Review by ewing453 Location: Liberty, Liberty, TX, USA Cost: $40 per month Install: about 3 days Local people, local tech support, great speeds Line of Sight wirless may not work at your location If you can get it, it is awesome!

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

If you have lived in Liberty anytime in the past 20 years then you know Computer Solutions. Randy, Robert and the guys live in Liberty and have always worked hard to offer competitive prices and services to the local community. They were the first to offer dialup to an area that nobody wanted to serve. They wriggled into the ATT central office and are able to offer ADSL and SDSL to a select few customers in Liberty were the conditions are right. With the advent of WiFi IMS started looking for ways to offer WISP services. They tried several different technologies and worked with local businesses to get tower locations. They have been creative arranging deals to locate equipment on water towers, rice dryers, and abandoned microwave towers. The great thing about IMS is they are local and know the terrain. They will work with you when they can. I tried Teleshare Wireless(Internet America) and I could not get a signal. I ended up going with Hughesnet after a Wild Blue nightmare. In case you don't already know, hughesnet is an ISPOLR (ISP Of Last Resort). It works, but with the latency and "Fair" use policies it is virtually unusable.

I was excited to hear that IMS was planing to locate equipment on the water tower in Hardin and expand their services for the school district. I happend to pull into the driveway one evening and noticed a shiney silver water tower sparkling in the evening sun just through the trees. The tower is a little over a mile away with trees nearby on my end and a sloping creekbed in a large open field. There was no way to get a shot to the tower from my house, but I was able to see it from the edge of my property about 325 feet from the house. It was there, but some brush and low trees across the fence were obscuring my view. After having IMS out to do a preliminary survey (at no charge!), we decided I could try and clear some of the brush and see what happend. I decided to take it a step further. They were quiet surprised when the came back for the install and found a 40' tilt over tower I had constructed. I also ran CAT5 and fiber from the house out to the tower. They mounted the equipment and raised the mast. After a few config checks we were humming along at speeds greater than 1meg. The service has worked great since then. I have only been down three times. Two of those being an extended power outage, and the most recent being a thunderstorm that knocked out their equipment on the water tower. It was dark, so they couldn't get it fixed until the next morning, but I still say that is awesome service.

UPDATE: Yesterday we had another thunderstorm and this time I lost the accesspoint on my end as well as my router. I put a call in just to let them know. I didn't expect a call back since it was Memorial Day holiday. To my surprise they called and were coming by in 15 minutes!!!

They had to replace my access point, which they asked me to pay for, but I didn't mind considering the great service and the fact that I will probably have to claim it on my insurance.

If the service is not availble in your area don't give up! New technology is coming out every day and I assure you these guys will do there best to try and reach as many folks as they can. I hear they may be testing WDS radios to bring service into a neighborhood on a tower like mine and then distribute it out to the neighbors.

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