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Review by oaktownlady 
UPDATED: 1.1 years ago
member for 8.4 years, 180 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Las Vegas,Clark,NV
 $25 per month (12 month contract)
 about 3 days
 "Possibly the least expensive 1.5 service in the area."
 "1.5 is the only service available,"
 "Good value, problems are rare."
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I thought I had reviewed this company some time ago, but I'm unable to locate reviews that old.
I happened across this company quite by accident one day after noticing a flyer at a mall kiosk. Other than that, they do no advertising, so many people don't even realize it exists. It was an individual company when I joined but has now taken over other small companies.
I have been with this company over 3 1/2 years now and for people who think there are no other choices in Las Vegas other than Cox Cable or Embarq DSL, check again. Other than Las Vegas where they started, their service is limited to a few rural areas a few states.
Granted, they don't provide service to every single part of Las Vegas (check out their service area map on their website), but I'm basically pleased with my service. It's on all of the time and relatively stable, at least for my needs.
For those unfamiliar with the service, a 12" square antenna mounted on my rooftop air conditioning unit receives a wireless signal, which travels by way of a coax to the ethernet port on the back of the computer. I reside in a very old, established neighborhood with trees 50 ft high or more throughout and by no means have an unobstructed line-of-sight view of the transmitting antenna that's a a mile or two away from my home, but a signal is still very much available.
For the first time since I've had the service, there is an outage that started yesterday and continues today. They're blaming the phone companies for fiber optic problems, but at least 3 states are involved.
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Review by candle83
UPDATED: 1.1 years ago
member for 7.4 years, 10 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
Lincoln,Lancaster,NE
Contract price not specified.
"Service to areas where there is no other option"
"Spread too thin as a company"
"They bit off more than they could chew after they went public"
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I can appreciate Keyon's efforts to expand their company through out the United States, however, this has come with a price. I my opinion, Keyon has lost site of who they are. When they set up the Las Vegas Network, they used Motorola Canopy equipment which is an excellent product because it is proprietary and does not use the 802.11 b/g/a/n standard. A good Canopy network can offer excellent service. However, Keyon decided to expand their network through organic growth. Basically, they bought existing wireless ISP networks instead of keeping with the model that they started with. Unfortunately, these networks were having problems before Keyon bought them and the previous clients were expecting their problems to get better after Keyon took over.
Keyon moved their headquarters office into Omaha, Nebraska after they bought Speednet network from DTN Speednet. Their plan was to continue buying wisp throughout the midwest hoping to capitalize on the revenue from the acquisition of the newly acquired wisp's customers. However, in their effort to gain the label as the largest wireless service provider in the United States, they started having problems both internally and financially. If you review their stock trading history on yahoo financial, KEYO.OB, you will see that they were being publicly traded at one time for as much as $19 to $20 per share. Currently, their stock is at a value of 55 cents per share.
I believe that Keyon, as a company, has problems beyond recovery. I don't think that those who have their service currently will have to worry about losing their internet. Generally, Wisp are not bought and sold, only their physical network is. Who wants to buy a company in debt. This was how Keyon aquired the networks that they have currently. I foresee one of two things happening to Keyon here shortly. Either they will be forced to liquidate and sell off parts of their networks to another company or they will merge with another company with better financials which can support Keyon until they can figure out how to make money with the system they currently have.
Most of you have recognized the problem with their customer support. Most of their customer support technicians have either no computer/internet experience or at best they are only a level one help desk. This means that even if you are able to get through to their help desk your problem will not be resolved and they will schedule someone to come to your location within 2 weeks. More than likely, the help desk will tell you to reboot your equipment which is the standard response because they do not know what else to do. It has been my experience that rebooting only works about 5 percent of the time.
Bottom line, I think Fixed Wireless Internet is a good option over satellite, and in rural areas where DSL have probelms everytime it rains. But, if you are hoping to stream video from Netfilx or other broadband intensive service, I would spend the money and go with Cable or DSL. However, if all you want to do is surf the internet and read your email, this type of service, Fixed Wireless, is worth the investment.
For those of you who are having problems with your service, I will tell you from experience, this is a line of site technology. Your antenna on the roof MUST be able to see the tower clearly without any obstructions. You can save yourself a headache by just looking to see if trees on your property have grown into the radio wave path. This is within your control to correct. If you still have problems, but cannot seem to get an answer, see if you can run a trace route. This will tell you if you are getting packet loss before their gateway (Keyon Router).
1. Click on your Windows Start Button.
2. Click on "Run"
3. Type - cmd.exe and then hit ok.
4. A black window will open, type in the following command:
tracert www.google.com
The information that is being displayed is a list of all the network routers that you are going through to get to that website. What you are concerned with is the first three hops. Generally the first one is your router at your house. The second one may either be your radio on your roof or the pop router for Keyon. The next router will be the handoff to their upstream provider. This is the last hop that Keyon can be responsible for. Anything after that is beyond their ability to correct because those are usually Level 3, Qwest, AT&T or one of the other big boy network service providers.
I hope this help you, good luck.
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Review by dennislv
Posted: 1.2 years ago
member for 1.2 years, 24 visits, last login: 27 days ago
Las Vegas,Clark,NV
$41 per month
"Free static IP and no port blocking"
"Extremely unreliable!"
"Not worth the $ anymore!"
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I signed up with Keyon (a.k.a. Speednet) about 4 years ago. At the time, they gave you 1.5m/128k for $30.18/month total. Not bad considering the alternatives. So I bought in and agreed to their $150 install and 12 month term, only because of the bridged connection with static IP.
Recently they offered the upgraded bandwidth of 1.5m/384k for an additional $20/month. For $50 a month I can go with the local cablemodem provider (Cox) and have ten times the speed! (but no static ip, and lotsa ports are blocked)
In the past few years, they went down hill severely! My static IP connection was having the average latency of 3100ms. They sent their techs out here 4 (yes four!) times only to discover that I needed to be DHCP. So they convert me to DHCP (there goes the main reasons I signed up) and tell me that they'll convert me back soon.
Its been 2 months and they still haven't successfully completed it yet. They changed me back to static and my latency went back up to 3100ms. (it averages 20ms)
They're support is terrible. Management is worse. Its saddening that these guys have the future WiMax licenses 
There most recent continued downtime is being blamed on their fiber provider (American Fiber). They should pass the buck, and they should have a redundant connection if they're going to take peoples money!
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Review by LogicCube
UPDATED: 2.6 years ago
member for 4.5 years, 289 visits, last login: 91 days ago
Centerville,Appanoose,IA
$35 per month (36 month contract)
"Surfs Web Fine, Connection can stay online consistently"
"Cheap equipment, Inconsistent latency, Varying of speeds even in none peak hours."
"Not meant for intensive web applications due to cheap equipment on their network."
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When this company first started in my area they were Siris Online but they were bought out by KeyOn. Now since KeyOn has taken over I haven't seen any improvement at all, maybe even more negative at times which I didn't think was possible since 56k out performed Siris Online in reliability when they were still around. In games my latency goes from 50 - 3000+. Even when idling on my desktop I tested it and it doesn't change. There speeds vary from 180 - 1000 Kbps in bandwidth test and upstream is from 180 - 512 Kbps.
But it is there connection reliability that is the problem, they just haven't proven they can run a successful stable connection. I have researched the equipment used for this type of service and compared to other companys that run 10 Mega up and down they don't have the resources or they aren't spending the right amount of money. I could go on for days about what they should do/did. Bottom line they don't have the resources to run a successful WISP.
-- Update 12/07/2006 --
After some time of getting in contact with the company quite often they have finally moved us to a different tier which is nice they told us they were overloading the one we were on, which isn't surprising since many WISPs do this. I competitively game and luckily I am only on the service for a few days at a time and it is alright but it still has its issues which falls more on the KeyOn end for not getting good equipment. It is kind of bad cause this company gives good WISP companies a bad name which is wrong.
I now average 3 Mbps / 512Kbps (Down/Up). Even though I average this speed wise the latency on there network is still soo jumpy and that is due to using poor equipment and I have mentioned this to them before I have emailed them article and article of research I've done on equipment and like many companies they just refuse to spend the money to get the right equipment.
-- Update 12/23/2006 --
Going further now with the company in our area there are only two tech guys so far that are qualified to work on the equipment but unfortunately, they don't have the man power to help fix everything that is wrong with the Keyon network. It just makes the customers suffer the worst from KeyOn's lack of help they are giving to the people that have taken over when they bought out Siris. Like I said before they just give good WISPs a bad name. There are good WISPs out their it is just hard to find them and asking the right questions helps when you come across one to find out if they are for real or if they are not.
-- Update 02/08/2007 --
Ever since 2007 hit the ISP has gotten really bad. I don't know what happened with the service, the ping spikes unbelieveably high.
-- Update 03/17/2007 --
By now Keyon has acquired SpeedNet but I don't believe there has been a major difference on there network load for there customers in the Midwest. SpeedNet was one of the largest WISP in the Midwest I don't really see any drastic changes on Keyon's end to improve the customer experience since not much has changed since they acquired SpeedNet.
I'm fairly certain they are still using the cheaper equipment which is causing the spiking on there network so often.
Followup comments:  LogicCube
join:2005-04-30
Grinnell, IA | Moved I've moved and don't use Keyon anymore so if there is any new developments with the company just spot. | |
| rholechek
join:2007-01-05
Omaha, NE
|  Cheap?
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| | bob356148
join:2005-03-20
Las Vegas, NV | Re: Cheap? I have had Keyon in Las vegas for a few months and its the worst service I have ever had, even Sprint DSL was better. I plan on going back to Cox. | |
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Review by chucklaw
Posted: 2.9 years ago
member for 6.9 years, 10 visits, last login: 2.4 years ago
North Las Vegas,Clark,NV
$25 per month (12 month contract)
about 4 days
"price is very good"
"upload speeds slow"
"good product for the price"
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I was originally on cox cable internet. They have great customer service and fast download speeds, but I feel the prices are too high. I looked for an alternative and found Ameralinx (Keyon) here in Las Vegas, NV. The tech came and installed the system about 4 days after I called. It cost me $150 for the install and equipment, plus $25 a month for the service. The $25 is just for internet. For $5 more, you get 5 email addresses and web space. But I didn't need that so I just went with the cheapest deal. I have yet to encounter any problems (I've had it for only 3 weeks). Download speeds are consistent. Around 1400+ down and 115+ up (kbps). The company claims 1500 down and 128 up. So if you're looking for a cheap alternative to cable, much faster that dialup but half the speed of cable at half the price, then I recommend Keyon. If you only surf the web and get email, with some downloads here and there, then you'll love it. If you're a heavy gamer or download large files all the time, then you'll probably hate it.
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KeyOn
