 Review by JTC 
Posted: 1.8 years ago
member for 7.8 years, 2010 visits, last login: 2 days ago
 Beaverton,Washington,OR
 Business customer
 Contract price not specified. (24 month contract)
 Integra Telecom
 "rock solid connections, 24/7 support"
 "limited availability, not much cheaper than residental from VZ"
 "If you run a 'business' and need solid support, this is it"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
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I run my own domain with email, web, etc etc etc. My last ISP (Aracnet) is good, but I got sick of the connection dropping, which required that I call up tech support and have them 'touch' the circuit. As their tech support was not 24/7, on occasion when this would happen, I was without any connection until the next day (and for over three days one holiday weekend).
Former coworker used to work for Integra and liked them, so I though I would give them a shot.
First and foremost, Integra, as least in my area, is a business-class CLEC. However, what defines a business apparently can be defined in different ways... 
Pre Sales information: The usual. I got the base price of the service, but the extra taxes and such were not listed.
Install Co-ordination: This was a mixed bag. While the appointment was made and the installer showed up about when he was supposed to (He got a bit lost trying to find my place, not surprising, the area is easy to get lost in), the signal from the CO was not on the secondary copper pair like it was supposed to be. This was quickly corrected for the voice side, but the DSL was not working either, nor did I receive the pair of statics I ordered.
After about 20 minutes of testing and tweaking, the DSL was running, but that still left the problem of my missing IP. When I asked the installer about them, he told me that he was only given the single IP and that I should call in. I did so, and asked that they call my cell phone when they allocate the second IP I ordered, then proceeded to go out to eat.
Once I got back, I found that the data connection was non-functional. Calling tech support (it was around 7PM at this time) got me in contact with the NOC, who informed me that the IP numbers had changed. Positive: I received my pair of numbers. Negitives: They did not call me back on the number I requested, I really should have received the two IP's from the beginning, and when they did get me the correct number of IP's, they changed the one I was originally given, further disrupting my servers.
Connection reliability: In the year+ I have had them, the connection has never once gone down due to anything they did. No outages that I have ever noticed (they do allow for system maintenance outages during a certain time frame, but I've never seen one).
Tech Support: I have to say it's good. The only email exchange I've ever had with them was to get them to forward reverse lookups of my FQDN to my DNS server vs their own reverse tables. About three email exchanges were done (I send, they reply) before the requested changes were done (the fourth and fifth exchange was me realizing the tech I was emailing was yet another former coworker, and me congratulating him for gelling the heck out of the hell hole I worked with him at).
Services: I gave this one a notch above average as they didn't charge me a huge amount more to pump up the volume on my connection from 512 kbit to "up to" 1.5 mbit. I'm only getting around a 700/600 kbit connection, but that's due to my loop length. Still beats the original 512/512 when I first started. Beyond that, I've not partaken of their other services, whatever that may be, as I didn't need the email addresses, web space, etc. I told them right up front I just want the pipe to push the bits through with a few statics, and they didn't try to sell me anything else.
I was impressed that their sales people knew what a dry line was/is (part of the cost of the service is with a voice line. Unfortunately in my area, they are not legally allowed to sell a data line without voice), and they offer symmetric DSL lines.
Value for money: As far as DSL lines go, I think it's an OK deal. Up to 1.5 mbit both directions data line (with voice), a pair of statics and 24/7 support for under 100 bucks US. From what I've seen, if the ISP even knows what a symmetric line is, they tend to charge quite a bit more for it over an async line. The monthly bill would be considerably less if I didn't have to have POTS (VZ would have made me take it as well for the residential service) and it wasn't taxed as hard due to it being a business line, but for about the same as I was paying for VZ and aracnet, I've got a much better class of service.
Did I mention that the longer the contract you sign up for, the less they charge per month?
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