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Review by mrefish 
Posted: 1.3 years ago
member for 4.2 years, 8 visits, last login: 313 days ago
 Salt Lake City,Salt Lake,UT
 $40 per month
 "Fast connection (with serious problems), low cost, offers internet/phone/tv bundles"
 "Throttles bandwidth, poor customer service, medium reliability, terrible phone service"
 "Good connection, very bad people"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
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When Utopia Fiber first became available in my area, mstar came through door to door asking people to sign up. At this point I was fed up with Comcast cable, so I switched. I signed up for their internet/phone bundle ~$70/month. The phone service was horrific from the very start and never got any better, but this review is about the internet.
One month I went over the somewhat hidden traffic limit of 100GB/month. I received a call from customer service saying that I had gone over but they were not going to charge me the $2/GB over fee (would have cost me an additional $40).
From that point on my connection seemed much slower, and I did my best to try and troubleshoot any problems on my end of the line. When I first suspected my connection was being throttled (all the way down to 50Kb/sec at some points) I was furious. I called up mstar, there was almost always a phone or internet outage somewhere so customer support takes a while to get ahold of. The first person I spoke to told me that they did not throttle any accounts and offered some poor advice (restart your computer, clean out browser cache....if you've ever called an ISP for support you know the rest) when they found out I had a router they said it was causing the problem (it wasn't, I still use it today and now I get 20Mb/20Mb at least).
I called up tech support one last time to see if there was a problem with my connection and this time they told me that since I had gone over my traffic allotment in a previous month, my connection was being throttled. I said that I was paying for 15Mb/15Mb connection and that they should give it to me regardless of my going over the traffic limit in one month. I asked them how they could justify throttling my connection and they put me on hold for several minutes and came back with telling me to read the User Agreement, Attachment A, 3, d. (they did not read it to me on the phone) which reads
"Bandwidth changes and throughput fluctuations. Mstar will provision the subscriber-network demarc at contracted bandwidth. Mstar may, when necessary to control network congestion, re-provision Subscriber's bandwidth and/or impose reasonable throughput limits on Subscriber's use of the Service in order to ensure equitable access for other subscribers. Mstar will use commercially reasonable efforts to provide the throughput described in this Attachment, but Subscriber acknowledges that throughput may fluctuate from time to time throughout the day and that Subscriber may observe throughput less than bandwidth provisioned at the subscriber-network demark at all times during the day. At Mstar's discretion, Mstar may impose restrictions that will limit upload throughput. Mstar reserves the right to perform bandwidth management to ensure all customers experience the highest level of service possible"
(short version, mstar can throttle your account for any reason at any time)
This is contradictory to three of their main points for their Fiber internet
*15Mbps standard connection or upgrade to a 50Mbps connection (where available)
*Symmetrical bandwidth – upload as fast as you download
and the WORST!
*Always a dedicated line – never share speeds with your neighbors
If I never share speeds with my neighbors then why can they throttle my connection for the sake of my neighbors?
I was completely disgusted with this customer support experience and when I told the person on the phone I consider this a good reason to find another ISP, they said fine.
I am now with Xmission's Utopia fiber and I love it, and I use AT&T's callvantage for VOIP (better than Mstar's phone service)
Followup comments:  lordammon
join:2008-08-12
Orem, UT
| Problems with MStar I live in Orem and use MStar for my high speed internet. I am using a torrent program to download the client program for a MMORPG. I found that they are limiting my download to 50-60Kbs. I called their technical support and one of them told me this is true they do limit your connection when using torrents. I have contacted the FCC on this and found out I was the first one to bring this to their attention. If you would like to submit a comment to the FCC on this please visit »fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/Upload Then click onto Commission Inquiry Into Broadband Market Practices Docket - Docket 07-52 (It's the fourth one down.)
There you can file a public comment with the FCC. | |
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