June 20, 2008 Holbrook, AZ USA The CableOne internet only service with leased cable modem is an affordable thirty-five some dollars per month. That's Much, Much less expensive than what the local telephone company sells it's DSL basic telephone service for. (I did have DSL previously with phone and voice messaging service.) It's interesting to note that CableOne obtains it's internet connectivity from the local phone company. You get what you pay for. This CableOne service is great when it works. When it doesn't work, don't expect the company to know what the hell is going on. The tech folks apparently do not communicate with the network operations center staff and the network operations center staff apparently do not communicate with help desk operators, And no one communicates with the customers -a marked contrast from the telephone company's mode of operation. (Gee! Was that a run-on sentance?) Perhaps I've been spoiled by the likes of Qwest (what a stupid name for a company) and Frontier Communications which offer network status web pages with schedules for maintenance, outages, and etc. CableOne has none of that from what I can tell. I'm left with the distinct impression that the company does maintenance whenever they damn well please without any communication with the customers or with their very own help desk operators. I subscribed to the service in December of 2007. Since that time there have been four unannounced outages that I've noticed. The most recent was for a half hour this evening. One of the four outages was due to a moron who drove over a telco junction box -draging a fair amout of cable along with him. That was a hit (the phone box) and run incident -obviously beyond the control of the cable company. From my experience, CableOne has good customer service oriented installers and help desk operators. What the company Lacks and Desperately Needs is C O M M U N I C A T I O N -both internally and especially Externally. There needs to be an internal network status web site and proactive email communication with customers regarding planned and unexpected network outages. The lack of internal communication Must be addressed. The network operations center people need to know what the hell is going on with their network and they need to communicate that information to their help desk support people as well as posting the information to a network status web site where customers can have the option of receiving automated status email messages. Regarding the leased modems (mine is called a Motorola Surfboard) the customers are provided no means of configuring the device. That includes setting the correct date and time. Yes, CableOne, we are no longer in the year 19frickin70. Get a clue. What I'm bothered by today is that, after this latest outage, the IP address obtained by my computer is way outside of the DHCP range the modem is supposed to provide. I don't know where the hell this IP address is coming from. I feel sorry for all the other users who have installed routers behind their crappy cable modems. Good luck getting your configurations straight. It should be noted that CableOne Does allow customers to provide their own modems from a select group of approved modems. It's difficult to commit to making the purchase though when the service is so spotty that I'm not sure whether or not I will remain a customer. Have a nice day. (I began working professionally in the information technology field in 1994. Since that time, I've had a total of seven years away from that field. I currently work within it. Perhaps that will qualify my sentiments somewhat for your sake, dear reader.)