Suddenlink … you’re connected?

Suddenlink rep says new upgrade will fix the holiday blues.

According to Suddenlink Vice President of Operations Dan Spoelman, Suddenlink has just completed an upgrade that will ensure Mammoth never again suffers the slow Internet speeds it did over the Christmas holiday.

Spoelman offered the Planning and Economic Development Commission (PEDC) a presentation on Suddenlink’s efforts following that crisis, in which some business’ digital phone lines crashed, and many businesses’ and residents’ Internet slowed to pre-Digital 395 speeds.

For instance, during the holidays, 1849 Condos Manager Cheryl Witherill reported that the average downloading speed at the condo complex was .18 megabytes. St. Anton Condos, also near Canyon, was downloading at 1 or 2 megabytes when they are paying for 15, according to Manager Connie Bromby.

At that time, Witherill said she spoke with Suddenlink Regional Manager Jason Oelkers. She said he told her that the issues are neighborhood specific, the area near Canyon Lodge experiencing the most difficulties.

Suddenlink acquired former Mammoth Internet provider NPG cable in 2010. In 2013, after Digital 395 reached Mammoth, Suddenlink began taking on new customers, guaranteeing 15-megabyte service (up from 1.5 megabytes). According to resident John Stavlo in a January 2015 letter the editor, Suddenlink oversold its services, and town experienced a drop in download speeds below .5 megabytes during the Christmas holidays of 2013.

Suddenlink updated its equipment in March of 2014 to quadruple its capacity, but according to Oelkers’ reports, there was 160 percent growth in data use over the previous year

Stavlo urged Suddenlink customers to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Gregg Vane (the writer’s dad) followed that advice.

According to Gregg Vane, about two weeks after filing a complaint online, he received a phone call from a Suddenlink representative. He said the representative apologized for service issues and offered credit for the full month of December.

“She said, ‘We had absolutely no idea that there were going to be so many people in Mammoth. We took over an aging system, updated it, but that update was clearly not adequate.’”

Vane said he expressed his surprise that Suddenlink hadn’t anticipated the peak demand over Christmas, considering Mammoth’s status as a world-renowned skiing destination.

“She said they screwed up,” he said. She also told him Suddenlink had put a short-term plan in motion to fix the holiday service issues. Spoelman elaborated on that plan before Planning Commissioners on Wednesday.

“We all recognize that recently during the holiday week there were some congestion issues,” he said. “We believe we have a solution in place that was introduced on March 6 [this year].”

That solution is an expedited $415,000 cable modem termination systems (CMTS) upgrade, which will give customers with 15 megabyte accounts a bump to 50 megabytes; customers with 50 a bump to 75, and will introduce speeds of 100-150 megabytes by April of this year.

Despite this news, Commission Chair Mickey Brown wondered if Suddenlink had accounted not only for the growth in users from about 8,000 to 35,000 during the holidays, but also for the increase in demand for streaming services.

“I don’t know it we can stand here and say we’re never going to have congestion again,” Spoelman said. “Like a lot of businesses in town … we can’t design to peak use without risking some kind of business continuity.”

Spoelman said that the CMTS upgrade was in place as of President’s Weekend, and on Saturday of that weekend, the upgrade performed “without any congestion at all.”

Spoelman also said that Suddenlink could address bandwidth issues on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, by splitting fiber nodes in two, doubling capacity.

Mono County IT Director Nate Greenberg said he believed Suddenlink’s expedited CMTS upgrade “indicates willingness to maintain certain levels of service in the community.”

He too expressed concern that an increase in bandwidth to 150 megabytes would in turn encourage greater demand from residents and visitors, which might again slow the system to pre-Digital 395 speeds.

Spoelman said Suddenlink is actively studying the relation between bandwidth increase and utilization, and has seen a four to five percent increase of utilization on average as Internet speeds increase.

The challenges faced by Mammoth are part of a larger trend, Spoelman said. “I can assure you that right now we’re looking at not just this particular market,” he said. “Consumers’ bandwidth consumption has grown in leaps and bounds.”

Greenberg also wondered whether Suddenlink would not only advertise a higher ceiling for bandwidth, but also establish “some artificial floor that customers can expect. If you go to 150 megs, and have a capacity issue again, will the floor still be 1.5, or 15?” he asked.

Spoelman claimed that when speeds increase, session rates (meaning duration of use) decreases, and that this means customers won’t ever again get as low as 1.5 megs in bandwidth during peak periods.

But, he added, one of the reasons Suddenlink moved so quickly to complete the CMTS upgrade for President’s Weekend is “to get a better view of what happens when a community has additional folks coming in.”

“Right now, we think we’re in good shape,” he said. “We’re confident we have met the needs of the community.”

Gregg Vane disagreed, however. He said he received a letter two weeks ago from the Vice President of Suddenlink to the FCC in regards to his complaint. “It was a one-page letter that said their representative had spoken with the customer and waived the December payment, that they are working hard to upgrade the system, and to consider the case closed.”

Vane said he plans to pen his own letter in response, noting that Suddenlink did not address how it plans to support the large, sustained demand over holiday weekends, particularly as visitors tap into the system with more devices.

He said he also plans to inform the FCC that problems with his Internet in the Mammoth Knolls persisted through last weekend (March 7-8). “I had to reboot my wireless three to four times per day,” he said, “and this was not even a peak weekend.”