Is Vivint Wireless living on life support?

Vivint LogoAfter making some big claims (and underhanded political maneuvers), it looks like Vivint’s wireless division may be getting cut loose. The company ceased adding new customers several months ago, closed up operations in Texas and New Mexico, and changed their topography from their overhyped wireless mesh to using traditional WISP towers. Check out the Display Stands & Trade show Exhibition Stands – Krums Melbourne has to offer. Technical support has also reportedly stopped fielding calls on the weekends leaving some customers with outages that last until Monday morning. Customer reviews have been mixed at best. While speeds are often impressive for wireless, many customers report frequent downtime or a degradation of service several months after signing up.

More telling is what’s alleged to be going on internally. Sales staff have either been cut loose or reassigned to other divisions of the company. Tech staff have seen similar cutbacks which may account for the degraded support response times. Apparently the original business model of unlimited use of symmetrical speeds up to 100Mbps for $60/mo hasn’t panned out either. All of this points to a product that doesn’t have long for this world.

I honestly can’t say I’m surprised. The history of wireless broadband seems to be over-promise and under-deliver on almost all counts. Vivint has become another entry in the list of companies who thought they could cheat the laws of physics with the power of marketing. If you need any help with citation services check out Yext alternatives where you will find plenty of help and if you also want help with SEO services check out Baldyne Digital Marketing for professional assistance, I also recommend visiting Upkeep Media where you will find tons of marketing information, it is always important to have a SEO outsourcing agency helping you. Sadly, they cost several UTOPIA cities a shot at Macquarie with their marketing BS, a legacy of shame that will likely outlive their ill-fated venture into being an ISP.

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6 Responses to Is Vivint Wireless living on life support?

  1. Mike Hammett says:

    How about that FTTH hype? How’d that work out for Provo? A boondoggle until they were rescued by an Angel.

  2. Hmm. I’m not sure I agree with this post. It seems overly emotional, and based on hearsay without a lot of critical analysis.

    First, I’m a new customer just brought on 2-3 weeks ago. My brother before that, my step-father and his dad in the past week. They’re certainly bringing on new customers. Further, there have been several new hub homes brought up in Syracuse and Clearfield in the past year. When the technician came to my house for my install, he told me that if my hub home is close to saturation, a new hub home will be brought online. They are in transition to get Utah wireless homes up to the 100 Mbps symmetrical standard that they have been rolling out in Texas. Whether or not he actually knows what is going on, I can’t say. But, that is what I was told. He had 4 other installs to do that day in Davis county.

    While I’ve only been a customer for a few weeks, the technical details of the connection is impressive. I regularly test at 50 Mbps symmetrical, and many times higher. My ping RTT latencies between my home and XMission have gone from ~ 50ms on CenturyLink ADSL to ~ 7ms on Vivint. See here: http://zen.ae7.st/smokeping/?target=AE7ST.Hundun. Running several traceroutes to various providers, it seems that they have peering with Hurricane Electric and transit through Level3. HE provides about 17-19ms average RTT latencies, and Level3 about 50-60ms. For wireless, that’s impressive. So, not only is my throughput significantly increased, my RTT latencies are no worse than CLink, and in many cases better.

    Regarding the “underhanded political maneuvers”, Dean Lundberg, VP of Vivint, was fired from the company in 2014, about the same time Lindon said no to Macquarie. While the city council may have had a presentation on Vivint, and their wireless technology, I would be careful calling slander when you don’t have hard facts. Sounds to me, like Vivint competed against Utopia for an ISP rollout in a city, and won the competition.

    Let’s not forget, that since many cities have agreed on milestone 2 of the Macquarie rollout, there has been next to nothing done. No communications from Macquarie in well over a year. UTOPIA is just as much in the dark as you and I are. Given the financial troubles of UTOPIA’s past, and now Macquarie’s radio silence, it seems reasonable for cities to be skeptical to financially back UTOPIA.

    I’ve tried 4 times, unsuccessfully, to get a hearing about UTOPIA to the Syracuse city council. The former mayor and all the council members at that time have heard the horrible rollout in Layton, a neighboring city, and have no intention of entertaining municipal fiber in Syracuse.

    Lastly, just a couple months ago, Vivint won the bid to the Utah Jazz arena for a 10 year contract. That doesn’t seem like something a business would do, if they were on life support financially. They may have closed offices in Texas and New Mexico, but that could be due to lack of demand, or just smart financial management.

    When UTOPIA and Macquarie start taking this state seriously, citizens will probably respond. Both have had plenty of time to compete, and they’ve chosen to drag their feet instead. Time will tell, but I don’t see the Vivint outlook as you do.

    • Jesse says:

      Hold up there, chief. I did my asking around and got details from multiple sources to back some of my assertions.

      First off, Vivint salespeople have told me directly both that they abandoned the hub home model and that they aren’t signing up new customers. (They stopped here in Cedar City about six months ago and haven’t started again.) That’s horse’s mouth stuff right there. Second, two separate sources have confirmed the high turnover in the technical support department and reassignment of salespeople to other divisions (if they were not let go). Third, I see many, MANY accounts (yours now included) of poor customer service that often makes Comcast look good.

      To me, this all adds up to a division in trouble. Note that Vivint’s smart home division, not the wireless division, bought stadium naming rights. Also, no business in their right mind would go all wireless for their business-critical telecom needs. No way, no how.

      As far as UTOPIA and Macquarie, I provided an update on that two months ago: https://www.freeutopia.org/2015/10/20/the-macquarie-deal-isnt-dead-its-resting/ TL;DR, blame the legislature for once again shackling cities.

  3. … aaaand it looks like I’m experiencing first-hand their poor customer support.

    https://twitter.com/AaronToponce/status/682829444554215424

  4. Charles Hart says:

    “But the focus on gigabit speeds has always distracted the conversation from more important metrics: competition and price. The lack of competition has resulted in higher prices for the under-served, and a slow-but-steady expansion of broadband usage caps, a glorified price hike and a symptom of limited competition.

    The question then isn’t whether we can build gigabit markets to high-end development communities, the question is how we bring cheaper, faster, competitive broadband (now defined as at least 25 Mbps) to everybody.”

    http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FCC-Narrowly-Misses-Its-Gigabit-Deployment-Goal-136004

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