how-to block ads
|
next review in page
Review by AKLife247 
member for 298 days, 3 visits, last login: 288 days ago
updated 298 days ago
 Nikiski,Kenai Peninsula,AK
 Contract price not specified.  "ACS Alaska offers DSL with unlimited downloads" "ACS Alaska does not care about their" "For a lot of Alaska residents, they are the only option. ACS Alaska knows and abuses this fact."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
I have used ACS Alaska as my POTS provider for over 15 years. I jumped on their DSL service as soon as it was available in my area. This was over ten years ago and they were offering 320k D/L for ~ $30 per month. A few years later I managed to upgrade to 640k d/l for ~$44 per month. Fast forwarding to fall of 2010, ACS had finally managed to make 1 meg d/l available in my area. I jumped on this upgrade and thought life was grand. A few months go by and I begin to notice intermittent but substantial latency and bandwidth reductions during normal peak usage times (after work until late evening).
I called ACS Tech and was told everything was fine on their end; it must be my DSL modem. After two modem replacements...with no help in the problem, I was told that it must be my router because, you know - it's old. Instead of rushing out and buying a new one, I researched all I could on network latency and DSL. After I compiled days of trace route data, I started in with Tech support, continuously requesting my issues to be taken to the 'next level' since each person I talked with seemed to know very little about trace route data. After days of this, I was finally told that the top Tech Support Manager would call me.
After a week of waiting and a couple or reminder, I finally got on the phone with him and was promptly told that ACS Alaska simply could not offer me a stable low-latency service at the "high" bandwidth that I had. The options offered were a reduction to 320k d/l or to "live with it". The Manager admitted that "work needed to be done in the area to remedy the issue, but that work is not going to happen for AT LEAST 9 months".
So here we are - in a small Alaska town, using a local Alaskan company, and realizing they don't care one bit about customer satisfaction, only about shareholder profits. ACS Alaska is focused SOLELY on expanding and profiting from their wireless market. They have no desire to upgrade their wired network but will be happy to charge you exceptionally high monthly rates for decade-old technology. In case you don't believe my comments regarding their focus, I recommend that you read the ACS yearly shareholder reports for 2009 and 2010, which are freely available on the web. If you are in a small town, welcome to my boat!
TL:DR version - For those interested in DSL, I recommend you look elsewhere first. Use ACS Alaska only as a last resort and prepare for regular battles with their Tech support.
Their sales pitch about ACS vs the Cable Company quoted from their website: "Alaska Communications High-Speed Internet always gives you your own dedicated line-that means consistently high-speed Internet every time." This is total and utter BS. My bandwidth is being reduced due to other local users. ACS has admitted this is the case, are obviously aware of the issue, and have done nothing to resolve it.
Comments:
 | next review in page (previous review)
Review by dirtfarmer
member for 10.5 years, 114 visits, last login: 67 days ago
lodged 1 year ago
- Anchorage,Anchorage,AK
- $69 per month
- "Tech support has always been quick and efficient."
- "Tested speeds have consistantly been slower than advertised"
- "Except for the slow speed it's OK."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
Speed package is 1M/320kbs. The order install was DYI and was really no trouble. The contract is part of bundled services, including local phone. We are using a Nortel network box and have for several years without a problem.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by goshrx
member for 1.9 years, 5 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
updated 1.2 years ago
- Anchorage,Anchorage,AK
- $89 per month
- "Excellent customer service"
- "Could be even faster I suppose"
- "Very good value"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
I was one of the first dozen or so GCI cable modem customers when those came out. Speeds were great, but their customer service was always horrible, whether it was for internet, or cable tv. But they were, I think, the only game in town for broadband. After about 6 months (when my neighbors had all signed up as well), I noticed that the good speeds I originally enjoyed were now a fraction of that. Every night, after folks came home from work, the net got slower and slower and slower. That's because with GCI, you share the bandwidth with your neighbors. When I moved out of that apartment and bought a home in 2004, we switched to ACS for phone and internet, and I've never looked back. In fact, I've had the same dsl modem since then (grey Nortel box, I don't know if that's still what they use but I'm guessing not). Original speedtests show that I'm getting about 600kbps down and 240 kbps up, for $49/month bundled with phone (total bill is around $81/month). I think that's an excellent deal, and it hasn't changed since 2004. Big fan of ACS here, but I do wish, like everyone else, that speeds were faster to allow for high def streaming.
Update Nov 2010: Just upgraded to ACS 3mbps package. Voila! Much faster now! Streaming on Netflix/xbox is NOT a problem. Sweetness! $89/month including landline phone with bells/whistles and 100min out of state.
Attachments:
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by dpsiegel
member for 5.2 years, 15 visits, last login: 1.6 years ago
updated 1.6 years ago
- Fairbanks,Fairbanks North Star,AK
- $108 per month
- (12 month contract)
 about 2 days- "Fast response from tech support. Stable connection. Steady speeds."
- "On speed tests, 60-90% of advertised speed. Sales reps need some coaching."
- "Only game in town in the great white North! Beats cable (which isn't in my area anyway)"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
I started with the 1m'330k package. (net/phone/100 min.LD) It streams Netflix to the TV while surfing on the PC. Just upped to 3m/500k. We'll see if that ups the quality of streaming video. Plus, we've got a wireless router and the kids are getting laptops for school. We home school so our Internet is an invaluable resource. Hopefully we've got enough bandwidth to handle it.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by methodical
member for 1.7 years, 10 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
lodged 1.7 years ago
- Fairbanks,Fairbanks North Star,AK
- $106 per month
- (24 month contract)
- "reliability, good service"
- "price, slow speeds"
- "Ok for residential service if you don't want TV"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
3/.512 service package is the fastest ACS offers and it lives up to it's name for me. It's worked well, and was able to call tech support and change from interleaved to fast path to lower my ping times for gaming, which was a pleasant surprise.
It's still coming out to more than $100 a month for the service though, and includes a local phone line and long distance I don't use. I wish they'd offer naked DSL, or lower the prices and introduce a higher speed tier or two. Their speed tiers are anemic and sad.
I'm a previous customer of GCI's cable modem product and the GCI internet experience is much better for me. Lower pings and a better network, but I'm not in their service area.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by jrlawso
member for 2.2 years, 4 visits, last login: 1.9 years ago
updated 1.9 years ago
- Anchorage,Anchorage,AK
- $69 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 4 days
- "No overage charges, great customer service"
- "None"
- "I can recommend ACS"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
I switched to ACS 1 MB unlimited DSL service 3 months ago after several years of frustration with GCI's usage overage charges, frequent system outages, less than advertised speed (at least in my neighborhood), and very poor customer service.
I have been very impressed with ACS customer service and their internet service performs as advertised. Their phone and tech support folks are alway friendly and they seem like they really want to help.
I took the extra step of installing a whole house DSL filter / splitter at my service entrance when I got DSL service and I believe that it helped with line quality. For awhile the DSL modem was dropping synch often due to poor line quality and errors. After much frustration I tried changing the RJ11 patch cable that ACS had supplied with the Zhone modem and the problems went away.
Overall my experience with the ACS DSL service has been great and I can recommend it to anyone.
Update 3/12/10 - Last week I drove into my driveway with my AM radio on and the radio sounded as though I had an atom bomb in my house ! I searched the house with a portable AM radio and found that the power supply in my PC was throwing all kinds of trash back onto the power lines. I replaced the power supply in the PC the next day and the noise went away. At the same time the connection statistics on my DSL modem greatly improved and it has not lost sync in over a week now.
Comments:
 | | Small clarification Just to clarify, GCI does not outsource ANY services. All tech/customer support is handled locally and/or in Anchorage 24/7. I work right next door to them so I know... | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by cluth
member for 8.1 years, 396 visits, last login: 66 days ago
updated 2 years ago
- Anchorage,Anchorage,AK
- $108 per month
- "Reliable service"
- "Expensive for what you get; consumer products ridiculously slow"
- "Can get OK service without bundling (unlike GCI), but speeds are barely acceptible for all but the most basic home user"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
(The above prices refer to the standard ADSL product.)
My company has had service with GCI with a cable modem as well as ACS using standard ADSL and business-grade "BXB" (Ethernet over PPPoE over G.SHDSL).
The BXB offering is superb: symmetrical connections up to (as I recall) 9mbps with virtually zero downtime (four nines, in my experience, and the bit of time it was down last year was actually a statewide issue with their core backbone, not the last-mile), full status monitoring (they usually know before you do when your Internet is down), 24/7/365 tier II support (you talk directly to the NOC and get guys who speak techie, can tell you what "G.SHDSL" stands for, and know Cisco IOS commands), and optional support (for extra cost) for a routable network, VPN tunnels, and other more advanced features.
However, all of that comes at a price--a price less than a T-carrier connection (for a relatively similar product) but *much* higher than the normal ADSL price. I don't pay the bills for my company, so I don't know the exact amount, but our 3m/3m connection runs around $500 per month.
Ouch.
There have been a couple of other downsides: our account executive can sometimes be a bit slow to respond (sometimes multiple emails have to be sent, or--gasp--you actually have to pick up the phone to get answers!), and sometimes the install or change process can take a bit of time to coordinate (it actually took them over a month to get around to upgrading the speed at one of our other offices--you'd think they'd spring into action to charge us more money!). All in all, though, I'm impressed with their business-class offerings, especially given our demanding needs (our POS software runs over Citrix sessions from an out-of-state server farm, so we are very aware when our ISP has connectivity problems).
I can only provide a brief review of their consumer-level ADSL product, since we only had that for a short time before upgrading to BXB. It's nothing special--just a plain ol' DSL product. I never found it particularly unreliable, though we didn't run it as hard as we do now. The biggest problem with the consumer-level product: it is S L O W. GCI, the local cable company (running DOCSIS 2.0 with up to 12m/1m connections, rumored to be upgraded soon even more) is spot on with their ads calling ACS's product "DS-Snail." The fastest product is 3m/512k, which I find insulting at $89 per month (around $108 after taxes; that price includes home phone service). It's doubly insulting because they advertise having uploads twice as fast as "the cable company" and propagate the lie that "the cable company's internet" is slow because you share your connection with your neighbors. (My GCI cable modem at home *consistently* gets the full 8m down and 512k up any time of day or night, whether I run GCI's own speed test (»speedtest.gci.net), ACS's Anchorage-based test (»speedtest.nwc.acsalaska.net), or ACS's Seattle-based test (»speedtest.sea.acsalaska.net/speedtest-3.0/), so in my experience, ACS's claims are a complete lie: GCI doesn't oversubscribe their last-mile or their out-of-state backbone).
On the upside, while it's hardly "cheap" by the standard of out-of-state DSL providers, it seems like it's not as expensive as GCI due to ACS's less-restrictive bundling practices. If they offer naked DSL, they don't publicize its price on their site, but I would doubt it's much of a savings. But at least you can get their fastest product without a ton of add-ons, unlike GCI, where you can't even *think* about getting anything faster than 4m/1m unless you have phone and cable TV service with them (at a minimum bundle cost of $93.99 plus your Internet speed upgrade cost). Still, that 4m/1m product from GCI is available for $100/mo, plus a $7/mo access fee if you don't have cable TV, which is really not any more expensive than ACS's 3m/512k product (granted, you don't get a home phone line, but really, who uses those any more?).
So, for value, I have to give ACS a big thumbs down, both for the business product (if I were the business owner, I would really not like paying $500/mo for 3m/3m, regardless of the extra services it comes with) and the consumer product (over $100/mo for barely acceptable speeds). Perhaps the rumors that Verizon is looking to buy out ACS will come true and they'll bring some modern technology up here with prices to match (hello, FiOS!). For now, I'd have to suggest that residential users (or SOHOs needing just a normal Internet connection) look to GCI as the better value, and businesses needing reliability look at going with an ACS consumer DSL connection and GCI cable modem connection and installing a multi-homed router that switches between both, providing extra speed and an increased measure of reliability.
All that said, ACS's BXB product, which is what I originally came here to review, has served us well for the last few years. If price isn't an issue, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it for high-demand situations.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by JuneauDave
member for 2.1 years, 2 visits, last login: 2 years ago
lodged 2.1 years ago
- Juneau,Juneau,AK
- Contract price not specified.
- "inexpensive compared to competition"
- "very very slow installation"
- "If you don't mind long waits on account changes, then it's a good choice"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
I was told when I inquired about service before Thanksgiving that it would take 5 business days. It's Dec 9 and I am still waiting. They are not above flat out lying about installation times. On business day 6, I was told someone has started working on the order.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by torxxx8
member for 6 years, 11 visits, last login: 2.3 years ago
updated 2.3 years ago
- Fairbanks,Fairbanks North Star,AK
- $101 per month
- "3mbps down 512k up DSL.."
- "Connection problems, speed problems"
- "Depends on what you want. I shoulda went with 10 mbps cable"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
Dont bother with these guys. Their customer service are idiots, there outside repairment are meth heads. they talk so damn fast you can understand them. They are part tossers.. oh your internet is messed up here use this new modem it'll fix everything. I got 3 bad modems in a row from these clowns in one week... Just bout a new 100 dollar linksys router because tehy said it was bad,
My speeds are about half of what they advertise. I'm so disgusted with them, but the cable up here isnt anybetter. They slap you with 30 gigs a month bandwidth and then 2 dollars a gig for every gig after the 30.
Alaska internet is screwed any way you go about it. Thanks ISP's.. bring some lube next time so it dont hurt as bad
Comments:
 MIHotBearPremium
join:2003-07-02
Hazel Park, MI | Call Sarah Palin Doesn't she have all the answers to everything? | |
|
| |
| next page (previous review)
Review by NiteRider_AK
member for 2.6 years, 1 visits, last login: 2.6 years ago
lodged 2.6 years ago
- Fairbanks,Fairbanks North Star,AK
- $89 per month
- about 2 days
- "Consistently fast download speeds"
- "average upload speeds"
- "I would recommend this service to anyone"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
I was originally on GCI cable but the download speeds would fluctuate widely based on time of day. ACS is much more consistent. Download speeds aren't great, but DSL is more focused on download anyway. Great service.
Comments:
|
|
·
·