Review by JazzJRabbit 
UPDATED: 259 days ago
member for 6.1 years, 1255 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Naperville,Dupage,IL
 $75 per month
 "Same day install, stable connection, good speeds, good ping"
 "Failed DNS lookups redirect to WOW search page"
 "Very satisfied"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
To begin with we've been with ATT for the last 8 or so years. It's kind of fun thinking back so far. It certainly has been a long journey. It started as Ameritech, then merged with SBC and then finally came back as ATT. Back then you could still get unbundled DSL from Ameritech and internal PCI DSL cards were still offered as an option with blazing speeds of 768Kbps.
During all that time we've been satisfied with our DSL service. We first had 768Kbps service, which got upgraded to 1.5Mbps and eventually to 3Mbps and then back to 1.5Mbps (more on that later). The quality was mostly good. There were outages, but they were infrequent. Outsourced tech support from India was non-existent, but what can you honestly expect from them? All in all however, we've been satisfied with our service. Stable connection with steady throughput without any slow downs and good pings. What more could you want?
It all began going downhill when we moved to a new location. At our old location we could get reliable service with 3/512 speeds. Those speeds were were not stellar, but lack of bandwidth caps and consistent speeds were more important. At the new location however, we could only get 1.5Mbps. Fine I thought, maybe they will put DSLAM in the area and I will be able to upgrade speeds later. Well, the upgrade never came and in the meantime line quality has been slowly deteriorating with router working only at 1.1Mbps speeds and pings nearly doubling. In the end it got so bad that landline almost stopped working and if it worked it usually killed DSL sync. Kind of like back to dial up days, you can either talk or surf.
So with DSL being almost unusable it was time to switch ISPs. There were two choices, Comcast and WOW. I've been tracking both of them for some time and while WOW traditionally has had slower speeds, it did not appear to have bandwidth caps, unlike comcast, which made my choice.
The sales process was relatively painless and quick. I told the sales person I just wanted 15/2 high speed internet, but he either didn't get me or was just following the script because he still tried to sell me phone and TV services to which I refused. The guy didn't persist and I was able to place an order in about 30-40 minutes.
Installation was scheduled and done on the same day after work hours, very impressive I must say. The installation guy was an independent contractor working for WOW, he looked like ZZ Top kind of guy, massive beard and everything. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I just thought the resemblance was funny. I was also impressed that for someone obviously over 50 he knew ipconfig command and what flash is. One of my acquaintances had Comcast cable installed, they couldn't even get her online, they connected the modem and told her to call customer service. All in all it was refreshing to see someone knowing what he was doing.
The cable was buried within about a week. I was told they'd call me to let me know when it can be done, but they never did. Not really a problem, but I wish they'd let me know.
Installation was half off and only cost $20. The monthly bill is 72.99 + 2.50 for modem rental which comes out to 75.49. No taxes or surcharges of any kind. Very nice to see that you pay exactly what you get quoted. Of course this might not be the case if you get phone and/or TV from WOW, but at least for internet "what you see is what you pay".
After having WOW for about week and a half I can say I'm very satisfied with it. 1.5Mbps DSL was simply too slow to be used by entire household. There simply wasn't enough bandwidth to apply patches and watch youtube at the same time, and if someone was watching youtube it meant game pings would go from normal 110ms to 170-350ms. This is no longer a problem with WOW. The speed test shows 15/2 just like advertised. I think there is some fluctuation because I tested several times over several days and there were couple of times when the speed test came back as 10/1.5. Still this is over 10 times what I realistically had with ATT so I cannot complain. Most importantly I see no significant slow down when multiple people use internet, whenever someone watches youtube or applies patches, or downloads something. The pings to my favorite server are half of what I had with ATT or about 48-53ms. They are very stable and I can download at about 300kb/s and see no difference in ping times. I need to download at 600kb/s to see the ping go up by a couple of milliseconds. There are times when I see my pings spike, but they are very infrequent and this may not even be WOW fault, it may be someone else in the house downloading or just a congestion somewhere on the path to the server. Even remoting in to work from home is a much more pleasant experience. With ATT I was struggling because there was almost a second delay an any action, with WOW it's much more responsive.
Just about the only negative I can say about WOW is that they redirect failed DNS lookups to their own search page. This is extremely annoying if you make "off by one letter" error when typing an address. Without redirection I can just press CTRL+L in firefox, correct the mistake and be on my way. With DNS redirection I get wowway.search.blahblahblah (or whatever) in address bar so I have to retype entire address again.
I realize this is a very glowing review and that individual experiences depend on a lot of factors. Some people have bad experiences with Cable and get better service with DSL, some, have bad DSL service and have good experience with cable. With WOW it would seem most of the complaints are coming from MI, IN, and OH, whereas IL is relatively trouble free. But then of course, it's very individual and there is no way to say if you will have good service or not. In my case we've had good DSL service before moving and very poor after the move with abysmal speeds and horrible line quality. WOW on the other hand provided a wonderful experience so far.
So to recap:
PRO
-Same day install
-The speed may vary, but I haven't seen it below 10Mbps
-So far no outages (only had the service for 10 or so days though)
-What you see is what you pay (at least if you order Internet only without phone/cable)
-Good pings
-No bandwidth caps that I know of
CONS
-WOW redirects failed DNS lookups to its own search page
NEUTRAL
-Wish they'd call to let me know when they were going to bury the cable.
-Sales person tried to sell me more services, but did not insist when I told him no
UPDATE 03/06/09
I learned that WOW was in cahoots with behavioral advertising agencies such as NebuAd and is still in cahoots with RIAA/MPAA. Doesn't affect me directly, but leaves a poor impression.
Also, connection stability has been going downhill lately. I've been getting lag spikes when gaming in the last month, I would lag for about 5 seconds and then go back to usual. Would have been no biggie, but in the last two days I completely lost my connection three times. I had to unplug my cable modem each time to get my connection back.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of WOW Internet and Cable |
|
WOW Internet and Cable
(11)
(15)