[UFO Chicago] OT--ISP Recommendations?

[Carl Karsten]

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 11:49 AM, Greg Groth <ggroth at gregs-garage.com> wrote:
> On 5/4/2011 9:39 AM, Neil R. Ormos wrote:
>> Christopher D. Heer wrote:
>>> Neil R. Ormos wrote:
>>>> Although there appear to be some good fixed wireless ISPs
>>>> in the Fox Valley and the North Suburbs, I haven't found
>>>> any that serve residential customers in my area.
>>> I used a fixed wireless ISP up here for a couple of years
>>> and have checked into others.  All the ones I looked at do
>>> employ some kind of throttling, depending on your overall
>>> usage and/or tower usage.
>> Where is "up here"?
>>
>>> Also, after about a year and a half, I started having some
>>> kind of interference that would kill my bandwidth.
>>> Multiple service calls were unable to determine the
>>> source, and eventually I had to just bail and go to AT&T.
>>> (In fairness, the customer service from the provider --
>>> dls.net -- was utterly outstanding; far better than
>>> anything I've ever seen with the big ISPs.  They just
>>> couldn't fix my problem.)
>> DLS used to have coverage along I-90/I-290/SR-53 around
>> Schaumburg, Arlington Heights, etc.  Unfortunately, they
>> have apparently abandoned that part of the market in favor
>> of greener pastures out west.
>>
>> I have only found one fixed wireless vendor that serves my
>> area, and they are targeting the T-1 replacement market at
>> nearly $300/month.  I was hoping someone here would know of
>> some others.
>>
>>> Now with the bandwidth caps I've been searching for an
>>> alternative, but I'm coming up empty, so I'll be very
>>> interested to hear if others have alternative suggestions.
>> In former-SBC territory, there appear to be several vendors
>> that sell DSL service and claim to have no cap.  For
>> shared-line ADSL service, which requires that you keep your
>> AT&T plain old telephone service (POTS), prices start around
>> parity with AT&T ($36-40 for nominal 6 mbps service) and go
>> up.  In most cases, the carrier does not disclose whose
>> DSLAMs are being used.  I found one vendor which offered
>> service via AT&T's DSLAMs for $40/mo and COVAD's DSLAMs for
>> $50/mo.  Dry-loop ADSL, which does not require working POTS,
>> appears to start around $90/mo for nominal 6 mbps service.
>>
>> As you might expect, the bushel of additional services
>> (e.g., e-mail, Usenet, etc.), and the quality of tech
>> support, vary among vendors.
>>
>> I'll post a capsule of what I've found in a day or two.
>> Perhaps after I consult the LUNI list and clean up after the
>> inevitable flames and floods.
>>
>> --Neil
>
> I've been using Cyberonic for more years then I can remember, somewhere
> close to ten now?  I live about 2 1/2 miles straight west of the Golden
> Nugget at Irving & Austin, so I can't say if their services are
> available in the suburbs.  No throttling that I've been aware of, no
> download limits, no port blocking, and they let me run commercial
> websites on a residential connection with their blessing.  Calls to tech
> support have always been answered by knowledgeable people that
> understand what ping & traceroute are, don't question my findings, and
> don't tell me to "hit the start button and click reboot".  I think I've
> had perhaps 4 outages since I've been dealing with them, never longer
> than a couple of hours, except the time they were updating the DSLAMs,
> and had to send out a new router, during the switchover I was down for
> 36 hours.
>

prices aren't very competitive for what I am currently shopping for:

Biz DSL: 768k/768k - $69/mo.
Dry Line: 15m/1m - $89/mo.
http://www.cyberonic.com/

12Mbps/2Mbps - $60
http://business.comcast.com/Internet/plans.aspx

note: I don't think 60 includes a static IP, which to some people is
worth some $.

-- 
Carl K