Review by Dawn4 Location: Winchester, Frederick, VA, USA Cost: $60 per month Install: about 3 days No Cap Acceptable Service and Honest Owner The best I have found for my area.

I live off route 50 west near Back Mountain Road. I purchased my home four years ago and we had tired all options for internet including Hughes Net, Dish Net, and Verizon MiFi device. Hughes Net simply Horrible! Verizon was okay for a year and a half until they introduced 4G in my area and service dropped constantly, and they limited usage.

So, in November 2013 I started to look for a new internet provider. I was torn between reviews for Winchester Wireless and Wave 2 Net. I visited the offices of both Winchester Wireless and Wave 2 Net. I was not impressed at all with Wave 2 Net's operations or customer service.

Winchester Wireless's customer service team presented their services well and explained all fees. I felt they knew their business, but was still a bit apprehensive due to reviews and the amount for the equipment purchase. During my visit to their office and requested to speak with the owner, and surprisingly he came out to speak with me. He addressed all concerns and I feel went above and beyond. I took the leap and purchased the equipment and signed up for service.

It is now February 2014, and I must say I am impressed with my internet services. Besides it running a little slower between the hours of 5pm- 10pm (which I was made aware of before signing up), I feel it's the best for my area.

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Review by ddfunk Location: Winchester, Frederick, VA, USA Cost Contract price not specified. None Everything...Owner is a tard Stay away, because they are going to rip you off.

Winchester Wireless practices a bait and switch scam, where a customer has a money back period during the initial 30 days. During that time your connection will be great with little to no issues. Then after the 30 day period is up. Your connection is severely degraded with restrictions. Outages become an every day occurrence. If you complain, David Williamson first, will try to blame your equipment. Next, he blames radio interference. If you happen to know computer networking, and prove it is an issue on his network. He will tell you to take it or leave it. Offer you $100 to buy back your equipment. My initial install was over $600. He regularly deletes any and all Facebook entries made by Winchester Wireless customers which paint him or Winchester Wireless in a negative light. Currently my connection has 50 plus outages a day. Each lasting anywhere from 2-12 seconds. I proved there was an issue on his network, which he promptly demanded I pinpoint the problem on his network. I refuses and was subsequently deleted from the Facebook Winchester Wireless. Thus hiding his broken network from other customers. In my opinion David Williamson is a thief and a conman. He regularly berates and insults customers on the fore mentioned Facebook group. The Better Business Bureau has given him a grade of F. Save your money and find something else.

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Review by harleigh Location: Winchester, Frederick, VA, USA Cost: $40 per month They installed it quickly enough I may as well just say it does not work DO NOT GET THIS! Every week there is a new excuse for the reason the internet does not work

Pre Sales Information: Install process: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:

I've had this service since spring on 2010, and back then it worked very well. It wasn't the fastest but being out in the middle of nowhere it gave us the option for high speed internet that allowed us to play our online games when there was only dial-up.

Now I'm considering going back to dial-up, this service is that bad. It's constantly going down and even when it claims that it's up the speed is so poor that I can't even load webpages. Google pages, wordpress pages, nothing. Images break, things just time out and stop loading.

Forget ever watching netflix, hulu or even youtube where videos are about 2 minutes long. It's not possible. And to play any games online, you can definitely forget that. Even if you weren't getting disconnected every 10 minutes or so the speed is far too poor.

When you call them about it, which I've talked to them about it for some time, every single week I've been given a different excuse. "Trees are in the way" We cut those down, "We're upgrading" I haven't seen any improvement since that was said, "You're maxing your soft cap" It's been 4 hours into the day. There's no WAY facebook maxed any kind of cap that quickly, especially when half of that time we spent waiting for service to come back up, and I wasn't aware we were capped nor could we find any indication of such in their terms of service.

We also had out modem go out and had to take it in for replacement. I was surprised to see they were working out of someone's garage, pretty much. I was not impressed.

From the reports of others I've seen around the internet (which I am on at a public place because my home internet does not work) there are many others having these same issues.

Do not sign up with them.

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Review by WinchesterVA Location: Winchester, Frederick, VA, USA Cost: $50 per month Quickly Installed the equipment, and were courteous. The service does not work most of the time. Speed test indicate it is slower than 92% of the nation when it is on. AVOID at ALL cost. I am doing this on my verizon hotspot because the service is out AGAIN!

Pre Sales Information: Install process: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:

I tried to order a business package thinking it would be faster and reliable, but they would not let me order it. The install was quick, and service was good for a couple of months, but started getting worse and worse. When you question their service they get arrogant and deny you are having problems. I have email support on three occasions and have NEVER gotten an answer.

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Review by Banker2005 Location: Winchester, Winchester City, VA, USA Cost: $39 per month Install: about 5 days They come out to install equipment right away They are OVER SUBSCRIBED and cannot deliver bandwidth as promised STAY AWAY, you will be buying service that you cannot use

Pre Sales Information: Install process: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:

UPDATE***** I moved on from Winchester Wireless since this review was originaly posted and now have service with Wave2Net. Wave2Net was able to re-use my equipment and they price matched my old service -- for $39.99 a month (no contract) I now really do get 3 megs down and 1 meg up. Service and quality has been stable and I am VERY HAPPY NOW! There are no restrictions, I can watch NetFlix, and no matter the time of day SpeedTest reports my bandwidth at 3 down and 1 up.

OPTIONs; There are many options, do your research and be careful not to believe the "smear campaigns" that you will find when you look for competition local to Winchester Wireless. Hind sight being 20/20 I did not see Winchester Wireless being smeared, so I now wonder who is really behind the smearing.

SERVICE; The package I bought was $39.99 a month for 3.2mg up and 1mg down. But when I can get to the internet it more like 700k down and 300k up....you can forget about the internet between 4pm and 10pm daily -- you will be lucky to get online to read your email without time outs. No such thing as watching NetFlix, and you can forget about watching the shortest of YouTube videos. Video will NOT load without continuous time outs and reloading. Gaming is a no go.

ORDER & INSTALLATION; To order it was a phone call, they will take you credit card information and sell you the antenna outright with an installation for about $550.00 bucks. You will not see a box, they resell old subscriber SM radios and make you believe it is new, there will be no original manufacture packaging seen during the installation.

EQUIPMENT; Motorola SM9000 – they will password protect the antenna and NOT give you access to anything more than status menu. That’s right, you can forget about getting into the radio to look at QoS settings

GOOD & BAD; Well there is no GOOD. During the installation they bad mouth every other local WISP in town -- this should have raised a red flag. Then when the installation was complete the bandwidth was 650k down and 240k up with 320ms delay. The lead install tech got on the phone and had the home office reboot the main router. The delay issue was resolved; however the bandwidth did not increase. I should have had them take their equipment back right then and there, but they talked fast and said upgrades to bandwidth were “in progress” and bandwidth would triple in just a few weeks. I was such a sucker to believe what they were saying at the time. With your subscription you get access to a FaceBook Group that is closed to the public and heavily moderated. People complain about the service in rants of rages of discontent -- the rants are mysteriously deleted.

SUMMARY; It is clearly a case that Winchester Wireless is over subscribed. For years they just kept adding new clients, collecting money, and procrastinating bandwidth upgrades until customers lashed out. Now its “too little too late”. Take my word for it and go elsewhere for internet service.

wirelessdog join:2008-07-15 Queen Anne, MD wirelessdog Member 2011-Jul-29 11:06 am Well Duh... Of course they password protect the equipment. You seriously think that allowing customer access to sensitive equipment and configurations would be good business practice? What else are you being unreasonable about or exaggerating? 2011-Jul-29 11:06 am: · hey mods ·
	No Dummy @comcast.net No Dummy Anon 2011-Jul-31 8:47 pm Re: Well Duh... I know who runs this company, and the original poster has hit it right on the head. 2011-Jul-31 8:47 pm: · hey mods ·
BookFace @comcast.net BookFace Anon 2011-Jul-31 8:40 pm Winchester Wireless I have heard similar stories about this company. Heard about how "transparent" they are with customers. To have a forum on Facebook that is closed to the public is a HUGE "red flag". Sure they have a page that someone can look at, but to conceal true issues that current customers have tells me there is a problem. The radio being password locked is to protect someone from making a change that will cause connectivity problems. If you have the knowledge to investigate QoS then Winchester Wireless should allow you to be able to look at that. Any company that has to bad mouth the competition has no faith in there own product. 2011-Jul-31 8:40 pm: · hey mods ·
	wirelessdog join:2008-07-15 Queen Anne, MD wirelessdog Member 2011-Jul-31 11:36 pm Re: Winchester Wireless There is no option in Canopy to allow access to only certain parts of the configuration i.e. QoS. You either allow configuration change access or you don't. So, no, it is not reasonable to expect the ISP to allow any configuration change access to the radio. That being said, looking at their website, the speeds they advertise cannot be accurate. For example, the maximum, aggregate, throughput of an ENTIRE Motorola Canopy 900mhz AP is 4megs. That is 4megs split among ALL of the users connected to the AP. Advertising a 3.2/1meg service is wrong as even in a perfect world they would NEVER be able to provide that speed even if there was only one customer connected to the tower. The MOST would be 3/1 and that is pushing. 2011-Jul-31 11:36 pm: · hey mods ·
		wirelessdog wirelessdog Member 2011-Sep-26 11:06 pm Re: Winchester Wireless Inaccuracies or lies? You claim the equipment is a 900mhz SM9000. You also claim you are getting 3megs/2megs which is impossible on that equipment. 2011-Sep-26 11:06 pm: · hey mods ·
			Anom @comcast.net Anom Anon 2011-Sep-28 1:04 pm Re: Winchester Wireless Free antenna's?....I wonder how many people have these on their home... »www.merchantcircle.com/b ··· iew/list 2011-Sep-28 1:04 pm: · hey mods ·
			Banker2005 join:2007-03-12 Winchester, VA Banker2005 to wirelessdog Member 2011-Nov-17 8:34 am to wirelessdog Wirelessdog; sorry for my typo -- it is 3megs down and 1meg up. I corrected my update typo and reposted. 2011-Nov-17 8:34 am: · hey mods ·
				Banker2005 Banker2005 Member 2011-Nov-17 9:20 am Re: Winchester Wireless Wave2Net service results from SpeedTest-net. »www.speedtest.net/result ··· 4886.png 2011-Nov-17 9:20 am: · hey mods ·
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Review by virtualfreak Location: Middletown, Frederick, VA, USA Cost: $49 per month Install: about 19 days Responds quickly to inquiries, 1-day to install, no contracts, reasonable rates, reliable wireless service speed and reliability still not quite on par with a wired equivalent like DSL or cable A good value for a wireless service. The company only wants you as a customer if you are a happy customer

Pre Sales Information: Install process: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:

• What other options did you consider for broadband

I considered DSL and Cable but they weren't available to me. I tried another local wireless provider but the experience was less than satisfactory.

• What SPEED/package did you order, at what monthly price?

I ordered the $39.99/mo package with $10/mo additional for static IP

• How was the order & install process?

Smooth

• What brand/model was the supplied equipment?

Motorola Canopy System

• What good or bad experiences most struck you?

The good is this service has satisfactorily supported streaming media and VOIP despite other claims that wireless won't.

I have recently been experiencing some service degragation but the provider has always been prompt and responsive in providing me accurate feedback regarding any service interuptions or issues. I've had the service for 5 months and have only experienced one noticeable outage. I was promptly made aware of it when I called and recieved their automated outage notice and service was restored once they fixed the issue.

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