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Review by loungesong 
Posted: 5.2 years ago
member for 5.2 years, 14 visits, last login: 2.7 years ago
 South San Francisco,San Mateo,CA
 $100 per month (12 month contract)
 about 2 days
 "Next Day Installation,Very Fast, Low Latency, Easy Tech Support"
 "Installation more expensive than DSL and Cable"
 "Excellent competitive alternative to SDSL if you need upstream bandwidth"
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Alex and the gang are very helpful and will answer all your questions about the technology. We have 1.0/1.0 and it has been very reliable. Much cheaper than similar SDSL speeds with Covad.
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Review by jmeter
Posted: 5.2 years ago
member for 5.5 years, 5 visits, last login: 4.6 years ago
Los Altos,Santa Clara,CA
$99 per month (12 month contract)
"Incredibly fast speed, small responsive company"
"Rare downtime"
"Much more fun than DSL or Cable!"
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Etheric has done a great job building this small company. The speeds are fantastic. The technical support staff is quick to help me with any problems. Unlike SBC, they care when things aren't working right for me. I will never go back to the big guys!
Silver plan, 1Mbps, burst to 2.5Mbps
Random speed test just now: 4843/3351 kbit down/up
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Review by klhung
UPDATED: 5.3 years ago
member for 5.4 years, 58 visits, last login: 6 days ago
San Mateo,San Mateo,CA
$100 per month (12 month contract)
about 14 days
"Upload speed is good"
"Reliability... technology is too new?"
"Cool technology provided by a small company with growing pain"
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I have cable modem (Comcast) and DSL (Sonic), just constantly look for more reliable broadband solution.
Package ordered: 1 static IP (additional $3/month), 1M/1M.
Cost: $320 down for equipment, $64/month plus $25/month equipment finance for 24 months.
Ordered Etheric on 5/20, installed by Patrick (job very nicely done BTW) on 6/3. Immediately got connection at 1M/1.1M on the same day.
Lost connection on 6/7. Called Etheric and Alex replied my phone call. Initially he suspected it was due to my machine problem, having done more research he finally found out my client side record was not listed on their newly migrated Access Point. After few minutes I was online again, but he had to bring it down for a client side firmware upgrade. After the upgrade my SpeedTest dropped to about 350k/400k (from 1M/1.1M)... I reported the issue but I was told it is not urgent and will be resolved in 24 hours. After 6/7 my SpeedTest result were different but in average between 400 to 800 for both up/down, never came back to 1M!! Kind of disappointed especially you had seen fast 1M/1.1M speed in the first three days...
======= UPDATED 7/27/04 =============
I have to admit that I am getting premium service from Alex and the team. Although there was still downtime (maybe while server rebooting) but it always came back within an hour or so. These people treat customers' incidents as their own problems, and I do appreciate that.
As a small business owner myself, I truly understand the growing pain and the path of setting up the right process mentioned by Alex over the phone. I will keep supporting Etheric and hopefully my business will grow with Etheric in the long run.
I am sure I will upgrade my Etheric service to higher grade when I see my availability rate reaches somewhere close to 99.9% (99.994% mentioned in »www.etheric.net/faq.html#10).
I have updated my review and hope this will improve Etheric's rating.
Thank you, Alex and the team.
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Review by whoo_hoo
UPDATED: 5.4 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 4 visits, last login: 5.4 years ago
Menlo Park,San Mateo,CA
Contract price not specified.
"Pleasant enough on the phone, when you reach them"
"site surveyor created initial problem; follow through from there months to no end."
"Given up after much waiting."
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Closing this review out since I have since gone with another provider. The key
problem I see here is that Etheric's management didn't know how to say "No, sorry", and
stop. The first problem (new site surveyor going to the wrong address, and writing up
LOS available which was not) was irritating and sloppy, but within the "s**t happens" bucket.
An apology on the phone was delivered, and had they stopped there, that would be that.
Instead they kept believing that I could be a customer, and wasting their and my time
on this. I got an email invoice for service, they were so sure; I got customer oriented
emails like "Etheric Hits Number One Spot as Fastest ISP On DSLREPORTS", they
were so sure. I also got told in March, April, and May that they were planning on
putting in a repeater for my area. I got messages from their CEO showing photos
of their new tower.
I did not get service.
Judging from a few of the voices on the board, Etheric attracts customers who love them.
I don't want to love my ISP. I want a business that delivers the service at a utility-grade
reliability that I just don't have to think about.
If you have service with them: good luck, and I hope the relationship is what you want.
______________________________
The review below was written on the day of the install. Within hours of my email
about this to them, I had gotten a call from the founder again apologizing and offering
several next steps. None of them are guarantees, but the willingness to see if
a beam shift or other coverage changes could get us online was definitely there.
That's not somethin I would expect from Comcast or PacBell/SBC and is a good sign.
The next step will be a signal test; I'll update the review at that time. In the mean
time, I updated the below to reflect the fact that they're still trying.
+++++++++
I beat on the doors of etheric for several months trying to get sales to talk to me;
I sent emails, filled in the forms, and left voice mail. They apparently were dismayed
at the idea that I needed to be home when they did the site survey (I have a dog, and
it wouldn't be a good idea to be on the roof without me there). I left them various times
when the dog wouldn't be there, so they could pick one and schedule. They
never did give me a scheduled time, but eventually called me to say they had done
the site survey and everything was fine. I agreed to a service level by calling what
turned out to be the founder's cell phone, and he set up an install time. He also
said he'd send sla, t&c docs, etc; none of that ever came.
When I called the "support" number the day of the install, to get an idea of what
they were providing for my end (ethernet port, hub, switch, router), I had an excellent
discussion of the value of different APs for 802.11, again, with the founder of the
company (the answer to the question, by the way, was an auto-sensing 10/100 port
an ethernet "junction box"). It did not concern me over much that the founder was
also the tech support guy, but I did wonder if he would be doing the install.
Turns out no. The guy who did the site survey came out to do the install; only, he had
never seen the house before. The previous visit was to a different town, when he'd
gone to the same street name in a place 15 miles or so away. So he had not done
a site survey at all (and it seemed to be dumb luck he'd ended up at my house this
time instead of at the other house again). Needless to say, when he tried to do one
at my house, he couldn't see any of the towers putting signal my way. Not that he
actually tested for signal; he used binoculars to look toward the right places, and made
his call from that.
Upshot is, the founder seems nice, but the company is a bit raw in its sales and has a site
surveyor who is very new and needs to learn to call when there is potential site confusion.
They do seem to be willing to keep trying, though, and I'll update again when a definitive
yes or no on the experience is possible.
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Review by mgdmb
Posted: 5.4 years ago
member for 6.3 years, 515 visits, last login: 3 days ago
Campbell,Santa Clara,CA
$229 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Amazing upload and download speeds, outstanding support, very little downtime"
"Expensive, but entirely worth it."
"Speed, speed, speed! And they're always working to improve."
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Etheric is the best ISP, bar none, that I have ever had the pleasure of using - and I've had broadband, in one form or another for over nine years...
They know what they're doing. If you live in the Bay Area and need a solid ISP, this is the one, without exception.
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Review by mchren
Posted: 5.5 years ago
member for 5.5 years, 0 visits, last login: 5.5 years ago
San Mateo,San Mateo,CA
 Business customer
$170 per month (12 month contract)
"Fast Speed, Low Cost"
"Lose connection about once a week"
"Purchase it."
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I would definitely recommend Etheric. You get extremely fast connection speeds at an extremely reasonable rate. I shopped around A LOT, and this is the best deal out there. Customer service is pretty good, techs always willing to help. Usually can get a tech out to the building within the same day.
Highly Recommend.
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Review by Nick Dunckel
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 0 visits, last login: 5.6 years ago
Los Altos,Santa Clara,CA
$69 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Excellent Tech Support; excellent high-rate connection"
"Minor billing problems"
"Excellent!"
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Very good service; link provides data rates of 1 to 4 megabits/sec consistently; very helpful customer service; quick installation.
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Review by peggygnehm
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 4 visits, last login: 4.5 years ago
Watsonville,Santa Cruz,CA
$69 per month (24 month contract)
"I live in the "boonies" and cable or DSL aren't options for me--this is fantastic."
"expensive equipment, monthly charges a bit high for me. can be unreliable during bad weather."
"great."
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Everyone I've come in contact with has been great. Tomas, the installer even got all the dog toys off the roof while he was up there. It took a while to get service, but that wasn't their fault. They were setting up a new service area (Watsonville)and it took a while to get everything straightened out with the tower. Once the tower was up and running, it was only a few days. My cost is lower than most because i'm a charter subscriber. I have the "bronze" service.I think the lowest monthly cost for a regular subscription is $99 now. There's a small dish on the roof of my house, the install/equipment costs were high, but again, that's partly because of where i live.
My son gets his homework done in far less than half the time because we don't "time out" on downloads, like we did with dial-up.
The sometimes unreliable service in bad weather is because i have a marginal signal--I'm only a few yards from the edge of the coverage area.
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Review by Karin_n
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 0 visits, last login: 5.6 years ago
La Honda,San Mateo,CA
$69 per month
"Very fast and reliable. Nice group of people."
"none"
"The BEST!!!"
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I live in LaHonda and had been suffering with dial-up for years.. When I got Etheric Networks to install my system with static IPs to my two computors IT was GREAT... They are very helpful and nice. I have since tryed my friends Apple computor and had no problems connecting and playing on the web. Great company and would recommend to anybody for a fast connection.. Karin_n
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Review by garrick1
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 2 visits, last login: 4.7 years ago
Sunnyvale,Santa Clara,CA
$99 per month (12 month contract)
about 12 days
"Fast....Fast...Fast...Support great once Contacted"
"Costly for the average home user compared to DSL and Cable"
"Highly recommend for Speed."
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The initial installation coordination was rough...2 missed appointments on two diferrent days, because the installer didn't finish on a previous job. Firmware flash not done when promised. Not directed to the correct DNS servers on the initial install. All problems were ironed out.
After the initial mishaps, this is the best thing going. I knew it would be, that's why I was so patient. I signed up for 1 meg both ways and get 4-6 megabits consistenly.
Thanks to Alexander Hagan and the Team at Etheric.
I had DSL service since 1998 and was happy to say bye bye...
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