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 Review by braynes 
UPDATED: 43 days ago
member for 4.6 years, 2137 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Waterville,Kennebec,ME
 $89 per month
 Verizon
 "tec will help"
 "Some what Confusing at first, this is now a moot point"
 "Service is very good, Happy with gwi"
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Up date I moved in sep. and they were excellent in all way about getting my service switched I am very happy and give them a big congrats, thanks to all gwi personal for a great job.
I have had Broadband since 1992, with 5 different companies I find that to be sure of service I run a dual wan system, 1 with Verizon and 1 with Roadrunner.
When Verizon sold to Foolpoint I felt the need to change my dsl service.
I have had some trouble getting switch but GWI Did take care of it in a timely fashion,
It would not work well at 15 Megs. So I was moved back to a 10, I am not sure if is has been changed back to 15 yet.
The 2nd line number took a little longer the rest of the phone but it works and that is what I wanted.
I am sorry at this point that I was so RUDE to the people at GWI and will not repeat it in the future.
I encourage all to try them
Bruce
It has been almost a year and time to update my review, over the last year it has has it downs but overall once the problems were ironed out it works very well, I am happy with the service. I feel they went out of there way to fix my concerns and went as far as coming to my home to change the filter, this is GREAT service and I have now told people to go with them.
I am somewhat demanding when I feel things are not the right way, and again GWI took care of me. This leaves me no choice but to raise my rating.
My only complaint is when you send an email you get a canned “call this number, I do not think anyone reads them it just auto answers, so it takes a number of emails before you gat they attention but after that they kick into gear.
Bruce
Bruce Raynes
edit for spelling
update: well they cut my phone over, one number works,thes other says disconected.
this was fixed the 1st thing on monday morning, In the above review I was to upset to be fair so I have now amended it to reflect my services.
Thank you
Bruce
Well I upgraded to redline 3 and get around 12-13 down with my line stats that is great, I am now very happy with GWI and have recommended them to other people.
Bruce
Followup comments:  ElJay
join:2004-03-17
 ·Great Works Internet
| GWI's contact page clearly says... "For your convenience, you can now submit a ticket with our Technical Support Teams for non-urgent issues." »www.gwi.net/support/contact.html
You need to call GWI up if you have an immediate issue with your service. If you can't hear then you need to find somebody who can assist you. I fail to see how GWI is unique in this regard because Time Warner and Fairpoint would expect the same. Unlike these two mega companies that don't know if they're on foot or horseback, GWI might actually fix the problem if you communicate the issue to them.
My parents had a problem with inbound calls when they were hooked up to GWI's phone service, because Verizon did not tell GWI that the switch had been made (huge surprise there.) I think Verizon/Fairpoint is likely doing this on purpose to make sure customers who bail from the mothership are given a bad initial experience with GWI's phone service.
As for the modem, why do you need to get into it? Put your own router behind it and it works just like it's supposed to, like a dumb modem. | |
| | | | | ElJay
join:2004-03-17
·Great Works Internet
| Re: GWI's contact page clearly says... No I don't work there, but I have been a customer since 2004. You can say whatever you want in an email, but the fact remains a phone call is probably going to put you at the front of the line, especially during weekends and after hours. I think this is the case with about 95% of the businesses out there.
I've found Time Warner cannot fix anything without sending a tech to the house (and thus proving it's really their problem, not mine), because the people on the phone are total idiots and assume their customers are idiots as well.
I'm glad to see GWI fixed your issue and you updated your review. | |
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wcnghj2
@maine.edu | settings Just call and ask for the modem settings, I am sure you will get them without hassle. | |
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Review by MaineMike
Posted: 347 days ago
member for 5.4 years, 33 visits, last login: 4 days ago
Portland,Cumberland,ME
$54 per month
"No problems - Good Service"
"This is a good deal!"
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I don't know any other ISP that offers DSL speeds this fast. If GWI serves your area, I think it's your best bet!
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 Review by Quahog
UPDATED: 1 year ago
member for 7 years, 141 visits, last login: 17 days ago
South Paris,Oxford,ME
$35 per month
 about 3 days
Verizon
"Stable Service,"
"Long Wait times for Customer Service, Lack of Services"
"If you want speed, go somewhere else"
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I am new to this area and after a year of living in broadband no-man's land it was SO good to be able to have high speed internet again.
I first decided to go with Verizon DSL I signed up a month before I moved so the service would be running fairly soon thereafter. So my phone service was turned on the day we moved in, but I still had to wait another 2 weeks for the DSL. No Problem I thought. It then turns out that Verizon had given me another vendor's number and they needed to change it. When that occurred I asked if this was going to upset my original DSL order. The answer was of course no it will not.
After a few day I still had not received my modem, so I called Verizon and I am told that because of the new number I had to set up a new DSL order with another wait of 2 weeks. This was completely unacceptable, so, I decided not to order the service.
It was about this time I ran into GWI website and began to look at ordering the service. The price was a bit more than Verizon's was with out taxes and fees, but the service was faster, much faster. So I ordered the regular service 3/768 for about $35 a month. The very nice sale rep I spoke with told me it could take anywhere from 3-6 days for the service to be activated. 3 days later I receive my modem and when I plug it in the service was already ON !!!!! I have a dynamic IP but will see if I can change that to static. I did call customer service to give them my Ethernet card's MAC Address and the wait was HORRIBLE I was on the phone for a whole hour before I finally spoke with someone. However for the price and speed and so far reliability it is a minor inconvenience . I would recommend it to anyone in the Norway South Paris Maine area
***Update***
I have since switched to their premium tier service 5mb down 1mb up My actual speeds are about 4.8mb down and 700k up not too bad for being about a mile away from the central office in Norway. The service is VERY reliable with only one outage due to maintenance . I am wondering why there was no email or other notification that the service was going down.
****Update****
December 23,2005
Looks like GWI wants to scale service back from 5mb to 2.5mb due to lack of use in the Norway/South Paris area Personally, I think this idea stinks and I am quite upset to say the least. I knew this service was too good to be true.
Well, they dropped the speeds and since the decrease the service has been terrible. I have also just found out that my bill is only going to drop by $5.00!! They drop my bandwidth by more than half and they are only dropping the price by five. Looks to me like the next thing to drop is me.
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 Review by sward445
UPDATED: 1.1 years ago
member for 4.5 years, 944 visits, last login: 8 days ago
Waterville,Kennebec,ME
$39 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
"Competant staff, dependability, support"
"None"
"Good value for the $$$"
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Great Service, can't say enough good about them!
3/8/2008 - Still excellent service, reasonable price!
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Review by jebba2005
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 4.8 years, 1684 visits, last login: 7 days ago
Portland,Cumberland,ME
$40 per month
"naked, dsl2, SPEED if you want."
"none really"
"Stable, steady."
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they had to reschedule my install, was supposedly Verizon's fault. Other then that it has been smooth sailing. My download speed is around 12000kbps, up 720 kbps. Thanks BBR for helping me find GWI.
Sept-08. Still going strong. No problems. The staff is friendly when I call to pay my bill. The owner of the company even stops by the forums here. I have downgraded my plan so it is $40 a month for a 3000/768 kbps dry loop. There are no extra fees. My bill says Internet $39.95, total $39.95.
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Review by ElJay
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 1363 visits, last login: a few hours ago
South Portland,Cumberland,ME
$45 per month
about 4 days
Verizon
"Very reliable connection with stable speed. Local company."
"None"
"A great, local option for broadband"
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I've had great experience with GWI. The connection is rock solid and the speeds are very consistent. I am a "naked DSL" subscriber at 5/1, which means I am paying an extra $5/mo for the privilege of not having a dialtone on my phone line. The modem they gave me a few years ago doesn't fulfill the advertised upstream speed, but that's not very important to me. I play a few games over the internet and the pings are low from my spot in South Portland. (About 25ms to NYC, 35ms to DC)
GWI recently outsourced their email operation to Tucows and in the process added IMAP access and a nice mailbox size of 2gb. It will be interesting to see if their spam filtering is up to par with that of Postini, the former antispam vendor that GWI used for years.
IP addresses are handed out via DHCP, and are not likely to change if you have a router connected 24/7.
I have few complaints about GWI. Outages are very rare and tech support is fairly efficient at fixing issues. If you're an existing subscriber and you want to upgrade your service, I would recommend calling them instead of trying their online order system. While the FAQ says that the online system can be used by current customers to request upgrades, my experience was that the order went through as if I was a new customer and that prompted a confused GWI salesperson to call me.
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Review by buzz_4_20
Posted: 1.3 years ago
member for 6.1 years, 1660 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Presque Isle,Aroostook,ME
$39 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Great Tech Support. People That Know What They Are Doing"
"Isn't Fiber"
"Great service with people in the know"
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Got my modem before I was provisioned. Still worked, just not at top speed. I don't have my full upload but after I emailed them and they told me that the signal levels at my modem limited me to slightly less than my 1meg up, i didn't care that it wasn't full speed because the told me it was the signal noise. No BS just the facts.
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Review by lovegwi
Posted: 1.4 years ago
member for 1.4 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.4 years ago
Old Orchard Beach,York,ME
$73 per month
about 7 days
"GWI is the best & most HONEST company around, Local, NO HIDDEN FEES!"
"This company values honesty & knows how to treat their customer's"
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Gwi is the perfect phone & internet provider. Sales is wonderful, they gave me all the information I could possibly need prior to placing my order. Then everything ran smoothly from there. Billing is great, RTS 24-7 LOCAL!! I love the fact there is no hidden fees, the company is local, best prices around. The customer service is GREAT! Friendly people. I would recommend this company to everyone, 5 stars!
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Review by wcnghj
UPDATED: 1.4 years ago
member for 1.5 years, 33 visits, last login: 24 days ago
Rumford,Oxford,ME
$66 per month
about 16 days
"Local Provider, Fast and Reliable Internet,Low Pings, Cheap Long Distance, Allows Port 80!"
"Phone took a little while to get setup(16 days)"
"Excellent provider, more reliable than Cable and Fairpoint in this area!"
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Update 5-31-08: I have upgraded to 5/1 for $4.95 more per month, I am working on getting my Westell 6100 working with GWI in hopes of getting better speeds than I am with the GWI provided modem.
GWI Supplied Modem:
»www.speedtest.net/result/278213995.png
Older Verizon Modem:
»www.speedtest.net/result/278233195.png 
____________________
It all started when Fairpoint took over DSL and Phone in the area, I wanted out. The first day Fairpoint took over, we were without DSL for a few hours.
I decided to give GWI a spin. I ordered the Local Phone and Regular(3/768) DSL for $60 a month, and added inside wire maintenance for $3.33 a month, bringing the total to $63 a month. This is $1 cheaper than verizon was(:p).
The Cons:
*Included Caller ID is just number ID(They clearly state this).
*If you want full Caller ID, you have to get it with other services(3 way calling,etc. This costs $5/month extra).
*Phone service took 16 days to get setup.
The Pros:
*Call Waiting is included for free on all phone planes!
*Internet speed on the download side is higher than advertised, and upload is very close!
*DSL only took 2 days to get the modem, and 2 more days for service to be active, 4 total days!
*https://selfcare.gwi.net/Login.jsp - Online Service for Phone Logs!
The modem provided was an older Westell model.
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Review by tacos4me
UPDATED: 1.5 years ago
member for 1.8 years, 197 visits, last login: 1 year ago
Houlton,Aroostook,ME
$50 per month
about 7 days
Verizon
"Fast, Relatively Cheap, Great High-Level Tech Support"
"Bad Routing"
"Great ISP if you know what you're doing."
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I had been a long time customer of Verizon DSL before the FairPoint sale. I didn't want to give my money to FairPoint, so I looked elsewhere and am glad I did. I don't remember the exact dates, but I called GWI sometime in February of '08 to make the switch. My call was answered quickly and the phone rep was knowledgeable. I was prequalified for the 15/1Mbit tier, and decided to give it a go, knowing full well that I may just be too far out to sync at the full rate.
My order was placed, and two days later the self-install kit arrived. It was a small box containing a Zhone 1611, three DSL filters, phone cord, and a short CAT5 cable. An average kit, I suppose. Had never heard of Zhone before and did some research to discover that Paradyne was bought out and all of these "Zhone" modems are basically Paradyne ones.
But anyway, about a week after I first called and put in my order, I returned home to find that my PPPoE connection from Verizon was no longer operational, so I switched out my Westell modem from Verizon for the Zhone, re-configured my router for GWI's DHCP service, and I was good to go, or so I thought.
My initial speed test's from GWI yielded results of about 7400/850 Kbit from a 15/1Mbit connection. Latencies to the east coast averaged 50ms with west coast around 100ms. Not really bad for being on the crap backbone that is Cogent. But anyway, I was disappointed to say the least. I called GWI tech support to see what was up, and they basically told me I was only syncing at 8.4Mbit for some reason, and that my line stats weren't great, so they knocked me down to 7Mbit from 15Mbit. I know distance is a huge factor, but being only 4000 feet from my CO, I was fairly curious.
The following weekend, thinking it must be my premises wiring, I installed a home run from a POTS splitter at my NID to no avail. It improved my noise margin slightly, but my modem still wasn't syncing past around 8Mbit. I wanted to check out my stats for myself, but couldn't figure out how to do it on the Zhone at the time, since GWI places all modems in bridge mode. So I broke out my Westell 6100 and configured it for GWI. My stats were roughly as follows:
7dB / 9dB SNR
45dB / 21.6dB Attenuation
So my SNR sucked, but attenuation was fine. Strange. Also strange, was the fact that I was set to G.DMT (just a note here, my Westell from Verizon is ADSL2+ capable). So I figure I had my answer. I hooked my Zhone back up, and called GWI. I confused a lower-level rep, and was transferred to one of the higher-ups. These are the especially knowledgeable guys, that have access to way more DSLAM options than the others. They'll really go out on a limb for you. But anyway, I told my rep that I noticed I was set to G.DMT rather than ADSL2+, he put my on hold for 3 or 4 minutes, and returned to tell me that I was syncing at around 16/1Mbit, and that my stats were looking great. Sure enough, I run a speed test, and I'm seeing around 15.4Mbit/880Kbit. Sweet. It took 2 weeks or so, but at least I was finally seeing my 15Mbit.
All things considered, I'm very happy with GWI. I'd recommend them to just about anyone looking for a cheap, reliable ISP. Someone made a mistake in my case, and it caused a lot of work for myself, but if it were any other company I don't believe my problem would have ever been solved. I love the fact that GWI listens to their customer's suggestions and gives them the benefit of the doubt. I don't know how many times I've called to adjust my speed, and they've always done it, no questions asked. I hope to enjoy GWI's service for years to come.
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. The Sale is complete but rest of transition will take a while.
