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 Review by AlsknSnoBals 
UPDATED: 2.3 years ago
member for 2.5 years, 219 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
 Anchorage,Anchorage,AK
 $70 per month
 about 1 days
 "Good connection with fast downloads."
 "In order to get unlimited, you have to buy a package deal."
 "Good service at a good price. About par for cable."
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I purchased GCI as a package deal, which includes digital television, Internet, and telephone. I had my doubts about voip at first, but overall my telephone service has been comparable to anything I had in the past. The cable Internet is five megs down and the television, well, it's cable. That's not to say that it's bad, there just aren't many channels I used to watch on DirecTV available in Anchorage.
Still, GCI has given me exacting customer service, reliable Internet and telephone, and decent television for a reasonable price. The best part is there are no annoying contracts to endure and customer service is 24 hours a day, seven days a week if I ever need anything.
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Review by otso32
Posted: 3.4 years ago
member for 3.4 years, 2 visits, last login: 2.9 years ago
Anchorage,Anchorage,AK
$170 per month
about 3 days
"Awesome tech support group for phone, cable, and internet in one department!"
"2 bills, 1 company? Better double-check those figures again."
"Always ask for the senior tech/rep/supervisor"
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I've been a GCI customer since I moved out of my parents' some time ago, and I've been a happy camper since! The key is to review your billing, and often! GCI had so many deals over the years, and I kept getting upgraded for free almost every 6 months. I started with just their cable modem service in Sitka, paying nearly $60/month for 256k/56k and 5GB of usage. Then one day, my speeds doubled, and when I called to check in on it, they had given me a free upgrade to 512k/64k and 10 GB of usage for the same price. I moved to Anchorage, but the customer service rep in Sitka told me to bring my modem with me, and when I got to Anchorage to 'provision' it, they told me that I was supposed to return the modem in Sitka and pick up a different brand in Anchorage! Looks like the reps weren't too aware of what city offered what services for the same company. Nonetheless, I picked up the "Ultimate Package" for $80+taxes/fees, which gave me some 150 all-digital cable channels (including local), and for additional fees, I picked up an extra 20-some movie channels, 15-some high-definition channels, and a couple of special interest (The Filipino Channel and the Korean Channel) for another $40 per month. On top of that, I also have a 5M/256k cable modem with unlimited usage for an extra $50/mo - less than what I was paying in Sitka! And as always, I get Alaska Airline mileage through GCI, too!
I actaully had to get this deal set up through the tech support department - the senior techs there knew more about selling than customer service, and at least the tech support group was open 24 hours a day, whereas customer service was not. All of the techs there handled everything - cable problems, phone problems, internet problems... They could even do things that customer service should be doing, such as these free upgrades and telling me about the latest deals, and one of the techs were even able to take a payment for me! But I have noticed that the tech support group is comprised of mostly younger guys than myself. I have became used to immediately asking for the senior technicians to get faster and more reliable information...
Installation was a breeze. Since GCI is the ONLY cable service provider in Alaska, every home wired for cable was already set up for it. I simply came home, hooked everything up with all of the cables and splitters (including the high-def component cables - Moster quality for free!) that I picked up from one of the GCI stores - no need to wait 1 or 2 weeks for an installer to come out. And even when I did need a trouble call, the technicians were helpful and informative about what was wrong and how they fixed it. They even work late (until 8PM) and even on Saturdays and Sundays, and they even have 24-hour on-calls - if you angry enough at a supervisor, they'll call out an on-call technician for you. I've never tested this, however... Anyway, my current apartment building is a 6-plex, so the last tech had to install an amplifier on my line to compensate for the old wiring in my neighborhood. He said that GCI will be coming around upgrading all of the lines (fiber?) in the future to provide digital local phone service (VoIP?) over the cable system. Apparently, this already exists in some parts of Anchorage...
Compared to what ACS, TelAlaska (better known as ACS), and Clearwire (Clearwire is a national ISP that provides broadband-over-cellular on GSM channels, but they rent all of their bandwidth from GCI!) has to offer around town, GCI has been the best for providing eveything in one spot. I have not once been billed to have a trouble call for cable, internet, or my phone service, and although there was a point where I was dealing with daily internet drops, it was easily remedied once I started talking to only the senior technicians. I've heard of horror stories of satellite dishes losing its quality in the snow - something that we get plenty of in Alaska - since the satellite dishes have to be pointed extremely low in the horizon to the south. And if you wanted to have it re-aimed or relocated on your house, get ready to foot a per-quarter-hour bill.
There was some descrepancy with the bills at first, and this applies to any of the "Packages": You get two bills, period. One bill is for local, long distance, and internet, and the second bill is for cable TV. This is because GCI started in the 1970's as a Long Distance carrier in some now-rich guy's garage. Eventually they provided local service and internet, but it wasn't until deregulation of the cable TV network in the 1990's that GCI bought some of the local cable providers around the state. Because of this, GCI never did have the necessary infrastructure to combine the two billing systems. Rumor has it, though, that GCI has a new billing system (reported on my bill last November), and they will be printing one bill, and not two sometime in the future.
Anyway, about that first pair of bills - I found out the hard way that the cable is not only prorated for the current billing cycle at the time that I signed up for services, but they also bill one whole month in advance. If you sign up in the middle of any of their billing cycles, your first bill could be almost triple than what your agreed monthly rate is, and customer service can never seem to get the figures right at the moment you sign up! (Again, talk to a senior rep about this, if you're that concerned about that first bill - it makes sense when you do a day-by-day analysis, but it takes a lot of understanding to see it right).
The good thing is that I didn't have to sign any contracts or put down any deposits, though I would consider the first set of bills to contain a 1-month advance deposit for cable. When you disconnect your cable services, they can take that 1-month advance billing and apply it to your current local/long distance/internet bill, which is handy when you want to cancel services. Also, if you ever get upset and you want to cancel services, GCI offers all kinds of 'save'-tactics - you can get as much as two months of all services free, and up to 20,000 Alaska Airline miles (a free round-trip ticket in Alaska) if you argue long enough with a supervisor! You will *never* find these tactics advertised anywhere because GCI takes a heavy loss of revenue when they have to employ these one-time only offers. They'll credit anything that you complain about - dropped phone calls, invalid over-usage charges, cable outages, missing or poor-quality channels - all on a day-by-day and case-by-case basis. Not that it's much, but it's good to know that you get your money back for services you don't get.
For example, the Ulimate Package is $79.99 per month, of which some $30 goes to phone services, leaving about $50 for cable. $50 divided by 30 days is $1.67 per day. If you're missing individual channels, it's $1.67 per day divided by 150 channels, or $0.01 per channel per day, and poor-quality channels only get partial credit - again, ask for a senior customer service rep for a complete and accurate breakdown. And if you have only the Ultimate Package, you're getting your LiteSpeed cable modem (84k/32k, 1GB) for free with your Long Distance plan - problems with your 'free' internet warrant zero credit.
Overall, you'll never find comparable prices for *anything* in Alaska to the lower 49, but when we're forced to work with what we have available, GCI is second-to-none in my book. Besides, when was the last time your ISP helped you re-install your wireless router or re-program your universal remote for a new TV or home theater receiver in less than 15 minutes?
One final note - after comparing notes with other GCI customers, I found that the more you pay for your services at GCI, the more likely you are to get better support, even though they say that all customers are treated equally. Obviously, business customers get highest priority, but the more you pay, the more likely it becomes a bargaining chip when you need something done or fixed faster...
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Review by khachadooria
Posted: 4.3 years ago
member for 4.3 years, 0 visits, last login: 4.3 years ago
Anchorage,Anchorage,AK
$49 per month (month by month)
about 1 days
"reliable fast downloading no clogged bandwidth"
"upload speed is slow 10GB monthly download limit"
"best value in the anchorage area"
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I have had GCI Cable modem service since 1999 in several anchorage locations, offer it as a perk for my rental apartments and reccomend it to my customers at Alaska Computer Doctor. I have the Silver Plus pacakge and am quite happy with the download speed - since i have a business account with them I don't have to pay the additional $19 for Cable service since we don't watch TV. Upload sped is slow - if you are going to be doing web publishing look at Tel-Alaska - it has the only symetric service in the area that I know of - otherwise you want to go with GCI Cable modem - David Khacahdoorian 907-360-6397 PS if you have a live cable connection where you are you can go to a GCI store and have your cable modem up and running in less than 1 hour - including travel time to the GCI store - of which there are 4 or 5 in town local number is 907-265-5400
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Review by schoolaccess
Posted: 5 years ago
member for 6 years, 23 visits, last login: 4.7 years ago
Anchorage,Anchorage,AK
Contract price not specified.
"I work for GCI, but in a different department."
"I work with GCI Internet."
"I don't work for GCI Internet."
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Disclaimer: I work for GCI, but not for Internet (the ISP side of the house).
GCI sells, in Anchorage, a 1M/128K, 10G transfer limit, dynamic IP, 20M webspace, 4 email account, cable modem connection for $50 (if subscriber has GCI Long Distance).
I'm not going to "Rate" any of the categories, but believe general support and service is good. (Even as an employee, though, I had "issues" with a CSR in another department over a cell phone plan and problem...)
GCI bundles a lot of services in all kinds of plans and is very successful at it--much to the frustration of our competition. And as with any service, read the fine print!
Of the research that I've done re Cable Modem delivery in other states, GCI does a pretty good job. From personal experience, I've found my CM delivery experience to be quite good. Far more reliable than any dialup or dsl that I've had.
The cable modem plant delivers to Com21, RCA and Toshiba devices using DOCSIS (up to DOCSIS2 on the RCA/Toshiba side, if I understand this all correctly).
BTW, although GCI Internet provides the backbone, GCI Cable & Entertainment maintains the CM infrastructure, which is a good thing. Also, GCI owns two undersea fibers that run from Alaska to L48. We have an awesome set of pipes to the L48 that provide redundant link in case of failure.
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Review by kakarot_11
UPDATED: 5.1 years ago
member for 5.2 years, 5 visits, last login: 4.2 years ago
Palmer,Matanuska Susitna,AK
$25 per month
"Very Lousy ISP"
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They consider 64/32k to be way faster. 64k is faster than dial-up, but not much better. 32k, what kind of cable connection rate is that? Fact: dial-up can go up to about 45-50k. Unless you're on a 28k at the most, 64k is not way, way faster than dial-up. They finally put the download rate up to 128k. They say "free lite speed" is the greatest internet deal in history, I would be surprised if it wasn't within the top 5 worst. Plus, their connections seem to often drop. If you want high speed access, I would strongly recommend a different provider if they are available in your area. Unless you barely ever download anything, and mostly just use your connection for e-mail, and you already have their qualifying products and are actually satisfied, I would not recommend their "free lite speed." MTA or ACS seem like decent providers. For businesses, DSL with GCI is without a doubt, a rip off. When you first order installation, they often say it can't be done for a few days. A good friend of mine said the person from GCI should up at his place at least a week late. When it comes to giving you service, it seems they want to make you wait. When you go to cancel your service, they cancel everything practically as soon as you confirm you want to cancel. They charged at least 3 times the price on our first bill and they were acting like they were completely innocent when we know for a fact that had a fair size fault. The only good part about their service was the technician for installation, actually showed up hours befor expected, in our case a really good thing.
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