I'm finally back online!

We're in our new home in Laughlin, NV but getting internet and tv has been a nightmare. This is a house built in 2002 in a neighborhood built with street and house cabling installed during construction. Unfortunately, we only have one outfit called Suddenlink as a cable provider at 100 Mbps max and the few other providers (CenturyLink, Viasat, Mohave Broadband, etc.) aren't capable of delivering higher than 7-15 Mbps even though they advertise 25 Mbps.

Since Sept. 2 we've had three installers out here and they were incapable of getting their own Tivo box and modems to communicate with their own system. In the meantime they updated their billing systems nationwide and completely blew up the other systems when they flipped the switch. I started working my way up the corporate ladder so Tuesday the regional QC manager for three states showed up to take a crack at it. Took him two days and over 4 hours on hold with his own company to finally get it done.

Welcome to small town America.

 

I think the original cable company here did and Suddenlink bought up the remnants, inheriting all of the cabling in the ground and homes in the process. Since it wasn't theirs to begin with, they had to find a way to make it all work.

The QC manager was actually pretty excited. Altice bought Suddenlink and has made a commitment to upgrading Laughlin. They put it on him to find the warehouse space for multiple railcar loads of fiber optics already on the way here. With the lack of qualified people out here they figure it will take 2-3 years to pull the lines and get things working. They're shooting for 1 Gbps like they have across the river in Bullhead City.

 

I wouldn't count on them hiring qualified people. Every business around here complains about the inability to find qualified help. Even if they do find someone, the newer generations don't have the work ethic or the "thinking outside the box" problem solving skills of the old-timers. They seem to think simply replacing equipment solves everything when in fact it might need a software or require a maintenance update somewhere else up the line.