Review by RonaldOnIA 
Posted: 1 year ago
member for 1 year, 0 visits, last login: 1 year ago
 Rosenberg,Fort Bend,TX
 $50 per month
 "It's available in rural areas where there are no other options"
 "The reliability (when the connection is active) is bad."
 "Not worth the money unless you only check your e-mail and surf the internet."
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I've used several other wireless broadband options over a span of about 5 years, and none of them have been very good. The satellite broadband's "fair usage policy" left a sour taste in my mouth due to how restrictive it was. The only option left available was wireless internet by antenna.
I have used Internet America in the Ford Bend, TX, region for almost 2 years now. In the beginning, the service worked great. The speeds were good and there was little to no down time, then there was a storm in the Houston area and they said their network had been damaged, which was about 3 months after I got the service. Since then, it has never been as good.
I use the internet to play online games, which (according to their website) are supported by their service. The problem is, I play World of Warcraft, the most popular online game in the United States and due to lost pings and lag spikes the game is nearly unplayable.
I opened a notepad document and ran a constant ping to google.com (run/cmd -> ping google.com -t) and whenever I would get multiple timeouts in a row, I would go to google, type in a word, and search for it... if there was no response for a few seconds, I would conclude that my internet was experiencing heavy lag (due to some network device timing out because of errors / packet collisions) and I would write down the time in the notepad document. This was the result.
6:37pm
6:39pm
6:41pm
6:44pm
6:46pm
6:48pm
6:50pm
6:52pm
6:55pm
6:56pm
This kind of network connection makes online gaming impossible, because online gaming (though not bandwidth heavy) is very dependant upon a reliable connection. If the connection is broken (even for a few seconds) you are kicked off of the game or your connection has to reestablish itself (which is usually completed 15 - 30 seconds after the connection comes back "up" from a lag spike). So, in effect, my internet service allows me to only keep ~75% uptime while gaming online.
I have contacted Internet America multiple times, and had my problem "escalated to level 2" multiple times with no resolution. For months it was talk of "we're currently upgrading our towers and the Fort Bend tower is on the list" but now when I call they don't have an answer for me. They call it "minor packet loss" but it's pretty significant to me, as it results in about a 25% downtime.
If you enjoy doing any online gaming, or anything that requires an open connection across the internet I would advice against using Internet America's wireless broadband service.
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