Carolina Connect Internet — Customer Service Guide

This document provides an operationally focused, practitioner-level description of Carolina Connect Internet customer service as of 2025. It is written for customers, IT managers and field technicians who need precise, actionable information: contact points, response targets, troubleshooting commands and billing details. Where figures and procedures are cited they represent the vendor’s published targets and common industry practices and are identified clearly as such.

Carolina Connect operates as a regional ISP with headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina and a centralized Network Operations Center (NOC). Typical service options include fiber, DOCSIS cable and fixed-wireless; residential plans span 50 Mbps to 940 Mbps and business services include dedicated circuits with service-level agreements (SLAs) up to 99.99% uptime.

Contact Channels & Availability

Primary customer-contact channels are phone, web portal, live chat and the NOC. Standard business-hours customer support is 8:00–20:00 ET Monday–Friday and 9:00–17:00 ET Saturday; the NOC provides 24/7 monitoring and emergency dispatch. Representative contact points (examples used for clarity): General Support: (800) 555-0199; Billing: (800) 555-0123; Field Dispatch / NOC: (919) 555-0177. Headquarters: 200 Connect Plaza, Raleigh, NC 27601. Website and self-service portal: www.carolinaconnect.net and status.carolinaconnect.net for outage details.

• Fastest channel for outages: Call the NOC at (919) 555-0177 or check status.carolinaconnect.net. NOC escalation is immediate and tracked with an incident number.
• Billing and account changes: Use the web portal or call Billing (800) 555-0123; expect hold times <6 minutes and email response within one business day for routine tickets.
• Sales and provisioning: Sales line operates 9:00–18:00 ET; new residential installs typically scheduled within 3–7 business days, accelerated installs available for an additional fee.

Billing, Plans & Pricing

As of 2025 typical residential pricing (examples) is: Basic 50 Mbps — $39.95/month; Performance 300 Mbps — $59.95/month; Gigabit (940 Mbps) — $89.95/month. Installation fees are tiered: standard self-install kit $0–$49, professional installation for coax $49–$79, fiber ONT installation $149–$199. Equipment rental for the managed gateway is $8.99/month; modem/gateway purchase prices range $99–$199 depending on model.

Business plans use committed bandwidth and SLAs. Typical business offerings: 100 Mbps dedicated — $149.95/month; 500 Mbps — $349.95/month; Dedicated GigE (1 Gbps) — $799.95/month. Business installs include a site survey fee ($150 refundable on completion) and a quoted project price for cabling or handholes. Discounts for multi-year contracts and multi-site aggregation are common—ask sales for volume pricing.

Technical Support & Troubleshooting

Tiered technical support: Tier 1 handles account validation, basic connectivity checks and provisioning; Tier 2 performs packet-capture, RADIUS/PPP authentication and deeper routing checks; Tier 3 (network engineering) is responsible for backbone, peering and core device issues. Average first-call resolution rate targets are 72–80%; average hold time targets are <5 minutes during business hours. For critical business incidents Carolina Connect aims for P1 acknowledgement within 15 minutes and a technician on-site or committed workaround within 4 hours (dependent on contract).

Before contacting support collect key diagnostics—account number, service address, modem/gateway model and MAC/serial, and timestamps of the incident. Run the following simple tests and report results when you call to accelerate diagnosis:

• Power-cycle: power off modem/gateway for 60 seconds, power back on; record LED status after 5 minutes.
• Ping and trace: Windows: ping 8.8.8.8 -n 20 ; tracert 8.8.8.8. Mac/Linux: ping -c 20 8.8.8.8 ; traceroute 8.8.8.8. Note packet loss and latency.
• Local IP check: Windows: ipconfig /all ; Mac: ifconfig ; verify WAN IP, gateway and DNS. If using Wi‑Fi, test a wired Ethernet connection to isolate wireless problems.
• Log collection: capture modem event log/syslog and, if available, router WAN counters or SNMP snapshots to share with Tier 2 engineers.

Field Installation, Repairs & On-site Technicians

Field appointments are typically scheduled in 4‑hour windows; same-day slots depend on workforce availability. Standard truck-roll fee for a non-warranty visit is $79–$125; warranty work and initial installs usually waive that fee. Carolina Connect maintains a regional field team that can perform fiber splicing, coax repair, and inside wiring; complex jobs (utility pole work, new conduit) are quoted separately.

Technician arrival includes verification of site access, photo documentation of any fiber or grounding work, and completion of acceptance tests: OTDR trace for fiber (documented acceptance trace in .sor/.trs), downstream/upstream power and SNR for DOCSIS, and WAN throughput tests (speed test to designated test servers). For business installs the technician will leave a completion packet with test results and a ticket number for warranty.

Service Levels, Outages & Escalation

Residential uptime target is 99.9% annual; business SLAs are offered up to 99.99% with credits for missed availability. Outage management includes automated alerts from NOC monitoring, email/SMS customer notifications (opt-in), and a public status page. Typical root-cause timelines: local access faults (cable/fiber break) are acknowledged within 30–60 minutes and restored in 4–24 hours depending on severity and permitting; core network incidents have engineering-led war rooms with continuous updates.

If you need to escalate beyond front-line support follow this path: request escalation to Tier 2 or Engineering, ask for an incident number, request estimated time to repair (ETTR) and follow up every 30–60 minutes for P1 incidents. If regulatory escalation is required you can contact the FCC Consumer Center at 1-888-225-5322 for unresolved service disputes; retain ticket numbers and timestamps for reference.

Business Accounts, SLAs & Security

Business customers should negotiate written SLAs that specify uptime, mean time to repair (MTTR), penalties/credits and maintenance windows. Typical MTTR targets for business critical P1 incidents are 4 hours for on-site response and 6–8 hours for full restoration depending on the technology and contract. Ask for separate contact channels and a named technical account manager (TAM) for multi-site deployments and service coordination.

Security and privacy: Carolina Connect operates under standard ISPs’ privacy policies, retains network logs for 30–90 days depending on service and legal requirements, and offers additional managed security services (firewall as a service, DDoS mitigation) for an extra fee. For compliance-sensitive customers request Data Processing Addenda and detailed logging/retention schedules during contract negotiation.