Review by ardensherry Location: Payson, Gila, AZ, USA Cost: $60 per month (2 month contract) Always On Latency of 1069ms slows up/downloads to a crawl Only game in this area of town.

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Phone support does answer, but only to deny all system issues, and to convince you that your computer is the sole problem. Never physically responds to site for on-site testing of slow internet. When norified that their radio must be powered off/on often, they tell you that is normal, and the radio does not need replacement.

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Review by jedaustin Location: Apache Junction, Pinal, AZ, USA Cost: $79 per month (24 month contract) Install: about 5 days The price is reasonable Periodically down for a little while. The best of the options in AJ - home of 30 year old phone lines that Qworst won't fix

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1.5M down, 1M up.

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Review by jaymer Location: Apache Junction, Pinal, AZ, USA Cost: $50 per month (36 month contract) Install: about 1 days Fast Installation! Site Survey -> Order -> Install in less than 36 hours. Static IP. Costs for more bandwidth increase quickly. If Qwest and Mediacom/Cox won't serve you, call these guys! They'll take care of you.

Pre Sales Information: Install process: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:

This install was not for myself, but for my aunt. I am reviewing it here since I was incredibly impressed with the Wydebeam team and believe that they deserved some kudos.

My aunt has been on a Qwest 256/256 DSL line since 2003. I have called Qwest many times and requested more speed, but they always had some excuse. While my aunt's neighbors were getting 1-2mbit sync on their DSL lines, we were still putting along at 256kbit, it really was starting to feel like dialup. Every call to their call center (over the course of 4 years, starting in 2005) was a task and nobody was willing to help us. Mediacom is the incumbent cable company in Apache Junction and they will not serve the address without a plant extension, what a disappointment. It's like they don't want our money!

In order to remedy this problem I gave Wydebeam Broadband a call around 8:30AM on a Tuesday, I talked to Patrick who was very helpful and had answers to all of my questions (speeds, network design, equipment, etc). He suggested that he send a crew over to perform a site survey later in the morning and ensure the service could be installed, I was okay with this. The Wydebeam techs arrived around 11:30AM and gave the okay on the site survey (we are less than 2 miles from their tower with VERY clear Line-of-Sight). I called Patrick back later that afternoon and placed an order for their 1mbit down, 512kbit up service for $50, all taxes included. This included free equipment and installation with a 36 month contract ($100 ETF). Since the ETF was only $100 we did not have issue with signing a 36 month contract in order to get a free installation and equipment. The install was scheduled for the next morning between 10am - 12 pm.

Around 10:30AM Thomas arrived to install the service. He was very professional and quickly provisioned a 5.7ghz Canopy SM and went up on the roof with me to determine a mounting location for their equipment (hose clamp to vent pipe). Once SM was mounted and pointed at the tower, Thomas ran several diagnostic tests on the link from his laptop, before running the weather resistant CAT5e cable down to the office. He neatly attached the cabling to the side of the building using clips and ran the cable through a grommet, into the wall, and then neatly terminated the connection into a keystone jack on the other side of the wall. We then installed the canopy power inserter and connected up the router. Once the SM came up, a static IP was assigned to our DD-WRT WRT54G2 and we were online. After some testing and paperwork, everyone was satisfied and Thomas left.

I am not in Phoenix full time, but I have been using several utilities on DD-WRT in order to test the connection for reliability and performance. So far it has performed as advertised and my aunt and uncle are very happy. They have been using Vonage over the connection and have not had any issues with packet loss or jitter, the connection appears to be very stable, even during peak hours.

They appear to route out to the internet in Mesa, AZ via both Qwest and Cogent. A majority of standard internet traffic routes over the Cogent network, the only things which consistently route over Qwest are connections back to my University in NY (who peers with NYSERNET, TWTelecom, and Level3) and Vonage. Overall this provides a pretty good balance of performance and reliability. While Cogent is known for cheap bandwidth, it is also known for peering disputes. I am very happy that Cogent isn't their sole route to the internet since I want this connection to be as reliable as the DSL connection they had in the past.

Overall I am very impressed with the Wydebeam customer service team and their service offerings. While a cable modem or DSL line will be a better option for many people, if you don't have those offerings, these guys shine. I am very happy when I call customer service I talk to a person in Mesa, not in India or another state. I love their quick response and quick installation. I highly recommend at least checking out Wydebeam.

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