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Review by benwalsh 
Posted: 8.4 years ago
member for 8.4 years, 2 visits, last login: 8.4 years ago
 Hinsdale,Dupage,IL
 Business customer
 $369 per month (12 month contract)
 Covad
 "Fast and Reliable"
 "Twice as much money as other ISPs"
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CAIS Internet
SDSL Service
I previously owned Ameritech! They are totaly lousy! The DSL practically
never works! Now I've switched to CAIS SDSL and get the reliability I'm
looking for -- almost 100% uptime and 1100Mbps BANDWIDTH!!!
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Review by dakita
Posted: 8.6 years ago
member for 8.6 years, 6 visits, last login: 8.6 years ago
Montgomery Village,Montgomery,MD
$101 per month (24 month contract)
 about 35 days
Verizon
CLEC party: Covad
"Rock-solid connection!!"
"Hard to get a hold of customer rep. on the phone."
 "Very satisfied with CAIS - highly recommend!"
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I've had 192k SDSL with CAIS since Aug, 1999. I signed a 2 year contract at $99 per month, which included a free Flowpoint 2200 8-port router - $0 installation.
Installation was about 5 weeks after signing. There were 3-4 weeks of connection problems following the installation, which were finally isolated to be Covad's equipment in the CO.
Since then, my DSL has been very reliable. I host my own mail and web servers without worry. Internet gaming is very fast with little to no packet loss. This web site reports my connection at 160k on several tests at various times of the day.
Every communication with CAIS's NOC has been handled very professionally, with DNS modifications usually happening within an hour - correctly. Being a technican myself, I really appreciate a well run NOC.
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Review by vince
Posted: 8.9 years ago
(review was emailed from domain cuthie.net)
Alexandria,Alexandria City,VA
$179 per month (24 month contract)
Verizon
CLEC party: Covad
" provided a reasonable service at a reasonable cost, great tech support"
" sales team a bit weak and unresponsive --"
" primary reason to utilize CAIS is because of their tech support team, reasonable cost and systems that work"
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Since 1995 we have used CAIS (Capitol Area Internet
Service).
In that time CAIS has gone through many changes, some
for the better, some not.
However they have always provided a reasonable service
at a reasonable cost.
Additionally their tech support team has always been
helpful, responsive and most important
to me.... it is unusual when a 'real' human being fails
to answer the phone and you are asked to leave a
message.
I have found their sales team a bit weak and
unresponsive.
In my personal experiences 'sales' seems to promise or
imply more than they are prepared to deliver (i.e. an
annual review of your needs, customer info news
letters, 'personalized service, "I'll be your account
manager", we'll contact you with money saving ideas,
'you have a problem just call me and I'll solve it
etc.etc.-- yea right!!)
Thus if you avoid the 'sales' and deal directly with
tech support or billing you'll spend less time waiting
for a response and more time taking care of your
companies business and getting real work done.
The primary reason we continue to utilize CAIS is
because of their tech support team, and in our point of
view reasonable cost for the service delivered. Our
firm needs systems that work and CAIS provides exactly
that.
When things go wrong, and they will... my experience
has been: that their tech support is like a bulldog
with a bone.. they don't let go until your problem is
solved and you are satisfied.
Their billing department is also pleasant to deal with.
They don't always deliver what they say they will, when
they will ( i.e. returned calls, faxes of your
'invoice', etc.) but once you get a billing dept.
(human) person on the phone the experience is usually
productive.
However: the billing 'system' (it must be their
software) is goofy because their invoicing (bills)
never clearly states what you are being billed for.
(i.e. it gets tiring continually explaining to my
bosses, or the accounting dept. or the Board of
Directors...what the 'ppp' is that we are being billed
for! or what ARE the "ISP services" your being billed
over a thousand dollars for!)
Bottom line CAIS continually serves our needs and
provides systems that work. When things go down..it may
be on your end..but not here.
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Review by cmanske
UPDATED: 9 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 6 visits, last login: 8.7 years ago
New Berlin,Waukesha,WI
$99 per month (12 month contract)
about 35 days
Ameritech
CLEC party: Covad
"Smooth install, up and running the day after CLEC install."
"Slow getting Domain Name registered to new CAIS IP."
"So far so good. I would recommend these guys for iDSL."
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The only bad part of this install was the DNS registration. I currently have two Domain names and I was assured that the one I wanted would be registered as soon as possible when I got going with the service. But 4 weeks later when I finally got the service up and running I found that Cais hadn't even made an attempt to change even the Name Server entries at InterNIC. After I wrote them an e-mail about the problem the Name Server entries were fixed and I thought everything was underway. After a week I still had no entries at their DNS so I had to make a call and write a second e-mail to get them to add our Zone info to their DNS. Not more then a day later everything was running.
Other then this one problem everything has been great. I would defiantly recommend these guys if your looking for iDSL. Sometimes they need a poke in the eye to get moving but once moving things get done.
UPDATE: Their usenet (nntp) server seems to drop _a lot_ of posts, probably like 30%. I am sure of this because I posted something to a group and didn't get a responce for a few days. After reading the responce it looked as if it were a responce to a completely different post. I went off to deja.com to check the news there and found that my note had about 10 responces to it. the responce CAIS's nntp server had was a reply to a reply of my original message.
I called tech support and they had no clue what a usenet server was. I wasn't able to communicate with an administrator to get the problem solved so it probably never will get solved.
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Review by dwlebowitz3
Posted: 9.1 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 1 visits, last login: 9.1 years ago
Pikesville,Baltimore,MD
Business customer
$119 per month (12 month contract)
about 20 days
Qwest
CLEC party: Covad
"Reliable, consitant, predictable"
"Would not work with another ISP - ever. If CAIS don't get there, we wont."
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Couldn't be happier with all three of my CAIS/COVAD installations in the last 45 days. We are rolling out a national WAN all based on DSL and could not have had better cooperation from CAIS. They are our one stop for any issue. To date we have turned on Dallas, Tampa, Phoenix and Baltimore with absolutley no problems. Every appointment has been kept at every branch.
The techs leave behind all the information we need - IP range, router address, DNS, etc.
We are using 192k for $119 a month with a $200 rebate on every install.
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Review by dsolari
Posted: 9.2 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 94 visits, last login: 79 days ago
Alpharetta,Fulton,GA
$99 per month (12 month contract)
about 37 days
BellSouth
CLEC party: Covad
"Great Salesman and Quality connection at ~32000 feet IDSL ... responsive"
"Many newly hired Tech supt reps. Have to call often to get a problem resolved"
"Everyone is very polite"
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I have ordered DSL on 07/31/2000.
The speed ordered is 144K/144K IDSL BUSINESS CLASS SLA.
$99 / month $199 install
Netopia router R3100-T Free
up to 32 static IP's
Have 8 static now (only 5 usable by me)
Tom my salesman was very helpful and professional ... even called tech support to answer technical questions.
On 8/2/2000 I received an Email from CAIS welcoming me and provided me with my DNS server IPs, subnet, Gateway IP, Usable IP addresses (5), Network IP and Broadcast IP address.
On 8/2/2000 COVAD sent me a email welcoming me and comfirmed my order and user information.
On 8/9/2000 COVAD emailed me and said that my phone company has given then a committed delivery for a new data line of 8/22/2000.
And after the the line is delivered Covad will schedule a date for the Covad technician to perform the DSL installation.
*****
Line installed and working on 9/6/00
Bellsouth missed the first FCO date but once they tagged the DSL line to my house Covad came the next week and worked quickly.
****
9/7/00
Notice my tracert 1st hop was always Chicago not Atlanta. Call tech support and they said it should be Atlanta and that is why my 1st hop shows ping times of 200ms+. (BTW my dialup shows 100ms+ to 1st hop)
*******
9/8/00
CAIS said they would fix they route problem by coordinating with COVAD by tommorrow.
9/11/00
Actually over the weekend CAIS and COVAD reprovisioned my line to Atlanta's CAIS router. (I beleive it happened on Sunday 9/10/00)
But when I came to work on Monday .. my computers could not access the internet and I could not ping the my router....
So I called CAIS and they said that COVAD was still reprovisioning and it would take about 3 days.... I said not good enough.
So I called back for another tech since it seems that CAIS has newly hired people in tech support that will not research problems, but give you a standard answer.
Finally got a tech that listen to me ... he called his engineering group and COVAD and found that everything is set except no one told me what my new IP's were????
They had already logged into my router and changed my IP address for the router on Sunday .
After getting my new IP's everything was fine and my 1st hop is ~35ms great!
MY point is be persistent with their Tech support and call back often if your want to get a person who will handle your call responsively.
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Review by Joe1tech
Posted: 9.3 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 3 visits, last login: 9.2 years ago
Media,Delaware,PA
$119 per month (12 month contract)
about 30 days
"The Presales was Please and informative, the service went in good"
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We are a integration firm in PA and have been very pleased to work with CAIS.
We have recomemend CAIS to every one of our clients that is looking for good priced DSL and reliable service.
We dont use CAIS's techical support much because we have our own staff of technician. Actually one time our client ordered the wrong number of IP addresses 6 instead of 16 and with one call to CAIS it was fixed in 3-4 hours.
I give CAIS a high rating especially from working with ALOT of NIGHTMARE DSL COMPANIES!
Joe 
Speed was great 192k.. Price even Better $119
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Review by rlocke
Posted: 9.3 years ago
(review was emailed from domain crowncitysw.com)
Coronado,San Diego,CA
Business customer
$167 per month (24 month contract)
"Finally getting it together"
"Slow start"
"Good value and solid speeds now that it's working."
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I was browsing through the DSL report reviews and noticed quite a few
scathing reports on CAIS/Covad DSL. I switched my office to CAIS in
April from cable. Following the lure of $99 rates and quite a few
static IPs, I made the switch. It took a month to get the service
started. We had a rocky start, the 192K speed ended up to be more like
162K speeds and was much slower than our cable modem. I compared the
two side-by-side as I planned to have the cable modem serve as a backup
during the DSL switchover (I highly recommend this to anyone in a
similar situation). It was well worth the money to keep the cable modem
as a backup since we had quite a few outages for several hours at a time
that first month or so. I was on the phone with tech support at least
once a week during that first month complaining about the frequent
outages. We also discovered that users here in San Diego were being
bounced all the way to Washington D.C. which added to the slowness. The
outages were usually due to some equipment failures back east. After a
couple of months (I kept the cable modem the entire time and actually
had some computers on our network using cable and some using DSL), I
upped our speed to the 384K (which cost the same as the cable modem).
The results were dramatic and speeds improved to match our old cable
service. Since then, everything has worked fine and is running
smoothly. The thing that worries me the most though, is that even
after I called more than once about billing, I am yet to receive a bill!
With all the initial problems, I was told by a service rep that they
were not going to charge some customers who had problems (apparently
they were simply not ready to provide adequate service in San Diego when
they started selling it to us). Maybe I am getting some free service in
exchange? I am concerned about one person's report on this list about
having their service disconnected because they did not "bill
themselves". What the heck does that mean?
Anyway, after a bumpy start, I give their DSL service very good
reliability ratings for the last couple of months (July, August). And
poor ratings before then. We'll see what happens if they decide that
their lack of billing was my fault (even after I called their billing
department and informed them of the situation)...
The technical reps, sales people, and install people were all pretty
good, though email gets you a better response than phone calls. They
seem to be pretty busy handling problems. (Monica Kannel, CAIS Account
Manager was exceptional--she always responded quickly and was very
helpful).
My biggest complaint now is that the emails sent to my company that have
more than about 2MB of enclosures are bounced back to the sender. The
tech rep said that that was the imposed limit and that I had no option
(even if I paid) to increase the limit. That alone almost made me
cancel the service. We resorted to telling clients to post their large
enclosures to our ftp site (not always the easiest thing for some
less-technical clients to do.)
R. Locke
Crown City Software
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Review by sekou21
Posted: 9.3 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 1 visits, last login: 9.3 years ago
New York,New York,NY
Business customer
$99 per month (24 month contract)
"cheapest deal for 192K"
"horrible tech support"
"cross your fingers and hope for a smooth install"
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i ordered 192K/192K for my office of six people.
firstly, they provided us with a great deal and an amazingly more efficient solution to our increasing web-based needs than using three of our five phone lines for dial-up connection. we paid $99 per month with no equipment or installation fees, which saved us about $700 with our 2 year contract. they said the entire process should take between four - six weeks. this would have been fine, i was patient. but, it ended up taking about four months. between "load coils" on the line, cancelled orders, re-orders, unreturned phone calls, two separate installing entities who had no idea what the other was doing, and a tech support center with a total of one regional representative and one sales rep, it was probably the most frustating process of my life. everything has been pretty smooth so far as a result of my not having to deal with anybody there for the last three weeks. i hope i never have to contact any of them anytime soon. the only other problem is that i ran the speed test and i'm only receiving 145/160 at best.
Sekou
New York, NY
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Review by yosarian
Posted: 9.4 years ago
member for 9.7 years, 19 visits, last login: 6.6 years ago
Arlington,Arlington,VA
Business customer
$120 per month (24 month contract)
"Helpful, reliable tech support"
"Billing department needs to return calls and answer emails"
"My first and last choice for service"
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[I waited 4 months to post this to make sure I wasn't jumping the gun regarding my satisfaction. My high level of satisfaction has not changed since I got the service.]
I have been a CAIS dialup customer since 1995 and when I found I could finally (!)
go to DSL in my area, CAIS was the first ISP that I called. It didn't really matter to
me who was the DCLEC, as long as it was CAIS as the ISP. The pre-sales staff
was paitent, knowledable and extremely helpful when I had follow up questions.
(I order the Biz Service-SDSL 192kbps u/d for about $120/month-Static IP with 6 more available)
They strongly encouraged me to have other vendors contact me. Most of their
competetors were clueless. When Bell Atlantic had to ground work near my CO,
CAIS called right away to inform me that my install date may be pushed back (it
wasn't). When there was a scheduling snafu with Covad, CAIS handled it called
COVAD (at 10:30pm, on a Sunday night even!) and COVAD had someone at my
apartment when they had originally promised. It took the technician about 1 hour to
do all the work and set up the router. The speeds are as promised (80% of
192-24/7), I occasionally experience network burps, but they are during normal
rush hours and are to be expected.
I am very happy with CAIS and the level of support I have received and I would
refer them to anyone considering going to a new ISP.
My one problem is with billing. I have been receiving my monthly bills each month,
but I also receive a seperate bill for dial-up, but the amount owed is something
strange like "$-950" or "$-970". I have called twice and emailed twice. No luck.
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ARDENT COMMUNICATIONS -- formally known as CAIS
