Review by iquark 
UPDATED: 48 days ago
member for 3.8 years, 30 visits, last login: 3 days ago
 Mount Vernon,Skagit,WA
 $79 per month
 "Price, appears uncapped for 7 hours in the early morning."
 "Service is awful in prime time, tech support/customer servies is slow/doesn't care. Won't admit to speed problems."
 "Great price, bad service/bandwidth."
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I moved out to Washington from Colorado where I had great Comcast Service for 3 years with almost no problems. I may have been spoiled, but seeing an averave of 10-12 Mb/s on usenet with almost no outtages was great while I was a student.
Now that I'm back in Washington state I found that I was outside Comcast's service range by just a mile or two so I had to get service from Wave Broadband. Looked at prices, and speeds and I was slightly supprised, they were about 10$ cheaper a month for the same service I was getting back in CO. When the installation tech came out I asked him point blank how heavy the traffic was on the node, and what could I expect in terms of reliable bandwidth. He told me that the node was not up to full capacity yet and that I would see my adverticed speed all day with maybe a dip down to 75% of max during prime time.
Little did I know that this was wrong in every way shape and form. The only time of day that I get my 10 Mb speed line max is after 12 at night and before 7 in the morning. At most other times of day I'm seeing more along the lines of 3-5 Mbps. Prime time slips me down to 1-3 Mbps MAX! I've called over and over to both tech support and customer service, but most the time the people I talk to probably don't even know what Cat 5 is!
Finally I had another tech come out on their dime so that I could talk to someone who knew what they were talking about. He told me that the node around here is pretty much completely full with all their new VoIP services and such, and that in a staff meeting a few weeks ago they had talked about the fact that they were seeing slow downs in my area. Still he said that I shouldn't be expecting to see any difference in my service for a long time as they didn't have any fixes they would be doing anytime soon.
I've been continuing to call customer service trying to get them to do something for my house (4 people just out of college or in graduate school) since we are paying for their top line service. The best 'deal' that they could make me was to lower my service to the 1.5 Mbps level... and this was after telling them that we had an entire house who could be using the internet at anytime.
Oh well, I'm stuck with these guys since they have the cable rights around here, and maybe if I annoy them enough they'll toss me a second line into the house and 2 power user accounts. If you're in a Wave Broadband area and have a choice at a higher reviewed company, I'd suggest to go with the second option.
Details of Service:
Package ordered: 10 Mbps Down - 1 Mbps Up at 44.95$/Month
Install: Free with TV/Internet service (this was nice)
Modem: Motorola SB5101
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