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Review by bigweedy See Profile

  • Location: Dodge, Dodge, NE, USA
  • Cost: $90 per month
Good customer service. Local techs.
Expensive, lower tier seems really oversubscribed
Not the best or the cheapest, but it's all there is.
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Lower tier (5 Mbps) service was awful. Once upon a time we actually got nearly the advertised speed, but as years went by and everyone got broadband and then began adding smartphones, tablets, streaming video, etc, the service seemed to become quite oversubscribed. Most days we struggled to pull down anything more than 1.5 Mbps unless it was the middle of the night - even then anything more than 3 Mbps was rare. Against my better judgement I decided to cough up even more money (5 Mpbs DSL only service was already over $80/month) to see if we could get better speeds. To my surprise, it actually worked. Even in the middle of the day I'm getting 9 Mbps out of the advertised 10. I don't know if being on that premier service tier gives our traffic a higher priority or if we're connecting to different equipment at the CO, but it's dramatically better. It's still not blazing fast, and it's ridiculously overpriced, but it's the only land-based option. It's kind of sad that I'm over the moon about 9 Mbps, but it's so many times faster than what we've been stuck with for years, that I'll take it.

member for 10.2 years, 3 visits, last login: 8.5 years ago
updated 8.6 years ago


Review by HPDrifter See Profile

  • Location: Mccook, Red Willow, NE, USA
  • Cost: $90 per month (18 month contract)
  • Install: about 7 days
  • No Cap
Bingo.
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Avoid, period.

We had GP as our ISP in another part of Nebraska and had no real issues other than connectivity. Their customer service reps do not care, but that is expected. The local tech ran a direct line to our house - problem solved - no more nasty CS reps to deal with. Expensive, relatively, but reliable, which is my priority as I am a web developer and work from home.

We stuck with GP when we moved across state. Bad idea. The connectivity was horrid. Shared resources. Multiple times techs came out. Promises of "hardware upgrades" in our neighborhood and the community in general, but a year passed and it just got worse. Again with the deplorable CS reps, so I went right to their headquarters in Blair and finally found someone who had my back, for a while. It did improve. Then the cable lost multiple channels yet our bill did not decrease. After a few months, we decided it was a waste of money and wanted to drop the cable for over-the-air (try it!) since it's free and HD. Shocker. They upped our DL speed without our request so expected more billing than what we actually contracted for. After much prodding, they lowered to our needed speed, but it still was $15 more a month than it previously was.

I asked the CEO directly if he was interested in keeping us as clients and if so, yes or no, would be treat us fairly and adjust our bill minus the cable so we could pay EXACTLY what we were currently paying for Internet. I literally asked him three times without a reply. His silence speaks volumes.

We're moving on from GP ASAP. The competition offers more value. I don't look forward to the hassle but again, the GP management and C-level folks clearly indicate that they just don't care.

My advice, if you are considering Great Plains Communications for any of your needs, is to shop around FIRST. You'll thank me later.

member for 9 years, driveby review (so far)
lodged 9 years ago

Goldir
Premium Member
join:2013-05-23
North Platte, NE
Calix 844G

Goldir

Premium Member

Any other available providers?

How well does GP communications rates compare to other local providers like Pinpoint or MccookNet? Expressing your displeasure with your wallet works well in areas where there is fair competition.

Unfortunately, Mccook is NOT one of those areas. Pinpoint and GP have a stranglehold on everything in Red Willow county. They charge Republican Valley schools 3 times as much as other ISPs around the state to provide the government mandated 100Mbps data connection for distance learning.

I've been trying to con Allo into moving into the Mccook area, but they mentioned something about not wanting to screw over local and mom & pop businesses. Maybe if there is a demand (and preferably investor money,) Allo might consider it.

I wish you luck. I have a 1Gbps connection to my house in North Platte and when I go to Mccook/Indianola to visit relatives I freak out from the abysmally slow internet service there (1.5Mbps - 5Mbps.)

Review by Falassion See Profile

  • Location: 69031
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Better than nothing?
Everything
I loved it before it was oversubscribed and useless
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Update 8/2/2011

Changed to a WISP, the DSL from Greatplains was always lagging and usually got maybe 10% of the advertised speeds, really was unusable and they said they weren't going to upgrade the remote terminal with more bandwidth, or fix it if anything ever went wrong.

member for 17.7 years, 141 visits, last login: 12 years ago
updated 12.6 years ago