot on an iPhone, is 1.0 Mb/s or slower down, 0.58 or slower Mb/s up.

This isn't "High Speed" by my definition and just trying to access the internet with this is painful. Their router is supplied by Verizon and I'm pretty sure that's not the bottleneck (I did turn it off/on to reset it). The friend has had Verizon techs out there more than once and they don't find anything wrong.

My questions for the Forum are:

1) Is this normal speed in that area for Verizon DSL? I live in N. California and we get far better speed than that with AT&T U-Verse.

2) Is there another Verizon Internet service they could use for faster speed?

3) Would AT&T do better there? I'm not sure because I got online to AT&T's website while there, and it said they couldn't provide U-Verse to the address, which makes me think their POTS infrastructure is bad.

Any insight you can provide is welcome.

[smith6612 · Accepted solution]

If they are paying for "High Speed Internet" and not "High Speed Internet Enhanced" then the speeds they are getting are actually correct. Anything higher than 1Mbps down would be supplied by the Enhanced package, which gives something between 1.1Mbps to 15Mbps. Or, the FIOS service should it be available, will provide at minimum 25Mbps/25Mbps.

Generally, if Verizon is the local telephone provider, AT&T will be unable to provide U-Verse. U-Verse is available along with Verizon services in the rare over-build areas, or in areas where AT&T is the ILEC.

Also note that Verizon DSL and U-Verse are mutually different technologies. While both operate on DSL, Verizon DSL uses ADSL to ADSL2+, whereas U-Verse is VDSL and VDSL2. ADSL is significantly slower and carries less data over the same copper than VDSL, however ADSL can run over longer copper lengths than VDSL.

[buggsy1]

Their bill they showed me doesn't say "enhanced" so I guess they're getting what they pay for. I'll pass on your suggestions about Enhanced and FIOS.

[smith6612]

Sounds good. Let us know if you need any more information.

[buggsy1]

My friend called Verizon to get a faster service. However, they told him they can't provide it! Seems strange, could this be true they can't do better than basic internet (1 Mb/s) near Los Angeles? Or maybe my friend didn't understand correctly?

[smith6612]

That could be from capacity issues, stop sell orders on Verizon's end, distance, or database issues. It's hard to say without having some more information at hand, such as the modem Transceiver statistics.