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Review by jkh 
Posted: 2.8 years ago
member for 2.8 years, 0 visits, last login: 2.8 years ago
 Milbank,Grant,SD
 $139 per month
 "Be prepared to be a self tech"
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In October 2006, Midcontinent finally took over Qwest telephone lines in our area of SD. So far since there take over, I have lost telephone service 3 times. For some reason they have hooked up the telephone lines along with their cable lines via a separate cable box which is installed inside your home.
I was a bit leery of this to begin with, but, if you didn't take the service wit them, you had to find service elsewhere! Problem there, we had the bundled services. It's sort of a "gotcha" situation. So what's the problem with that you say? Be prepared to crawl around on all fours and go outside to where your phone line comes into your house and even take a corded phone out there to connect it to see if the problem lies outside or inside. In other words, you better be prepared to be a technician yourself, before they actually send one out. The same really goes for problems you may have with internet and cable services too. When Midco was offered to buy out from AT&T in these areas of SD, ND, very little of MN and NB, customer service went right down the tubes. I know this for fact because I used to be one of the original Service Reps for AT&T. AT&T's motto was, "The customer is always right"! The problem with Midco was that they bought into a technology they knew absolutely nothing about and have been winging it thus far. And after 5 years of Midco closing several local offices down, they seem to be still winging it. One thing is for sure! You had better have some basic knowledge yourself about digital cable, telephone and internet or they will have you on your hands and knees all the time. The techs that come to your door are still some of the original employees of AT & T, but the Customer Service Reps that you call on the phone are the ones who really lack the knowledge, and by no fault of their own. Unfortunately it is what they have been taught to say and do by the upper management within the Sioux Falls office.
Bottom line is, now that they also have the telephone lines on cable, if you lose one thing, you will more than likely lose it all.
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Review by brucer69
Posted: 3 years ago
member for 3 years, 3 visits, last login: 40 days ago
Grand Forks,Grand Forks,ND
$45 per month
 about 7 days
 "Customer service is friendly and helpful."
 "Service is advertised at 6Mb down. I Barley Get 1Mb."
"What do you expect for North Dakota. If there was a better services avalible, I would swich."
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I signed up for the Midco Max, which is uncapped downloads and 512kbp up. It would be worth it but I barley get the capped speeds of 2Mbs. If I had more options I would not use Midco. When I talked to customer service I was told "The network was just busy." I understand that but less then 1Mbs from cable is awful.
Followup comments:  bryanlautt
join:2004-05-19
Mitchell, SD
| Speeds Yeah its pretty good too for me, uptime has been really good, i have only notice a little bit where email was down a bit and i guess one time where internet was down but it was back up in like an hour. Alot better then i can say for some other ISP's | |
| FrunkuS
Premium
join:2007-03-14
Le Mars, IA
| midco is good I live in sioux falls north of pilot truckstop
have the bussines service at home / package for $95.00 month and i thinks it
awsome pings are stable at about 58-60
dl speeds once tweeked 15-19 mbps
upload 900
i play online games and between a solid system and midco
i pull 150-190 fps in games online
Last Result:
Download Speed: 30791 kbps (3848.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 911 kbps (113.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
from »support.midco.net/
i drive truck so i,am only home once a week but if u need
some help with dr tcp i could meet and help you
jlm7424@midconetwork.com | |
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 Review by Reg Mauler
Posted: 4.2 years ago
member for 5.8 years, 555 visits, last login: 24 days ago
Phoenix,AZ
$34 per month
about 5 days
"Almost constant uptime, speed usually good anytime of day or night"
"Speeds are lagging behind industry (Currently 8 down, 256 up)"
"Pretty fast speed considering they are a small ISP and very reliable!"
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Been with midcontinent since 4/01 and have had very little outages or connection problems. Ordered when I moved and they had it hooked up by then end of the week. Tech support has been good for the few times I've had to call them, seemed like they knew what they were talking about. They now offer 3 packages for residential service, 1 is a limited account with only 128k up and down, 2 is the most popular and is 8mb down and 256 up, 3 is called midconet max and is unlimited down and 512 up. They also do spam filtering and virus scanning on their e-mail servers. Overall I have been pretty satisfied.
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 Review by vaporware
Posted: 4.2 years ago
member for 7 years, 214 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
Pierre,Hughes,SD
$15 per month
"8mb download pipe, tons of promotions"
"Tech support still in the dark ages"
"get it-but don't call tech support for anything........anything"
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Everything about this service is wonderful-except Tech Support. Tech Support just plains sucks-reminds me of the mentality Tech Support had during the early days of broadband or everyday working at the @Home Network.
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 Review by Chad1
Posted: 4.3 years ago
member for 7.5 years, 859 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
Grand Forks,Grand Forks,ND
$30 per month
about 12 days
"Fast, Reliable connection. The best broadband choice in Grand Forks, ND"
"Upload is low, and depending on your modem you may experience ocasional outages."
"Living in uppermidwest, and have MidcoNet as a broadband option, go for it. Bundle if you can!"
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I ordered MidcoNet within the first week of it becoming commercially available. I had to wait 12 days for a technician to come get me hooked up, but the wait was expected since most of Grand Forks, ND had little to no broadband option until Midcontinent came in. The initial technician that showed up was very friendly, and set-up everything with ease. He even installed a complimentary cable amplifier for my t.v. He did make one mistake, and that was setting up midco's proxy server to cache1.midco.net. This cache server is used in Sioux Falls, SD, and the correct proxy should be cache2.midco.net for those of us living in Grand Forks, ND. I changed my desktop to the correct proxy server, and since I never use proxies on my laptop there was no problems there.
The service is speedy, and responsive. At first the package was 3000/128, but they sync have upgraded their upload speed to 256, which I still think is sub-par for cable broadband services. Oh well, I am still happy to be connected, although I only use the service when I am home for the summer.
I have experienced occasional outages, which have lasted between 15 minutes all the way up to an hour. I still have the old 3Com shark-fin modem, which does take its sweet time to sync in.
MidcoNet does offer a MidcoMax package, which doubles your upload speed to 512, but of course you're going to pay for it. A 512 connection upload speed is becoming the "standard" of many broadband providers done south, and I hope MidcoNet soon realizes this as well. Perhaps if a 1 megabit upload option was available, more users would be less hesitant to dish out the extra $10 a month for the increased upload speed.
Bottom Line: If you're living in the North Dakota/South Dakota area, this may be one of your only options for broadband, but it's definitely a good service.
For those living in the greater Grand Forks area, forget NorthStar Telecom, Invisimax, or Qwest. They can't even come close to what Midco can offer at such a lower price, with less installation, etc.
Followup comments: valalor
join:2007-03-27
Sioux Falls, SD
| moving your modem?? how many of you guys rewire all your own cable and movie your internet to a different room.. That could also cause you to have slow speed or bad connections.. And if you have a 3com modem, i would recomnd buying a new one.. That company went out of buisness and cant get the firmware update for it nomore... | |
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Review by doomgazer
Posted: 4.3 years ago
member for 8 years, 191 visits, last login: 220 days ago
Wahpeton,Richland,ND
$95 per month (12 month contract)
about 30 days
"excellent customer service and fast internet"
"peak hours are really slow on residential internet lines"
"great choice for the ND/SD/MN area"
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I've had midco for a couple years now and overall the customer service and internet service has been superb. After my initial install I was seeing speeds around 7mbit down, so it's very fast, especially for the area. The slowdown during peak hours was really a drag though because you would often drop below 500kbit and ping times were horrid. I upgraded to a business package because I needed more upstream and IPs. During offpeak hours I usually get around 20mbit download, and peak over 5mbit, so it was a vast improvement. I would recommend them to anyone in the area.
The only other complaint I have, which has probably changed, was when I ordered my install it took around 30 days to get them here - mainly because there were a lot of people switching over to their cable internet at the time.
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Review by shrek_fx4
Posted: 4.4 years ago
member for 4.4 years, 6 visits, last login: 4.1 years ago
Sioux Falls,Minnehaha,SD
$32 per month
"Very fast speed, Great Cust Service"
"Best cable, isp, phone around."
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I've been a Midcontinet Cust for almost a year now and experienced very few problems, when I did have one, their tech support knows what they are doing and gets it fixed. Very smooth internet, very fast. On average is about 13Mbps, That's with their Midconet Max, the upgraded service. There basic is around 7Mbps.. Great dig cable choice, and great phone service. Love it.
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Review by haas
Posted: 4.6 years ago
member for 8.2 years, 68 visits, last login: 2.7 years ago
Bismarck,Burleigh,ND
$34 per month
about 10 days
"Reliable, Fast, Affordable"
"Blocking ICMP - Makes it tough for troubleshooting"
"Would never use DSL with this available"
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I have had this service for over 5 years and love it. As mentioned above not having ICMP really bites! Thank to the virus writers for that. You should definitely have a firewall in place as there are lots of scans going on all of the time. Best service available in town. They also give you 7 user accounts with 26MB mail boxes and 50MB web hosting each. I had Qwest DSL prior to this and it did not compare. Originally we didn't have to pay tax on the service then our great legislature passed a law in ND to collect tax on internet connections even though the Feds don't require it so that added a couple of dollars to the bill each month. Speeds typically 3000kbps download and 256kbps upload. No contacts!
I would and do recommend this service.
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Review by amsev
Posted: 4.7 years ago
member for 4.7 years, 0 visits, last login: 4.7 years ago
Rapid City,Pennington,SD
$97 per month
about 14 days
"Excellent coordination for install, they have different packages for diff types of users"
"occasional outages -- but very rare!"
"I like using MidCo -- no reason to switch to the competition!"
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**IMPORTANT PRICE NOTE*** I didn't have a bill handy to indicate the exact price for just broad band. At the time I ordered I wasn't interested in getting cable TV as I don't watch a lot of TV, but that service was only like $8.00 more to get that three-piece package. Thus, with a little quicky math, my monthly broadband svc charge is about $44.00
Great coordination with install. Their customer service was excellent when I called with a question about something Windows XP Pro did with my connection. The one time I have personally experienced down time, I called the 800# for customer service and they had a very informative pre-recorded message explaining what was going on. I didn't have to go to a CSR for further explanations. Price above is for my entire package -- basic broadband, TV and telephone service with caller ID.
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Review by Pontiac
Posted: 4.7 years ago
member for 7.5 years, 55 visits, last login: 123 days ago
Sioux Falls,Minnehaha,SD
$35 per month
"Just Plain FAST"
"Comcast owns 49% of Midcontinent"
"The Best Deal In The U.S.A."
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Buy a modem, and it's only about $35 a month. This speed from Midco Speed Test, with a new modem. Download Size: 2MB in 0.796 seconds.
Est. Throughput: 21,037 Kbps. @ »support.midco.net/ Thats about a T-14 Line >>>>FAST 3000down/256up is what I have. Had it about 3years, been down less than 24hours total. Got a new modem, when the old one died, at no charge.
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Midcontinent Communications
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