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Review by asgiov 
Posted: 1.2 years ago
member for 1.2 years, 3 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
 El Dorado Hills,El Dorado,CA
 $80 per month
 "Best choice for rural Sacramento area, EASILY"
 "Offer Low-End Broadband ONLY, though capable of MUCH MORE. 500Kbps-1.5Mbps"
 "No cable or DSL but can get Zeta, Satellite, or Cell-phone wireless? CHOOSE ZETA"
| Pre Sales Information:
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We as a family have had everything from our own personal T-1 lines to Satellite to finally getting fed-up and simply using our Sprint Wireless cards, which we got unlimited(no 5GB limit), until we decided to try Zeta Broadband.
For the most part, Zeta has excellent customer service, bar-none. While they don't seem to have a whole lot of operators and calling usually involves leaving a message with the answering machine, it's a heck of a lot better than calling and being put on hold for 20 minutes. Usually you get a call back within the hour on the weekdays during the day and if it's after hours then EARLY the next morning.
Another thing I have to say I loved about Zeta is their commitment to making REAL appointments. None of that, "we'll have a technician there between 12pm-4pm" most cable companies pull. They will make an appointment for you at a specific time and arrive at that time for the most part. They will even offer to set-up your connection when you can't be home, though they recommend you be there.
Since we had a very good line-of-site to their tower, the installation took about 20 minutes.
The guy just put the antenna out on the patio and ran the line through the wall and we hooked it up to the router and it was done. The reason for the 3 out of 5 however is because the Antenna fell off the room after about a week and dented the edge of the roof a bit. They came back the next day after I called them and remedied the problem by adding an additional metal arm to the antenna and using larger bolts. It's a lot more stable now. I just feel that for a $350 installation the INITIAL job felt a bit unprofessional in that respect. I feel like I could have done it just as good myself despite having little maintenance skill. In the end it was fine though and the dent it is VERY VERY small.
I've honestly had no reason to call tech support and that can obviously only be a good thing. The connection has been VERY consistent and VERY reliable. It's never fallen below advertised speeds and never cuts off. In fact we get ordered the 1.5Mbps package and typically see speeds of 1.8Mbps Down and 1.9Mbps Up. For $80/month in an area without DSL and Cable coverage it seems fair.
Now if you think 1.5Mbps is fast enough for you then don't even worry about the next part of this review. The company is perfect for you.
Now to get to what frustrates me the most. After two weeks of having the service something dramatic happened. The 1.5Mbps limit they had on our connection seemed to vanish and all of a sudden our download speeds were up to 10Mbps+. We were able to download large 100+MB files in a couple of minutes and we enjoyed instant access to HD rentals on the Apple TV, no longer having to wait a couple hours before we could watch our movie. My son could have lag-free game sessions EVEN while we were online watching streaming videos, it was a god-send. While the 1.5Mbps connection isn't bad and probably alright for a good amount of people, if ONE person starts downloading then it will STILL take away all the bandwidth and we will get arguments on how to use the connection. It can be extremely frustrating and it's even more so now that the speed limit is back and we are back down to the lame 1.5Mbps after about 2 weeks of bliss. Now that I know the capability is there I WANT those faster speeds. It would be as easy as flipping a switch on Zeta's side of things and yet all they offer is LOW-END Broadband speeds. Incapable of streaming HD video online and incapable of any REAL heavy usage by more than one person. Sure if all we are doing is checking our e-mail and browsing a couple of websites then it's fine, but we REALLY need it for MORE than that. If I could get that 10Mbps Downstream OFFICIALLY I'd be happy to pay upwards to $250/month. I feel like they should in the least be offering something in the 5 or 6 Mbps download range. It wouldn't even have to be asynchronous. It's not like I'm running a website. Get with the program ZETA! Give the customers what they WANT!
Honestly though, other than the utter frustration of getting teased with the amazing speeds that our capable, I am more than happy with Zeta. They offer a good combination of Customer service, very reliable internet, and much better rates than satellite.
I'll be hounding Zeta until they can offer me something faster than 1.5Mbps so until then, stay tuned for a possible review update.
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Review by jbizzle
Posted: 1.4 years ago
member for 2.7 years, 57 visits, last login: 1 year ago
Placerville,El Dorado,CA
 Business customer
$60 per month
 about 3 days
"1+ mb/s symmetrical. GREAT PING."
"Wish it was more like 5+ mb/s."
"For my technical needs... this is the best i can get."
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I wish I was on fiber optics, but I am no where near getting that to my house any time soon. But in the mean time I am enjoying all the benefits of fiber ops only on WIRELESS!!!
With line of sight being the only worry to have when looking into wireless there is nothing else that makes more sense than to go with zeta as the wireless provider.
5 great points about zeta's wireless service
1. Great Value
2. Suburbs and WAY beyond!
3. Potentially very high speed
4. Excellent pings
5. Reliable
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Review by vryhappy
Posted: 2.5 years ago
member for 2.5 years, 1 visits, last login: 2.5 years ago
Placerville,El Dorado,CA
$89 per month (12 month contract)
about 2 days
"Excellent dedication to service"
"Still working out tech help details on website"
"Good people working very hard to please the customer"
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I have to say, all in all this has been a totally positive experience thus far. After receiving a mailer saying high speed was available in my area I was of course sceptical since I am in a rural area with poor phone lines and few homes, but being on a quest to have something fast and reliable that didn't rely on satellites that was available in my area I sent a service request.
I am a busy guy during the week and happened to be doing this on a Saturday late in the evening. I have to say I didn't expect a response until the following Monday, but instead got a call from the owner himself Sunday morning. The owner called me and expressed his dedication to providing the sort of service to his customers that he expects for himself, and everything I have seen reflects this philosophy. I met with one of the installers at my home first thing Monday morning, I was made no promises of a signal because of the hill I was behind as well as the heavy trees on my property as well as my neighbors'. The tech verified my fears that we would not have a signal directly from the access point and left for the day.
I phoned back to the owner because when I had first spoke with him, he mentioned there were different options to get me service and with the distance from me to the access point we would try to find a way. The owner himself came to my home with another tech to assess the issues and see if indeed there were a way to make it happen. I worked with the two of them to try to resolve this (of course for my own selfish reasons) and ended up selling a nearby neighbor of mine on the service where Zeta was able to place a repeater to give me service! This of course made me ecstatic that I was finally going to have REAL broadband. The time spent by the owner and his installers was well above the call of duty and the installation costs did not reflect the agony they had gone through in finding a solution. They could certainly have just said they couldn't service me and moved on to less of a problem child where they could do a fast install, collect the money and move on. I have tested the down and upload speeds on this service many times and found both to be at or well above the claimed speeds (1.5Mbs up and down). There has been one instance where there was a disruption in service, I called the tech line to find a recording saying they were doing system upgrades. The owner had told me when he was at my home they would be doing this so it wasn't really a surprise, but it would have been nice to have gotten a mass email to the effected customers prior to the outage. Certainly not a big deal by any stretch, it just could have been planned better.
My overall opinion of Zeta is definitely positive and I have been telling my friends and neighbors about how nice they are to deal with as well as the service. I have felt the personal touch of a small business that seems to have been all but lost in Corporate America, and found it to be quite refreshing.
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Review by broncoman
Posted: 2.6 years ago
member for 2.7 years, 61 visits, last login: 1.4 years ago
Auburn,Placer,CA
$60 per month
"Seem to actually want rural customers"
"None so far"
"Good choice even if you have others"
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I am posting this for a family member. I helped a close family member start service with this company today. I was really impressed with the installers and the company. The family member lives in a rural area of placer county (lincoln). He had previously tried Central Valley Broadband, but they strung him along and tried one half hearted attempt at installation and then stopped returning calls as to when they might be back out to ever try to actually complete the installation (they left no equipment on sight, said couldn't get a signal). Zeta on the other hand came out on the appointment date (which was less than 2 weeks from the first call) and completed the installation in around 2-1/2 hours or so. The installer was knowledgeable and asked if I would need assistance in installing the router that the family member wanted installed. I said no so he was on his way. Upon installing the router I ran into a problem that their tech line returned a call from within 10 minutes.
I will update how service is after a couple of months, but so far it would seem this company is pretty good.
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Review by alexiidx
Posted: 3.6 years ago
member for 4.7 years, 6 visits, last login: 3.6 years ago
Roseville,Placer,CA
$60 per month (12 month contract)
"Only thing we can get"
"Just about everything"
"AVOID AT ALL COSTS"
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We had Fastkat to begin with and things were fine. Speeds were 2mbps up and down which was pretty decent. After about 9 months of having them, they were bought out by my new ISP, Zetabroadband. Since the transition, the service has been awful. I tried to call to ask for help and the guy was stupid. I could feel myself getting into an arguement with him because everything was fine on his end while everything was awful on mine. Problem still isn't even fixed. They charge an arm and a leg just to attempt to fix the problem...about 80 bucks an hour. If I recall correctly, Fastkat would solve the problem fast and with no problem. Since they were bought out, speeds were cut in half and the only reason why its in half instead of 3/4 is because I was with Fastkat. Just avoid this horrible company.
Followup comments:  broncoman
join:2007-03-03
Auburn, CA | RE: How was the Loomis experience So is there anymore to the saga. I am curious how they are to deal with as a family member is looking to sign up with them as well. | |
| seregmcw0
join:2006-11-28
Alameda, CA
| Great so far I just moved from the ebay to placerville. 22000ft from the CO if I remember right.
I was looking into T1's, or god forbid a dish, when I found Zeta. I filled out an online form. A guy called me back. In less than a week from finding them, I'm up and running. I signed up for 1024/1024 and am getting pretty close to that. | |
| | mweitsen
join:2007-07-30
Sacramento, CA
| My FastKat/Zeta Experience (2005-present) I am the IT Manager for a mid sized (140m/year gross revenue) construction company based in Sacramento and my experience with both Fastkat and Zeta stretches back to mid 2005. We had a jobsite that was just around the corner from Sierra College and was inexplicably outside of of AT&T's DSL footprint and we needed something, ANYTHING other then dialup for this project to be successful. Nobody was around to provide reasonable cost bandwidth and the lead time to get a T-1 was out of the question. I spoke with some other IT people in construction and one of them suggested FastKat (before Zeta came along) however he recommended FastKat with some MAJOR caveats:
What I'd heard boils down to this: "Fastkat's network sucks....It is horribly designed, poorly maintained, and run by a guy who wasn't capable of running a washing machine, much less a wireless network....But they can probably get you access where you are..." was the report handed to me.
Having no other option other then dialup, I crossed my fingers and signed up, but as we were signing up, Zeta was in process of taking over FastKat's network and cleaning up the mess the previous administration left behind. I was rather surprised when the company owner shows up to do our initial site install. OK, so the new guy in charge isn't afraid to get his boots dirty, scores points in my book. The network wasn't rock solid back then as the new administrator spent time cleaning up the mess (I spoke to the new administrator a few times regarding what uphill battle he was facing with the network) but it worked well enough.
After having decent service for 4 months, we ran into an issue with running VPN traffic not getting back to our network. The Zeta people went WAY WAY out of their way to help us get our traffic flowing again. The ownership level of the problem the Zeta team took to get us back to functional state was well above and beyond what I would expect a vendor to provide. (The problem turned out NOT to be their issue at all, but an issue with some of my gear)
Our 2nd Zeta install, we were the only contractor to initially us Zeta's service, all the other contractors were using Surewest's wireless offering and having an awful time holding signal. (The SureWest AP the other contractors were pointing to had almost no LoS) while our antenna was the lone one pointed in the OTHER direction and we had no problems whatsoever. The general contractor's IT contact finally asked me who we were using (since our antenna was aimed the other way) and one by one, all the contractors dropped Surewest for Zeta, and were very happy to do so.
As Zeta has cleaned out the last remnants of the Fastkat network and has gotten their own design and infrastructure in place, the network has become rather robust.
My last service visit involved an a repoint of the antenna to a different AP when another contractor heaped up 2000 yards of dirt 100 feet high directly in my LoS to my original AP (oooops) ... I'll deal with that.
Zeta provides the bandwidth to nearly 1/4 of our remote jobsites at any given time and they get the 1st call when a new site is getting ready for mobilization, ahead of AT&T. They currently provide bandwidth to our company President's family, as well as senior people within our company who live outside the footprint of the major bandwidth pushers.
As a business, we rely on bandwidth that has uptime during business hours and is stable and we get that through Zeta. My home users who signed up with them have not reported any complaints to me so I can assume they work well for the consumer arena as well.
Anyone looking for service, or who has had problems with FastKat in the past should really check out and see how far Zeta has come to providing solid transport. I went from a skeptic to a believer in 2 years. Well done guys.
Sincerely,
Michael Weitsen
Information Technology Manager
John F. Otto, Inc.
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