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 Review by jwlanham 
UPDATED: 9.1 years ago
member for 9.8 years, 491 visits, last login: 4.6 years ago
 Lenexa,Johnson,KS
 $160 per month
 about 45 days
 "Fantastic DL speeds, solid UL speed. Includes 4 phone lines and LD in one package"
 "New technology, still has some growing pains"
 "For small office or home office, it is a great deal. For those that want full bandwidth...you got it!"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
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Slick things:
Complete control of my phone line such as call waiting, call reject, caller id through a webpage. No phone call required to change up my services.
Awesome speeds, have talked to other ION customers and they are seeing speeds of 5, 6 and 7 M/sec DL! I am 12.5K ft from CO and still I am at 2.5M/s, all the time as it is dedicated pipe.
As a small office, I have all of the phones I need, including one for the children.
Data comes with two static IPs, half-bridged network. NO PPPOE for me!
Comes combined with Earthlink software, but have found that it is not required. The software has some benifits, its a personal preference.
Customer service is very responsive to any trouble. Very short, if any wait times.
I have had all four phone lines on call, and have not impacted my data speeds even though it all is going out on the DSL connection.
Overall, best described as SWEET! Its good to have a big pipe!
2000-10-05 04:32:44 Speed test 2044/846 kbps
2000-09-30 09:14:23 Speed test 2228/846 kbps
2000-10-05 04:33:30 Speed test 2235/545 kbps
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Review by leeb0
Posted: 9.5 years ago
member for 9.5 years, 118 visits, last login: 8.8 years ago
Kansas City,Jackson,MO
$160 per month
"Innovative DSL/phone bundle"
"New service, everyone is still learning"
"Good package if you need the services it offers"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
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Early Sprint ION experience:
Sprint is rolling out its ION service in Kansas City (where I am) and a few other markets, with plans to expand fairly quickly to other cities.
ION is a package DSL connections for two PCs (2 static IPs), an ISP (Earthlink), web pages and 5 e-mail boxes hosted by Earthlink, 4 voice lines, 12 free hours/mo of domestic long distance (.07 each additional minute), in-bound toll free line, and phone extras like call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID and, promised soon, voice mail. All for a flat $160/month, plus a one-time $150 install fee (for me at least, they waived the fee for the ION hub). For us, the ION monthly cost will be less than we've been paying for multiple phone lines, local and long-distance carriers, ISP accounts, etc.
We signed up for ION March 9, and got a predicted install date of April 14. About a week ahead of time, the install was pushed back to May 4, Two men and a truck showed up as scheduled, and a third arrived later in the day.
We've been on the system for about two weeks, so this is an early report. Our installers started around 9am, and the last left at 6:45pm with the install still incomplete. Most of the effort went to running cable to multiple rooms, and the rest to getting the ION hub (a box that looks like a good-sized power amplifier) in and running. The service is new and so are most of the technicians, though they were cooperative and cheerful. At the end of the day, the cables were in, but the ION hub wasn't synching yet, so our phone service stayed with our local carrier. Worse, we realized only after the installers left that the wiring changes had left one room my wife's office with no phone service at all. She couldn't get to her e-mail that night, and wasn't a happy camper. A technician made it back two days later to get her phone lines up again.
That technician also got the hub up with two PCs connected, but only one connection was working correctly. The other PC pinged and uploaded O.K. but couldn't seem to download anything. Getting that connection working took another frustrating 24 hours. It would have been less if either tech support or I had guessed sooner that the problem was very simple a defective patch cable between PC and wall jack.
With a new cable, both PCs are now up. On several runs of the DSL test, speed typically hovers slightly above 1Mbps download (I've seen as high as 1800kbps, as low as 800), and 750 upload. It's shy of the "up to 8Mbps" in ION ads, but it's a whole lot faster than dialup, and I'd guess that I'm limited now mostly by the speed of the net itself rather than my connection. PCs that connect to the ION hub need network interface cards; otherwise, Sprint provides the equipment and software.
In our two weeks of service, there's been one service outage that I know about, at around 8 p.m. on a Thursday night. It lasted for about an hour -- tech support said they were changing network DSLAMS. Tech support has been easy to reach usually within a minute or two and eager to help, though I think everyone is still in learning mode.
Sprint provides an ION/Earthlink combo software package on a CD. I've found Earthlink 5.0 to be difficult to get running on some machines. One Earthlink tech said it isn't necessary to run it, so we're relying mostly on Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. The Sprint software includes web access to the ION control center, which provides on-line control over services (you could turn call waiting on for some lines and off for others, for example). I haven't had a use for it yet, except to add sub-accounts for each family member.
Early adopting is like beta testing -- you have to expect glitches. With both DSL and dial tone dependent on Sprint's network and the ION hub in our basement, there will probably be times our cell phones come in handy. But ION is an attractive package if you need the kind of service it offers, and it's nice to consolidate all the local, long-distance, and ISP accounts into one. So far, the quality of the service is good. We'll learn about reliability with more time.
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Sprint ION
