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Review by cobalt01 
UPDATED: 360 days ago
member for 4.7 years, 130 visits, last login: 36 days ago
 Tucson,Pima,AZ
 $19 per month (month by month)
 about 2 days
 "Knowledgable friendly staff."
 "None"
 "I am extremely pleased"
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I am in no way affiliated with Gain Communications other than a happy customer.
Just and update, 11/29/08;
Gain Communications has been taken over by Dakota. I still am extremely pleased with all aspects of the service.
I have been back in Tucson for 8 years after having lived here before in the 80's. Gain is the third ISP that I have had in that time and now for about a 5 year period. My son referred me to them after hearing me complain about the other ISP's that I had used. I have been pleased with their service and plan to continue with them for services. Rarely have I needed to call for technical support. When I have, my questions or problems have been resolved in a timely manner. They have not off-shored their support services and yet have remained very competitive in the market place. My internet speed has always been very acceptable and the reliability very high. I have used the telephone as well as their web site to report a problem or ask a question and the response time is great. Unlike other services I have had in the past, several times they have called back at a later date to make sure that everything was performing as it should. I highly recommend them to anyone that has need of a highly reliable ISP.
Services provided and equipment used
Broadband/DSL at 1.5mb
Qwest line provider
Actiontec R1524SU Modem/Router
Ethernet and Wireles
Extremely pleased customer,
John in Tucson
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 Review by McLovin
UPDATED: 1 year ago
member for 4.4 years, 1093 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Fairbanks,Fairbanks North Star,AK
$215 per month
"Stable, fast connection, fastest in Alaska."
"The few outages that have occurred have happened right when I needed to use the internet..."
"The fastest, and most stable internet connection in Alaska."
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Ordered the "Ultimate Package Plus" on 5/2/08, which includes the digital cable package (151 channels), VoIP phone (local and 500 long distance minutes), and 320Kbps/128Kbps internet. for $89.99
Upgraded the cable service to get the preferred service to add an additional 80 channels, plus the HD package and HBO premium HD package. Also added an HD DVR, which is required to add any HD package. Also upgraded internet connectivity to 10Mbps/1Mbps. Total in upgrades is roughly $105.00/mo.
I may scale the bandwidth back to 7Mbps/768Kbps later to save some money, but I have got some catching up to do on the internet!
They had to delay the install because they were out of stock on HD DVRs, and they wanted to wait to roll me on a new cable modem they are going to start using (DOCSIS 3?!? *crosses fingers*). Anyway, the install date is set up for Monday, 5/19/08. Customer service has been great. They offered me one free bill, and $20 off the following two bills for the inconvenience.
I will update on 5/19 after the install to advise of status and installation procedures. Along with pictures, potentially.
UPDATE 5/20/2008
Install went OK. They were still missing the DVR, however they did get into the store that day, the tech just didn't have one with him as they had gotten in about an hour before the truck roll.
The only real thing I have against anything that went wrong, was that the installer was 2 hours late. Thus delaying the account creation until the next business day, sticking me at the lowest possible cable modem provision at 128Kbps/64Kbps. Needless to say I just went to bed early and didn't even bother.
Now that I have my nice HD DVR and the cable modem at 10Mbps/1Mbps. Speedtests show accurately...
Download #1
------------------------------------------------------------
File size transferred : 14.65 MB (15360000 bytes)
Total time taken : 12.27 seconds (12265 milliseconds)
Throughput : 1252.0 KB/sec [Kilobyte-per-second]
= 1.25 MB/sec [Megabyte-per-second]
= 10016.0 Kbps [Kilobit-per-second]
= 10.02 Mbps [Megabit-per-second]
Upload #1
------------------------------------------------------------
File size transferred : 14.65 MB (15360000 bytes)
Total time taken : 128.14 seconds (128141 milliseconds)
Throughput : 119.0 KB/sec [Kilobyte-per-second]
= 0.12 MB/sec [Megabyte-per-second]
= 952.0 Kbps [Kilobit-per-second]
= 0.95 Mbps [Megabit-per-second]
The plan is nice. Cable TV picture is actually outstanding. I also ordered the HD package and the display is phenomonal. 1080i over CATV is great, and will be worth its weight in gold once football season starts!
UPDATE 11/16/08:
So service is great. Internet has been quite solid (had some instability, found out it was the routers fault), couple of outages, but none lasting more than an hour or two. Only complaint I have is that they are adding more HD channels, which is good. The bad part is that they nearly doubled the price of the HD package without telling me... Bill comes in the mail that's $20 more than usual... They raised the price of the HD package from $15/mo. to $25/mo. But they STILL don't have the local channels in HD, which SUCKS... GCI told me however that it faults to the local stations not being capable of HD, which I have a hard time believing... Customer service did a stunning job, crediting me for my frustration. But I still elected to keep the HD package...
As far as internet connection goes, its great for the New Xbox Experience. 10Mbps streaming HD Netflix rocks, video loads in ~20 seconds, plays without hiccups, as long as your roommate doesn't start trying to download stuff against you... Upload appears to be slacking, going at about 820Kbps consistantly. Several modem and router reboots does not improve anything...
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 Review by koolman2
UPDATED: 1.7 years ago
member for 7.1 years, 3964 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Anchorage,Anchorage,AK
Contract price not specified.
about 3 days
"good ping, good throughput (10 Mbps) , reliable"
"upload is slower than I'd like, but I'm not complaining"
"GCI is worth it."
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We ordered on Feb. 1, 2005, and were installed during the afternoon of Feb. 3, so I guess it was actually two days. We originally ordered the Ultimate Broadband Package, but have since upgraded services. We currently have:
10 Mbps / 1Mbps with unlimited transfer
Basic cable (channels 2-17, CSPAN 1,2)
Phone service with up to 13 features
Cell phone service, 1400 Nationwide minutes and three partner lines
Long distance w/ 150 free out-of-state minutes, 10¢/min after 150
The cost of the internet on top of everything else is $99.99 (unbundled). I'm going to leave it at that due to the difficulty of unbundling the prices.
The install went great- the person that came to setup the cable (we haven't had CATV installed in this house for about seven years) went out to connect the cable to the house, while I connected the cable modem. After the cable internet was activated, I was surfing 8-10 times faster than with my old DSL with ACS (now about 40 times due to recent upgrades, as we were originally at 2 Mbps, then 5, then 7, and now 10 with unlimited transfer, while ACS was 320 kbps [256 after overhead, whereas cable modem doesn't have overhead because the modem syncs at the maximum rate and caps the bandwidth, unlike DSL which has a physical limit due to sync rate of the line]).
The company says that I have 8 dynamic IP addresses to use, but in my experience they tend to be static. I can keep an address for months at a time. Needless to say, I really don't mind at all! The addresses are DHCP-assigned.
Overall, I was a bit nervous switching from all-ACS to all-GCI, but am now happy I did so. We now have basic cable, 40x the speed of our old internet, and the same phone features as we did on ACS.
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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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