Local internet provider leaving customers disgruntled
Zito Media Internet speeds are not living up to what Graham County citizens paid for.
“I am confident in the design of the network and that it is providing the speed advertised,” said Zito Media president Jim Rigas. “If there are any ongoing issues, we want to investigate and resolve them.”
One local resident would disagree with that assessment; another struggles to operate his business due to slow internet.
Repeat issues
Samuel Borrelli of Robbinsville started his journey with Zito Media in September 2021. Everything seemed fine at first. His internet speed was averaging 450-550 mbps in his living room.
In 2022, the internet speed slowed down and Borrelli received a new modem with a booster to increase the range.
Borrelli experienced the same issues again and received another new modem and booster in 2023.
This did not fix the issue. Currently, Borrelli is receiving 95 mbps in download speed and has been experiencing this issue for five months.
Borrelli is subscribed to a 1 GB fiber optic plan and pays about $89 for this plan.
On Jan. 4, two Zito technicians arrived to Borrelli’s house. They verified that Borrelli was getting less than 100 mbps for WiFi. Borreli’s modem was replaced for a fourth time. The booster was activated, but it is not working.
He is still experiencing the same issues.
Good internet speeds are generally thought to be at least 100 mbps for downloads and 20 mbps for uploads, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
In an email to Rigas, Borrelli stated that he is getting 90 percent less than the 1 GB he is subscribing to using 5G. Using ethernet, he is getting 85 percent less than 1 GB; he said Zito’s tech department verified this three times.
“Therefore I feel that I have been defrauded by Zito Media for failing to provide me with the service I am paying for,” said Borelli in email.
Borrelli has a two-year contract with Zito Media that ends in September.
Borelli filled complaints to the Federal Trade Commission, the FCC and the N.C. State Attorneys office. He has posted on the Robbinsville North Carolina Word of Mouth Group on Facebook, asking others for internet speed tests. He has also posted about the issue on the Robbinsville & Surrounding Area’s Bulletin Board Facebook page.
“The manufacturer of the modems requested all speed tests and copies of posts on Facebook,” said Borelli in a post in the group.
Borelli has received 12 internet speed test results from neighbors and citizens using speedtest.com.
“No matter what you subscribe to, 200 mbps, or 1 GB, the download speed shows 95 mbps,” said Borelli in a Facebook post.
People who provided speed tests in the Facebook group page generally had poor upload speeds, with the lowest at 3.40 mbps and others ranging from 5-10 mbps. The download speeds provided were generally high ranging from 201-390 mbps.
The lowest download speed provided was 73.4 mbps.
Desire for faster service
Another common complaint from citizens is Zito’s unresponsiveness and their unwillingness to show up to customer’s homes to fix issues.
Borrelli has called employees of Zito 32 times about download speed issues and for service.
Rigas explained that Zito takes a number of service calls through the call center on issues like reliability, speed and video and then deal with them.
“Over the last several months we have taken calls about speed issues and done what we can do resolve them,” said Rigas.
Craig Kallmayer owns The Cabin in The Woods in Stecoah Heights. He was interested in the Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology – or GREAT – grant and how Zito will use those funds.
The federal GREAT grant is a program that provides funding to private sector broadband providers to give rural areas high-speed internet. Nearly $80 million in additional total funds was added toward the grant in July 2023 for 33 counties in North Carolina, including Graham County.
The private provider for Graham County to use this grant is Zito.
“I’ve called them (Zito) and no one there can tell me anything about their plans to make it available at my location in Stecoah Heights,” said Kallmayer in an email. “I’ve been told someone would get back to me, but no one has for two months.”
Rigas said that Zito is implementing the state grant to provide faster internet to rural areas. He also mentioned that the company is working on extending to 100 percent fiber-optic directly to homes in Graham County. This requires taking out the coaxial to the home and replacing it with fiber optic.
In the Robbinsville Word of Mouth Facebook group, citizens agreed that Zito provided poor customer service and do not always come to locations to fix issues.
“…Everyone I talk to about them today tells me their existing customer service and reliability is the worst of the local providers and advised us to choose someone else,” said Kallmayer in an email.
Kallmayer’s provider is Frontier and he gets a download speed of six mbps on a good day with an upload of 0.89 mbps on a digital subscriber line.
“Tough to run a business on that,” said Kallmayer in an email.