Review by anthrorules 
UPDATED: 54 days ago
member for 4.9 years, 1888 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Rollinsville,Gilpin,CO
 $84 per month
 about 10 days
 "reliable connection, attentive technical support, decent bandwidth allowance"
 "expensive"
 "Only TRUE high speed Internet provider in my area, better than Deadway Internet Satellite Service and Dialup!"
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I spent 10 months with Deadway (I mean Direcway) from June 2003 - April 2004, and that service was horrible. It was worse than dialup (which in my neck of the woods, I only get about 24.4 kbps). Constant disconnects, constant downtimes, etc. When I found out that there was a Wireless Internet Service Provider providing service in my neck of the woods, I was thrilled (and still am for the most part). It was good timing as my Deadway receiver was dying and my one year contract with Earthlink (reseller of Direcway) was almost up.
I was a cautious consumer this time and spent several minutes on the phone and email with representatives from ionSKY. They sent out a technician who come to find out was a neighbor of mine and also used ionSKY. The technician was friendly and proficient. He spent quite a few minutes surveying the property, including the top of garage. He recommended minimally a ten-foot tower for placing the antenna on top of the garage (which now looks like a telecommunication hut, with a dishNETWORK dish, Direcway dish and WISP tower/antenna on it).
Two weeks after the site survey, they were scheduled to come out to do the installation, which was delayed about three days due to lack of proper equipment, including the tower materials.
But the day finally arrived for them to install the equipment (ten-foot tower, 900 Mhz antenna, cables, etc.), which was an adventure. After they installed the ten-foot tower, the two technicians (one of whom did the initial site survey) agreed that the LOS was not as good as they originally thought and could not get a reliable signal. They recommended that I needed to cut two large trees near the garage to gain a more clear LOS. I decided to break in the chainsaw that was given to me by my parents as a house warming present a couple years back. This was my first tree I was going to cut down. The two technicians were unable to physically assist me as it was a liability. But they did guide me during the process. All said and done, I cut down the two large trees, and the technicians were able to get a substantial signal with minimal packet loss.
The service ran well for the first few months, but then I started getting packet loss (some times 20%) and the connection would seem like it died. I dreaded the worst that I was getting screwed yet again. But ionSKY worked hard with me to fix the problem. They came out and installed an amplified antenna, a 2.4 Ghz antenna, which initially didn't seem to work any better. But then they flashed a new firmware in the antenna, and since then I've had limited outages and downtime.
I now consistently get 950 kbps downloads and 350 kbps uploads (paying for 1MB down and 384 kbps up). I am able to almost flawlessly work from home via Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection to my work network and computer, which with both Satellite and slow dialup, it was clunky. I am also able to SSH Tunnel and Remote Desktop to my home desktop computer, which was virtually impossible with the other Internet connection technologies I've used. So, I can stay better connected with my side clients, permanent work, family, and friends.
UPDATE (2008-07-06):
I am done with Wispertel who took over ionSKY. Their level of service has plumpeted due to over subscription and installation of newer and "better" equipment that now depends 100% LOS to work reliably.
QWEST DSL has made it into my mountain subdivision, which I've had installed for three days. It works pretty well, at least download speeds are consistent, working with technical support to rectify the upload speeds.
So, no more dealing with sub par technical support, having to worry about cutting trees down, usage caps (at 5.0 GB a month with the Wispertel), etc.
Again, if you can manage it and it's available, go for the following set of high speed options:
* Cable
* DSL
* Wireless
* ISDN
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