Sigh. There's not much to say that isn't in your tale, but I'll give
you my version ...

Called and signed up for Bresnan's service as soon as I got the
advertising flyer, on 7/27. Got an installation appointment for
Friday, 7/30. The cable installer arrives on time, and appears to
have no problems. He leaves, and says the software installer will be
there "soon." Over two hours later, the software guy gets there.
(This is the only part that's different from yours, since I'm on a
Macintosh -- and the installer didn't even know where to begin!
Wanted to test the floppy drive for some idiotic reason, but of
course iMacs and Powerbooks don't HAVE a floppy drive :) -- so we
moved on. To make a long story short, I basically talked HIM through
the installation, and I ended up leaning over to type things when he
didn't know what to do.) The machine crashed about four times due to
the outdated software install CD, which REPLACED my system components
with OLDER versions, without so much as asking or even notifying me.
I tracked down the problems, and we finally got the AtHome customized
browser up and running. It didn't seem very fast to me, but I didn't
have any diagnostic tools running yet, so I let the installer guy
leave (actually, he said "I have to leave now," and I didn't argue.
One of the first mistakes, I guess.)

As it turns out, once I got a monitoring tool running, I was getting
about 3K/s. Yep, just like you. Frantic, I started reinstalling
everything, thinking I must have 56K modem preferences left over, or
something. But nope, no such luck. After TWO DAYS of
troubleshooting my software, I was at my wits end, so I called
1-888-BRESNAN. Didn't help much on the first try, I basically got NO
answer and not even an admission that there was a problem. So I took
to email. After two emails to a tech rep (Eric Nussear), I finally
got a trouble ticket, which he said would be taken care of "a.s.a.p".
Hmm. I let him off with that. I then waited over THREE MORE DAYS to
see if anyone would do anything. All this time I'm getting about
3-5K/s, and not even a spike above 10.

After three days, I wrote another email, and got basically no
response, so I called the 888 number again, and *finally* got my
ticket upgraded to "priority". Said they would come out the next
morning. Morning rolls around, and around 11 I get a call asking to
schedule an appointment. Well, at least they could schedule for that
afternoon. So, in sum, FIVE DAYS after the initial problems, I
finally had someone show up. He tested the line (it was "fine," he
said), put line filters on and checked the pole (all was "fine"), and
finally replaced the modem with a different brand. While he's still
there, I start downloading a large file. I get 8K/s, with an
occasional spike at around 20K. Woo-hoo! I reluctantly agree, as he
insists, that this is faster (by 2-3K) than it was, so he feels he's
free to leave. Before he leaves, I do manage to ask if I can find
out how many other people are on my node. He says yes, no problem,
he'll submit a request and someone will get back to me "soon."
(Quick update on that: it's been a week, and I've heard not a peep
from anyone. Recent emails are still awaiting responses.)

Okay, so now I have five more days of surfing. This was the best
time, so far -- downloads around 6-8K/s, almost the same as I get
with my 56K modem. (Although I did run some checks, and I actually
can download files FASTER with my 56K connection, because the cable
modem doesn't keep anywhere near a constant rate). I started reading
posts on the athome newsgroups and on comp.dcom.modems.cable, and saw
that a few other people in Madison are complaining, and that Bresnan
has said they're going to upgrade things by the middle of the next
week (meaning NOW, at this point). So I waited. No more phone calls
or emails.

But then, last night as I was downloading a nice large QuickTime
movie --- the connection just STOPS. Can't connect anywhere at all,
with any software. I look at the cable modem, and discover that all
of the lights are flashing rather randomly. Aaarrgh! I try various
things -- unplug the modem, plug it in; follow the manual and reset
to factory settings; everything I can think of -- to no avail. The
"cable" light on the modem just flashes annoyingly at me, reminding
me that there's just no outside connection. I go to bed. In the
morning, with a clear head, there's no difference -- still just a
flashing cable light, and no connections anywhere.

So, this morning at 6:30 a.m., I call the 1-888 number. They have me
run through the same things I had just done (reset, etc.), and agree
that something must be wrong, so they issue a trouble ticket. I ask
how long it will be (once bitten, twice shy, you know). Oh, two days
"or so." ARGH! Two days, and I have NO service whatsoever now.

Well, that's about where I'm at. I did get a call to set up the
appointment, for 36 hours from when I reported the problem. Better
than 2 days, but not by much.

I also wrote another email to tech support, and forwarded a letter
that I had sent to Michelle Rebholz (the Cable Regulatory
Coordinator). This, at least, seemed to elicit a minimal response.
Here's the letter I got in return:

Nancy,

This is Mike DeMarco at Bresnan's headquarter's in NY. Here is our
current situation in Madison:
Excite@Home is in the process of switching to a new backbone network
to address growing demand for its cable modem service, and improve performance speeds that have slowed recently for customers in
Madison, WI.

The reason for the current performance problems is that T1
information lines running from Bresnan's headend to Excite@Home's
regional data center in Chicago are filled to capacity due to
enormous response to the product. Excite@Home is implementing
several solutions to address the issue, short term and long term.

Excite@Home is adding more information lines to augment the
network's existing configuration offering a short-term fix to
improve the speed performance for Bresnan@Home customers in Madison,
WI. In addition DS3 circuits, with even higher capacity have been
ordered. Since the delivery time for these faster circuits is longer
than T1s, the additional T1's were ordered as an interim strategy.

In the meantime, Bresnan is planning to ensure that our customers
are compensated for any inconvenience they experience.

There are many advantages to the Cities we serve and to our
customers by our aggressively introducing the newest products and
most advanced technology. Regrettably there are the problems
inherent in new technology and customer interest far greater than
that imagined by any of us. We will work diligently with all the
companies involved in bringing this exciting service to residents of
Madison in order to provide the quality and dependability available
in our other @Home markets.

@Home is a new and innovative service that is available to a small
percentage of cable customers nationwide. Bresnan is determined to
provide not only a state-of-the-art product, but also a service that
adheres to our traditional high-quality standard. We will keep you
updated on our progress.

This doesn't satisfy me, but it's a start. Somehow, though, I doubt
they'll be "updating" ANYONE on their progress.

So now what? I really appreciate your webpage (I saw a link to it
two days ago, but didn't read it till now, and hadn't even known you
were also in Madison). I am glad to hear that the Cable Regulatory
Coordinator has gotten more than just my complaint. But isn't there
anything else we can do? I was wondering if we should let one of the
local news channels know of the problem. Doesn't 27News have a litte
investigative section? I'm thinking I may write them a letter.

Also, as I'm sure you are aware, there are a number of posters to comp.dcom.modems.cable who are also from Madison and having problems. Mitch Abaza and Aaron Vollrath are the two I've emailed personally.

At this point, I'm giving up for the day. I've struggled long enough
for today, and everytime I even THINK about the cable modem I want to
cry, so ... I'll come back to it tomorrow. (Plus, I really do have
other things, like grad school prelims, to be worrying about...)

Thanks for the webpage. Feel free to post any or all of this letter
on it, as well. And please get in touch if you'd like to talk about
anything. My AtHome address is nthuleen@home.com, but I'm using the
university account now (nthuleen@students.wisc.edu), since it seems
less likely to have whimsical outages.

I really can't believe the headaches that this is causing me. It's
like a nightmare!

Email addresses for Bresnan: Sales@bresnanliink.net or bresnan@home

I applied for an Assistant Network Administrator position with Bresnan @Home way back in February. Dave Snodgrass and I had numerous phone conversations In which we talked about my working there for him. I had an interview, and he made it seem as if I was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I finally went to work there as a f***ing telemarketer with the tantalizing opportunity to migrate into a technical position in a couple of months. Needless to say, I got jerked around constantly, and it never happened, even though Dave was my best friend through it all, if you understand what I'm getting at. The man is great at what he does; what he does is shuffle numbers and blow sunshine up asses. My last week there, I learned quite a bit. I suppose I have a personal axe to grind, so I guess I may as well do it now before I get on to the juicy, really important stuff. First of all, a few, to-remain-nameless managers and cable staff (all men told me by the way) that they had the impression that I knew more than Matt Harlow, and that had I a penis, I probably wouldn't have been a telemarketer. Now, as a woman in the manly world of computer technology, I tend to blow stuff like that off. It is a male-dominated field, and if I had the attitude that I didn't get anywhere or things happened to me because I'm a chick, then I wouldn't be very happy in my chosen career. However, when I have four different people telling me that they thought it was a matter of boys' work versus girls' work, I would be stupid not to notice a little. That being said, I didn't go anywhere with that knowledge, since it's my opinion that I'd rather be cold, starving, and homeless before working for David Snodgrass again. By the way, Matt Harlow, Assistant Network Administrator, got his job, so I was told by a couple of those same cable staff members, the way you were offered one: he and Dave Snodgrass were having a phone conversation about Matt being a beta tester, and he just offered him a job. (This was after my interview, I have to add.) After working with Matt at both SITEL and Bresnan (in fact, I assessed his entrance exam for employment at SITEL and was part of his training staff--BAH!) I think I can say that he couldn't find his ass if he was sitting on his hands. The Network Administrator, Phil Soli, has about a clue and a half more.

Now that all the personal stuff is out of the way, let's get on to business. First of all, this network was thrown together with bubble gum and duct tape from the very beginning. Matt Harlow was hired about two months before Phil Soli arrived on the scene, and when Phil got there, the most he found was Matt's ability to use Bitch-X. Phil had to bust his butt to get as much network as possible up and running. It was the cable staff who put the UBRs together in the head-end. On my initiation tour, Phil pointed out a few pieces of hardware, and then promptly said he didn't know what "those things" were for. (They were routers, by the way, which I pointed out, but it didn't seem as if anyone wanted to pay attention to some telemarketer.) Phil is a whiz-kid when it comes to UNIX/Solaris configurations, but as far as the full capacity of a Network Administrator, he's lacking. And even though he tries, he'll not get much chance to improve... Thanks to Dave Snodgrass, most of Phil's responsibilities have been moved on to management type stuff. Even while I still worked there, Phil wasn't hardly ever able to handle any network issues, because Snodgrass constantly had him in some meeting or other, or on some sales trip, courting high-paying business customers. Just a little tidbit of information: the Bresnan @Home and BresnanLink networks are in the same head-end, are the same network. When initial modem provisioning was occurring, we had to take down BresnanLink in order for the @Home modems to provision properly. (Matt Harlow, who was using the BresnanLink network for personal use at his residence, wasn't happy when that happened, and I distinctly remember him balking at doing so in one of our staff meetings.) This setup in Madison here is like no other setup anywhere else in the @Home family. Typically, Bresnan @Home and BresnanLink are on different networks entirely. Here, they're controlled by RF signal, one set belonging to one network, and a different set belonging to the other network. You can imagine the headache this type of setup can cause. Now, I have no reason to believe this is the case, but here's something to think about... If you had a school or large business using your network, right along with your residential customers, and you had to guarantee service to one of them, which one would you guarantee? Who pays more?

When modems were first being provisioned and installed, the complete incompetence and chaos in that office was astounding. When I first started working there, I was supposed to be calling people who had already called in and who were interested in the service. According to Dave, I was supposed to be making sales about 3 or 4 days after beginning there. (At $5.00 per sale, I was counting on this, since he was only paying me $5.15 per hour. I hadn't worked for minimum wage since I was 14 years old...) What I inherited was a stack of *gasp* paper, over 700 of them, with names of people in the Madison area who wanted service. Most had phone numbers listed or email addresses, but an amazing number did not, and quite a few were duplicates of callers. You wouldn't believe the number of messages I listened to that consisted of, "Hello, I'm interested in being a beta tester for your service, so if you could call me back, I'd appreciate that. *click* " I tried to Zen with the phone line for these persons, but I wasn't ever able to come up with a phone number, try as I might. Or the inevitable, "Yeah, I've already called 5 times today to inquire about your service, and I'd like for someone to call me back." It didn't seem to occur to these people that they were calling based on word-of-mouth advertising, and the reason they hadn't been called back yet was because there was no one there yet to call them.

At any rate, I took all these "leads", as Dave was fond of calling them, home with me and entered them into an Excel spreadsheet in order to get a little organized. Then I had to work with filing paper the whole time I was there. It took them over two and a half weeks to get me a working PC. At that point, Dave, it seemed, had hocked some numbers to his boss with @Home.

We had to start installing modems. Now, at this point, the network doesn't work. There are numerous problems going on, and we had Cisco and Samsung in to take a look at things, along with one outstanding Bresnan guy named Sean. (The @Home guy, Shawn Fisher, was a complete moron. He didn't seem to grasp any of what was going on. In my personal opinion.) None of them seemed to be able to figure out what was going on. That didn't matter to Mr. Snodgrass. We had to install modems. So, I called some people and set up a week-long installation schedule. Unfortunately, most of the time, the modem was not able to be installed because of numerous reasons. The return signal wouldn't work, because we were trying to install on slum-lord lines downtown that were older than my grandma (owned by the slum lords, not the cable company). People would try to be installed into multi-unit housing where they didn't have permission to tell the cable techs to punch holes in the walls. People wanted to have a cable modem installed, but didn't yet have a computer. It was such a headache.

There is something else that has to occur when cable modems are installed. All cable modem residents are installed onto nodes. For example, there is a node on Blair Street, as well as one right in front of Oscar Meyer; there are, of course, many more than those two. These nodes are those green boxes that bring cable to your street. Each node services a certain number of people. All nodes have to go through a certification process in order to transmit data of the Internet type, since they have to be able to carry a certain amount of bandwidth, along with your cable TV service. When Bresnan was trying to get @Home up and running, they contracted out this certification process with an independent company who goes around and certifies nodes, since the task was too large for the number of cable techs available. Well, one of the detail-oriented cable managers at Bresnan was looking through the certification information one day and noticed that all the RF signal read-outs where the same. Since this is virtually an impossibility, he deduced that the contractor had cut some corners. What this meant was that all of those nodes, over 15 of them, if I remember correctly, had to be re-certified. This also meant that all those people I had scheduled for a week of installation had to be rescheduled because they ended up being on nodes that didn't really work. *whew!* Again, not to be deterred, Mr. Snodgrass suggested we go ahead and install anyway to get the practice. (I probably don't have to tell you that Mr. Snodgrass isn't very well liked by the cable technicians and managers at Bresnan. They're the ones who have to try to complete all these impossible tasks.) And so it went for as long as I worked there. Snodgrass was constantly insisting that we "put our cart before our horse" and asking the impossible. I also have to point out that no modems could actually be provisioned for users, regardless of a working node, unless that node was actually entered into the billing system, and it was @Home who ALWAYS dragged their feet on entering this information. Many times, I had a user ready to install on a working, certified, turned up node that passed the cable tech's signal test, but because that node hadn't been entered (a simple matter of data entry), I couldn't provision a modem for that user. ( I should point out here, for those of you who aren't aware, that @Home is a franchise, like McDonald's. Bresnan bought the @Home franchise name to use as its ISP service. So, when I mention Bresnan, I mean Bresnan Communications, and when I mention @Home, I mean the @Home internet service.)

The NIC vendors, AC Computer Exchange and Aurora Computers, don't seem to know a whole lot about the process, either. The purpose of the NIC vendor is to come to the new subscriber’s house after the cable techs have made sure service is possible and install a Network Interface Card and @Home software, and configure the machine if necessary. Very rarely did I feel confident sending these vendors out to users' homes. I, a lowly telemarketer, actually had to offer Macintosh technical support to one of the employees for one of the vendors! Up until MacOS 8.6, OpenTransport had problems using DHCP with some cable modem setups. Even though the fix is amazingly simple, well-documented, and well-known, the NIC vendor didn't have a clue as to how to handle the issue. Now, I use both Macs and PCs, and I have to say that the Mac community gets crapped on at every turn when it comes to competence. They aren't any harder to work on than a PC, but most contracting companies, the two Bresnan uses included, don't care to learn anything about them. When I worked there, I voiced my concern over this. Madison has a very high Mac user population, and not having a competent staff on hand to handle Mac support issues is a big deal and would isolate many people. Again, my concerns seemed to fall on deaf ears. I found that not only could the NIC vendors not install the software correctly or configure it correctly on a Mac, but they also had problems with the PC.

One vendor called for help one day, aghast that every time he launched Outlook Express, the Dial-Up Networking Wizard would also launch. He didn't know what to do. Now, I consider myself pretty technically proficient, but even if I weren't I think I could figure out that when I am using a cable modem, I'm not using dial-up at all, so there should be no need for Dial-Up Networking. There's a little check box that says something to the effect of "I already have a connection, bozos, and don't want to make any changes." Seems pretty simple, but there you go.

Now that I've completely ranted on all the short-comings of Bresnan @Home, for personal and non-personal reasons, I feel I should also talk about a few positive things I've noticed and believe about the service. First of all, not everyone at Bresnan @Home is incompetent. Having done technical support for an ISP for 2 years, I know that many of the questions people tend to ask when they call technical support are not questions the people who answer the phones can answer. The people who answer the phones when you call technical support are in Bay City, Michigan, while the head-end for Madison is in Madison. The network people here in Madison don't seem to know what's going on with the network, so why should the people in Bay City. Also, again from experience, people on the phones aren't always told for various public relations reasons. Technical support people, by virtue of being human, inevitably don't always say the right things and can give out the wrong impression to already frustrated customers. I also noticed that one of the readers, Nancy Thurleen, wanted to know how many people were on in her area. Sorry, Nancy, but you don't have the right to that information. There isn't an ISP in existence that will give you that information, since it's proprietary information solely for business purposes. If they give it to you, then a competitor could also get that information, and that's not good for business.

There is a guy who works in Bay City named Dwayne Bivens, and he is just awesome. I have had a multiple IP problem since I've had my modem, and Dwayne has worked pretty hard on getting it resolved. (I haven't been able to use my second IP at all since I've had the service, due to a hardware flag inside the modem which doesn't allow the second IP to be recognized.)

Although it's taken a long time to get any sort of response, I fully believe that Dwayne has done everything he can to resolve this issue for me. I've also received credit due to non-usability of my service, but I'm sure that is determined on a case by case basis. All in all, my service has been great. My speeds are excellent. Recently, my modem has been losing its signal, but every network experiences some difficulties; no network can be functional all of the time. Granted, problems typically don't arise this early in the game, but since I'm getting the same bandwidth that costs others up to $1000.00 per month (T1 access in some areas and some packages),

I'm not going to complain about that a great deal. I also have to give major kudos to Bresnan @Home for making the decision to stop installing new customers until they have enough bandwidth to carry them. Do you realize how much money they're losing by making such a decision? But, the important thing is that they're trying to keep happy their existing customers. Putting into place "emergency T1s" was about all they could do, by the way. I know that there is at least one OC48 on order, which is an amazing amount of bandwidth, but the problem resides in Chicago. Chicago isn't relinquishing any more pipes for quite some time, and they're pretty backed up for requests. So, while there may be bandwidth issues, keep in mind that some of those issues can't be helped by the Bresnan @Home people. If Chicago won't make any more pipes available, it's hard to push people through the limited amount of bandwidth we already have, and I think it's great that Bresnan made the decision to keep their existing customers up and running as much as possible before signing anyone else up. Also, The Cable Company ain't as bad as all that. While in my brief, torturous stint working for Dave Snodgrass, I met some mighty fine people. Dan Wolfgram works hard and is willing to learn whatever is necessary to get the job done. Jamie Hanson, who is a cable technician, is damned computer literate, and truth be known, can answer a hell of a lot more questions than the NIC vendors Mr. Snodgrass picked out to send to people's homes. Jamie is also very concerned with making sure the cable works properly before leaving the job; he has a great sense of humor, as well. A couple of the managers back at the head-end are also detail-oriented and are extremely interested in making sure the job gets done right the first time. If one of them hadn't noticed that the certified nodes hadn't really been certified at all, just because he was paying attention to detail and working hard to make sure it was done correctly, it's possible that no one would have a modem at all right now. A couple of others pulled cable techs right out of thin air in order to meet the impossible installation schedules Dave Snodgrass insisted on keeping; again, without these people, none of us would have a modem at all. Even the man who is responsible solely for training cable technicians, and who isn't supposed to really be out working at all on such things when he's not training a new employee, was out in the trenches, working to get nodes up and running and modems installed. The main bottleneck in quality service seems to be David Snodgrass, General Manager for the Madison Bresnan @Home network, because he's more concerned with how his numbers make him look to his boss than listening to what anyone is telling him about the service, Phil Soli, Network Administrator, either because of Mr. Snodgrass' doing or his own is simply not completely qualified to run a network the magnitude of the one here in Madison, and Matt Harlow, Assistant Network Administrator, because he's more likely to be seen talking to his wife on his cell phone than working on the network, and because he's dumb. If those people weren't in the way, Madison's @Home network would work.

* Research the market before going into it.
* Plan in advance to EXCEED demand, and not to react to it.
* Budget enough to hire qualified personnel.

This is largely anecdotal evidence of Bresnan's suckiness -- I don't have any direct experience with Bresnan's cable service 'cuz I'm out in the boonies where our only real option for a decent Internet connection is via DSL.

My roommate's parents hooked up with Bresnan a few weeks ago and have had nothing but crappy experiences, exacerbated by being unable to get ahold of (decent) tech support. (If I have the story right, Bresnan's tech dorks spent a *few days* trying to fix a problem that turned out to be an incorrect mail server setting in Eudora.) They've been getting a pretty good connect speed but today their service was interrupted completely. So they called me (roomie's out of town) to get my opinion on DSL.

I strongly recommended going the DSL route -- it's been running pretty much flawlessly aside from a couple minor issues (like some nasty static on the voice "side" of the line). Our transfer speed never drops below 30K/sec -- I just finished downloading 100MB, average speed 45K/sec.

So, DSL's a bit more expensive than cable but if Bresnan sucks as much as this site indicates I'd say it's definitely worth making the switch. In Madison be prepared to wait 4 - 6 weeks for your line (thanks, Ameritech!),

and you might want to consider getting a separate voice line.

Down with monopolistic enterprise!