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Review by kshusker 
UPDATED: 48 days ago
member for 48 days, 34 visits, last login: 2 days ago
 Lawrence,Douglas,KS
 $120 per month
 about 1 days
 "Local company, fast download speeds"
 "Slow upload speeds, bandwidth caps, network congestion"
 "Good choice for casual internet users, poor choice for heavy users"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
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We've had Sunflower's internet service since the beginning, in the late 1990s. We've used them for cable, telephone and internet (the internet portion of our bill is about $55)
The positives are that they are a a local company in Lawrence; when you call someone, you are talking to a local call center and they are generally very responsive.
The download speed of the service itself (we have used the top level, Gold) when network use is light is as good as advertised, a solid 20 mbit down (they are upgrading to DOCSIS 3.0 and 50 mbit down in November). However, in the evenings and during other periods of heavy use, the speed slows down, sometimes significantly.
Additionally, the upload speeds are terrible, only 1 mbit at the most expensive tier of service (even with the new DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade), which makes Sunflower useless for things like online backup, or uploading to video sites, etc.
Lots of people have complained about the low bandwidth caps, and I don't have much to add here. You basically always need to be cognizant of your cap (to Sunflowers credit they have a good monitoring system; you can view your use by the month, week, day and hour) and how much data you are using, kind of like in the old days with dial-up AOL, where you had so many minutes a month and the clock was always running.
I think Sunflower is a good choice if you are a light internet user, who just wants to do some surfing and email, but if you are a heavy user or someone who needs faster upload speed, you might want to see if U-Verse is available yet in your neighborhood.
I should note for the record Sunflower is starting to advertise an unlimited bandwidth service called Palladium, with variable speeds but no bandwidth limits. This might be something some folks would want to look in to, but I have no experience with it.
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Review by RKhoury
Posted: 83 days ago
member for 1.1 years, 224 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Lawrence,Douglas,KS
$49 per month
about 1 days
"99+% up time. Nearly every CSR I've talked too has known their stuff."
"Nary a one worth complaining about"
"Beats local AT&T DSL service in every category."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
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I've been a Sunflower internet customer since the old Zenith cable modems were state of the art and outside of enduring the learning curve with them at that time the ride has been a good one.
On the technology side Sunflower is now starting to roll out Docsis 3 service which will have a price point of $49.99/month with no bandwith caps.
As to my comment on DSL service, up until recently my employer had one of our local facilites on At&T DSL service and we/I continually had both connectivity and email log-in server problems.
My current service with Sunflower consist of an internet feed, cable TV feed (with HD content) and telephone (VOIP) and I'm always amazed at how well everything works.
Followup comments:  Dampier
Phillip M Dampier
join:2003-03-23
Rochester, NY
| Caps If you have any additional information about their $50 service not having any usage caps, can you drop me a note? I'd like to write it up for Stop the Cap! I'd be impressed if Sunflower actually did this, because every speech coming out of the CEO implies caps are here to stay. | |
| | RKhoury
join:2008-10-22
Lawrence, KS
 ·Sunflower Broadband
1 edit | Re: Caps On the usage cap request, here is the link to the page showing what is going on.
»www.sunflowerbroadband.com/internet/
Gold is currently DOCSIS 2, with Paladium being 3.
As I understand current plans Gold will migrate to 3 (as is shown on the page) once 3 is up and running with no problems.
The up and down speeds are for now considered to be variable, however from what I've read in their forum area those will stabilize some once the deployment of 3 is done.
Also the page will show Gold as having a 50 Gig Cap. Sunflower announced that they bumped this to 70 to see how much it affects their network...etc. Silver has been bumped from 15 to 25 under the same thought process | |
| | | Dampier
Phillip M Dampier
join:2003-03-23
Rochester, NY
| Re: Caps Thanks. Since I can't find a way for non-customers to access their forums, can you cut and paste any recent forum threads that relate to subscriber views on usage caps, variable speed, and their thinking/methodology on this and send them to me as private message or e-mail (if you click on my name on the left you should find windows for either option.)
I will write this up as a story, but am very curious over what precisely the speeds are and whether they vary for individual customers depending on usage. If it varies per account, it could be similar to the Australian model of slowing down specific accounts when usage is "excessive." If it's a common experience among every user on this speed option, that is a novel approach.
Thanks in advance! | |
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Review by bpapa
Posted: 2.2 years ago
member for 2.2 years, 1 visits, last login: 2.2 years ago
Lawrence,Douglas,KS
$40 per month
"Great customer service! Best connection speeds available in area. I've never noticed any downtime since getting it 4 years ago."
"Connection speeds rarely capable of advertized speeds, but that is not uncommon."
"For the money, easily the best network option in area."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
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I switched from AT&T DSL over 4 years ago (I had a terrible experience with AT&T DSL, bad service, poor install support, frequent billing errors, crappy speeds, long contract, etc.). I am going to roughly break up my review based on the 6 categories of service listed in the rating scheme: Presales info, Install Co-ord, Reliability, Support, Services and Value.
I like Sunflower’s website, you can monitor your bandwidth usage so you can purchase additional units before you go over your limit, and their pricing and packaging options are relatively straight forward, and tech support by phone or email is readily available. They also have a pretty good web-mail setup if you choose to use the free email accounts that come with their broadband packages (I don’t use mine, I already have three other email accounts…)
If your residence is properly equipped for the service they typically will be able to connect you that day or the next. Simply provide the MAC addy of your modem or pick up a rental modem at their Downtown Lawrence offices and you are done.
I have never seen Sunflower require a contract. Sometimes they run specials where you can upgrade to a higher level of service for free for the first 3 months or so on only a 6 month or so contract, but the contract only applies to the data service so you can still cancel/change your TV/phone accounts if you wish.
As I have said, I have had Sunflower Cable service for over 4 years, and I have never noticed any downtime! I have had some downtime; but every time after trouble-shooting I discovered it was either the fault of my modem (not a rental until recently) or my router (or because I forgot to pay my bill, Doh!).
Based on my experience Sunflower's tech support, although reluctant to look into more fidgety detail issues at times, does tend to be very thorough once they actually assign you a trouble ticket. But honestly I haven’t really needed to rely on their support many times throughout my time using their service; I have had very few problems…
They offer 6Mb, 10Mb and 20Mb packages that each come with a respective bandwidth allowance. I upgraded to the 20Mb “Gold” package about a year ago when that speed first became available; it comes with 30gb/mo of bandwidth allowance. All packages have the option to buy 30gb blocks of bandwidth in advance for $30 or $1/1gb, going over your allowance without purchasing additional bandwidth will incur steeper charges the rate of which though I do not recall off the top of my head.
I reviewed the other broadband options available in Lawrence, KS about a year ago and decided to stay with Sunflower. Based on what I saw then; there wasn’t really much for me to think about. Sunflower really was the best value considering my major broadband concerns were speed and bandwidth allowance.
NOTES:
One thing that I recently discovered about Sunflower’s network is that it can be picky about modems. I had a Linksys cable modem for my first three years with Sunflower and was consistently dismayed with my actual connection speeds (turns out that although I still love Linksys routers/switches, their cable modem kind of sucks). I recently bit the bullet and rented one of Sunflower’s top-of-the-line (according to them) modems for $5/mo. The modem they gave me is a Motorola Surfboard SB5101, and to my initial surprise it did significantly increase my actual connection speeds both based on the speed tests on this site and several others I have found. Now my connection averages around 18,000kbps on off network speed tests (the speed test on Sunflower’s own servers does typically average around or slightly in excess of the advertised 20Mbps, but obviously there is practically no ‘real world’ traffic between my connection and their servers). I have also found that the Motorola modem is significantly more reliable than the Linksys modem I had; which I typically needed to reset several times a week. Overall I have more reliability issues with my local network/router than with my residential broadband connection!
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