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Review by stx 
UPDATED: 75 days ago
member for 1.6 years, 239 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Corpus Christi,Nueces,TX
 $97 per month
 about 7 days
 "Reliable Internet Connection...no down time"
 "Inconsistent speed,high pings,poor performance"
 "Avoid Grande, slow internet,high pings...I DO NOT recomment Grande."
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I ordered the 8.0 internet access plan, telephone service, and cable television from Grande Communications due to the fact that it is a tad cheaper than getting similar services from Time Warner Cable or AT&T. The order process went smoothly, but the install process was poorly coordinated, and the installer did a poor job. Two days after the installer left my home, I started having problems with my phone,internet, and cable. I had to schedule another appointment with Grande, this time, it was for a "repair,service call", basically, the installer did a poor job that had to be fixed. I am extremely dissatisfied with Grande Communication's internet service & also dissatisfied with the quality of the cable television. The ONLY positive thing about Grande's internet service is the fact that the internet connection is reliable...I have experienced no down time. Now, on to the negative aspects of Grande's internet service, the internet connection is consistently slower than the plan that I am paying for, the connection always has high pings & generally poor performance. I ordered the 8.0mbps download / 512kbps upload plan, during non-peak usage times, I actually receive 5-6mbps download/ 540kbps upload. During peak usage times (6pm-11pm), I receive much slower speeds than I am paying for, example: 2-5mbps download/496kbps upload. I DO NOT recommend Grande Communication's internet service or their cable television, the internet service is slow and provides poor performance, the cable television is equally crappy...bad picture quality. To sum everything up, AVOID Grande Communications. I will be switching all of my services(internet,cable television,and telephone) to either Time Warner Cable or AT&T.
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 Review by Zomniak
UPDATED: 110 days ago
member for 8.8 years, 1285 visits, last login: 11 days ago
Frisco,Denton,TX
$160 per month
about 20 days
"Stable, relatively fast internet service."
"Declining HD picture quality; Expensive."
"The best option for internet in a non-Fios area, will shop for TV."
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Solid internet service. 1200/1000 service is actually 12000/1500 with downstream bursts to 24000 kbits.
TV service is average. They have been adding more HD channels, but the picture quality has declined noticeably to the point that I'll be shopping for satellite. Channel 5 (KXAS) dies during thunderstorms.
Poor install coordination. Tech showed up late, and it took 3 weeks and several phone calls to get them to come back to bury the cable. When they finally did bury the cable, they broke my sprinkler system in several places. They also removed the line for Time Warner Cable (yes, I have 2 cable providers).
Followup comments:  BigBallin
join:2009-01-21
San Marcos, TX | KXAS KXAS dies during thunderstorms due to the stations headend equipment. It has nothing to do with Grandecom. | |
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Zomniak
join:2001-01-08
Frisco, TX | Re: KXAS I never noticed this issue with my other cable provider (yes I have two options here). Can you cite any source for the KXAS headend issue?
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The visionary is always right. | |
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Review by mo1258
Posted: 155 days ago
member for 5.4 years, 25 visits, last login: 155 days ago
San Marcos,Hays,TX
$120 per month (12 month contract)
about 10 days
"Consistantly high speed (8Mbs) and Very good value especially for initial signup period"
"TV selection not as good as Time Warner, Install was a circus"
"Good for internet and phone, not so good for TV"
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Had Grande Com in San Marcos. The install was a fiasco - all on their side of the house - no problems inside. They did stick with it until they got it working but it took over a week. Phone worked fine over existing phone wiring - it is not VOIP to my house. Internet speeds were very reasonable - upgraded to 8Mbs and it was indeed that speed at all times of the day. Connection was reliable. Great pricing for the initial 12 month signup period then the prices shot up like a rocket - customer service took no efforts to keep me as a customer. Wife wanted better TV - more HD so we changed to Time Warner with Turbo Boost - which, BTW, I do not think is all that fast. Grande was consistantly fast with no lags. Time Warner Turbo seems to have a lag then spurt of speed. I miss my Grande internet!
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 Review by zeos386sx
Posted: 331 days ago
member for 3.9 years, 8 visits, last login: 321 days ago
Waco,Mclennan,TX
Contract price not specified.
"8Mbps as opposed to twc's 6Mbps"
"p2p throttling seems to be in place"
"speed is great, only cable option for this apt."
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8Mbps as opposed to twc's 6Mbps for about the same price.
p2p throttling seems to be in place, torrents, linux isos only of course  , run at about 3Mbps
speed is great, only cable option for this apt.
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Review by toddnix
Posted: 359 days ago
member for 359 days, 4 visits, last login: 346 days ago
Austin,Travis,TX
$39 per month
about 6 days
"fast, reliable, consistent, friendly installer"
"had to wait a week for install, technical requirements not spelled out well"
"recommended"
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ordered GForce F-10 High-Speed Internet
switched from 2-line ATT + DSL to Grande + Voipo
my monthly bill is 1/2 and my speed is 3x both up and down.
speeds have been rock solid consistent with no issues and no down time.
they should inform folks that the modem needs a power drop and while they will install it under a pier&beam house, they won't install it in the attic and prefer to install it indoors
wasn't a huge problem - had my electrician out the next day to install a plug but an unexpected hiccup.
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Review by dallas_tx
UPDATED: 1 year ago
member for 1.2 years, 6 visits, last login: 358 days ago
Allen,Collin,TX
$30 per month
"Very high latency during peak hours. Sub-par d/l speeds"
"Stay away"
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I've been with grandecommunications for about two years now. They used to be okay, but have recently gone downhill. I live outside the Dallas area, and there are EXTREMELY high latencies most evenings. A simple ping to grande's default router will average between 40 and 120ms, with peaks above that. If you play online games, forget it.
You may pay for the 6 or 8 Mbps bundle, but will usually get significantly less, especially in the evenings.
I have called their tech support numerous times, but so far have been unable to make any progress on the latency issues. Latencies are generally lower and speeds faster in the mornings, which tends to point to "not enough bandwidth for our subscriber base".
Here is an example of HOW BAD IT IS: (this is a ping test from my cable modem to a router internal to grande):
Fri Nov 21 19:00:39 CST 2008
PING 24.155.121.224 (24.155.121.224) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=1 ttl=61 time=207 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=2 ttl=61 time=178 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=3 ttl=61 time=129 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=4 ttl=61 time=108 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=5 ttl=61 time=131 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=6 ttl=61 time=146 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=7 ttl=61 time=112 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=8 ttl=61 time=157 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=9 ttl=61 time=111 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=10 ttl=61 time=132 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=11 ttl=61 time=155 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=12 ttl=61 time=107 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=13 ttl=61 time=133 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=14 ttl=61 time=86.7 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=15 ttl=61 time=177 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=16 ttl=61 time=195 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=17 ttl=61 time=143 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=18 ttl=61 time=112 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=19 ttl=61 time=105 ms
64 bytes from 24.155.121.224: icmp_seq=20 ttl=61 time=139 ms
--- 24.155.121.224 ping statistics ---
20 packets transmitted, 20 received, 0% packet loss, time 18998ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 86.755/138.720/207.909/31.463 ms
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Review by fattycakes
Posted: 1.1 years ago
member for 1.1 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
Arlington,Tarrant,TX
$78 per month (12 month contract)
about 10 days
"when i first signed up it was worth what i was paying"
"they jacked the price up 2 times on me"
"they suck and the cumtomer service is terrible. i will never use them again"
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i used grande for 3 years. in that time i had service problems constantly, even thought it was basic cable that plugged into a wall, whenever it would rain the "satellite" would lose signal. well we didn't have a satellite. along with multiple times of having to spend anywhere from 1/2 an hour to an hour and a half on the phone to have someone check the lines so the internet would work. this generally lead to a tech having to come out and the problem would not get fixed for 5-7 days.
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Review by brybarnes
UPDATED: 1.4 years ago
member for 8.7 years, 812 visits, last login: 5 days ago
Little Elm,Denton,TX
$35 per month
about 5 days
"Reliable Speeds-Connectivity-Very few outages-Excellent field service techs"
"None (yet)"
"Quality Internet at decent speed/price"
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2 years now with Grande Cable; they continue to provide a reliable connection with few outages. I have had the same speed package and upload speeds can vary wildly anywhere from 200's to 400's. latency and jitter have become a concern with VoIP; the speeds only offer subpar or radio quality VoIP. Still cheaper and better the A** &T DSL!
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Grande only offered DSL in my area until they extended their broadband cable network into my neighborhood. Install went well. When there was an area outage (only one so far), the field techs were at my house the very next day to ensure service was up and speeds were there!!
Update: Field service tech came thru again! My neighbors built a pool and severed the line when installing a sprinkler. Service tech was out the next day to check signal at house (none), he ran a temp line. Total down time 3 days in a year!
Update: Upload speeds could be higher, mine 400.
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Review by mbizer
Posted: 1.4 years ago
member for 8.2 years, 67 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
Austin,Travis,TX
$20 per month
"generally reliable"
"tech people are idiots"
"much better than Time Warner!"
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$20 is a special one-year rate for 6 mbs down and 384 Kbps up.
I've generally been very happy with Grande but my recent experience with them has given me pause. My router (or computer, if it is directly connected to the cable modem) is consistently getting a DHCP lease that lasts only an hour, it's filling up the logs, yet I get the *same* dynamic IP every time. I've spent countless hours on the phone with Grande, suggesting that their DHCP server is misconfigured or should be reconfigured to give me an IP for at least 24 hours, to no avail.
Followup comments: retsej2007
join:2008-06-02
| .... Strange...I'm now in the Austin(ish) area on Grande, and my lease times aren't an hour the last time I checked. I was having a latency issue while playing WoW which seemed to occur at certain intervals, and I searched everything from leases to wireless connections and it ended up being the stupid wireless software. (linksys and windows sometimes fight over who owns my wireless lol)
Although I don't think it will bother me for what I'm doing, I'll check mine this evening out of curiosity. I wonder if it's possible it's specific to certain areas? | |
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ret
@grandecom.com | Re: .... Mine is working fine...maybe they fixed something? | |
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 Review by Scooby007
UPDATED: 1.7 years ago
member for 7.5 years, 154 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
San Antonio,Bexar,TX
$44 per month
about 4 days
"super fast and reliable, professional and accommodating install, inexpensive bundle, best connection I've had"
"absolutely none so far"
"do it now if you can!"
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**edit (2/28/08): after almost 2 years I am still perfectly happy with Grande - I pay the same monthly fee and now get 8mb/1mb according to my last test at bbr. I've noticed literally NO downtime since I've had their service - an unparalleled record in my long broadband experience!
(original review) Grande was a very nice suprise. I've had cable and it worked fine, but never knew I was in a relatively small area that Grande was doing fiber to the house in. I originally contacted them only because the bundle price was less than Time Warner Cable. **Only after I signed up, did I find out they would be running fiber to the house.** In my opinion, this should be their #1 selling point on the phone. It's faster upload and download than cable right now. Anyway, I was very happy. The guy came out and told us they needed to put a power supply in the house somewhere. As we had just remodeled the house, I was really picky about where to put it, and he accommodated every request - I was very surprised.
This is another way they do things differently. We had a very nice rep come out, talk about everything and set an appointment for install. If there's any downtime, we are supposed to call him directly. This type of service I thought didn't exist anymore...!
When the install guys came out, they were less enthusiastic about our special install requests... probably because they had to first pull the fiber from a couple of blocks away outside.... But, eventually, they delivered as promised, putting the power supply and ethernet port neatly in my office closet. On top of this, because they missed their first appointment, they waived the install fee (which, in this case, was probably substantial, as they were on the property somewhere for about 3 - 4 hours...).
Since the install a couple of months ago, the connection has been rock-solid. No downtime and blazing upload and download speeds.
I am a web designer / developer, so I am very picky about this kind of thing, and I can say this has been the best broadband experience I have had. I would recommend Grande to anyone.
p.s. To answer the questions below:
We get 8Mb down / 1Mb (edited 2/28/08) up / dynamic IP for $43.95 (includes 20% off with bundle)
Cost Calculator on their website: »www.grandecom.com/Residential/bu···byob.jsp
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