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Review by jfortune06 
Fair warning: reviewer joined this week
lodged 4 days ago
 Terrell,Kaufman,TX
 Contract price not specified.  "Best available option in my area" "Service is spotty, speeds slow at peak times, tech dispatch very slow" "It's better than Satellite or cellular on a price per speed ratio."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I live just outside of town where my only options are...
Satellite - which never lives up to it's advertised speed, is expensive and caps downloads.
DSL - which I am too far way from the C.O. to get any usable speed.
Cellular - I can get 4G surprisingly from Verizon but they cap bandwidth and make you sell your firstborn to get more available cap.
Skybeam - Not the fastest option, or the most reliable, but the best combination of speed, price, reliability available to me.
Here's the deal. I am a realist. Skybeam is filling a void in internet service for those of us in rural areas who are semi-heavy internet users. Their profits are not going to be as high as in a denser populated area where cable and local phone companies are available with better speeds and service. They have to pay pretty steep prices to get the fiber transmission lines to these remote towers so their profit margin isn't going to be huge. That being said, I have some advice on how they can help their customers...
Pricing structure - If you are going to offer higher priced connections, you need to be able to supply the bandwidth. If you can't supply 5Mb, don't offer it to suckers who expect to get that kind of bandwidth. I think an even better option would be to offer customers the option to pay a little more to get a guaranteed minimum bandwidth of something like 3, 5, 10, etc bandwidth. Just charge whatever you would need to in order to pay for the required backbone connection to make this happen. You can use QOS settings in your APs to make it work. I, for one, would be willing to pay $100 a month if I could get 5MB 24/7 with no slow-downs.
Installation - Please help those of us who are technically savvy to get the best possible connection by giving us access to our radio's signal aiming software. We don't need full access to change settings you don't want us to change, only access to see the signal and noise levels to help us better aim the dish to get the best possible connection. This would save your field techs SOOOO much time. I know that my dish moves slightly during high winds. Sometimes trees change during the seasons and affect the signal path. If I could just SEE what the heck is going on, I could fix it myself when I have time rather than waiting 2 weeks for one of your techs to come to my house and move my dish 2 degrees to the right. I watched the tech the last time to see how it works and it's really not that complicated. I actually did the dish adjustments while he watched the screen to make things go faster. He showed me how it all works.
Tech Support - Hold times, obviously, are an issue. This means you need more staff. The other issue, is you need more knowledgeable staff. I am in the tech support business myself and I know that much time can be saved if the techs can quickly diagnose an issue. You would need less staff if the staff you have are faster. A tech can better diagnose an issue if they have a full understanding of how everything works rather than relying on a script that wastes the clients time checking things that don't need to be checked. I had to explain the Ethernet OSI model to almost every tech I spoke to when diagnosing a physical connection issue. It was quite simple. I was getting a link up / down connection issue which is either link layer or physical layer, not network, transport, application, etc. Rebooting my PC won't help. They had no idea that the link light should remain on no matter what the connection status from dish to tower was. A tech visited twice on this issue and just replaced the POE injector which did not fix anything. I ended up fixing myself by re-crimping both ends of the cable from dish to the POE injector inside my house. The original crimps were HORRIBLE.
I hope someone from Skybeam reads this and takes some of my advise. I really want this thing to work. I understand the uphill battle rural internet service can be but there's no reason to shoot yourself in the foot too.
Comments:
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 Review by RenHoek
member for 12.6 years, 5580 visits, last login: a few hours ago
lodged 136 days ago
- Peyton,El Paso,CO
- $41 per month
 about 1 days Qwest- "Good high-speed internet in the "middle of nowhere""
- "Goes down once in a while, but usually for only a few minutes"
- "Good value for the price"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings well above consensus)
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When me moved to "the country", we went through the Qwest website for DSL and their website said high speed DSL was available at our address. When we tried to order, they said, "sorry, not available in your area". Same with Comcast, the local cable monopoly. Our new neighbors had SkyBeam and were happy with them. The service is "point-to-point" wireless using a dish similar to DirecTV. We have direct line-of-sight to the tower about 7 miles away so the signal is awesome, even when it rains or snows. So far only a couple of minor outages in 6 months, nothing for more than 1 hour and that was due to power issues at the tower. So far I'm very happy with the service. 5Mbps down/1Mbps up for $41 a month is WAY better than satellite internet.
Comments:
 | | Thank you! Thank you for sharing your positive experience with Skybeam. We strive always be your best connection choice. Thank you, Tom Gallegos, Director of Customer Care | |
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Review by slackmagnet
member for 6 years, 19 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
updated 1.5 years ago
- Hillsboro,Hill,TX
- $63 per month
- about 7 days
- "so far good 2.5down to7.0down, 1.3up to 4.7 up"
- "was out about 6 hours 1 day only"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
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Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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so far so good, i have had it about 2 weeks.
i got the poweruser at about $63 a month.
i not used to the fast speed.
my wife is on facebook-farmville all the time.
i am a xbox player.
the installer knew what he was doing, had a hard time getting the tower, but
finally found it.
im a happy custumer.
we are about 13 miles from hillsboro texas in the country.
service is getting worst, some time great 40%, some time bad 60%.
can't get a hold of service, left number no call back.
service is very bad about 5pm to 10pm.
no happy right now
Comments:
| | internet  service is good 2.5 to 7.5 down , 1.5 to 3.5 up
mostly good. can't gripe. | |
| | | skybeam repair radio was out on roof and it took 2.5 weeks to get a new radio up.
this is to long.
the repairman was good, radio is on the roof on tower.
woking good now.
4.0 to 5.5 down, 1.0 to 2.5 up | |
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