Afn-Ashland Fiber Network

Good… when it works. A black hole of small town unresponsiveness when it doesn’t.
I relocated my family here from the SF Bay Area 13 years ago to raise our daughter. Since I work as an independent software developer for clients across the country, my work is done over the Internet. Given that, a strong and reliable connection to the Internet is a must.
Ashland’s fiber optic network was a very large factor in bringing my family to Ashland and I am aware that it is a large factor drawing others both in my business as well as many in the movie industry.
Had I known 13 years ago what I know now, I would not have given as much weight to the «state of the art fiber optic network». It is not as reliable as it should be.
Today my service went down a little after noon. Being on a deadline, I immediately called in to my ISP which interfaces with AFN (all of the local ISPs do) and was told they knew of an outage but it was downtown, not in my area at the south end of town. I was told I would get a call back.
Between 3:30 — 4:00pm my ISP called to say that AFN said they fixed the problem. Maybe for the folks downtown, but not for me. They called AFN back to be told that they fixed the main problem and don’t have time for me today. I’m supposed to get a call in the morning. This puts me out of business for half a day. Gee, thanks AFN. I wish I could say it’s the only time it has happened.
Update: The cause of this disconnect turned out to be cockpit error. I caused the disconnect and it took the AFN tech less than a minute to figure it out. So yes, I’m embarrassed but it doesn’t change my gripe with AFN in the least —
1. There is no way for the end user to contact AFN directly — you *have* to go through your ISP (who may run a ²⁴⁄₇ shop but it doesn’t matter because -)
2. AFN runs an 8 – 5 shop with no way for the end user to request emergency overtime services.