Customers sue Windstream to get higher broadband speeds

A number of Windstream's clients in the state of Alabama aren't glad about the wireline DSL tech that they are getting from Windstream, and they are suing the company in the hopes the company will respond by upgrading its wireline infrastructure, hoping for a better internet connection informed by Fiercetelecom.

In St. Clair County, a group of lawyers are collaborating with the goal of motivating Windstream to upgrade the networks in these areas. A number of users have reported they can't even get 1 Mbps DSL speeds.

Michael Teague, a Windstream spokesman, told St. Clair News-Aegis that the lines in the area were never upgraded with next-gen technology such as ADSL2+ or VDSL2 because of the belief that more consumers would just use their mobile devices as the primary means to get Internet services. Being a wireline-centric provider itself, Windstream invested on the 4G LTE boom by building out fiber to cell towers (FTTT) in its service area to provide wireless backhaul services.

What changed in the home was the advent Wi-Fi and the growing consumer demand for streaming video services. 

"Industry-wide, we found people still want that broadband delivered to their homes so they can stream multiple devices wirelessly," said Teague. "It created a kind of shift in the thinking, and it's come back around."

With much of the fiber-to-the-tower (FTTT) projects completed, Windstream's new President and CEO Tony Thomas is already moving to improve the company's broadband status.  

Teague said that the telco has completed 15 network improvement projects in St. Clair County since January 2014, and the company has 32 more upgrades planned by the end of the year, "barring any unforeseen circumstances." 

                        Source: Broadband Communities

Thomas told investors during the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in May it will launch 1 Gbps service over a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network in one market this year, with the potential to reach five. To reach that goal it would leverage existing fiber it had installed in newer housing developments in its territory.

Source: Fiercetelecom