Review by tacos4me 
UPDATED: 1.5 years ago
member for 1.8 years, 197 visits, last login: 1 year ago
 Houlton,Aroostook,ME
 $50 per month
 about 7 days
 Verizon
 "Fast, Relatively Cheap, Great High-Level Tech Support"
 "Bad Routing"
 "Great ISP if you know what you're doing."
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I had been a long time customer of Verizon DSL before the FairPoint sale. I didn't want to give my money to FairPoint, so I looked elsewhere and am glad I did. I don't remember the exact dates, but I called GWI sometime in February of '08 to make the switch. My call was answered quickly and the phone rep was knowledgeable. I was prequalified for the 15/1Mbit tier, and decided to give it a go, knowing full well that I may just be too far out to sync at the full rate.
My order was placed, and two days later the self-install kit arrived. It was a small box containing a Zhone 1611, three DSL filters, phone cord, and a short CAT5 cable. An average kit, I suppose. Had never heard of Zhone before and did some research to discover that Paradyne was bought out and all of these "Zhone" modems are basically Paradyne ones.
But anyway, about a week after I first called and put in my order, I returned home to find that my PPPoE connection from Verizon was no longer operational, so I switched out my Westell modem from Verizon for the Zhone, re-configured my router for GWI's DHCP service, and I was good to go, or so I thought.
My initial speed test's from GWI yielded results of about 7400/850 Kbit from a 15/1Mbit connection. Latencies to the east coast averaged 50ms with west coast around 100ms. Not really bad for being on the crap backbone that is Cogent. But anyway, I was disappointed to say the least. I called GWI tech support to see what was up, and they basically told me I was only syncing at 8.4Mbit for some reason, and that my line stats weren't great, so they knocked me down to 7Mbit from 15Mbit. I know distance is a huge factor, but being only 4000 feet from my CO, I was fairly curious.
The following weekend, thinking it must be my premises wiring, I installed a home run from a POTS splitter at my NID to no avail. It improved my noise margin slightly, but my modem still wasn't syncing past around 8Mbit. I wanted to check out my stats for myself, but couldn't figure out how to do it on the Zhone at the time, since GWI places all modems in bridge mode. So I broke out my Westell 6100 and configured it for GWI. My stats were roughly as follows:
7dB / 9dB SNR
45dB / 21.6dB Attenuation
So my SNR sucked, but attenuation was fine. Strange. Also strange, was the fact that I was set to G.DMT (just a note here, my Westell from Verizon is ADSL2+ capable). So I figure I had my answer. I hooked my Zhone back up, and called GWI. I confused a lower-level rep, and was transferred to one of the higher-ups. These are the especially knowledgeable guys, that have access to way more DSLAM options than the others. They'll really go out on a limb for you. But anyway, I told my rep that I noticed I was set to G.DMT rather than ADSL2+, he put my on hold for 3 or 4 minutes, and returned to tell me that I was syncing at around 16/1Mbit, and that my stats were looking great. Sure enough, I run a speed test, and I'm seeing around 15.4Mbit/880Kbit. Sweet. It took 2 weeks or so, but at least I was finally seeing my 15Mbit.
All things considered, I'm very happy with GWI. I'd recommend them to just about anyone looking for a cheap, reliable ISP. Someone made a mistake in my case, and it caused a lot of work for myself, but if it were any other company I don't believe my problem would have ever been solved. I love the fact that GWI listens to their customer's suggestions and gives them the benefit of the doubt. I don't know how many times I've called to adjust my speed, and they've always done it, no questions asked. I hope to enjoy GWI's service for years to come.
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Great Works Internet
