 Review by XANAVirus 
member for 1.2 years, 345 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 330 days ago
 Lavalette,Wayne,WV
 Business customer $320 per month- (12 month contract)
 about 1 days "Stable connections, no packet loss, VoIP and VPN 'allowed', good rural coverage with 3G." "Slow, seemingly no new local rural network development (no 3G at home), pricey." "Not the best period, but thus far the best provider for my area. 50/50, so-so, etc."
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I have been a business customer with AT&T since 2005 for our local family-owned law firm, and have had the unlimited data plan for as long as I can remember (but if I ever have to get rid of it, I'm jumping ship immediately).
We have the FamilyTalk Nation-to-Nation 2100 Rollover plan, with unlimited N/W, unlimited roaming, unlimited mobile-to-any-mobile, and unlimited text/data - total costs range from 310-330 USD ($310-$330).
So far, it's been a 'good' experience, in that we have stable 3G out here in West Virginia (which, in my honest opinion, is pretty rural).
I can't say it's fast, however, since the many speedtests I've performed show us get 1Mbit down and 1Mbit up.
Of course these speeds are fluctuating all the time, and it sticks around that area (0.01Kbit-1.00Mbit).
I wish they would have more backhual around here, since we do have consistent 4-5 bars of 3G around - I feel we could have much more than 1Mbits connection speed if they bothered.
No, I'm not talking about 4G, but instead about getting a faster backhual connection (higher than a T1).
The good things are that I have 2,100 minutes I can use, along with thousands upon thousands of rollover minutes (usually stays around 20,000), since we have 4 lines right now.
We also have unlimited mobile-to-any-mobile and unlimited texting, along with unlimited roaming and nights-and-weekends.
We do have 'unlimited' data, but given the speeds we see it's hardly usable for anything.
As such, we are highly unlikely to be going over our limits.
I will admit that is very incredibly pricey, though.
My/Our business pays the bill so I can't really do anything about it.
That's the bad thing, all these minutes, sms/mms messages and data, but only the first two can be of any real use.
I am one of the many lines on the plan, and use my Callcentric line to make my calls (as such I've not used any minutes), and I don't text.
I regularly use 100-200MB of data, unless we are on vacation where it then jumps up 1-10GB depending on what I do while traveling down (but I don't drive myself).
I try to use WiFi wherever possible though, since that's faster than my connection right now.
Our other lines use the other features of the plan very often, but I'm only speaking for me here.
The other good things are that I can use my VPN to mask my data (not that that is good for anything given the aforementioned speeds), and be able to use VoIP.
There's no packet loss, but there is high latency, usually in the realm of 200-300ms.
I never use my VoIP unless connected to the VPN, since I have no idea whether I am 'allowed' to use VoIP on the wap.cingular APN (for that matter, I also have no idea whether VPN is allowed either).
At home, we don't have 3G through the AT&T network normally, so we had to purchase a microcell for home in order to use the cell phones there (and the only time we do that is when we are already on a phone call when we come home and don't want to hang up).
They don't seem to want to put up any new towers around in WV, so that bites. Great service in Huntington, though, 5 bars everywhere!
Unfortunately, I live out in the country (as you can see from my location), about 8 miles from Huntington. I have no intentions of moving any time soon, I don't want to give up the privacy nor the 'serene-ness' of my current location.
Oh yes, their tech support.
It's horrible.
They outsource, just like everybody else nowadays and as such you'll never get them to admit to anything or any problems unless you can get higher than teir-1 support.
Luckily, since the connection is stable I hardly ever have to call them.
The bottom line is:
AT&T is a good provider for West Virginia, and you could look at them if you want to, but don't ask me for any recommendation, since it's quite 50/50 over here.
In my opinion, their 3G network still needs some work before they start nudging me over to 4G.
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