‘It was dishonest:’ The families of St. Johns is paying for a network that he says is not working

ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – Families in the newly built neighborhood of St. Johns County is dealing with frequent power outages. It comes from the supplier that they have to pay for, with no option to opt out, according to the residence documents.

This affects approximately 1,000 homes in the Beacon Lake Phase 4 development, built by Dream Finder.

Anthony Danielson said he and his wife paid for their internet upfront, costing more than $450 a year.

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“It’s been unbelievable,” Danielson said. “It’s been down for days, usually the last two and a half months that I’ve been here. I think we’ve had 4 or 5 days of problems.”

Danielson is one of several neighbors who contacted Action News Jax about the network problems. Several families came together and filed a complaint with the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) in August. The company that provides the network, Fast Fiber Homes, receives the complaint.

“The response from it has been normal as usual because we had another problem at the beginning of September,” one neighbor said.

“Working from home has obviously been a hindrance. When we’re in the middle of conference calls, the internet will go down and I’ll be left scrambling,” Danielson said. “I’ve thought about going to a second network provider just to have backup. internet.”

Danielson and other neighbors say there is no opt-out option since it is included in their HOA fees.

The new CEO of Dream Fiber, which operates the Fast Fiber Homes network, apologized in an email to homeowners, saying in part, “The comments you had were unacceptable. ” The message went on to say that Dream Fiber has had a change in CEO duties, and the new CEO is taking this matter seriously.

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The letter went on to say, “The problems you’ve experienced are largely due to fiber outages and equipment malfunctions with AT&T, our carrier partner responsible for the Internet backbone. Beacon Lake. The AT&T fiber service outage is affecting all of our Beacon Lake customers. Additionally, the recent AT&T strike has delayed their ability to dispatch an expert over the weekend, yes. which has caused an unacceptably long recession.”

Neighbors said the network problems started months ago.

The company installed a backup plan over the weekend, using the Space-X satellite, but neighbors said the bandwidth was too slow.

“It was useless,” Danielson said. “College football started, and we had no internet for the weekend.”

Families said they want an opt-out or adjustment for services.

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“We get a message that says, ‘Hey, there’s a problem in your area,’ but nothing more than that,” Danielson said. “It’s not a good explanation as to why.”

We reached out to the Lake Beacon HOA and Fast Fiber Homes on Thursday. We received this response on Friday from Randy Cosby, CEO of Fast Fiber Homes:

As you mentioned in the online article, the outage is directly caused by the failure of the high speed network we receive from the local supplier. (Surprisingly, when these failures occurred, the carrier’s residential customers in this area did not seem to be affected.) We continue to work with AT&T not only to resolve recurring issues with their network but also We have contracted with a second carrier to deliver. another higher connection of the spinal cord. A new circuit is being built and will not only provide a way to maintain the network, but will also increase the potential for future growth.

In the meantime, we have installed a temporary backup connection via satellite, so residents can still get essential internet services even if the fiber goes down again. During the recent outage, we found that the satellite connection was insufficient, so we made some improvements this week to greatly increase the available backup capacity. Work is underway to find some short-term backup connections as well. While we hope there is no other fiber carrier failure, we are doing everything we can to provide reliable, fast internet to the residents of Beacon Lake. We will continue to work with the HOA to ensure that all residents receive the services they pay for, and more. ”

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