Astound seems to be some PE buying up local ISPs and it's probably very different depending on which ISP is Astound in your area, but having service from a local ISP before and after it was acquired by Astound I could not help but notice severe degradation of the service (which was not stellar to begin with but cheap enough and local). Frequent price increases (every 2-3 months) were some of the Astound's "improvements" to the old service.