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Review by iansltx See Profile

  • Location: Fredericksburg, Gillespie, TX, USA
  • Cost: $45 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 2 days
Local people, when it's working it's better than satellite
Huge setup fee + contract, low speeds for a high price, business practices, network mgmt, unreliability
They used to be okay-ish, now they're better or worse than satellite depending on the day
Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

Original Review, 8/8/08 (WARNING: long and ranty but every bit of it true!)

When we got Bee Creek internet (February 2007) they looked to be the only option in the area. No wireless carrier had deployed 3G in the area, at least not that I had found. I searched long and hard for an upgrade from dialup, where I was tying up the phone line and everyone else wanted a connection where waiting for EVERYTHING wasn't required.

I don't even consider satellite to be an option for internet; you can download more on dialup than you can on sat internet if you're on the $50 plan (WildBlue) and equipment costs etc. are outrageous.

Now both Sprint and Verizon have EvDO Rev. A networks in the area and it sounds like AT&T will have HSPA in 6-9 months. In other words nobody should sign up for these guys; get Millenicom instead. Oh, and I'm gonna personally start something WiMax based if I can do anything about the internet situation in the area; doing reaearch right now. It's that bad.

Anyhow, installation was fine. The router (ParkerVision, forget the model but it was their long-range 11b unit) I had (LAN only at that point) did not work with the service for whatever reason (maybe the WAN port was bad, had no way to test) so they used a crossover cable to connect the radio to one of the computers.

The router took awhile to troubleshoot so the install tech was there a bit over an hour if I remember correctly. This included going up on the (managable) roof and putting up their equipment, threading the Cat5 down to the garage, then plugging in the Power Over Ethernet injector and setting up the radio to the point that their computer (prior to over-the-air profiling or such) was able to speed test at 3 Mbits symmetric. The install was done within a few days of our calling to order, and the tech knew what he was doing.

About the equipment, I wasn't told much about the make and model but I've figured out that they use Mikrotik gear, and it seems like they've been using the same gear (802.11b based) for all six years that they've been in business. This means that the setup atop the house roof is quite large; a panel antenna is pointed toward one of their towers (we have LOS to two of them, but one is just a mile away versus a longer distance to the other, so we're pointed at the nearer one), and below it is an enclosure that's about the size of an SFF PC. All this stuff is on a tripod. What's intersting is my cell phone, which is one hundredth the size, can get faster data rates than what they're willing and able to give.

At that time the network topology was relatively simple: static-IP connections at the router (or computer, if you had a crossover cable) were bridged to their CPE, then it was 802.11b (now I now...I think they used to use channel 6 but now they use 4 and 9) to their towers, which also were 11b up to their long-range link, which was 5.8 GHz. From there the connection went into a T3, from AT&T at that time. They used to use a few T1's but had upgraded awhile back, and likewise upgraded their customer speeds (before the lowest tier had been 128-256k/128k). Oh, and their customer base, last I heard, was about 1500.

Anyway, for the first year the price was $41.95 a month plus sales tax plus $10 for not having a 2-year contract (1-year as it was and they own the equipment; I chose 1-year because that left options open down the road). At the time that translated into a 384/128 (kilobits naturally) connection. Slow-as-molasses speeds but TWC RoadRunner doesn't go out this far and DSL is very limited in reach so it was that or satellite and sat has horrible latency :/. Ping times were consistently about 60 ms to Google, not too shabby...the AT&T backbone probably helped. The static IP was also very nice; despite the low speed I was able to use RDP to login to computers on the home network from pretty much wherever and get some useful work done. This is rather crucial for me (public DHCP is fine though, just as long as I can get into the system from the outside) as I'm by far the most technical of the family so I need to get into the fam's systems to fix things when theygo awry.

But back to the connection...

The summer of the first year rolls around and I decide to use BitTorrent. Over the course of a few days I consume maybe 5GB of data, something not too easy to do over 384/128k . I then go on a vacation. When I get back, the internet is off. "Viruses", the Bee Creek people say. "Nonsense" say I, citing a video download service like...um...Movielink. Still, the connection was turned off without notice and I was well within the bandwidht limit for the month.

Later in the summer I get Sprint for cellular service. See my review for Sprint mobile broadband; suffice to say that it was faster than my home connection, though latency at that time was lower on Bee Creek by about 2\3 (my phone was running Rev. 0 at the time).

The second year rolls around and we're out of contract, so the price drops to $41.95 (plus sales tax of course) for the 384/128, static IP, 25 GB per month bandwidth limit (though they didn't seem to pay attention to this too much; I think I went a good bit over once due to online backup and I didn't hear from them about it). Around this time Bee Creek makes some major modifications to their network. Everyone is converted to DHCP in advance of a switchover from AT&T (which was perfectly fine but expensive I suppose) to Qwest for Bee Creek's backbone provider. Still a T3, just from a different provider. Due to the nature of the DHCP switchover, everyone is firewalled (only later did I figure out that NAT was involved!) and ports had to be forwarded upon request. FOrtunately, the people answering the phones at Bee Creek are the same people who work on the network so this wasn't too painful of a process.

Around the time of the DHCP switchover Bee Creek raises speeds for our package to 512k down. Others who had 512k are now getting 1Mbit. The service is overprovisioned, and was from the start, so we get advertised speeds. Interestingly, upload seems to be uncapped, reaching 900k at times. Interesting to say the least. However, around this time video calling, which had been reliable before the DHCP switchover, seemed to falter, starved for bandwidth, lack of jitter or...something...

Then the switchover to Qwest occurs. It takes a bit for everyone to make the switch, but finally we make it over. Our "static" IP changes for a second time (first change was when DHCP happened...they didn't bother to tell us about either one) and I suppose they would still call it a static IP, and call us grandfathered in because of the port-forwarding they had in place. The download speed of the connection stays okay for awhile, and uploads are as speedy as before, but then things tank. Bee Creek doesn't end up forwarding ports to the connection until months later (they had said they were already good to go), but that's the least of our worries. Upload speed is now all over the map, ranging from 900k at the top to 90k at the bottom. Packet loss, latency spikes, you name it, that's the connection for enough of the day that it seems like most of the time. DNS servers? I'll give them a solid "meh".

Bee Creek's response to what's obviously a problem with their tower and network infrastructure (the latency spikes and packet loss were at the first or second hop on their network)? "The tower is busy." Not overloaded, just...busy. Their "heavy usage" period where larency is horrible? It depends...it could be 1-2 am, or 9-10 am, or 3-4 pm, of the same day! Oh, and when I mentioned latency\ping spikes up to 350-700 ms...suffice to say that, in order to measure latency now I have to run a traceroute. Pings give 100% loss, and it's just for my connection. To grab a phrase from Stevie Jobser, "SLIME BUCKETS!"

I was going to switch the phone line to VoIP but I don't feel confident that the connection could sustain it for something that mission-critical. SKype sounds better over my Sprint Mogul with WMWiFiRouter turned on.

What's really fun is the worst problems don't even show up from the outside. Remember about the whole DHCP thing? Well, "my IP" routes to a hop or two "in front of" my router, conveniently avoiding the parts of Bee Creek's network that are absolutely atrocious. And it's not just me; other people mirror my experience in uploding files: if you're lucky the connection starts above 256k, reaching even 320k on real-world uploads (we're talking to Google Video\Picasa here, so bandwidth on their end isn't the question). Then it peters out to 200, then 100k. Ouch. The line quality test, oddly enough, shows that even their "false front" IP address drops packets like mad, unable to sustain a constant stream of data, or something to that effect. The should-be-a-rectangle ping graph looks like a sparse forest of green toothpicks. That can't be good, can it?

About that IP address, you've probably figured it out by now but it's shared among all people on that particular tower. That's why "for security reasons" I can't get port 3389 forwarded to RDP on my network. It was port 6100, now it's...8900, I think. BitTorrent just plain doesn't work, and VPN (which lets it work) adds about a second to latency (it should only add about 60ms where I'm going to, though Qwest's network seems to be much less stable than AT&T's ping-wise). Despite there being no possibilit of BitTorrent on the network, they STILL can't get their act together on network performance; the tower is overloaded to the point that anything served out of my house runs like molasses in midwinter. Nah, that substance runs faster, nevermind.

I seriously doubt that business customers get anything better when they pay $15 a month for "static IP" service than what's happening now with my connection. At any rate they pay about 50% more for service than residential customers, and they get "faster response times in the event of downtime" in return, plus 35GB of b\w instead of 25, if they can track that anymore with all the DHCP clutter. Or something like that. Bee Creek gets gas money for their Hummers so they can put them in the city parade. ugh. Build out your network guys, or I WILL put you our of business. I swear...

One more thing: recently I called in, masquerading as a "potential customer" (ha) wondering why they had taken pricing info off the website (they now just have people call a phone number). As it turns out, competition from a telephone coop with a service area 20-30 miles away from mine (they have 12/1 FTTH for $60 straight up, no contracts or bundling), aka (to them) "competitive landscape" has them pricing their services $12-$30 a month lower over there than here. Of course they won't post prices (here, 2 Mbit down and *maybe* 1 up but I doubt it, is $100 a month) 'cuz it'll make their subscribers fiery mad at the subpar service they're receiving at a distinct premium versus, well, everywhere else. Sleazeballs.

My advice? Find a Sprint-compatible modem and get Millenicom. Your connection will be more stable (in a storm of any significance Bee Creek can be counted upon to go out for an hour or twelve, with no refunds of any sort of course) and faster for a similar price. Okay, Millenicom is $60 a month straight-up, the same price as 15/2 RoadRunner in town, but what's to be done? At least you've got a solid connection in the interim...until I get through with the clowns at Bee Creek who seem to have forgotten how to run a network ("Are there any plans to upgrade?" "Nope.") at which point there *should * be some more competition in what shouldn't be an underserved market but is.

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updated 15.5 years ago