Review by loopy44 
member for 350 days, 0 visits, last login: 350 days ago
updated 350 days ago
 84005
 $35 per month- (24 month contract)
 about 2 days "Decent value, good product, good support staff" "Requires rebooting hardware too often, better value with other providers" "Good service for general internet use. Wouldn't recommend for power users."
| Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
I've used Utah Broadband for nearly 5 years now. During that time they were aquired by another company (Airwired was the name I believe), then my understanding is that the original owner/CEO repurchased the company and switched the name back to Utah Broadband. As of June 2011, they're known as Utah Broadband.
Anyway, in the 5 years I've been with them I've been relatively happy. They have a good product, decent reliability and pretty darn good tech support and customer service. I've rarely had to be on hold with them for more than a couple of minutes when calling about billing or tech support. They've treated us fairly and overall I feel like I've gotten my moneys worth.
However, (now for the not-so-good-side), I'm not exceedingly pleased with the speed, reliability or value.
Speed - Typically if you run Speedtest.net during non-peak hours (mornings and daytime during weekdays) you'll find you're getting the advertised speeds. I subscribed to the 1.5 MBit package for my first couple of years then upgraded to the 3 MBit packages. I'd get pretty darn close to my paid-for speeds during these times. However, during peak times such as nights and weekends, I would typically get around 50-75% of that, sometimes less. I understand the concept of sharing bandwidth with a wireless connection, but getting 1 MBit on a Saturday night when I'm trying to catch up on an episode of House or CSI is frustrating. Overall, if you're surfing the web or checking email this isn't a problem. But if you're doing anything more intensive such as streaming or P2P software, you're likely to encounter trouble.
Reliability - The relibility of their network is actually very good. I rarely encountered problems during storms, rain, snow, wind, etc. (and the wind is pretty crazy out here in Eagle Mountain). In the 5 years I was with them I had two dish calibration issues where they had to come out and re-align the dish, a couple of outages which were due to lines inadvertantly cut (not the companies fault) and a handful of downtimes due to tower issues or other problems. Overall, not a big deal. I'm sure the big boys like Comcast and Qwest have had the same number of outages per month/year. It's to be expeceted. So that's not a problem. The problem lies in whatever hardware is used for receiving the signal at your home. I routinely had to reset the hardware/modem by unplugging it, waiting about 15-30 seconds, then plugging it back in. This is actually the first thing they'd ask us to do when we called with problems, and it solved the problem 95% of the time. Easy fix, I know, but having to do it at least once every other day, sometimes several times in one day, is a pain in the neck. I actually got to the point where I hooked the hardware up to a power strip and routed it to my computer so I could just flip a switch at my desk for a minute, then flip it back on. And voila! Interenet worked again! Kind of dumb, but that's the way it is.
Value - I've since switched to another ISP. It's not always easy to judge the value of an ISP until you use them, as other aspects of their service could totally suck. Digis is a great example. On paper they look great. In June 2011 they were running a promotion for a 10MBit connection for $25. Great price right? Wrong, if you read the reviews. I never signed up with them due to the vast pages of terrible reviews. If the reviews are even half true, they're still a terrible ISP. So one has to consider more than speed with considering value. But take Direct Communications in Eagle Mountain. They provide an 8MBit connection (with a 1MBit upload) + an emergency phone service (never use it, but hey, it's there anyway) for $43 after taxes and fees. And this is DSL, which is considerably more reliable than wireless and no download limits. With Utah Broadband at $35 for 3 MBit and $45 for 5 MBit, it's a no brainer to go with Direct Com. Qwest has similar pricing if it's available (not in Eagle Mountain). Comcast gets expensive so I wouldn't compare them, but if you need serious speed then they're the one to go with. Overall, there's just better speed for the money. But they're slightly cheaper than Rapidwave, which is also a wireless ISP servicing Eagle Mountain. So they're not the best value, but they're not bad either.
I would recommend Utah Broadband to the general internet users out there. But if you're a power user, rely on the internet for phone, streaming or heavy downloading, go with a wired connection such as cable, fiber optics or DSL.
Comments:
|
