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 Review by forty4one 
Posted: 6.5 years ago
member for 6.6 years, 53 visits, last login: 1.9 years ago
 Levittown,Bucks,PA
 $12 per month (month by month)
 about 1 days
 "All around great local ISP"
 "DSL not available in my area yet."
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I'm still waiting for broadband. My phone line was disqualified for DSL due to a DLC on the line (Digitial Loop Carrier). My understanding of this is that verizon recently "upgraded" my area replacing copper with fiber. I may decide to go with ISDN
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 Review by mguinther
UPDATED: 6.9 years ago
member for 9.5 years, 183 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
Reading,Berks,PA
$74 per month (12 month contract)
about 17 days
 Verizon
CLEC party: Covad
"Freindly and fast customer support."
 "No automatic receipts. Must call every month for billing receipts."
"Great ISP - Recommended!"
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I used this ISP for years with Dial-up. Fastnet has one of the best customer support staffs that I have seen. Unfortunately, I am got to know the customer support staff too well at first. I have had problems with my connection due to a change made by CLEC Covad. I would still recommend Fastnet because the problem that occurred was not their fault and they worked hard to get it resolved. They are much better then my last DSL provider Speakeasy. Also, CLEC Covad resolved the issue and my connection has been stable.
Note: This is why I rated Fastnet the way I did. I may rate harder then average because I use to monitor WAN networks for a living.
Pre Sales information - No issues.
Install Co-ordination - After I asked for my settings, I was given the correct ones. My settings were mailed to me but I had my DSL circuit was setup before I received the settings. (-1 star)
Connection reliability - Lost my connection the first day. Having circuit problems because Covad changed my circuit and the length is now over 18000 ft. (-3 stars)
*UPDATED 11/15/02* - Connection reliability has been stable. (+2 stars)
Tech Support - These guys are great! (Would give 6 stars if I could)
Mail,DNS,News - I connect to the Internet from several different connections. If you are not directly connected to Fastnet, you can receive but cannot send mail from your account. (-1 star)
Value for money - I feel the cost of DSL for most ISPs is too high! If everyone keeps rating 5 stars, prices will never come down.
*UPDATED 11/15/02* - Competition has grown in the area and some prices are starting to come down. Fastnet prices remained the same. A friend of mine switched to Comcast cable to save money and said Fastnet DSL is a better choice.
No automatic receipts. Must call every month for billing receipts. (-1 star) Because of a billing problem, I once had to call seven times before receiving a receipt. (-1 star)
*UPDATED 11/15/02* No longer ask for receipts.
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Review by bookie01
Posted: 8.4 years ago
(review was emailed from domain fast.net)
Hoboken,Hudson,NJ
$79 per month (24 month contract)
Verizon
CLEC party: Covad
"Excellent Service and Tech Support"
"None"
"Get it"
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Hi I am a very satisfied user of DSL service provided by Fastnet. I have
been a user for one year now. I previously used Bell Atlantic DSL
service for one year so I do have some experience. Bell Atlantic's
service was very disappointing compared to Fastnet. I estimate that I
had 18 service outage with Bell Atlantic with very little help from
their customer support. While with Fastnet I've only had 1 outage for a
whole year. I've had a couple of problems due to software problems of
mine and everytime Fastnet tech support was always available (24 hours)
and very helpful and friendly. I can't recall all the numerous calls to
Bell Atlantic DSL support only to be pushed off with long waits,
confusion between level 1,2,3 tech support personnel. The real kicker
was when I canceled BA DSL service they kept on billing me for 8 months
even though they acknowledged that the service had been canceled. I was
given the runaround by 5 different depatments within Bell Atlantic (now
Verizon). Did you know that bellatlantic.net is a different entity than
the rest of Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic). Yea try to resolve a
billing problem with one phone call, good luck. FYI Fastnet DSL service
is provided by Covad which from what I can see has an excellent network.
I do regular speed tests and my Fastnet DSL speed is always constant at
1.5 mbps download and 384 kbps upload. I can't say enough gook things
about Fastnet DSL service. I am a real person so call or email me if you
have any questions.
James Miele
300 Newark Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030
201-795-3666
bookie01@fast.net also james@miele.org
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Review by sfrancis
Posted: 8.6 years ago
member for 8.6 years, 9 visits, last login: 102 days ago
Chatham,Morris,NJ
$49 per month (24 month contract)
about 39 days
Verizon
CLEC party: Covad
"Responsiveness, reliability, customer service"
"I'd recommend this company unreservedly"
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FASTNET told me it would take 30 - 60 days for order realization. It took 39. They advertise speeds of 608/128 for residential ADSL. After minor tweaking, my speeds are 512/110. Their modem is a SpeedStream 5260. I have two PCs networked together via ethernet, so I installed a second NIC in one of them for the DSL interface. It worked like a charm, with Win98 ICS to share the DSL between the two computers. They provide a static IP. Their price of $49.95 for a 2-year contract is $10 higher than Verizon, but I'd rather pay $49.95 for a service I can get than $39.95 for one that never shows up.
In short, no problems, and a very satisfied customer. I'd recommend their service to anyone.
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Review by JDM599
Posted: 8.8 years ago
member for 8.8 years, 6 visits, last login: 8.3 years ago
Newtown,Bucks,PA
$49 per month (12 month contract)
about 35 days
Verizon
CLEC party: Covad
"Fast and Reliable"
"Time to installation"
"Can't live without it!"
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The only downfall was time to installation but considering what I had heard I guess that fact that I got DSL service is enough. This service is fantastic. Its fast and dependable and FASTNet is a great provider. I have to get another DSL line about 0.5 miles away so we will see how long it takes this time around.
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Review by worleyeoe
Posted: 9.3 years ago
(review was emailed from domain fast.net)
Powder Springs,Cobb,GA
$50 per month (12 month contract)
"Solid Customer Service and Coordination"
"Could at least offer 768 Kbps for $50/month"
"Great combination for DSL newbies."
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ISP: Fast.net
Service: 608 Kbps
Contract: 12 months
Cost: $49.95/month + $198 installation after $198 rebate from Covad
Date Ordered: 6/1/2000
Date Service Installed: 6/30/2000
My ADSL installation with Fast.net and Covad was almost everything a DSL
newbie could ask for. I only had two minor issues which are almost not
worth the effort mentioning. Oh well, I have to get my two cents in.
1. Covad sent e-mail stating Bell South line test commit date was 6/19.
The day after I received this e-mail, I received e-mails from both
Covad and Fast.net stating the line test would be delayed until 6/21.
No big deal especially since I didn't have to be home for Bell South to
access the NID on the side of my house. Kudos for good communication.
2. Covad called me on the Friday before my final install was to be
completed on the following Monday letting me know the line test
indicated some extra voltage on the line. I'm not really sure that this
was above board since the Bell South linesman told my wife that
everything looked OK. And, Covad DSL uses a dedicated pair line so
nothing should have been on the line Bell South tested. If this were
the case, maybe Bell South tested my existing voice phone line. Again,
no real big deal since my install was completed within four days of the
original commit date.
In the week that I have had my DSL, I have probably downloaded 100+ megs
(not including general browsing which is nice and fast) of data off the
net. By all indications, I am getting a consistent 520
kilobits/seconds. It sure would be nice to have 1.54 megabits/second
though.
***For anyone that works for Fast.net who reads this and has any pull,
here's my only rant. Please, oh please, let me sign up for T1 speed if
you all start offering it for $50/month. I called Fast.net about this
before I placed my order and I was told by customer service that I would
be stuck at 608. I certainly hope this isn't the case if the pricing
does change within the next 12 months.
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Review by echow
UPDATED: 9.3 years ago
member for 9.6 years, 362 visits, last login: 4.7 years ago
Germantown,Montgomery,MD
$69 per month (24 month contract)
"Good customer support, good install co-ordination, and very good throughput"
"Not enough pre sales info, and Covad tech didn't get the network info for the install"
"Go with this ISP"
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6/21/2000
I have had the service for a little bit over a month now, and it totally ROCKS!!! No down time, speed has been consistent(1.3M bps), and pings and packet loss are in the acceptable range(47-63 ms to gateway, 80-90 ms to most sites in the East cost, 120-150ms to most sites in West coast, once a very while a couple packets would get dropped). I love it... but how come no one else is using them? Perhaps you guys looked too hard to find an ISP and overlooked them? Give them a try if you want broadband.
DSL Speed: 1.5M/384K
Static IP
*********************************************
I have always wanted DSL, and finally I am getting it. I guess I would start a review on FastNet to cover my experience with them. This will be an ongoing review as I just placed my order.
*********************************************
Pre-sales: I called FastNet on 3/31 to catch their special. I told them to snail mail me the contract. 5 days went by, and I haven't gotten the contract. So I called them and I talked to Lori on the phone. I told her to fax me the contract. She did so within an hour, which is good. The rep I talked on the phone gave me some details on the connection. She said anything over 128K (speed wise) is acceptable for FastNet because mine is a "Best-Effort" service. We will see. From DslReports.com, my house is about 5500 ft from the CO.
*******************************
5/16/2000
Covad techs woke me up at 8:30 in the morning. They were in and out in 1 hour, and I am up.
This concludes my experiece with DSL installation from FASTNET. Overall, it's a quite pleasant experience. I definite recommend this ISP to everyone. There is always someone to answer your call(if you get the answering machine, try again. I usually can get to a live person within 3 calls.) I tested the speed with this site, the general speed is 1330K/325K with variance about 50K. Latency is a little higher than I would like. I can get to most sites on the East coast in about 60-80ms, and west coast sites in about 120-150ms. This is due to high latency from my machine to the first hop(the gateway), which is always 60ms. I called tech support, and they said this is normal. But is it? I mean the gateway is within the same network, the latency should be very low. In any case, once the packets get past the gateway, the latency stays quite low, especially within FASTNET (usually the difference is less than 5 ms). Other users please comment on the "high latency to first hop" problem. If one takes TCP/IP header overhead into account, I am getting 100% of the advertised bandwidth witch is 1500K/384K. On minus point is that FASTNET doesn't send out your network information (IP, DNS, SMTP address) until they can confirmed with Covad that the connection is live, which I think it's kinda backward. Anyhow, go for this ISP if you are in the market searching for a DSL connection provider.
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 Review by sbhusted
Posted: 9.5 years ago
member for 9.4 years, 805 visits, last login: 59 days ago
Bethlehem,Northampton,PA
$69 per month (12 month contract)
"Great Connections, Good customer support"
"None so far"
"High Quality service to date"
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I am located in Bethlehem, PA. I won't go into my horror stories with Hell
Atlantic, but some advice. Unless Bell Atlantic is your VERY last choice
for high bandwidth connections, AVOID BELL ATLANTIC AT ALL COSTS.
Due to my problems with BA, I cancelled on my 29th day of service so I could
get a refund on my modem. I was down 18 of the 28 days I had BA. Anyways,
I called Fast.net which uses COVAD. I had heard that COVAD has a superior
network and system and much more experience in providing DSL. Anyways, the
sales and customer service staff at Fast.net are some of the best I have
ever encountered. Its refreshing to actually have people return your phone
call as promised! Even if they didn't have the exact answer I was hoping
for, they returned my call.
I ordered their 1.5/384 service for $69.99 a month. Modem was $199 and
installation was $199 with a $199 rebate direct from COVAD. They told me it
would be about 30 to 40 days for installation. I actually got connected on
the 31st day. Two days before my Bell Atlantic appointment, a truck was out
back and they were installing the actual line. They were also there the
next day and I asked if they needed access to the basement because thats
where my box was. They said hey didn't handle that part of the installation
and I should have an appointment for that, which I did the next day. I was
home the next day until noon. I called Fast.net to inquire if the
appointment was still on for Bell Atlantic. They said they would be there
before 5pm. Well, I had my wife take a half day so someone would be home
for the Einstein's at Bell Atlantic. Well, you can guess that they never
showed up for their appointment. I called Fast.net and expressed my anger
politely as I know it has nothing to do with them or COVAD. They understood
and the girl I spoke to promised to call COVAD personally and have them
schedule the next earliest appointment. Well, the next day i get a phone
call from my wife telling me the Bell Atlantic guy showed up with no phone
call and no appointment. Luckily, someone was home or who knows how long I
would have had to wait for the line installation. This was on Thursday.
COVAD was to insall on Saturday morning between 8am and noon. Well the
COVAD guy showed up at 8:15 (I actually would not have minded if he showed
up a bit later as I was still 1/2 asleep ). Very nice guy who knew his
stuff. We had some minor difficulty running the wire from the 2nd floor
down to the basement as our home is a very old townhouse. After running the
wire and he installed the jack, he connected the cable to the modem and his
laptop and ran some tests and everything was working. I then just ran the
chord to my PC, set up the NIC card and everything worked just fine.
Its only been a few days, but to date the DSL service has been fantastic and
the people at Fast.net seem to be very good at customer service which is
getting increasingly hard to find these days. Its early, but right now I
highly recommend Fast.net DSL if you can get it but whatever you do, AVOID
BELL ATLANTIC!! After downloading the registry tweaks, I now have average
download on the DSLReports test of 1024 and 322 upload. It helps that I am
less than 1,400 feet from the central office.
Scott B. Husted
ICQ# 4395450
Editor in Chief
»www.PowerSims.com
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Review by jsh139
Posted: 9.5 years ago
member for 9.5 years, 61 visits, last login: 3.6 years ago
Pottstown,Chester,PA
$49 per month (12 month contract)
about 20 days
CLEC party: Covad
"Very fast install. They seem to be very knowledgable about DSL."
"News server is DOG SLOW .. installation is STILL expensive"
"Whatta deal! $49 a month for 608/128 .."
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Well, I've been checking out dslreports now for about 2 months laboring over which ISP to select, and whether to go with Bell Atlantic or not. I can honestly say that I am 100% certain that I made the right decision with FASTNET. FYI, I don't work for FASTNET or any other ISP .. Just thought I'd say that since people seem to be touchy on here about giving ISPs good reviews. (Not all ISPs are created equal!!)
My install was probably the quickest I've ever seen from all of the reviews. It took exactly 20 days from the day I ordered DSL to the day the Covad guy left me surfing the net at 608/128. Pretty good considering that even FASTNET said it would probably take around 6 weeks to get everything installed. The Covad guy was absolutely shocked to learn that Bell Atlantic had actually done their part a day early!
Wanna know what my secret was? Well, don't quote me on this, but it seems that Covad couldn't care less WHEN they install their part, just as long as the Bells have done their job. Plus, since Covad has separate dispatch offices for different areas, they really don't know much about your order except your name, number, email, etc, etc. So, use that to your advantage. When Covad emailed me that they had a committed date from Bell, and shot off two install dates (one for Bell, and one for them), I immediately rescheduled the Covad appointment for two days after Bell. Of course, I had an honest reason to do this because I wasn't going to be in town during the initial install date. The initial dates had been 11 days apart! The Covad guy was really cool. He was supposed to be at my house anytime between 3 and 7pm. He actually called me at 3:15 to let me know that he would be there around 3:45. It wasn't like the cable company. Pretty cool.
Well, enough of that. More about FASTNET. These guys really seem to care about people. I've submitted a few tech support emails to see how fast stuff gets answered, and I've always gotten a response from an actual person within a couple of hours. I just submitted one about 10 minutes ago because their news server is consistently giving me 88 Kbps (that's bits) downloads .. That's why the Mail, DNS, and News got a 3. I'm not sure what's causing the problem, yet. It also looks like they trained their sales people to answer just about any high-level question you could ask about DSL and their services. I'm consistenly getting 480/130 speeds with the Speedstream 2060 which is pretty good. Covad estimated my house to be 5800 feet from the CO, so I hope that 480 turns into a 608 in the near future. But we'll have to wait and see.
Dates:
March 23 Order Placed
March 24 Confirmation from Covad
April 6 Bell Atlantic and Covad install dates given
April 7 Covad installation rescheduled
April 10 Bell Atlantic installed the 2nd line
April 12 Final Covad install
Plusses: Very fast install. Static IP (extras at $5 a month). Ability to run a personal web/mail/FTP server. Good tech support.
Minuses: Expensive installation. $200 for installation (there's a full rebate from Covad, though) + $200 for the modem (full rebate IF you sign a 2-year contract). Very slow News server (Tech support ticket placed).
Any questions, feel free to email me at jhoffman@fast.net
-Josh Hoffman
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Review by tschuler
Posted: 9.5 years ago
member for 9.5 years, 17 visits, last login: 1 year ago
Bethlehem,Northampton,PA
$49 per month (24 month contract)
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AOL and Bell said DSL was not available on my line, but FASTNET said yes. I ordered 384K/128K service for $49.95 at the end of February and then one week later Covad changed to the new speeds/prices. I emailed FASTNET and they allowed me to switch to the 608/128K service with Speestream 5260 modem and waived the upgrade fee since installation had not yet occured. Contract is for 2 years with free installation and modem. They gave me a delivery date of 6 weeks from receipt of contract.
There was a delay of 2 weeks because the CO needed to install and repair equipment to accomodate my order, but still delivered within 6 week time frame. The phone co showed two days before the scheduled appointment, but they did not need inside access. The Covad tech was a no show for the scheduled time (in the AM on Sat) but came at 3:45PM and said he was told not to come before 3pm. Oddly enough I had requested a weekday afternoon appointment but when notified was told it would be in the AM. When he arrived I had to leave for work in 40 mins and he had me up and running in 35mins!
I installed my own wiring from the NID to the jack in my computer area and the tech was suprised to find the wiring completed which he said made his job very easy. There was a slight problem with static on the line at first, but he fiddled with the wires and it disappeared. FASTNET failed to provide me with my account info (static IP, DNS, email address, etc). Called customer service and they supplied me with the IP and DNS info immediately (on Sat evening), but had to wait 3 days to receive email account, password info via postal mail.
Customer service was very helpful and on top of things through the whole process and kept in constant contact (voice and email) to keep me update on the progress. I'm a little over 9000 ft from the CO and am getting very nice speeds averaging 500/120K!
They include two email addresses, one static IP and 5MB of web space with the residential 608/128K DSL account. Additional static IP's are $5/mo each. I'd highly recommend FASTNET to anyone. Actually they were my first choice as an ISP five years ago when I got dial-up, but a competitor offered a better price deal at the time, but poor performance and support.
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