Verizon ISP problems [View all]

I've called their tech support 3 times this week. I was told to reverse the router cable. That appeared to help. I was told there was an outage in my area and it would be solved the next morning. They called to notify me, and it was solved. Sort of. Now I'm back to the same old problem.

Each day, the internet works fine from around 5:30 am to 4 pm. At about that 4 pm, usually before, my signal is dropped. Then from 4 til around 10 pm or even later, the signal is dropped every 2 or about 10 minutes. Sometimes I get 15 or even 30 minutes. The DSL light blinks red, the Internet light goes out. Sometimes there is loud erratic static on the phone line. Often the phone line is out of order (no dial tone). I reboot the router frequently. Sometimes it appears to be in good order, but the internet gets no data. Lots of "Server not found" messages, as well as 'insecure connection' messages when it starts to connect. Sometimes I think it involves periods of rain.

Verizon tried to sell me a new router/modem, told me the one I have is too old for software. But no one will explain why it works so well daytime, and so poorly in the evening. I am well along in preparations to ditch the phone and ISP altogether and work around library access one day a week (when I get there). It will mean loss of eBay. But I can't see paying for this service that does not work. I get no credits for outages, just lies. Verizon is simply incompetent.

Or is this net neutrality? Is there no bandwidth for rural end-of-line customers during periods of peak usage?