how-to block ads
|
»next review in page
Review by srdnaty 
Posted: 4.3 years ago
member for 4.3 years, 3 visits, last login: 4.1 years ago
 Waterville,Kennebec,ME
 $30 per month (12 month contract)
 about 5 days
 "Higher Upload speeds, great customer service, half the price of cable"
 "NONE!"
 "GWI IS AWESOME!"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
GWI is awesome, i switched because adelphia was so poor and i now get the same download speeds with a 250% increase in upload speeds at HALF THE PRICE  !!!! The customer service is awesome!! they answer emails within a day usally less and when calling them one dosnt have to wait long. GWI customer service actully called me once! they noticed that my modem was not responding correctly once and called me to see if it was working ok! there was a problem with some software installed and they helped me fix it. GWI IS AWESOME get it if you can!!!!!!
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Great Works Internet |
 | »next review in page (previous review)
Review by jl499
Posted: 4.5 years ago
member for 5.3 years, 21 visits, last login: 4.5 years ago
Lewiston,Androscoggin,ME
Contract price not specified.
 Verizon
"They offer great speeds"
"Horrible customer service and tech support"
"Adelphia, Oxford Networks, Or Verizon Would Be A Better Choice"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
I had service with GWI for almost a year and experianced many problems with them. One of the biggest being failed modems, in the time I was with them I went throu 3 modem because after so many months they would just die. They would send a new one but without a RMA for the old one, then send me a bill for the unreturned modem, leading to calls to customer service (which with them means being on hold for up to an hour) just to get it straightended out.
When I first signed up I had their basic service, but was then informed that their other 2 options the premium and redline services were available to me. So I upgraded only to have my service quality decline, the modem would lose sync every 15 minutes. After 3 days of playing with the tech support I was finally informed that I was actually to far away from the CO to have those services and was downgraded.
As for their tech support and customer service it is almost impossible to reach them at any given time during the day, as you will spend anywhere from a half hour to an hour on hold, to finally reach someone who is of no help to you.
In my opinion they are one of the worst ISP's in this area. they advertise great speeds, but can only deliver part of the time. They send you used equipment that fails, then bills you for it when it fails. They offer little to no support. All in all I would stay away from them. I have made the switch to cable now and the only regret I have is not having do so sooner.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Great Works Internet |
| »next review in page (previous review)
Review by jguala
UPDATED: 4.6 years ago
member for 6.8 years, 69 visits, last login: 34 days ago
Camden,Knox,ME
$34 per month
about 5 days
Verizon
"Good solid speeds, good price"
"Great value"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
Have been a GWI customer about for about 8 months now and my ONLY complaint is that the equipment at my local phone CO has not been upgraded to take advantage of the higher speed offerings given by GWI. Consistently pulling 1.8/.3 speeds
4/13 - After several months of emails back and forth about how to either get the full 3.0 of the basic plan or upgrade to the 5.0 premium, GWI is now sending out a tech to upgrade my modem in the local CO so that I can connect at the higher speed rates offered to other areas in the State.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Great Works Internet |
| »next review in page (previous review)
Review by djcarver
Posted: 4.7 years ago
member for 7.4 years, 6 visits, last login: 4.7 years ago
Bangor,Penobscot,ME
$34 per month
about 3 days
Verizon
"All around better service than adelphia or verizon plus GWI at 3MPBS"
"None"
"Good money Verizon only allows 1.5MPBS vs. GWI at 3MPBS"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
Great Service!!!! never lost connection yet!
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Great Works Internet |
| »next review in page (previous review)
Review by LairdThunder
Posted: 4.9 years ago
member for 5.9 years, 10 visits, last login: 4.9 years ago
Orono,Penobscot,ME
Contract price not specified.
| |
I've been drooling over ths service for months. I found out all about and asked for the service. I soon found out that even though it is aviable in Bangor and Old Town, I could not get service. I live in Orono. To my Knowledge all telco lines have to run through my town to get from Bangor to Old Town.
Now I could get the service by asking for there extented plan. This plan costs an additional 10-15 dollars a month. So in the end I'd pay more for GWI than any other Broadband ISP in the Area.
To me that seems kinda silly. I guess I'll have to stick with Verizon.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Great Works Internet |
| »next review in page (previous review)
Review by Kirby Smith
UPDATED: 5 years ago
member for 8.8 years, 2655 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Derry,Rockingham,NH
$30 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
Verizon
CLEC party: Verizon
"Excellent service tech responsiveness; high speed for distance"
"Disconnection issues were likely my router(s) vs Azureus"
"A pleasure to do business with"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
Sent GWI a list of questions. Questions were anwered a few days later by Head of Marketing supplementing answers from a Network tech. Found out I could do a CLEC to CLEC transfer that would cause only an hour or so DSL outage. Ordered service and it was functional by the end of the week.
Service is dynamic IP, with DHCP and no PPPoE. While GWI offer speeds up to 8M bps down, at a Verizon EWL of 15,200 ft, 3 was the maximum for me determined by live testing. (Verizon only provides 768k at this distance.) Initially, a Westell C90 wirespeed modem was provided.
I had problems with my primary and backup Nexland ISB SOHO routers, that were difficult to analyze because GWI gateways do not always respond to multiple pings for security reasons.. Router would tend to break when we would change speed or do some other configuration change. Router needed firmare reload to be restored. I am still unclear whether this had anything to do with GWI's setup, a flakey Westell modem, the router, or testing it with the Azureus BitTorrent client. Howerver, router worked flawlessly for two years on Verizon DSL at 768/176 running a more modest BitTorrent stream. Operating at 2.5M bps down helped, but did not truly fix the problem.
GWI sent me a Lucent Cellpipe 22A-GX replacement modem, which allowed a more stable 3M bps down speed. We broke router anyway in testing. I am presently testing with a Hawking FR24 dual-WAN router running single WAN. This router averages one lockup per day requiring repowering, but doesn't otherwise break. Probably Azureus vs Hawking related, and a forum user's suggestion for tixing it will be tested shortly.
Please note, all these routers' firmware was first designed before BitTorrent, and before high speed DSL was available. Although all are rated and reportedly capable of 8 Mbps speeds, there could be ISP configurations or DHCP message blocks that they were not programmed for. My experiences may not be representative of behavior with more modern routers. Even with breakage I can still download more Japanese TV time per day than I can watch per day.
Service techs were willing to spend considerable time helping diagnose the problems I was having. Further, they actually know useful stuff.
Email works fine. I haven't tested web page storage features yet.
Overall, I would recommend GWI without hesitation.
Revision 10/27/04: The Hawking was extended to run dual WAN with GWI and Verizon. Operation was smooth, but still a lockup per day. The Hawking has been replaced by Xincom 502 dual WAN router. Lockups have ceased. Down speed has been adjusted to 2 Mbps from 3 to minimize modem retrainings. (My EWL is, according to one source, over 15 kft.) I suspect previous problems were due to Bit Torrent vs. state table size in the routers.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Great Works Internet |
| »next review in page (previous review)
 Review by 2Paranoid
UPDATED: 5.1 years ago
member for 9 years, 958 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
Portland,Cumberland,ME
$40 per month
about 3 days
Verizon
CLEC party: Verizon
"Fantastic speed at a great price"
"Support-long hold times"
"Highly recommended"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
Switched from Verizon DSL to GWI after seeing many commercials on TV. Sounded like a great deal so I figured I would finally check it out. Ordered 5M/1M service via their website and was contacted about an hour later by a service rep. Order put through no problem, 3-5 days. I was hoping for a static IP but was informed that was only available for business accounts. The modem arrived in 3 days, a Westell Wirespeed C90-36R516-01 rev. j. Account was active that evening. It took me a bit to connect, I was trying to connect via PPPoE but finally realized it was DHCP (doh!). Perhaps a little more info when signing up would have avoided this problem but I tend to be a little impatient so I can't blame anyone. Now download speed is fantastic (4.6-4.7) but upload is around 400kbs. After a modem switch (new modem is a very nice Lucent Cellpipe 22A-GX) upload speed is still around 400kbs, no change. I've rewired my whole apt. out to the NID including running a seperate cat5 line right to the modem. Calling their service line is quite a task, hold times are long (over an hour). They do have an option to leave a message and get a callback but that is a several hour process. A positive point for GWI is their support people seem to be fairly knowledgeable.
One other point of note, I happen to be a Linux user and although they don't "officially" support Linux as long as you can answer some basic networking questions (as most of us Linux users can) it isn't a problem. I've heard some nasty stories about other ISP's dealings with Linux users, glad to have not had that problem here. Trouble ticket open on my upload speed problem so I will update when/if it gets resolved.
All and all I'm happy with the service, will be more so if I manage to get a faster upload speed going. I just hope I don't have to call their service line again....
10/20/04- Update: Upload speed fixed-now getting 850 kbs! Not sure what the problem was (other than it wasn't on my end) but they are suppose to give me a ring today. Took a bit to get fixed but well worth the wait. Extremely happy now-4650/850 for $40 a month, unbeatable!
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Great Works Internet |
| »next review in page (previous review)
Review by whiteyonenh
Posted: 5.3 years ago
member for 5.3 years, 2170 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Dover,Strafford,NH
$29 per month (12 month contract)
about 2 days
Verizon
CLEC party: Verizon
"Not PPPoE-Based, Price, Faster than Verizon, Cheaper than Comcast, and might be about the same speedwise as Comcast, not sure."
"None so far"
"Great Performance for the price! Tech Support a little lacking, allows servers on residential DSL."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
I went to order DSL once I got my Verizon local service set up, I called them and they stated that they could not place my order without a credit card, or an electronic fund transfer. I then asked about whether they could place my order without me sending them the money on merit, but considering they are basically giving me the modem, i can truthfully say that it's something i can agree with. The deal I signed up for was the 3000/768 plan and I am very happy with it. I consistently get fairly decent speeds, alot faster than any verizon customers in the same building, although it doesn't really hit 3Mbit at all, it does come close though, i would think that 2500-2800 is close enough considering the $29.95 I pay a month. Order coordination was a little off, I sent a money order to them to get the ball rolling on the service, and after they recieved the money order, my line was provisioned and i recieved my modem in two days. I ordered on a Wednesday, and recieved my modem on Friday evening. Plugged the modem in, found that it synced fine. Immediately plugged in the computer and did a speed test, got like 1800 kbps, I'm like, ok.... went and did some TCP/IP tweaks, now I get usually around 2800. Plus upload is around 620-640 kbps, which is cool cause I run a personal Web server. So far I have had DSL less than a week and it's working fine. Although once I went wireless for my laptop, my speed cut down to 1/2, still decent, gotta upgrade to 802.11g, (I'm currently running 802.11b, although laptop has a built-in 802.11g card, 802.11b router was cheap....). Machines running speed tests from wired ports get the full 2.8 Mbit, so I think upgrading to 802.11g should help quite a bit, especially on the LAN. Even with multiple downloads going on three machines, no noticeable lag is felt when browsing the web, very impressive. Although four days after getting it set up, they finally call me and ask if they can walk me through setting it up.... and then they say it says I'm already connected... and I'm like duh! Their DHCP leases last only 2 hours which strikes me as odd for an always on connection. DHCP leases on Cable usually last 24 hours, but ok, not like it matters, my router handles it just fine, just struck me as odd for an "always-on" connection. Love the speed and performance, don't know about the ping time issues that others have talked about, don't play games online other than yahoo games.
Update -- Moved, had to cancel service, reordered at new address, will post on how well it works at the new address.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Great Works Internet |
| »next review in page (previous review)
Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 5.3 years ago
(review was emailed from domain metrocast.net)
Rochester,Strafford,NH
$50 per month
Verizon
CLEC party: Verizon
"High Speed, Cheap Price"
"Switch to GWI"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
I recently switched from Metrocast cable modem to GWI and I am so glad.
I have read several other reviews of GWI, which were good for the most
part. Something I don't understand, though, is the lack of excitement
over the availability of an 8Mb connection. I have never heard of such
awesome speeds available from anything less than T1/T3 connections...and
for $49.95 a month?
Well, I am very happy with GWI; they have just expanded to my area. They
had some outages and problems a few months ago, before they upgraded all
of the equipment at the CO here in Rochester, but they were always up
front about what was going on. For the last 1.5 months, my connection
has been stable and blazing fast. I had the basic package 1500/512,
initially, then they asked me to test out a 4000/768 connection. We had
some difficulties with this, but it turned out to be a bad Westell
modem. They even came to my house to switch out the modem and perform
some tests to make sure that everything worked properly. Since the
success of the 4Mb connection, I have bumped it up to their RedLine
speed of 8000/1000. My uploads are consistently >800, and my downloads
usually brush 8000. I just tested by downloading a large file from
Micro....'s site, and I got speeds in excess of 12000. Nice!
Despite the initial shaky start, I feel that GWI has now established
itself in the Rochester area, and I am recommending them to all of my
friends and acquaintances.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Great Works Internet |
| »next page (previous review)
Review by WHR2
Posted: 5.4 years ago
member for 5.4 years, 10 visits, last login: 4.4 years ago
Lewiston,Androscoggin,ME
$29 per month
Verizon
"Good price, good speeds"
"Tech support sucks"
"Good if you don't need help right away"
| Pre Sales information:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
First off, their sales staff is good. I had a good expereince getting things organized with them, helping move off Verizon DSL to their service, all that fun stuff. Dealing with their tech support on the other hand...
First time I called them to check on my line provision, I had to deal with someone that had no clue on how to look up any information on my account. He couldn't verify one thing about connection status, any information I sent regarding my MAC address, nada. Best answer he could give was "I'm not sure what I should do." I told him, transfer me to someone that does know what to do.
Calls after that were of the type "how long shold I remain on hold before I give up and leave a message and hope they call me back sometime soon?" To me this is a sign of a company taking on more then they can handle. Easy to sell lots of accounts, but can you support them? So far it doesn't look like it.
The issue I'm trying to get resolved is finding out how come my upload speed is 50% of what I was told I could expect. Maybe I'll get an answer someday.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Great Works Internet |
|
|
Great Works Internet
·
·