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Review by zaby1337 See Profile

  • Location: Anchorage, Anchorage, AK, USA
  • Cost: $103 per month
  • Install: about 1 days
usually good performance, reliability, uptime
pricing scheme/scam, SMALL download caps, usage meter lags by 3 days
Alaska's only game in town for the most part, monopolists, but great performance
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

Have used this company for over a decade off and on, mostly on. Have had all sorts of internet plans with them, slow and fast. GCI is Alaska's only game in town basically; their competition is sort of null except for ACS dsl 10mb service which has unlimited DL caps, but ya, it's dsl, and it also performs horribly in my specific area of the city...

Performance is top notch, you get what you expect, even more when it comes to the nice burst speeds, tests well most of the time during gaming sessions and things like speedtest dot com. There will be times during mid day where the speed will drop to roughly 60-50% of rated speed, this is inherent to cable modem networks since the busier it is the slower it will be. The various tools on this site have tested this ISP to be very good, as well as other site's tests.

The most annoying thing about GCI is there pricing scheme/download caps. An example of this is their tiers of service which with their lowest of 10mb up and 1mb down, not bad. The bad #$)#ing part is a DL cap of 10GB, yes I typed it correctly. That tier is $40 stand alone pricing, add in their 'modem access fee' of $9 and other charges, comes out to over $50, really stings when you are constantly reminded of the ridiculous 10GB DL cap.

You can check all this on their site 'gci dot net' and select anchorage as the region.

Thier best tier is the 22mb up/2mb down/200GB DL cap for $120 stand alone price. Again, slap on access fee and whatnot, you're over $130. If you stream a lot or really do anything media related a lot, you'll reach that limit no problem.

This pricing scheme GCI has going is much like choosing between too little and 'too much' as well as paying between a 'little' and a truck load, the end result is GCI is annoying, please someone save us from them, even Comcast would be a great savior at this point. I am being serious.

My current package is at 18/1.5 mbps with a 150GB download cap. This is their second to top package, the rest have ridiculously small download caps which is the only reason why I don't have their lowest package, take note GCI, slimeball 1d10ts. They provide a RCA brand digital broadband modem for $9/month lease for the stand alone packages only.

They take away the access fee if you buy into their whole packages of phone/cable tv/internet, but ya, have fun throwing your money at them like you're in a strip club and you've had a few jack and cokes.

(All this information is updated as of Sept 2012)

I must also mention some important information, the usage meter they have online consistently lags behind about 2-3 days. Compared to Comcast's (lived in lower 48 for short time) usage meter which lags about max 3 hours (Comcast is pretty much instant), GCI's meter is pretty pathetic at best so good luck keeping up with how much you download, actually this is one of the most frustrating aspects of their service.

As I have recently seen some mentions of the GCI usage meter, even though it is ridiculously laggy, it is does keep accurate records. I have confirmed this through my own netgear router's software usage tracking, it has always been accurate every month for a while now ever since I've been monitoring it on my side, this is within 500MB or so at the end of the billing cycle, reasonable, so at least GCI has accuracy right..

member for 12.2 years, 7 visits, last login: 10.8 years ago
updated 11.4 years ago

45018997 (banned)
join:2011-11-29
543002

45018997 (banned)

Member

good

It is good

koolman2
Premium Member
join:2002-10-01
Anchorage, AK

koolman2

Premium Member

modem lease

They don't charge a lease for the modem. You might be paying an access fee or something if you don't have TV service.
zaby1337
join:2011-12-12
Anchorage, AK

1 edit

zaby1337

Member

reply to access fee comment

replying to previous comment, yes they charge an access for stand alone packages only.

also, in reply to the 'it is good' comment, if you're strictly referring to their performance only, it is good .

[EDIT]
it appears after checking the account of the 'good, it is good' comment, i have found the account was deleted because of violation of terms of use, haha, probably a paid GCI PR rep, honestly wouldn't surprise me.