The City of Northfield’s fiber consultant has finished surveying residents on their current use of cable, phone, and internet services (PDF of the questions asked). (See our podcast with City IT director Melissa Reeder back in Nov.) Melissa told me yesterday that she expects the consultant to report back to the City Council in late March. In the meantime, here’s a small straw poll on the level of satisfaction with area broadband ISPs. Then discuss!
speaking of wastes of money… seriously what is the consultant going to tell them that they don’t already know.
I’ve had problems with qwest and charter. qwest is down right annoying in their lack of action and the constant phone calls, mailings, and personal visits to try to win back my business. Had they spent half the effort to keep me happy when I was a customer as they have to win me back I might still be using them.
St. Olaf is great, I recommend their service for businesses.
I use Northfield WiFi. They’ve been great by me. Less downtime than my old Qwest DSL (back in the cities), better bandwidth, decent prices. That’s extended to unusual custom services (related to my telecommuting needs). So count me as a happy customer. To put it in perspective, I am less unhappy with them than I have been with basically any internet service I’ve previously had. (I have to say, IPHouse was very competitive, but the underlying Qwest DSL was never as good.)
Someone in Northfield better start reading the HR1: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — RIGHT NOW
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:h.r.00001:
See Sec 201:
Title II – Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies
Broadband Technology
Opportunities Program
Here is more:
Living in the country I now have Northfield Wifi, and I am a very VERY satisfied customer. Previously we had satellite internet, paying a ridiculous monthy rate, and it was down more than it was up.
Pity me, for thine hath Charter.
I have Charter, too, John. And they just announced today that they’re filing for Chapter 11
My speed at home is decent but I get dropped at least once/day and have to ‘power cycle’ the modem/router combo box.
So is that why the prices are going up again?
I wanted to be one of the early adopters for Northfield WiFi, but when they came out to do the site survey, there were two very large pine trees in the line of site between my house and the dorm tower at St. Olaf.
Has anyone heard if they got the secondaries up on the water tower south of town yet? I will have to give them a call.
What shocks me about the providers is that bandwidth is actually getting cheaper, and the rates being charged by providers is getting more expensive.
One would figure that for the price you are paying, you could get some redundancy, failover, and close to 24/7 uptime.
Charter is NO WHERE near that, and not even close to their advertised speeds.
Charter came out and ran new cable all the way from the main box in the rear yard, installed a new D-marc, and ran new cable all the way to the modem. I have 10MB/1MB service, and most of the time I am in the high 9’s, but you can sure see the latency during peak periods. It is really difficult to carry on a video conference or live meeting, and get dropped in the middle of it.
To go back to your fluff post regarding working and living in Northfield… I would love to. Give me some stable bandwidth, and telecommuting will be an option. With the infrastructure I have now, telecommuting can only be done on a case by case basis.
I would love a “work center” with some support facilities, conference room, and bandwidth. I would love to go to “work” there, pay a daily rate, and “work virtually” rather than make the commute to St. Paul.
I have the work laptop, I have cellular connectivity, and all the tools, but there are some work activities that I do that take tremendous bandwidth, such as video conferencing and Voice over IP.
I am at the point where I have to deal with what I have, or go to business level connectivity, which would be cost prohibitive for only telecommuting 1-2 days per week.
I am all for a city-wide, high bandwidth solution. Where do I sign up? 😎
P.S. Please forgive the typing. I am writing this on the laptop as we are doing 70 MPH down highway 52 coming home from St. Paul. No I am not driving the vanpool, and yes, the Sprint Merlin S720 EDVO Cellular card gives me a solid connection all the way from St. Paul to Northfield with no drops. (SPRINT, YOU FOLKS ROCK!)
Nfld News managing editor Jaci Smith has a cable company horror story in today’s paper: Fun and games with the cable company.
I’ve closed the broadband ISP straw poll. Just shy of 50 responded. Here are two images that show the results.
Who is your broadband ISP?
Rate your broadband ISP
Hi, Just looking at your straw poll for ISP. Is it possible to link satisfaction report with the specific provider? Just wondering how other people have felt about Jaguar (our provider, who I have a love/hate relationship with) and others. Thanks.