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Review by jwampler 
Posted: 8.8 years ago
member for 9 years, 111 visits, last login: 131 days ago
 Tinley Park,Cook,IL
 $79 per month (24 month contract)
 about 30 days
 Ameritech
CLEC party: Covad
 "Great Pre Sales, Connection Speed And Quality, And 24 Hour Support"
 "Lack Of Knowledge Of ICNT & Covad Installation Team - Covads Total Lack Of Customer Service"
 "As DSL Providers Go, ICNT Is Above Average, But You Do Pay For It And No One Has The Magic CLEC - ILEC Cares Card"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
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My former ISP Flashcom used Rhythms and took about 3 months to install at 384/384K. With the recent failure of Flashcom and the Earthlink (no static IP for less than $129.00) take over of Rhythms customers, I decided to make a change. If anyone had used Flashcom, they know all about hold time and poor customer service, even before the failure!
My job is installing DSX business internet services in the Chicago area and I am both Cisco design and service certified. The purpose for my home connection is VPN to my office and I made the sales peson (M. Dixon) aware of my 3 most important reasons for leaving Earthlink.
1.) A static IP.
2.) Reasonable customer support service.
3.) Self install with my Cisco equipment.
Mr. Dixon had very impressive answers, justifying "you get what you pay for". He told me that the installation technicians would work with me and my equipment, that the reason Flashcom went out of business was lack of support and that a static IP was no problem. Compared to Flashcom sales, he was more knowledgable and appeared to be more organized with email contracts, etc. The deal closer was telling me that I could have 1.5Mb/384Kb for $79.00/mos.
The next day, Marcelo (the installation account rep) called me to discuss install, I was very impressed that someone actually called. However, since he had to leave a message, it was the next day before I spoke with him and thats when the red installation red flags poped up! He emailed me a class C private IP block, and I called him back to tell him that I needed a public IP, to my total shock, he did not know the diference between a public and a private IP address. Again, however, to ICNTs credit, he did get someone who did know the diference to assign a public IP within the same day.
My scheduled install date was about 2 weeks after the order (even with the Xmas/New Years holidays), I was impressed. Of course only to be let down, because, Covad was installing a shared circuit, and they would not ship telephone filters, they said they MUST dispatch an EXPERT installer to such equipment! WOW.... What level do they consider a bridge or a router? I was scheduled for ILEC cross connect on th 2nd and the EXPERT on the 4th. I called Covad on the evening of the 2nd to tell them that with my phones unplugged, that my Cisco 675 did not sync up with their DSLAM, they said it was my equipment and the EXPERT would make everything better on the 4th. I called ICNT to complain about loosing work to baby sit Covad's EXPERT and spoke with a manager Brady Clark, who agreed with Covad and told me that Cisco is not compatible with Covad's Nokia DSLAM.
The EXPERT came out to my house on the 4th and installed the Covad supplied a Speed Stream (RFC 1483) bridge on the same line as my Cisco and got the same results, no sync. The EXPERT installed the filters and called Covad to dispatch the ILEC (Ameritech). The ILEC discovered that the F1 pairs were loaded and called construction, the only problem was that in the process the tech disconnected my POTs service. This is were the install really went down hill, I called ICNT who told me support was only for installed customers and installation reps did not work weekends. I called Covad who was also closed weekends. I then called Ameritech and got someone to fix my telephone line that day.
I relayed all of this info to Brady who said he is aware of the problems, but there is nothing he could do. Ameritech had committed to having the loads removed by Tuesday with me, but only communicates with Covad via email. On Tuesday, I checked and I was getting sync, but it was not staying in sync for more than a minute. I called Covad who said Ameritech needed 7 to 10 business days to remove the loads. When I asked to speak with a technician, I was told Covad would not waste their time having a technicain talk with me until they got confirmation from Ameritech that the loads were removed. I tried to explain that the line would not be able to pass 4K or greater with a load on the F1 pair, and therefore would not sync at all if Ameritech had not removed the loads. It would have been more productive to talk with the wall since it's not supposed to be able to think or reason. I asked for a supervisor, who said read the same web page as the operator.
If you have a CLEC choice, I highly recommend not using Covad unless you don't want to have any knowledge of how the install works and you plan on depending on their EXPERTS. Which brings me to the next point, Rhythms, was fairly easy to deal with and they do have 24 hour customer service and let my do my own install with Flashcom, so I decided to ask ICNT to boot Covad and install North Point since they don't use Rhythms. When I went to my basement to get the SpeedStream box, I noticed that the Covad EXPERT neglected to install a filter on the basement phone. As soon as I unplugged the basement phone, the bridge synced up. I called ICNT since I still could not ping and they had to reassign a new IP to me that did work.
I still would rather not see Covad receive any revenue from me, but I don't really want to rock the boat now that I'm up and running. All in all, my service is about as fast as I am paying for, which is much better than I expected (1.2Mb/320K actual most anywhere and I expected 400-500K/200K). Unfortunitly I will have 2 DSLs for six months, until my Earthlink acount expires, the 384/384 delivers 300/180, not bad but no static IP.
ICNT does have some routing issues that I will be trying to work out, they subcontact Level 3 in Chicago to carry their traffic, don't let them fool you with the private backbone @#$%, it's there, but it's useless, I can ping anyone via a Level 3 in half the time than their own www site on their over utilized small backbone. Again for the $$ Level 3 is a good choice, the do move data fast, my ping times anywhere off of ICNT's backbone are sub 100ms and 1.2M/320K+ data movement. I have asked why they route traffic on their own network from my home in Chicago to NewYork and back to Chicago before forwarding it to the real backbone providers, UUNet, Cable & Wireless, Genuity, etc... and they can't seem to answer or return an email or call.
Summary:
If you can stand the installation woes and ask tech support simple questions, ICNT seem very good for $79.00/mos which is expensive for home and cheap for home office. I have SNMP R/O turned on at home and have my office monitor watching the circuit for utilization and uptime, I am getting the bandwidth promised and the circuit has not dropped for any 5 minute interval in the 7 days that it has been installed. Try to avoid Covad, if Northpoint pulls through or maybe ICNT may contract with Rhythms.
Not bad, but it is sad that ICNT is better than many, but seems to rest on that and doesn't seem to be looking to improve!
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 9.3 years ago
(review was emailed from domain ix.netcom.com)
Arlington,Arlington,VA
$50 per month (12 month contract)
"I would stay with ICNT"
| Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
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I have been an ICNT subscriber for several months and would seriously
consider retaining the service beyond my contract. Starting up was a
rather frustrating experience: I as the enduser/subscriber was completely
kept out of the Northpoint (dsl provider)-Bell Atlantic (local phone
company) communication loop with regard to residence access issues. This
necessitated taking time off from work on several occasions and only when I
really complained to ICNT was the situation resolved. I have made it very
clear to ICNT that it essential that they facilitate this communication in
the future since they are the ones, not the dsl provider or the local phone
company, receiving the subscribers's money. ICNT must also upgrade its
relationship with dsl providers; I understand that the dsl provider in my
case, Northpoint, is not available on a complete 24-hour basis to
complement ICNT's 24-hour tech support. This is, of course, critical in
terms of trouble-shooting any connectivity problems (as had to be done in
my case.)
Having said this, I have received excellent support from Issac Escobar in
the Quality Assurance Staff and from Tier Two technicians Fred Trenery and
Chris Nelson. Moreover, I am now experiencing smooth service (a recent
glitch with email servers on the East Coast was promptly dealt with) and
therefore would consider staying with ICNT.
Susanne Kyzivat
Arlington, Virginia
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