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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 90 days ago
(review was emailed from domain att.net)
 Los Altos,Santa Clara,CA
 Contract price not specified.
 "fast, realiable, good tech and sales support"
 "pricy, no cell phone support (need to add femtocell)"
 "good experience"
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Early user of Etheric. I have direct line of sight to Santa Clara HQ.
Performance is great, minimal tech issues (10 months). Very good people and
helpful. Much better performance than Verizon wireless. Absolutely much
better than Hughes net.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 151 days ago
(review was emailed from domain goldenlight.com)
Watsonville,Santa Cruz,CA
 Business customer
$99 per month
 about 5 days
"great service for 7 years 24/7. great upload and download performance"
"none"
"enables me to work from home (in a remote area) with the same throughput as working ove the hill in a large wired office"
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Etheric has provided incredible service that has been running continously 24/7 for over 7 years through storms, fires, etc.The few instances of downtime, which have been less than five during this period, they responded immediately to fix the problem, including one house visit to discover a rat virus ( a rat gnawed into a Ethernet cable.) And I wasn't even charged for the service call.
My service has been running for over 7 years, non-stop at incredible speed. Etheric's technology has enable me to work remotely without any compromiseEvery little problem has been addressed immediately, professionally, and kindly. Their staff takes great pains to keep customers informed of any scheduled maintenance with advance notice, so I can plan for it. My bill is half of what I used to pay AT&&T and the service throughput is 40 times faster. I have run as many as 9 computers simultaneously with zero degredation. The customer service is every bit as good as their technical service. They are a great group of people who build great technology.
Regards
S Swami Nathan
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Review by tal 
Posted: 276 days ago
member for 276 days, 1 visits, last login: 274 days ago
Palo Alto,Santa Clara,CA
$119 per month
about 45 days
"Quite reliable and fast with extremely low latency"
"It took some time and effort to get it installed and working well (not completely their fault)"
"I'm happy"
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I got Etheric last summer to replace the Sprint fixed wireless broadband, which was shut down in July. I'm too far from the CO for DSL and didn't want Comcast.
It took some effort to convince them I was serious (I wonder if they've had bad experiences with looky-loo inquiries), but they eventually came out to check visibility, and warned me that the existing 20' mast (leftover from Sprint) might not be adequate to clear the nearby trees. I had them install on that anyway as it was quicker and cheaper, and while the speed was good the signal strength was low and the connection frequently dropped for a minute or two. After a month or two I decided to have them install a taller mast, which fixed the problem. Since then the speed is almost always well above the level I'm paying for ($119/mo for 1Mbps guaranteed/4Mbps burst), and it's usually extremely reliable. Tech support is sometimes slow to respond, but better than any large ISP.
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Review by Gm4n
Posted: 288 days ago
member for 288 days, 0 visits, last login: 288 days ago
Palo Alto,Santa Clara,CA
$99 per month (12 month contract)
about 14 days
"fast internet, flexible support, reliable connection, amazing upload speed"
"Slow sales team, installation fees, tech support isn't round-the-clock"
"Etheric is a good deal, and works way better than DSL. However, some patience will be required."
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I switched to Etheric after being fed up with terrible DSL at my home. The transition was a tad rocky. It took a while (around two weeks?) to get a survey and installation. The installer didn't get things quite right, and our internet wasn't exactly stable for the first few weeks. And of course, the installation fee itself, as well as your purchase of the hardware. Needless to say, I didn't start out enthralled with etheric.
After a while, service improved. Etheric tuned my beam, climbed a tower, and did whatever else it was that needed doing.... they even sent out another tech to fix the install. And when I wanted to get my ip-to-name lookup changed, it was done within a few hours 
Nowadays I essentially always have my "burst" speeds, and the connection is rock solid. Pings to google are amazingly fast, and there's NO packet loss (I don't really know what else to measure). I was far from pleased at first, but it turned out to be more than worth it in the long run... and if I ever call up, the techs speak english and know what's going on. I haven't had anyone tell me to reboot my computer in quite some time.
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Review by hroch
UPDATED: 300 days ago
member for 300 days, 0 visits, last login: 300 days ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$79 per month
about 10 days
"Local, small, effective, fast, reliable, independent."
"Technology limitations: line of sight, power to towers during storms"
"Far better deal than national ISPs. Best service in Silicon Valley."
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I have been a customer of Etheric Networks for over a year now and the connection, service, and support ROCKS, with "Bronze" Residential Internet Service at 750 kbps (burst 1 Mbps), 27.5 GB/month cap, for $80/month. Hardware and installation was approx. $500.
For DSL, I am apparently too long wound, as even dialup and faxes over the phone line fail frequently. I had Megapath ISDN for $100/month (144 kbps), now discontinued; they would offer me partial T1 for $400+/month, no, thanks. My neighbors run $200+/month "cable packages" from Comcast; since I want just the internet, "the service is not available in the area". Right.
So urban wireless it is. Etheric's installation was reasonable, although it took them over a week to work out all the tune-up. Since then, I have been practically permanently online (ruining web, ftp, mail servers); there were only a few down situations, either standard maintenance/upgrade/configuration, or a storm has passed through the area and knocked out power to the equipment on the hill I'm radioing with.
Only several hours down cummulative, over the course of a year, is an excellent service.
I don't buy FUD about wireless latency: I'm about 12 ms round-trip from a backbone in light traffic, and about 30 ms under heavy load. It was not better on the wire.
The real difference is in the company and the people. Personal, local, competent, and able to take advantage of me being an engineer. What a relief from an outsourced script drone!
How much chance do you have calling a national ISP and have them *understand* and *fix* a problem you define as "30% packet loss about 4 hops from me"? Without having to tell them what service pack you have on your MS Word? It took Etheric 3 minutes to resolve.
I wish I had known about Etheric Networks a few years earlier, and saved myself the hassle I had to endure with all the others. So, if you're in line of sight of any of the Etheric towers, I would certainly recommend them.
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Review by doug lockie
Posted: 1 year ago
member for 1 year, 0 visits, last login: 1 year ago
Los Gatos,Santa Clara,CA
$139 per month (36 month contract)
about 6 days
"all networks break, what happens to get it fixed shows a good company, Etherics tech support is super"
"even if you hook unauthorized equipment on the network, the support staff works it through with you."
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We ordered 10 Mbits/sec at $139. Install happened within an hour of schedule. Wind storm took out my tower, tech support talke me through a realignment. Flawless.
Best and fastest Internet I have ever had.
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Review by bod
UPDATED: 1 year ago
member for 7.3 years, 451 visits, last login: 4 days ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$129 per month (12 month contract)
"Speed! symmetric transfer rates, small company that listens"
"Problems can go unnoticed until reported by customers"
"Addictive; low cost for the bandwidth provided"
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Update 11/10/08: Things have steadily improved, The few issues I've seen have been short-lived. Etheric's network in general seems to be more resilient, and I've seen routing being changed dynamically to work around problems. My link has been benchmarking faster more consistently, and they appear to be widening their backhauls and sorting out other congestion points. I've been seeing 14-12 Mbps download speed tests pretty regularly, with upload speeds not far behind.
Customer support and communication has shown a marked improvement, no doubt helped by hiring a customer service manager. Response to problem reports has been prompt (definitely a problem in the past). Still some room for some improvement, but the trend is definitely in the right direction. They also hired a VP Engineering.
As an interesting glimpse into the company: they recently faced an issue with KBSW wanting to demolish a 1500' radio tower at Mt. Madonna, where they were a tenant. Most companies would have seen that as a setback, Etheric saw it as an opportunity, formed a group of investors and bought the tower.
________________
Update 06/30/08: Still pretty stable, no outright outages since the last update. A handful of short periods when internet access was sluggish, but quite possibly not Etheric's fault. Ping times pretty stable during the day, some increases late at night/early morning. My link speed seems to be hovering around 10 Mbps down/8-9Mbps up, though I've seen individual tests as high as 14/12.
No improvement in customer support observed. I sent in a trouble ticket a couple of days ago about their speedtest web server giving 404 errors, and the email bounced! It listed several internal email addresses that couldn't be reached. So I sent it directly to the CEO, still no response (which is unusual). I'm guessing they have not hired a customer service manager yet.
________________
Update 03/16/08: Stability seems to have settled down, though minor occasional glitches remain. But my speed tests have settled out to be generally 20-30% lower than they were, which it's difficult to be happy about. Especially when they were hitting 40% higher for a few days. Which contributes to an impression that their network is not stable & reliable. Seems like they're always scrambling to fix something, never ahead of the game.
The CEO circulated an email to customers which laid out some of the corrective actions they'll be taking over the coming months. It includes hiring a customer service manager, which could help with their weakest aspect (support and communication with customers). Let's hope they find a rockstar.
I did renew for the next year, but not without thoroughly researching the competition first.
________________
Update 01/28/08: Things had been going swimmingly: great throughput, occasional but brief outage here and there, until mid-December. Things have been decidedly spotty since. I've had periods of poor throughput, high packet loss and multi-hour outages. I've just had my worst set ever at Etheric - a 5 hour, 2 hour and 10 hr outage on the same day.
I don't know the reason yet, which is an area Etheric could still improve - keeping their customers informed. It's probably PG&E's fault - the last major outage was (I had to call to discover that). The access points are at high elevations, and experience power outages more frequently in bad weather like we've had recently (high winds, heavy driving rain). It'd be great if PG&E would fix its frail network (heaven knows I'm paying my part to fund it) but it could be argued that Etheric could do more - e.g. backup supplies at the AP. Could be it comes down to cost - I suspect I'm on an access point with fewer subscribers.
Other problems have been interference affecting my link, and problems on the backhaul from the mountain ridge down to the Qwest data center.
I've been told the reason my upload numbers vary so much is that one of my neighbors on this AP is using a lot of bandwidth, and hasn't been capped yet.
On the other hand, Etheric hasn't been idle; a firmware update for the radio modems has dropped ping times from 2ms to 1ms (at the cost of 0.5% packet loss) and improved throughput.
One aspect I don't like about Etheric is having to be obnoxious about a problem to have it attended to - not something I enjoy doing. I'd rather report a problem, and have it fixed in a timely fashion, than have to make a stink. Past experiences have shown that not making a stink about it means it never gets attention (months can go by, literally). Support at Etheric continues to be their weakest area, sadly.
I usually pay annually, and am due for renewal about now. Which leaves me in a quandry. If I were running a business over this link, this would be hurting it, and I'd have no choice but to look elsewhere. But I'm not, and it's mostly an annoyance, except when I'm trying to use WebEx for a conf call!. It's also a more serious issue for my VoIP connectivity. Chances are things will return to their previous high levels; there's always that seed of doubt though, especially after extended periods of poorer-than-normal service. When it's working well (the vast majority of the time) it's difficult to match by other (reasonably-priced) means.
I'll post another update when things settle down.
________________
Update 11/18/06: It's a shame that it required complaining in a public forum, but it got the ball rolling at Etheric. I still think the normal support mechanisms need fixing badly, but Alex (the CEO) is serious about keeping his customers happy and fixing issues when he hears about them. Here's hoping that's infectious for the new support folks he's hired/hiring.
Alex first looked at the existing link, saw plenty of evidence of the issues, and spent some time trying to optimize my link (apparently the poorest on my access point). There was an small improvement, but not enough to think the issues were nailed.
Alex encouraged me to consider upgrading to the latest generation of equipment ('Gen3'), since the performance was better in just about every metric relative to the Gen1 equipment they installed for me three years ago. The catch? a few hundred dollars out-of-pocket. I can't say I leaped at the prospect, but after looking at the material, it did seem like I was getting something significantly better for the money.
A friendly and knowledgable installer came out to do the upgrade five days ago. It went smoothly. I have a much stronger signal than I did, and throughput has gone up about 4-5x over what I was seeing previously. DSLReports speed tests are regularly reporting speeds in the 10-11Mbps range in both directions, and I haven't yet seen a speed reported below 8 Mbps (even in light rain over a 9.3 mile link!). Ping times to the gateway are usually about 1.5 msec.
Etheric has restored my faith in them. I can't see any large ISP taking the time to make sure an existing customer is happy the way Etheric has done. Paying for an upgrade wasn't what I was looking to do, but they were pretty reasonable about pricing. I feel like I've gotten significantly better service, and at the same rates as I've been paying. So I can happy recommend them again.
________________
Update 10/28/06: Sorry to say, the service has eroded steadily, and much of what I wrote below is no longer true. I've had intermittent outages (>70% packet loss for ~15 mins) for almost three months now. The support email address is essentially a black hole. It took three days for them to open a ticket when I first reported a problem, and I've had zero response since the first couple of emails and attempt to fix.
My burst speed now averages 2-3 Mbps, a long way short of the speeds I saw originally. My service plan states 'bursts to 6Mbps' but I've not seen that in a long time.
I can't honestly recommend Etheric Networks as things stand. I'm actually sad to post this, as they've been great in the past, but I can't say I feel that way at the moment. I'm hoping this is temporary and things will improve again.
________________
I'm very glad I found Etheric Networks...
Prior to having service from Etheric, I was using two DSL lines (from different providers). Partly to try to get more bandwidth at reasonable cost, but mostly for some redundancy, as outages were not uncommon. While my time with Etheric has not been spotless, the few outages I've had have not lasted more than a few hours. To date, my outages have been caused by: firmware problems on the transceiver (fixed within a week, when the vendor released a fix), router failure (about 6 hours, I think), and a few short outages when configuration changes weren't quite right. That last one is a bit of a double-edged sword... The good folks at Etheric take the performance of their network seriously, and are often tweaking to make improvements - which is great, a point-to-point wireless network benefits greatly from that kind of attention. But sometimes the changes are not as transparent as one would like, and a little further tinkering is needed. But if I had to make a choice, I'd rather have a very fast network with rare, short hiccups, than one that's perpetually under-performing.
One problem that's occurred more than once has been minor problems with the local DNS servers. Haven't happened in a while though, so perhaps it's resolved.
While the monthly price isn't bargain-basement, it's great value. I have a committed rate equivalent to a T1, but usually see sustained throughputs in the 5-7 Mbps range (tested with DSLReports). I wish they'd run a local speed test server, as I suspect internet congestion is hurting the numbers!
I was trying to find reasonably-priced SDSL service before finding Etheric, and nothing came close. Startup costs are a little high, as you have to provide a security deposit on the transceiver that's installed, but I'd much rather do that than have it's cost rolled into the monthly payment.
The pre-sales experience was a mix. The first sales guy was hopeless, but he left shortly after. The second one was very much on-the-ball (though perhaps a little too driven for some), answered my questions promptly and kept the ball moving. The installers were great, took the time to put the transceiver in an unobtrusive location (which looks like a satellite dish, as I'm over 9 miles from the access point) and run the cabling out of sight.
These guys care about their network and their customers, and the support people know what they're talking about, on the rare occasions I need to call. I'm one happy customer.
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Review by MHethering
Posted: 1.6 years ago
member for 1.6 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.6 years ago
La Honda,San Mateo,CA
Business customer
$99 per month (month by month)
about 2 days
"Responsive, Implementation of Security Measures, High Speed and Reliability,"
"None"
"Great company, great people"
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We have used Etheric for about a year for a rural-based law practice. Etheric provides far faster Internet speeds than we had at our offices in Palo Alto. Set up was extremely fast; less than 2 hours to run cable to the office and set up the router. Technicians were friendly, responsive, and eager to help us, unlike any other Internet provider we experienced.
Alex Hagen is extremely knowledgeable about security and has helped us implement extra security measures that other ISPs don't care about.
Tech support has been outstanding and responsive. Whenever we've had a problem, a real person answers the phone, and often fixes the problem in minutes- even on week ends. We had DirecWay and Earthlink in the past, and had endless problems with Technical Support.
Etheric uses a technology that is substantially immune to atmospheric conditions. DirecWay and Earthlink went down or became unstable every time we had rain, drizzle, or even thick fog.
We highly recommend Etheric. Etheric provides a reliable, cost effective, high speed alternative to satellite, DSL, and cable.
Followup comments:  sghulten
join:2003-04-17
Gilroy, CA | Big improvement in southern network Alex made a network change about 3 weeks ago and the system has been consistently fast ever since. I can't even comment on the tech support since the system has been so stable. Very happy now. | |
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Review by sghulten
UPDATED: 1.7 years ago
member for 6.6 years, 283 visits, last login: 3 days ago
Gilroy,Santa Clara,CA
$115 per month (3 month contract)
about 12 days
"fast"
"support needs improvement / needs redundancy on towers"
"the only solution for ruralites within sight of a tower"
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Here's an update. Finally got service restored after failed hardware unit on tower repaired. Having been down for serveral weeks (and being brutalized by using a dialup connection) I investigated alternatives for my location. Seriously considedred going back to satellite until I read the reviews on dslreports on hughesnet. Brought back too many painful memories. Still no dsl or cable. Tried Verizon and Sprint broadband wireless -- no signal. Notwithstanding the outage I have to admit that etheric is a godsend for my location. They really need to improve communication with the customer when problems arise. If I was told initially that they were swamped (because of recent storms) and that it would be fixed within a month I would have been more understanding.
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I don't like giving negative reviews, but.... This company utilizes wireless technology with transmitters on various towers through out the s.f. bay area. The company has a high potential, especially for folks like me that live in rural areas (no dsl, no cable -- satellite - been there, done that). I've been a customer for approx 4 years. I've been extremely patient as this company established it's network and associated support. The owner, Alexander Hagen is extremely capable at fixing any tech problems. However, his time is over committed.
It is now Thursday evening, January 31st and I've now been without service since Sunday evening. I was told my "problem" would be fixed two days prior. The support person I talked to doesn't know what the actual "problem" is but that it has been assigned a high priority. For all I know, this situation will exist indefinitely.
Actually speaking to support outside of 10-6 M-F is hit-and-miss -- mostly miss.
Bottom line -- This company is understaffed. A company in buisiness for 6+ years should not be subjecting customers to such a lousy experience. Remember, I paid money for this???
Followup comments: 
Disgusted
@mikecappella.com
| An illness that doesn't go away... Once again, Etheric's network is plagued with long-term downtime and un-usability: extremely high packet loss (+80%), high latency (+3000ms), and transfer speeds that barely compete with a dialup modem (58k/52k). This has been an especially terrible couple of weeks.
And still, they simply do not understand the concept of "customer support". Support line does not answer, calls are disconnected, emails are not responded to, and returned or follow-up calls are not made.
Time to restart the T1 shopping process again. Sigh.
I'm so totally disgusted with this company... | |
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Disgusted
@mikecappella.com
| Network pain Some pictures for your entertainment. | |
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Disgusted
@mikecappella.com
| It just gets worse... and worse... Another day of network hell from Etheric.
- Support is not answering calls
- download speed 8k, if at all
- net apps are losing connection, stalling
- the chief is literally "asleep" | |
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Review by acehreli
Posted: 2.4 years ago
member for 2.4 years, 2 visits, last login: 2.4 years ago
Mountain View,Santa Clara,CA
$80 per month (12 month contract)
about 2 days
"Very fast inbound and outbound speed; static IP"
"More expensive than other options but much better too"
"Very fast and reliable connection from a friendly company"
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Etheric Networks
