Review by garywk 
UPDATED: 2 years ago
member for 8.7 years, 759 visits, last login: 14 days ago
 Clarkston,Asotin,WA
 $100 per month
 "Fairly reliable uptimes"
 "When they go down, they really go down and it can last for days"
 "Expensive, only game in town,"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I've been a Cableone subscriber since they bought up AT&T's @home service in my home town a few years back. When they first took over from @home they SUCKED big time. They were down as much as they were up for the first 3 months, and here I was depending on my internet connection for work. They also dropped my download speeds from 4megs to less than 800Kb. I was one unhappy camper. I looked into other services, and there simply weren't any at any kind of reasonable price. The dsl provider wanted $300/month for 128Kb line. The wireless people wanted $200/month for 512/128, and I would have had to spend a bunch extra on the install to get a bigger antenna because the signal was so weak at my house.
Cableone has improved since then. Their reliability has gotten much better, but the winter before last two big windstorms came through the region and the entire valley was down for 4 days. The first storm took us down for 3 days the second for another full day. I asked tech support why they were dependent on a single point of failure. That received a rather frosty response. Other than that I really have no kicks with their current support people. They are courteous, helpful, and fairly knowledgeable. I've been given the run around only once, and that's when no one could figure out who to send me to talk to about which of their accounts had static IPs. For some reason, no one knew. It wasn't until my 3rd time around the circle that I got someone who knew the answer.
Their caps here are actually more reasonable now than when they first started, and I've rarely run it even though I download quite a few Linux ISO images and do Debian network installs quite regularly. I don't file share, so maybe they take it easy on me. When I have, the cap has lasted just long enough for my average download usage to drop below their stated limits. About 3 months ago I moved to their SOHO account as I needed to be able to put a server online out of my home for work purposes. When I upgraded to the account it was 5megs up, 768 down. About 2 weeks later it went to 8megs down, and a full meg up. I don't get the full 8 megs down all the time, but I'd say I average around 6.5-7.5 megs. The upload has stayed remarkably stable and if I am not getting my full 1 meg I'm getting at least 85-90% of it a minimum.
My only complaint now is the cost. They are still asking too much money for it, and I don't have a static IP although I do have a persistent IP. My IP address hasn't changed since I moved to the SOHO account and had a problem with some intermittent loss of signal. They had someone out to look at it the day I reported it, and the tech was pretty sharp. He definitely knew what he was doing. He fixed the problem and I was also moved to a completely different network block that day.
Overall, I'd have to say Cableone is OK. I don't like the price, but I do have a pretty decent connection for living where I do.
Followup comments:  garywk
join:2001-03-06
Clarkston, WA
| Update to my review I have had a few really busy days building systems lately and I know I have downloaded far more than the Cableone daily cap for my account for each of the last few days. I've yet to get capped, and there is nothing in the TOS about being charged for going over. So, my assumption on their policy is that they use it only to stop those who routinely do a lot a lot of file sharing or other very high bandwidth activity.
My cap is at 1250 MB a day, measured between 2pm and midnight. I know I downloaded at least 2 gigs doing installs during that time period on a couple of days this week, and my connection didn't slow in the least.
If my assumption is correct Cableone doesn't set really hard caps. They give you some leeway and only cap you if you abuse their rules. An occasional overrun doesn't seem to get you capped.
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