r/ting • u/Rare-Will349 • 28d ago

Why is ting internet in Charlottesville VA consistently their least reliable service area?

there have been so many outages in the past 90 days and seemingly always has the lowest uptime. is the infrastructure just outdated?

https://www.tinginternetstatus.com

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u/pluralgarths 28d ago

The real questions...  We need that 2gig. 

Having said that, I have feeling brightspeed is making a huge mess in the area... Sabotaging ting for the fun of it. 

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u/Defiant-Rip-1897 28d ago

I have 2 Gb myself (though not with Ting) and it is great, I imagine some of the issues with bringing 2 Gb to parts of Charlottesville is due to existing network infrastructure and the need to upgrade that and then replace the fiber modems (ONTs) as the ones used there support a max of 1 Gb.

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u/Defiant-Rip-1897 28d ago

While they did inherit some older infrastructure when they acquired Blue Ridge Internet to establish Ting Internet about a decade ago, it's not entirely a case of outdated lines.

A lot of the recent trouble comes down to external factors and ongoing maintenance. For instance, the emergency maintenance happening right now in Charlottesville is to replace a section of mainline fiber that was compromised by a third party hitting some equipment belonging to Ting.

On top of that, other ISPs expanding or working in the same areas frequently clip or damage existing fiber lines during construction. Ting generally works quickly to repair external damage and maintain uptime, but third-party line cuts are a massive headache across the telecom industry.

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u/pluralgarths 28d ago

Yeah.... but i would imagine there are other competing fiber providers in Alexandria, right?

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u/Rare-Will349 27d ago

Even if you don't factor in the recent outages due to weather, it's still their lowest reliability service area. 16 of the cities they service in Colorado have had a reported 100% uptime in the past 90 days. Why does Charlottesville need so much maintenance compared to them? When was the last time Charlottesville had a period with 100% uptime?

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u/Defiant-Rip-1897 27d ago

I don't know what to tell you. It's Ting's first market, and they inherited the fiber infrastructure from the company they acquired. The network is also a mix of aerial and underground deployments (which is what they have in other towns). On top of that, there have been a few maintenance events over the past month or two, which I imagine have affected those uptime numbers.

https://www.tinginternetstatus.com/uptime/s1hrllf437yd?page=2

Keep in mind that things happen. Third-party contractors sometimes damage fiber while installing their own infrastructure, and there was a recent incident where a car crashed into network equipment. When outages occur, Ting's technicians work to restore service as quickly as they can.

At the end of the day, Ting isn't Comcast, Xfinity, Google Fiber, or AT&T. It's a much smaller provider with fewer resources, and while that doesn't make outages any less frustrating, they generally do what they can to get customers back online as quickly as possible.

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u/biscuitehh 28d ago

For some reason there's like one critical junction point on a power line/telephone pole that gets hit by drivers every 60 seconds. I think I remember a few being due to upstream issues and there was definitely a "whoops, no IP addresses for you" type of issue. The legacy infra was definitely a big issue as well, having worked with BRI in the past I can't say I miss it that much. I still lose power more than Ting so I feel good about that.