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Review by conwaytwt See Profile

  • Location: Conway, Faulkner, AR, USA
  • Cost: $40 per month
Local amazing support, decent speeds for price.
Lowest tier priced higher if you don't buy cable TV service too
Probably the best broadband option in town.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

The broadband options here are DSL (via ATT), cellular (ATT, VZW, Cricket, T-Mobile), Satellite, or Conway Corporation (city-owned water, electric and cable TV company). I have not spoken to anyone who was happy using satellite or cellular service for their primary broadband connections, but I listed them because they are there.

Years ago, Conway Corp. put fiber all over town, and nowadays they offer a good range of options, including basic and commercial level service. Usually they are very responsive to calls, even at strange hours (they're a power company too), though the actual Internet support stops at 9pm most nights. HOWEVER I have successfully gotten a truck roll within an hour, even on a weekend, when my Internet service was down. The magic words: "My home phone service is down too." (I neglected to mention I don't subscribe to THEIR Voip service, but that didn't seem to matter -- maybe an unstated policy.)

If you get the basic Internet package and you do not ALSO buy any cable-TV services, they tack on an extra $5 charge. A few years back we upgraded to the "express residential" package which does not seem to also have the extra charge. I put that we currently pay $40 but it is probable that figure does not include local and state tax.

If there is any sort of data cap I don't know about it.

The service has been very reliable. We may have a brief outage once or twice a year, but it's usually back up within the hour. (Also I live in an old house so I've had to put in "modern" coaxial wiring, and the cable modem onto a small UPS.)

I believe you can rent a modem from Conway Corp but it's easy enough to get a decent one at any of the stores in town that carry electronics. Conway Corporation also offers VoIP home phone service, but I have not used it. I think they charge about $30/month for phone service, but like AT&T they also want you to "bundle" services. I have never had cable TV service so I don't know how much it costs.

member for 19.9 years, 632 visits, last login: 231 days ago
updated 9 years ago


F100
join:2013-01-15
Durham, NC
Alcatel-Lucent G-010G-A
(Software) pfSense
Pace 5268AC

F100

Member

Bring Conway Corp into the 21st centry.

Good to know Conway Corp is still providing reliable service. My sister has it there now and my friends had it back in college over 15 years ago. It seems like reliability is all that it has going for it though.

I want to know when they are going to bring Conway Corp into the 21st century and start laying fiber for 1Gbps connections to customers homes? They have owned this network for long enough it should be mostly profit and life-cycle/maintenance upgrades at this point.

If the city of Wilson NC can build their City owned Greenlight fiber network in way less time than Conway Corp has existed, why can't Conway Corp look to upgrade and actually provide speeds at decent prices. The Cities are roughly the same size and distance from their state capitols. They are both county seats as well.

Conway corp:
50 Mpbs Downstream and 3 Mbps Upstream for $85. 18 Mbps Downstream and 1.5 Mbps Upstream for $52. That's not even matching Comcast's prices in Little Rock for comparison in same general geographic region.

Wilson Greenlight:
Internet-only Service
Package Download Upload Monthly
40Mbps Internet-only 40 Mbps 40 Mbps $39.95
75Mbps Internet-only 75 Mbps 75 Mbps $59.95
100Mbps Internet-only 100 Mbps 100 Mbps $79.95
1Gbps Internet-only 1Gbps 1Gbps $104.95

When Conway Corp 1st started, it provide a service that didn't exist in the internet space. Now it's a monopoly that is uncompetitive and over priced. It's turned into the wrong way to do community broadband.

Yes, I don't have much else to choose from either other than TWC but now that Google fiber has plans to come to my city, competition and price changes is starting to happen. I hope this would be the case for Conway someday.
conwaytwt
Premium Member
join:2004-04-09
Conway, AR

2 edits

conwaytwt

Premium Member

Re: Bring Conway Corp into the 21st centry.

For me, my service has been plenty "good enough," and the reliability has been much more important than getting faster speed. I have two (non ConwayCorp) VoIP lines and the service has been completely reliable for years, once I got my own network issues corrected.

Other than a peering problem I reported just yesterday (and had to talk the front-line folks through what I needed -- reporting a bad link "upstream,") I haven't even had much reason to call ConwayCorp in a long time.

Based on everything I have heard I wouldn't wish Comcast "support" on anyone, so I don't know that it's a fair comparison, even IF the bits-per-second rate per $ is better. But it does give a good benchmark.

As for speed, I'm not a huge video watcher (for that reason I have never subscribed to any Cable packages) so maybe my experiences and requirements are pretty atypical. As you can see, the only other recent review posted here is obviously for another provider.

I hope some other current ConwayCorp customers would drop by and enter their own reviews. If you know some, send them here! I set up a discussion board for us, too... YEARS ago...

(Here's the link -- »Conway Corp. -- plenty of place for "independent" discussion!)

F100
join:2013-01-15
Durham, NC
Alcatel-Lucent G-010G-A
(Software) pfSense
Pace 5268AC

F100

Member

Re: Bring Conway Corp into the 21st centry.

Yeah, they probably have good customer service as the town monopoly that your taxes pay for. Reliability is important at any speed to make a good network. I grew up in South West Arkansas so I know how the choices are limited. I wouldn't wish Sudden Link Cable on anyone. They have a lot of the smaller towns in the state.

Has Conway Corp upgraded to DOCSIS 3.0 yet with multiple channel bonding? That may be why their speed tiers are so low if they haven't modernized the plant.

With UCA and the expansion of companies like HP in the Conway area, I don't see why people there don't start petitioning the City to upgrade to fiber to make the city truly a place to expand business and increase the value of city services. City owned means tax payer and subscriber funded which means you have the ability to group together to ask city for improvements. If they don't want to do that, then vote in some people that will. At lest you have that freedom and privilege. If it was a private company, you couldn't do that.

I'm not trying to knock on Conway Corp. I just wish more communities that have the abilities like this to push the USA to keep up with the rest of the developed world's internet would actually do it. Wilson NC, Chattanooga TN and a few others have this foresight.
conwaytwt
Premium Member
join:2004-04-09
Conway, AR

conwaytwt

Premium Member

Re: Bring Conway Corp into the 21st centry.

Well, it's a little more complicated than you suggest. The city may "own" Conway Corporation, but it's managed independently, and its TRUE purpose is to promote city development and keep the colleges happy. It was set up explicitly to keep Hendrix from accepting an offer from another town in 1929. They "kick back" some of their earnings to the colleges, and of course also have resources to develop things like the industrial parks. I've thought about attending some board meetings to learn more.

I suspect ConwayCorp could provision "Bonded DOCSIS 3.0" if someone asked for it -- they DO recommend we buy DOCSIS 3.0 equipment no matter what level of service we use. How common is that (Bonded service) in a residential area, I wonder?

However if ConwayCorp needs to accommodate heavy corporate usage it may happen independent of the cable provisioning. (That's purely speculation, though.) I have not tried to work with them on high bandwidth usage... though I have known people running pretty demanding services from their apartments in the past.

Remember also we have several high-tech businesses here that don't make the headlines every day... even though Acxiom moved their HQ to Little Rock for visibility, their biggest campus is still here. And HP is still here (who knows for how long). Though it's pretty likely neither gets their data via ConwayCorp infrastructure. On the other hand, PrivacyStar, Innuvo, and RockPond (for example) are all relatively small startup offices, and they may. (I think city leaders are more worried about accommodating all the new workers we have with parking downtown than the data provisioning.)

Also remember that if you ask ATT they will tell you "We're not dead yet!" They sell data lines here, too. And Windstream, and probably some others I'm not thinking of. I only have direct experience with purely residential level service. But maybe I'm not getting out enough...
conwaytwt

conwaytwt to F100

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to F100
You might be interested in this story »thecabin.net/news/local/ ··· -meeting

Chamber announces tech-minded Data District at Annual Meeting
Posted: March 20, 2015 - 7:22pm
By BRANDON RIDDLE
LOG CABIN DEMOCRAT

An introductory video projected at the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting on Thursday night announced the downtown Conway Data District.

Powered by Conway Corporation, the Data District concept will provide gigabit Internet services to businesses located in the district as early as this spring.

Brad Lacy, president and CEO of the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce, said that in the coming years, Conway residents could also see a downtown that is filled with tech workers who utilize multi-use, multi-story buildings to act as extensions of public space.

He added that the downtown area could also see apartments where technology company employees would reside.

“We think it will make us unique, not only in Arkansas but in much of the rest of the country,” he said.

Packaging and pricing for the data district services will be announced this spring, with 250 Mbps, 500 Mbps and one gigabit packages as part of the offerings.

“We have been proactively developing our fiber infrastructure in this area to meet customer demand, said Richard Arnold, CEO of Conway Corporation, in a media release. “With an eye on the future, we are providing the service needed by business customers in the district.”

According to Conway Corporation, the company was No. 5 in North America to commercially release a citywide high-speed, broadband cable Internet service, making it a technology industry leader.

The move follows recent tech companies announcing their plans to establish offices in downtown Conway – Metova, Big Cloud Analytics and Eyenalyze.

F100
join:2013-01-15
Durham, NC
Alcatel-Lucent G-010G-A
(Software) pfSense
Pace 5268AC

F100

Member

Re: Bring Conway Corp into the 21st centry.

Thanks for the Post. That's good that they are looking at doing downtown. However, what happens when tech people go home and their Verizon and AT&T cellphones get faster internet speed than their ConwayCorp connection?

I bet UCA an Hendrix already have Gigabit on campus and I'm surprised more students that live off campus don't complain that their connections are a fraction of the on campus speed. HSU had a fast network back in the late 90's when I was there. Living off campus then was miserable because cable modems were just coming out but Arkadelphia didn't have service yet. They were just starting to get digital cellphone service in May of 2000 when I graduated. Dialup was the pits.

I'm not dissing ConwayCorp. They city-owned cable network was good and innovative when it started and may have been one of the 1st to do so but then it just stagnated. Now it seems they are 10 years behind the rest of the industry with technology and speed and are using PR to play catch up. I just would have expected them to be much further along at this point, but that is the double edge sword of municipal broadband. When there is no competition, what's the rush.

Seems like maybe they are waking up now though. It's not just about the business district though. Just look to what Google is doing to see that. Google Fiber is doing business internet, but after they got much of the residential going as well.
conwaytwt
Premium Member
join:2004-04-09
Conway, AR

conwaytwt

Premium Member

Re: Bring Conway Corp into the 21st centry.

I don't think Verizon is competitive in that way. They just gave me a "deal" on my account, upping my shared 2Gb/month data plan to 3Gb/month for the same $50/month. If that was my only option for Internet I might be grateful, but the so-called "4G LTE" service isn't quite good enough here in downtown Conway that I would choose to have it as my only Internet service. I once used it as a backup during an outage, and for awhile I experimented with using it for VoIP, but fortunately I don't need to rely on it. AT&T might have an edge over them for cellular data here. And of course if I wanted AT&T DSL the central office building is an easy walk, so I know I would get good signal. But I detest dealing with AT&T more than just about any other company I have ever experienced, so I don't even consider it.

As for Internet service at UCA & Hendrix, whatever the size of the pipes to campus, I am sure most students don't see it. I read that UCA's student Internet is heavily "shaped" since they got sued a few years back by a media conglomerate. (Students were sharing music and movies -- imagine that! So the media lawyers went after UCA rather than try to find the individuals.) Since that time, anything that might even LOOK like media sharing gets throttled severely. At Hendrix the campus has "ordinary" WiFi everywhere, but I am almost certain providing big pipes to the general student body is probably not a huge priority.

Conway Corporation has provided free WiFi via a lot of businesses around town and in public spaces for years, so you can usually use them as a backup when you're near one of their hotspots.

I plan to follow up on this, however -- I don't know much about the daily operation and plans for Conway Corporation except what they send me in my bill every month. About 99% of what they print is about cable TV, which as I said I have never subscribed to, and I think will be a declining source of revenue. I did notice their new data center (from the outside) and had to walk around the trenching machines pulling fiber downtown in the past few months, so things are always changing... just maybe not always in the ways we expect... That news story was the first I had heard of that initiative, just as they had finished the infrastructure to make it possible.

IF Google offered to come in with fiber, maybe ConwayCorp would even welcome it instead of opposing it. Google already handles ConwayCorp email, so they don't ALWAYS keep their services in house.
conwaytwt

conwaytwt

Premium Member

deleted

I deleted this because I somehow accidentally created a new topic instead of making a thread

Review by DGee See Profile

  • Location: Cincinnati, Hamilton, OH, USA
  • Cost: $34 per month
Historically great alternative
Suddenly disappeared the last 3 days
WTF?
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

This is an internet-over-power-grid ISP, created in 2004 in Greater Cincinnati as Current Communications. Its name was changed in recent years. I've been a customer for 7/8 years.

Reading some of your old reviews, I would agree with their gist. But something bad happened Wednesday, probably in the evening, and the service has been completely down since then. No email, no internet.

The company is not answering its phones or replying to messages sent to its support group or entered on its web form (obviously via another ISP). It has posted nothing on its web site. The only sign of life is an answering service message acknowledging an outage, and this message is only during business hours; otherwise the only other message is that the office is closed and to call during business hours.

Anyone know more about this company? Never had problems more serious than outages under a day, and usually just a few hours. I've heard it might be headquartered in Texas, but I can't find such a reference myself.

Thanks.

member for 9.9 years, 1 visits, last login: 9.9 years ago
updated 9.9 years ago

ITGeeks
join:2014-04-20
Cleveland, OH

ITGeeks

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Current

current communications is »cincinnaticomm.com/