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 Review by dsl_boy 
UPDATED: 2.3 years ago
member for 9 years, 1431 visits, last login: 35 days ago
 undisclosed location
 $485 per month
 about 20 days
 SBC
 "T-1 service review -- it works as advertised"
 "Expensive"
 "T-1 from Megapath is expensive, but impressive"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
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Another update:
I'm still using Megapath -- their system sometimes has service dropouts, but mostly seems reliable.
Another update:
Megapath service continues to be reliable.
Another update:
Megapath has dropped their T-1 price by another $30 to $449/month Expect to pay another $45/month in fees and taxes.
Another update:
Well Megapath has dropped their T-1 charges by another 20% (from $699 to $599 to $479.) That's wonderful, but they don't notify their customer's of price changes -- one has to notice it on their web page, and then call in and get "reprovisioned" (signing another service commitment). And since it is not always easy to reach customer service at Megapath, this is a lot harder than you might think. What a pain. Still Megapath offers the cheapest T-1 service I've found, and usually service (over Covad) is acceptable. If you can't get cable or dsl service, this may be for you.
An update:
After several years of service, Megapath/Covad T-1 has proven to be fully adequate for my needs. It is just incredibly expensive. Here's what I wrote before -- which is still true.
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I've had the following services from Megapath:
- IDSL through Northpoint
- IDSL through Rhythms
- IDSL through Covad
- T-1 through Allegiance
- T-1 through Covad
I've certainly had my up and downs with Megapath (as the long, long list of comments below will testify -- the low point was certainly the way Megapath handled the Northpoint to Rhythms transition -- but that is ancient history). Today, however, my current service of T-1 through Covad is reasonably reliable (although Covad has the right to take down the service between 1AM and 6AM and sometimes, although not often, does this.) Other than service outages because of preventative maintenance by Covad and one unfortunate incident involving an outage of Megapath's DNS server, I've found service to be reliable and satisfactory.
Straightening out bill problems sometimes takes multiple phone calls, but Megapath always has corrected the bill in the end.
Megapath technical support almost always involves a wait (I suspect that because when I call, several people are calling -- there is some mass outage). When I was having serious problems with my Allegiance line (I used to strongly recommend that users considering T-1 server refuse to accept service with Allegiance -- but now that Allegiance is out of business, that's not necessary), Megapath quickly switched me over to Covad with a minimum of delay -- in about three weeks, I was up with far more reliable T-1/Covad service. However, during recent failures (coincident with SOBIG virus -- which was, perhaps, the cause -- it was impossible to get through.)
One point of confusion has been during the installation process -- PacBell has a way of coming a day or two before their appointment and giving up quickly if they can not get interior access
Oh yes, that pesky USF charge. Wish they were more clear about it.
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Review by largeformat
Posted: 2.3 years ago
member for 2.3 years, 0 visits, last login: 2.3 years ago
New Rochelle,Westchester,NY
 Business customer
$500 per month (24 month contract)
about 400 days
"Absolutely nothing"
"Everything from install to service and support"
"Worst provider ever!"
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Megapath networks is a joke.
After a year and a half my service still does not work.
I started with a fract. t1 then i moved to a full. That was supposed to solve my problem.
It didnt. The first install crossed my lines with someone else. They blew 3 smart cards and 2 routers. The line should have been deemed TNF a from the start. Over $4,000.00 later im broke and pissed.
I have a full T1 that costs over $450 a month. The line is bouncing.
I have had many techs out here. They only made it worse. I had days where i couldnt maintain a connection for more then 1 minute at a time.
There billing is criminal. They are liars and cheats. Most of the employees cant even figure out there own systems. This is an admission from them.
I cancelled the account and i was promised that i would not be charged for an early termination.
What do you think happened. Yup a bill for $1400. I have to file a claim and maybe get the amex credited. They should be arrested.
Ive never had such a bad experience in my life.
I have the distinct honor of having one of the largest trouble ticket histories and probably received the most amount of credits in there history.
The moral of this story is stay AWAY!!!!
Followup comments:  bescher
Bescher
Premium
join:2003-12-07
Brookfield, WI
| Megapath service Hmm Strange I have been with Megapath.com/Megapath.net now for 7 years. I started out with a 384K DSL line. went to a partial T-1 4 years ago and have had my full T-1 2 years now. I will say their Tech support isn't 100% but pretty good. I have been down twice in those years with the last time the past 3 days. My complaint about their Tech support has to do with them calling you to tell you status of the repair. But the problem is that in my area for example Covad covers my hardware to the Dimarc and then AT&T covers from the Dimarc out. Sometimes Megapath has to deal with them. I was on hold for 2 houes this morning because Megapath was on the line with Covad and AT&T.
Now their accounting is another story. That does suck although I have never been overcharged. But they have changed accounting systems and I have 4 diferent accounts number since I have been with them. My current T-1 charge with a 1/2 class C is $433.00 a month with Taxes and all that stuff.
Overall it has been pretty good service I would rate them a 8 out of 10 (the billing dept drops them down.
Bob E | |
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Review by jcirinci
Posted: 2.4 years ago
member for 6.3 years, 29 visits, last login: 299 days ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$85 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
AT&T
"Great Technical Support, Excellent handling of the LEC, allows other routers"
"Expensive, no support for Cisco IOS"
"Worth the extra money for their tech support"
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Looked at Cable - Comcast is the local but performance is poor. Close enough to the B-box to get 6M/608k - average real throughput is about 4M/400k. I had a package which is no longer available that has this 6M/608k with 5 static for $85.25 / month after some odd discount of $100+.
I have had MegaPath for ISDN, ISDL, and ADSL. Very happy with thier technical support when I have problems - able to quickly determine where the issue is. Especially good at handling the LEC which is a blessing for me. MegaPath uses Netopia for their CPE. Not bad gear, easy to manage text menus BUT.... they also allowed me to use my own CPE and gave me all the VC information to configure it - NICE!! Wish they had people on staff that know IOS and would be willing to configure / monitor using a Cisco router.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 2.6 years ago
(review was emailed from domain us.ibm.com)
Bethesda,Montgomery,MD
Contract price not specified.
Verizon
"Very polite service tech"
"Company administration/ coordination was laughable"
"Aviod mega path at all cost."
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I am sorry to say that Mega Path, in the Maryland/ suburban Washington, DC
area, is a complete joke. They had scheduled and cancelled a set-up visit
at least a dozen times. It got to the point where I just told them to not
schedule, to just show up and I will be on site. This is for a business
application so I didn't mind the arrival time of 8 AM to 4 PM, I was going
to be on site, but to continually cancel and reschedule over a two month
period is unacceptable. Then, when they were finally here the technician
- who was very polite - was put on a 45 minute hold by his service/ ping
center. Do whatever you must to avoid Mega Path.
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Review by consilien
Posted: 2.7 years ago
member for 2.7 years, 3 visits, last login: 1.8 years ago
San Pedro,Los Angeles,CA
$454 per month (24 month contract)
about 14 days
SBC
CLEC party: Covad
"Reliable connection"
"Price point"
"T1s are lot cheaper then they use to be, still pricey."
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This is a T-1 service for my office, and because of the associated SLA, in the couple of years I have had service with Megapath, I have had little to no down time. Pricing has come down some, and we have renewed our contract term to take advantage of the lower cost.
Tech support with Megapath has always been better then many other ISP. Being able to speak directly to a tech that knows what he is talking about, is a lot less frustrating then most level 1 support that can't tell the different between a router and a switch.
- Full T-1 1.5 Mbps up and down.
- Current install was an account move from another location, everything happened per the schedule they provided. Even the SBC field engineer that installed the smart jack was on time.
- Netopia Router.
- 5 Static IPs & custom Reverse-DNS settings.
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Review by catwomannj
Posted: 2.8 years ago
member for 2.8 years, 1 visits, last login: 2.8 years ago
Trenton,Mercer,NJ
$109 per month
Verizon
CLEC party: DSL.Net
"great tech support"
"problems have usually been the TELCO's problems"
"reliable, but wish it were cheaper"
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I have 192 SDSL static IP for SOHO business. Been with MegaPath for over 6 years. I have weathered several changes in CLEC's, in fact I was just changed from Covad to dsl.net. That transition went very smoothly. The bonus is I got a new router, Netopia R7100.
During the 6+ years, I've had a handful of times of losing service. Majority of the time it was fixed very quickly. Only time it took a few days was this past December -- don't ever lose service right before a holiday weekend. Anytime the issue involves Verizon, it is always a hassle and that was the issue in Dec. But the guy at tech support did a great job getting them to quickly fix the problem (after they claimed they already had).
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Review by craigbspengl
Posted: 3 years ago
member for 6.4 years, 12 visits, last login: 2 years ago
Fort Lauderdale,Broward,FL
$150 per month (24 month contract)
about 6 days
BellSouth
CLEC party: New Edge Networks
"great up front"
"horrible t.s., can't talk to anyone above minions"
"go elsewhere"
| Pre Sales information:
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I've been with megapath for probably three years now, they just offered a two month credit to commit to another two years. I did it.
WHAT A MISTAKE!
IDSL -- the only thing available out here -- out for four days beginning of October, have been out for six days (so far) up to today (Nov 7th) 2006.
Even for an outage this long, they only check tix ONCE PER DAY and since they are out west that leaves only a few hours contact window with east coast vendors. They will not let you talk to anyone with authority, and i have waited up to ninety minutes on hold for their ts to answer (800 number, fortunately).
I'm still out, they blame new edge, new edge blames bellsouth, and in the end i do not have service. Add to this the fact it is a remote facility and takes a five hour round trip to cycle power to satisfy their imagined troubleshooting regimen and, well, it is no wonder that some people could go postal.
ADVICE: be sure to cut out middleman if possible -- go new edge, covad, etc; whether to go to copper supplier (e.g. Bellsouth) I'm still afraid of that option since they fall outside of any state-controlled Public Service Commission portfolio.
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 Review by tomkb
UPDATED: 3.3 years ago
member for 9 years, 2359 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Cleveland,Cuyahoga,OH
$220 per month (12 month contract)
about 15 days
Ameritech
CLEC party: Covad
"Getting less good points each day"
"Getting really bad"
"It's time to move on - too many outages - LEC and ISP blame eachother"
| Pre Sales information:
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Comments are list chronologically, scroll to the bottom for the latest.
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What to say? A very good experience all the way. Communication is outstanding during the setup stage. I gave it a 4 for value for money because if everyone gives it a 5, they may think they are underpriced. Hopefully, with continued competition, prices will come down over time.
Worth your investment especially if you are a small business.
On a side note, Ameritech seems to have come a long way these past months, very curtious and on time. They also provided good customer service.
$199/month for 768 SDSL. $10 extra for a block of 8 ip's. The netopia router is very powerful, many features.
I-------------------------------------
It is now the end of October 2002 and I still feel very positive about Megapath. I almost never speak or correspond with them and that is a good thing because there product works great. They are good about telling you of outages, giving plenty of advanced notice. Planned outages occur late at night. I have only had two in the 4 or 5 months I've been a customer.
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It is now May 6, 2003, and all is good with Megapath. I had a problem with the connection going up and down about every 15 minutes. The connection would go down for approximately 15 seconds and then back up and repeat this behaviour every 15-30 minutes. I opened a case with Megapath, prompt response, they telneted into the router and we reviewed the logs. They identified the problem as 'bouncing'. We setup an appointment for late in the evening for testing of the line as to not inconvenience any of my customers. By the time the evening rolled around, the problem corrected itself. Maybe there was something going on in the Ameritech CO.
Bottom line, I reviewed the logs over the last several months and the connection is unbelievably stable, very few outages over such a long time period, I'm impressed.
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It's November 2003 and I still like Megapath alot. Can't beat it for small business. I have my router forward logs to my linux machine and it has very few entries, just an occasional loss of sync every few weeks but I can live with that.
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It's January 2004 and Megapath appears to be struggling a bit. The last 6 weeks have been met with increased outages, higher latency and dropped packets. They have been so stable in the past, I haven't given it a second thought as to how much I depend on them. I have been hearing others on bbr complain as well. It seems I receive a system status emails from megapath almost daily now in regards to outages where I used to get one very infrequently. It seems like something is always down. Anyways, I'm going to hang with them as long as I can stand it, hopefully it will get better.
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It's March 2004. Outages and latency have subsided since my last update in January and my connection is much more stable. I think I may be outgrowing their service. The reason I say this is because my situation requires me to now be able to throttle bandwidth. As far as I know, their are only 2 routers that will work with Megapath SDSL (they use a nokia dslam). Neither router has robust features such as QOS. Since my distance prohibits me from speeds greater than 768/768 and I cannot bandwidth throttle, that leaves me in the position of having to shop around for an affordable fractional T1. I hate to leave megapath but if I'm forced to shop for a T1, I'll certainly be shopping for a tier 1 provider, not megapath due to their occasional network issues.
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July 2006 - It's time to move on. Outages are everyday, line continues to bounce. Inside wiring replaced 3 times at their request. Refuse to reprovision without paid support call from covad. Unacceptable for a 3 year customer.
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 Review by techjoe
UPDATED: 3.4 years ago
member for 5.8 years, 2419 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Worth,Cook,IL
$120 per month (12 month contract)
about 15 days
Ameritech
CLEC party: Covad
"Decent support techs, good SLA"
"requires pro install even if prewired and configured, routing flaky sometimes"
"If you're too far for anything else, their idsl is a great option"
| Pre Sales information:
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99/month for 144/144 idsl with a pretty nice SLA. Support techs were more than willing to help me configure existing equipment and kept on the few issues I had with my order until resolution. First problem is on SBC's side, as when they hooked up my circuit they attached to the wrong pair in the box outside, but a quick temp fix had me online until Covad can get that looked at. Since I'm not even due for inside wiring yet I cant be too edgy on that one, yet. One mix-up led to radius not being setup for my additional (free, may I add) block of 5 routable ips but after staring at my router config for an hour a 10-minute phone call had that fixed right up. I do not want to pay for this pro install since I am already online with old hardware (I still need a router through them) but it seems I'm stuck with it as this is treated pretty much like any fractional/t1..With the strict SLA I suppose it is reasonable for them to want to double-check it all at least. I'm using a netopia 4652-t from my straight covad install. Unsure what they are bringing, I think it may be the same router (tech mentioned something about firmware..Maybe newer firmware too).
As for prices, Covad charged me 139.99/month with router purchase. I had 30-45ms latency first hop out of my router round-trip and they still called it OK since oneway was looking around 20 or so. Now on megapath, even though it is resold Covad, I get 25-30ms first-hop, a bit stronger up and down (always was 'ok', just hardly more now) for $109/month. I had a lot of trouble and frustration with Covad's tech support initially which also didn't help matters..Megapath's staff seems a lot more on the ball overall..Time will tell that tale of course.
Update 11/27/04: Well their invoices are stupid, I've been past due a month for a while and they don't list that on the invoice, only email reminders. Aside from that, they are good on letting you stay connected a while for no-pay, I assume because I always eventually pay and obviously can't get any other type of connection (YET!) here..
I've had some really bad nights with routing. I had over one full month that all of my traffic from a south chicago suburb routed to texas and back, even to a server downtown chicago!! Crazy. They never gave me an estimate on how long it would take to resolve, and as a result I saw huge pings all across the board with no credit issued either. All in all it's been a good line, pretty stable and very rare I lose packets if ever. First hop time sorta bites(~30-35ms), but I'm about 9 miles of copper out from the CO, through a pair gain hut, and can't get squat else yet, so I cant complain too much. The price is insane for 144kbit, but they're all gangsters in that aspect. Wireless should become available within days or weeks here so I'll be dropping them ASAP primarily for more bandwidth, as most fps games these days run poorly over anything less than 192kbit (voice comms included).
Update 7/14/06: Disconnection is being processed. The line had serious issues, and they blamed my CPE (and sent out a billed $300 unit which is going back thankfully), then it was a line card, and it's still bouncing here and there as of 5am this morning on their provided CPE. That isn't the entire reason I'm terminating -- Their price is too high for 144kbit these days, and I have found an alternative source for access with some creative work on my end that gives me over 20x the downstream bandwidth, 3x the upstream, and 1/3rd of the monthly cost. Can you blame me?
Overall, their support was pretty good. The techs were usually prompt (except on return calls!) but as for speedy resolution, I didn't have much luck there. I didn't have too many problems with the line over the years, but I did expect better stability for the monthly cost.
So in the end, adios Megapath. Thanks for the overpriced yet only thing available bandwidth...
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 4.1 years ago
(review was emailed from domain cyclotomic.com)
Vancouver,Clark,WA
$445 per month (12 month contract)
Qwest
CLEC party: Covad
"Good conductivity"
"Abysmal billing and help"
"Will think long and hard before renewing contract."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
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Our corp. recently went searching for a ISP in the Pacific Northwest for
a T-1. I happened upon MegaPath Networks, even saw some great reviews on
your site.
The actual T-1 line has been fine (we bit our tounges when we realized that they are actually delivering it via a DSL line) but I am forced to post now
because the billing department is chaotic and has diminished any
confidence I had in MegaPath.
Every month there is something wrong with the bill: the amounts are
wrong, the bills are 2 weeks late with a due date already passed, I got
2 copies of the same bill etc. I am tired of dreading the bill, not for
the price but because I have to comb through it to find out this month's
mistake.
I routinely contact the billing department to alert them to the billing
problems. You would think they would want to know that they have sent out two copies of the same bill to everyone. I have yet to get an apology or even real concern. If this is how they run their billing, I shudder to think how the rest of the
business is run.
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