Is downtime normal in your opinion? I never get ''random'' downtime on cable, except sometimes 10-30 mins in the middle of the night on announced maintenance once per 2-3 months...
No, but if my livelihood depended on it then I would prepare for it.
I don't have a business myself but work for a boss, but yeah, business connection over cable is available @ 500/50mbit here, exact same infrastructure as my home connection though.
Not uncommon to see the same infrastructure used, the difference is with a business package (in the UK at least) I'd be expecting some sort of SLA and better support than you get on mainstream consumer packages here. It's really, really difficult to explain just how bad mainstream ISP support is in the UK, it's only really with niche providers that I've felt I could quickly speak to someone who could understand the problems.
Aye, no UPS at home, though multiple mobile devices with batteries (lappy's, tablets, phones) that would go a long way in case of power outage.
Problem with no electric is it can impact your whole life - potentially heating, cooking, lighting, powering domestic appliances etc. For me it is way, way more important than fixed line internet. Sure, I can use candles for lighting, wrap up warm, buy food every day rather than refrigerating, visit a laundrette etc for a short while but it isn't sustainable.
That is appalling tbh, how can they get away with 30 disconnects per day?
Thankfully it is rarely that bad, but the local situation is a nightmare. For part of the town, the only service you can get is ADSL (no cable or fibre) so you cannot change the infrastructure being used no matter what ISP you go with. After months of woe, a meeting for residents was finally scheduled with some middle-management people from BT (who provide the infrastructure) and replacement equipment installed at the exchange, but further issues were found and they are testing changes out with small numbers of users.
On consumer connections they don't really have any SLA to speak of, just some vague "we will endeavour to provide a service and resolve problems bla bla bla", and their tech support is abysmal, even getting them to acknowledge a problem can be difficult enough. They never know about the ongoing issues so send out engineers to visit properties, but the engineers all know it is a waste of time because they've seen it dozens of times before. It's so frustrating phoning up because you know you will have to spend 30mins running pointless tests, being asked irrelevant questions, explaining the issue for the 834th time. It's like a really unfunny version of Groundhog Day.
This is just part of the problems, some people can't even get a phone/broadband connection installed for weeks/months because of capacity issues, e.g. a cab is fibre enabled but full so no more fibre connections can be made until someone cancels their service.
The whole thing is an absolute shambles, you would think we live in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere but it is all modern suburban housing of affluent people who want better internet, BT can get away with whatever they want here because for half the town they have a monopoly.
A while ago I complained about a few lost packets once every couple of days (24/7 ping test)
When I tell tech support I have packet loss, they don't even know what it is half the time "your download speeds are slow?!?" "can you try turning it off and on again". It's literally like banging your head against a brick wall except at least after 100 times a brick wall usually falls over and your problem goes away.
But, I digress a bit from the topic with this rant
