The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Money

July 10, 2007

Area businesses share Internet concerns with Suddenlink execs

Outages, technical support among chief concerns

Amelia A. Pridemore

When Digital Beckley has no Internet service, Mark Wray says that literally shuts down the business.

“When we have an outage, we have to send people home,” the operational manager of the Beaver-based technology firm said. “If we can’t get on the Internet, we can’t work.”

Tuesday afternoon, members of the Beckley-based Entrepreneurship Alliance Inc. and other concerned citizens in the business community met with executives from Suddenlink Communications to discuss their concerns with Suddenlink’s broadband Internet services — or a lack thereof in some cases, they say. The Entrepreneurship Alliance is an initiative of Region 1 Work Force West Virginia.

Wray said that when Suddenlink took over former cable provider Charter Communications, the network switchover was not a smooth one — namely because of outages.

“There were a lot of outages for businesses,” he said. “The worst was close to 18 hours.”

When trying to call technical support for help, he said response time by Suddenlink’s technical support staff was slow — with employees sometimes spending 45 minutes on hold.

“Production time is lost if you have someone on hold for 45 minutes,” he said.

Suddenlink’s services, Wray believes, have improved, but he wants to make sure that trend continues.

Suddenlink purchased Charter Communications’ systems July 1, 2006, said Bruce Kessler, director of Suddenlink’s business services for southeastern West Virginia. Network changeovers began around late November to early December 2006 — and this is when problems occurred.

Kessler and other Suddenlink officials admitted the changeover from Charter Communications has not been smooth — but Suddenlink has made significant investments in West Virginia to iron out the kinks.

“The transition to Suddenlink from Charter was not as smooth as we had hoped it would be,” Kessler said.

Kessler said that when Suddenlink bought Charter, it was like what one sometimes experiences when buying a new car. The car appears to run great — but the buyer then discovers a dirty carburetor or need for new tires. When Suddenlink officials did a “walk through” of Charter’s facilities, upgrades were needed Suddenlink did not initially catch.

Another problem causing outages are the widespread copper wire thefts plaguing other utility companies, Kessler said. People are climbing utility poles and cutting lines believing they are stealing copper — but all they are cutting is fiberoptic cable.

“It’s a widespread problem,” he said.

Suddenlink has now spent about $4.5 million to upgrade West Virginia’s network and equipment, said Steve Whitten, of Suddenlink’s corporate office in Tyler, Texas. New equipment has the ability to expand the network and allow for easy upgrades.

One problem encountered was having too many broadband Internet customers on one “node” — which eventually delivers an IP address to the Internet, Whitten said. This caused slow-downs because there was not enough bandwidth for all customers. Nodes are being split in 75 percent of West Virginia.

Kessler also noted Suddenlink is in the process of hiring more technical support personnel, but those people must be trained before working with the public. Whitten believes the on-hold time for customers has been reduced.

— E-mail:

apridemore@register-herald.com

Text Only
Money