Review by AKLife247 
member for 1 year, 3 visits, last login: 1 year ago
updated 1 year ago
 99635
 Contract price not specified.  "ACS Alaska offers DSL with unlimited downloads" "ACS Alaska does not care about their" "For a lot of Alaska residents, they are the only option. ACS Alaska knows and abuses this fact."
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I have used ACS Alaska as my POTS provider for over 15 years. I jumped on their DSL service as soon as it was available in my area. This was over ten years ago and they were offering 320k D/L for ~ $30 per month. A few years later I managed to upgrade to 640k d/l for ~$44 per month. Fast forwarding to fall of 2010, ACS had finally managed to make 1 meg d/l available in my area. I jumped on this upgrade and thought life was grand. A few months go by and I begin to notice intermittent but substantial latency and bandwidth reductions during normal peak usage times (after work until late evening).
I called ACS Tech and was told everything was fine on their end; it must be my DSL modem. After two modem replacements...with no help in the problem, I was told that it must be my router because, you know - it's old. Instead of rushing out and buying a new one, I researched all I could on network latency and DSL. After I compiled days of trace route data, I started in with Tech support, continuously requesting my issues to be taken to the 'next level' since each person I talked with seemed to know very little about trace route data. After days of this, I was finally told that the top Tech Support Manager would call me.
After a week of waiting and a couple or reminder, I finally got on the phone with him and was promptly told that ACS Alaska simply could not offer me a stable low-latency service at the "high" bandwidth that I had. The options offered were a reduction to 320k d/l or to "live with it". The Manager admitted that "work needed to be done in the area to remedy the issue, but that work is not going to happen for AT LEAST 9 months".
So here we are - in a small Alaska town, using a local Alaskan company, and realizing they don't care one bit about customer satisfaction, only about shareholder profits. ACS Alaska is focused SOLELY on expanding and profiting from their wireless market. They have no desire to upgrade their wired network but will be happy to charge you exceptionally high monthly rates for decade-old technology. In case you don't believe my comments regarding their focus, I recommend that you read the ACS yearly shareholder reports for 2009 and 2010, which are freely available on the web. If you are in a small town, welcome to my boat!
TL:DR version - For those interested in DSL, I recommend you look elsewhere first. Use ACS Alaska only as a last resort and prepare for regular battles with their Tech support.
Their sales pitch about ACS vs the Cable Company quoted from their website: "Alaska Communications High-Speed Internet always gives you your own dedicated line-that means consistently high-speed Internet every time." This is total and utter BS. My bandwidth is being reduced due to other local users. ACS has admitted this is the case, are obviously aware of the issue, and have done nothing to resolve it.
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