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Review by large_bande 
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 1 visits, last login: 5.5 years ago
 Los Altos,Santa Clara,CA
 $100 per month (12 month contract)
 about 2 days
 "Speed Latency"
 "Price"
 "If you want a quick reliable connection, this is the place to go!"
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I have a 1Mb connection with them Since the beginning of January. The speed is great, as is the latency. The fact that it is symetrical is great for SOHO too. The only complaint would be the price, but OTOH, I want them to make a living so that they do not get absorbed by a bigger, probably not better company!
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Review by paulmcnabb
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 0 visits, last login: 5.6 years ago
Palo Alto,Santa Clara,CA
 Business customer
$200 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
"Great pricing and consistent service"
"Occasional momentary drop outs"
"Great value"
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Great pricing and consistent service
Occasional momentary drop outs
Great value
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Review by mmanzana
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 6.4 years, 55 visits, last login: 3.1 years ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$119 per month
about 5 days
"Constant, Dependable connection"
"NONE"
"This ISP is not for those who need "handholding" for everything, but rather for those who just want "on the net" and FAST."
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I originally started out with ISDN, then dual-channel ISDN, then DSL, then IDSL.. none of which could provide an effective, sustained connection to the internet from my home.
I lost my DSL (Rythms wen't backrupt), and there were no other service providers willing to provide me service (as DSL, or IDSL) as I am just on the edge of their "reach" (~15,900 ft); even though techinically DSL can reach to 18k ft. I ended up going with Sprint BroadBand Direct.. and for about 1 month it was effective, then they oversubscribed, under-supported, and flat out didn't care any more about my connection problems, continous drop packets (which constantly killed my VPN connection to work).
And then my problems were answered ! ! ! - Ehteric.net.
You pay a bit for it, but the tremendous throughput, almost ZERO dropped packets, and almost ALWAYS on network connection more than makes up for it.
I've only lost connectivity once, in the 4 months I have been with them, and that was only for a very short period of time.
I now telecommute more from home, get more work done, and the zero stress about worrying if the connection is going to stay up is GONE!
I would highly recommend Etheric.net to anyone.
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Review by DJohnAnderso
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 41 visits, last login: 3 years ago
La Honda,San Mateo,CA
$70 per month
"very fast, great service, supports underserved rural populations"
"sometimes unavailable while system is being upgraded"
"best high speed deal in my town"
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2.5Mb/sec down
1Mb/sec up
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Review by quist14
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 1 visits, last login: 5.5 years ago
Menlo Park,San Mateo,CA
$99 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
"Fast! Fast! and 5 static IPs"
"DNS goes down or is slow at times. Sometimes net is out briefly."
"Well worth the monthly fee; great support, esp. if you are tech savvy."
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After years of struggles and constant issues with a DSL connection, Etheric came in like a breath of fresh air. Alex and Patrick were very helpful, and Thomás did a great job installing the dish. It was very refreshing to be able to talk about the technical fine points with people who understand this stuff.
We get consistent lightning speed up and down, even when several machines are streaming audio or doing big up/downloads. We have 5 static IPs (three Macs, one Windows, and one Linux), and we serve half a dozen low-volume web sites from one of the Macs.
Caveats? DNS can be slow at times, sometimes the net goes down (usually not for very long) for various reasons. It's a startup, we need to cut them some slack. One possible problem: if your house does not have line of sight to a tower or local repeater, you may not be able to get the service. This will be less of an issue as Etheric grows.
On the whole, we are very satisfied. Keep it up, guys, and grow the business so we can all continue to be happy customers!
Best wishes from Nick Turner
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Review by srader
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 160 visits, last login: 3.5 years ago
Campbell,Santa Clara,CA
$159 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Blazing speed and great people to work with..."
"Requires line of sight for service..."
"Outstanding value..."
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I ordered the Residential Gold T1 service at $159/month. They came out for a site survey the next day and I was up and running within 5 days. The installer did an outstanding job with my special requests during the installation and my concerns about high wind conditions where I live. They were very generous regarding the additional installation charges because of my requirements. The speed is consistently well above the T1 minimum speed and usually in the 3.5-4.5Mbps range. There have been very few outages and they have been very responsive to get me back online. I am very pleased with the service, the company, and especially the great people...
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Review by jayleone
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 0 visits, last login: 5.6 years ago
Redwood City,San Mateo,CA
Business customer
$40 per month (12 month contract)
about 10 days
"Fast and reliable"
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I average about 4MB symetrical
$40/month
I was one of the first customers. Customized install
antennae and router
static nad dynamic IPs
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Review by jshadley
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 162 visits, last login: 1 year ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$139 per month
"Very fast. Excellent service."
"Bad if you're on a budget ($$$)."
"Get Un-wired!"
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Minor glitch on initial install, but we can chalk it up to weather (cloudy, rainy, crappy day) -- the installer could not get a visual LOS on the AP in order to aim the dish. Came back the next non-rainy day and had it up and running within about 1/2 hour. Beats my DSL install where they had to come back 5 times and had some problems even after that.
Ordered 1Mbps service (up/down) with static IP and get 1.5 - 2 on a regular basis. Only one tiny lapse in service that I can recall, and it was back up before I had the chance to call and complain 
In my area, the best wired DSL I can get is 144K at $70/mo, and we don't have Cable Internet at all. Thought about satellite but it has poor upload speeds which are unacceptable to me, so I went with wireless broadband. I figure I'm getting at least 10 times the speed for only twice the cost -- and I'm glad to report that it has been really good so far (about 2 months).
If you have the $$$ and want/need the fast stuff (you can get up to something like 16M -- yes, M up/down), check them out, you will not be disappointed.
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Review by doctorb
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 4 visits, last login: 4.3 years ago
Sunnyvale,Santa Clara,CA
$79 per month
about 7 days
"reliable, fast, good people behind the service, way better than PacBel DSL."
"none"
"the best! (compared to my DSL at work)"
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Alex Hagen and Co. should be congratulated for what they have done for broadband. They guaranteed me T1 speeds in an area that PacBell/SBC does not service. Rarely is it that speed, since usually it's much higher. I have DSL at work, and it has been less reliable and does bog down in the afternoon. Etheric is consistent and reliable, easy to install, and delivers the goods. We have three laptops going constantly at home (two Macs and one PC), the speed never slows down. Their customer service is very available and very helpful. Kudos to Etheric! Install was simple and clean (not a lot of wires and holes), and I was up and running in minutes after the install. I pay 79/mo. Now, if only they would offer this service in the Tahoe region!
Postsript: I just read some of the other reviews (minutes after I wrote mine), and I'm suprised at the banter in regards to one review(er). Having read all of this, I just wanted to say, that although my review has no negative comments, it is still an accurate review in regards to my eleven month experience with Etheric.
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Review by gbramling
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 4 visits, last login: 5.6 years ago
La Honda,San Mateo,CA
Contract price not specified. (4 month contract)
"until DSL recently became available, Etheric was the only option."
"frequent downtime during business hours, dropped packets, random outages for"
"Etheric shot itself in the foot too many times. DSL is consistently faster, no outages, and 1/3rd the price."
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Etheric is only viable if you only surf and don't care when.
*If* the network is up and healthy, bandwidth can be good. Unfortunately, the network still goes down frequently without warning for extended periods. If you rely on a VPN, the dropped packets and timeouts will cause dropped connections frequently. If you rely on your ISP for business or timely email, Etheric fails repeatedly. Power outages along the many hops to the backbone, generator failures, propane nondelivery, wind, wireless channel conflicts, etc. are all understandable reasons for the network to go down.
Unfortunately, the network also goes down for random software tweaks, new code, "upgrades", rerouting. Moreover, this happens unannounced during business hours. *If* there's an announcement, it's usually been "System was down for upgrades today." Note that you can't read that message unless the system is up afterwards anyhow.
Read the Etheric reviews with a grain of salt. A representative of the company has been requesting existing cutomers to post reviews here. At first, the rep said he needed 11 customers in La Honda to make the Etheric network viable. Now the rep says he needs 40 customers. Which may be reasonable and fair, but makes me uncomfortable.
I encouraged a neighbor to sign up with Etheric one day when the network had been largely healthy for a week. Wouldn't you know it that the next day, someone started tweaking, upgrading, or otherwise making the network unuseable. The rep and I got some hate mail and phone calls from the neighbor.
Etheric is a startup, so I'm willing to cut it lots of extra slack. But consistently their business practice has been to not schedule or otherwise inform users of planned (or possible) downtime. This makes it impossible to tell whether the network is down for the day because of unknown failures in the chain, or if it's just getting a new transmitter, code tweak, or something that will probably only take a few hours.
If it looked like the problems were getting solved, I'd not be slamming Etheric. But every time things get vaguely stable the rep decides to "improve", tweak or upgrade stuff. An ISP is a utility for me. My net connection is a business tool, not a toy (not solely a toy, anyhow). The representative continues to break the system while trying for that last two milliseconds of improvement in a transmitter hop while disregarding the fuel tank on the backup generator.
DSL is now in La Honda. It costs 1/3rd as much as Etheric. It works if my phone line works. I've memorized a bunch of the Etheric employees' phone numbers. So, basically, if my phone works I call the representatives to ask why the network is down again, my DSL line is working. DSL wins.
Finally, and sadly, DSL feels faster. DNS is faster (domain name lookup). Bandwidth feels higher, especially during peak surfing hours around 5-8pm. Even picking up my mail from etheric.net servers seems faster through the DSL connection.
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Etheric Networks
