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Review by petertait 
UPDATED: 197 days ago
member for 1.6 years, 2 visits, last login: 197 days ago
 Berkeley,Alameda,CA
 $49 per month
 about 1 days
 "Fast, small local company, frighteningly responsive"
 "Must have line of sight, and small company means service quality depends on individuals"
 "I'm SO happy...."
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If you have line of sight to one of the Unwired towers, and like dealing with a small local business, this is a great choice.
After almost 10 years of reliable COVAD DSL service, I started to have increasing line problems and decreasing speed. A visit from a COVAD tech uncovered issues with the line and resulted in the speed being reduced to 1Mb/s to get some stability, and lately it's down to about 750kb/s. I'm in the Berkeley Hills a long way from the CO, at least 12k feet, but 1.5M service was fine for years. My personal suspicion is that ATT/SBC is undermining 3rd party DSL service to cut these suppliers off.
Anyway, I needed a replacement and I didn't want to go to ATT or Comcast. Based on reviews on this site I contacted Unwired Ltd by completing the Check Availability form on www.unwiredltd.com. Within 24 hours, I had an email from a network engineer (Claire) with information on tower locations, plans, pricing etc. Over the next couple of days, Claire answered all of my service-related questions by email, sometimes within minutes.
When I finally selected a plan and sent her the paperwork, she offered installation the next day! Unwired was also able to schedule install within a one-hour window, and the installation tech arrived right on time. Installation took about two hours, and the initial tests showed I was getting 5.8Mb/s each way. That has since been throttled back to the 3Mb/s I am paying for, although it varies a little during the day. I haven't seen less than 2.5Mb/s down and 1.8Mb/s up on the DSLReports flash test. Latency is typically around 20mS.
It is funny and wonderful dealing with a small company. The bill arrived via email about 10 days after the install, and was actually from a real human being with a direct office number. If I have any billing issues, I can actually reach the right person directly, without going through a maze of phone choices.
Installation is expensive, especially if you choose to purchase the equipment, but the $49.95 monthly fee seems great for this speed.
So far, I'm a happy customer, and I love the idea of supporting a local business.
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Review by mattyx
UPDATED: 243 days ago
member for 313 days, 9 visits, last login: 46 days ago
Oakland,Alameda,CA
$89 per month
about 4 days
"Local, independent company who care about their users. Fast and low latency!"
"More expensive than other options"
"Its worth the extra cash for this level of service."
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After having Comcast as my TV and internet provider, I finally got fed up with their constant price increases, and poor picture quality. After they could not fix the TV quality after more than 10 callouts, and repeatedly missed my appointments, I decided it was time to stop paying them altogether, and move my TV and internet services to companies who valued my business. I was looking for an internet provider who would give me a good speeds, and not require me to sign up for a phone line (since I don't have/need one). After reading some of the reviews on dslreports.com, and hearing someone I work with rave about Unwired, I decided to give them a shot.
4 days after my initial call to sign up, the service was installed and working. I will say that the installation costs are a bit steep, but from what I have read, the radios (dishes) they use are quite expensive, and are discounted deeply. That said, the installer was very professional, very nice, and honestly cared about making sure I was getting the best speeds I could get. He spent time make sure the dish was mounted securely, and even fixed a loose bracket on the house, since he was up there. I was immediately impressed with the level of customer service and quality of install.
Some time after the install, I noticed that my speeds were not as fast as I had hoped (I opted for the 6/6 plan, and was getting 4.5/4 or so). I contacted Unwired, and they verified the access point I was on was very busy, and offered to either move my radio to point at another location, or wait until they added more access points on the tower I was pointed at. Like clockwork, they added the additional access points a month later, and had swapped out my radio, and readjusted it for me. You're not going to get service like this from AT&T or Comcast. This is the beauty of a local company, and specifically Unwired.
I have never had an internet provider care so much about my needs, and treat my issues with such care and expediency. I am extremely impressed with Unwired, and see myself being a longtime customer. I urge anyone who is sick of their cable/DSL provider to give them a shot. You wont be disappointed. It's great to both support a local company and have such amazing customer service and technical support. I am very happy.
UPDATE 3/28/09:
Still loving Unwired. I have had no problems, and am happy with the service. If you're looking for a company that actually cares about its customers, give Unwired a try. I'm a very satisfied customer. Speeds are exactly as promised, and latency is low (18-21ms).
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Review by tdelporto9
UPDATED: 1.5 years ago
member for 8.1 years, 4 visits, last login: 1.5 years ago
Emeryville,Alameda,CA
$90 per month
about 5 days
"Fast install turn-around, Great connectivity to major providers, no wires, very personal service"
"A little more expensive and longer time for physical install than DSL"
"So Far, much better than any other internet connection I've had"
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After being a Speakeasy DSL customer for 7 years I had to find another provider due to AT&T continuously moving my copper in preparation for providing television in my neighborhood. I couldn't stomach Comcast, and FIOS isn't available to me, so I decided to try wireless. I set up wireless networks as part of my job, albeit for a much different application (large groups in concentrated areas rather than long distance point to point) and as such was leery of trusting a wireless link. The nice bit about Unwired's solution is that they use Motorola's Canopy product which uses licensed spectrum (5.7Ghz). I've only had the link for a week, so I'm not sure how reliable it will be in weather, but other reviews suggest that I don't have anything to worry about. They used a dish about the size of a Satellite TV dish for a 4 mile connection.
Unwired is a small business and support is very personal. I just email or call my contact and he responds personally and promptly. I have a routed /30 subnet for my single IP, something most providers do not do, and had the option of a /29 without additional charges. I play FPS games online casually, and latency is much less with Unwired than with DSL. Web pages load *very* fast. Bulk downloads seem to average around 3Mbps though I have 6Mbps class service. The one drawback seems to be their bandwidth to subscriber ratio is lower than larger providers. I might be upset but for the fact that they are very upfront about the "burstyness" of their connection. Oh, and latency to my office is 14ms. SSH is just like being on the office lan.
------------ update May 2008 -------------
Now that I've had the service a couple months I can readily recommend it, as long as your primary internet use is not bittorrent. Unwired allows bittorrent and requires users to police their own usage limiting rates depending on the tier of the user's subscription. A week or two ago a fellow subscriber didn't cap his/her rate, the result of which being latency shooting way up, at times to over 1000ms on the first hop. Web surfing still worked, albeit slow, but interactive ssh and my favorite FPS game were pretty useless. Once notified Unwired took care of the offender. and the connection has been fine since. I hate to say it, but cases like these make me a little more sympathetic towards ISPs that shape or limit bittorrent traffic.
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Review by bbrown888
UPDATED: 2 years ago
member for 3.9 years, 2 visits, last login: 2 years ago
Oakland,Alameda,CA
$89 per month (12 month contract)
"Personal Service, Highly technical staff, excelent value, high quality"
"Limited service area"
"Superior alternative to wireline, high speed upload rates"
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Unwired provided me with a custom wireless link between my home and Internet with static IP’s and reverse DNS at no additional charge. Upload/Download speeds vary with radio frequency and technology, my link is 3mbps (slowest due to trees etc. in the pathway). Unlimited monitors the quality of signal and link status every five seconds and sends me a quick email if there are any issues. Unlike many wireless services my real life wireless loop delays are much less than T-1’s, typically pings to WWW sites is less than 6-8ms. You will get great customer service. I have checked all of the East Bay San Francisco Bay Area WISPS and Unwired is simply the best quality WISP I have found.
11-07 Update:
It's been 3 years since connecting with the service and everything is still running great. My radio link is monitored 24 hours a day for quality of the connection. When I've unplugged the radio to re-wire I always get a followup email just to make sure there are not technical problems with my service. The stability is far better than any copper based internet service I have had such as Covad, DSL, @Home, ATT, or Comcast.
-Brad
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Review by stephthegeek
Posted: 3.2 years ago
member for 3.4 years, 9 visits, last login: 1.4 years ago
Oakland,Alameda,CA
$90 per month
about 7 days
"SO fast, personal attention, great price and upload rates"
"Limited availibility, long installation/tweaking period"
"The best and cheapest option for synchronous connectivity"
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Fantastic service so far. The installer was here for several hours on the first day, trying to get a clear shot of the tower over BART and through power lines. He also came back the next day for some more adjustments, but it's working fantastically now. Speed tests range in the 3500-5000 range, for both upload and download.
One odd thing to note, they used my last name as the default for the hostname. I didn't exactly want my last name being broadcast to everyone on IRC  I pointed it out and had it changed, but I don't know if they will continue to use that as their standard.
I posted some photos of the installation here: »www.stephthegeek.com/index.php?q···Id=21997
And here is some information from our pre-sales email exchange:
* They offer four plans with the same radio equipment: residential 3mbps/3mbps ($50/mo) and 6/6 ($90/mo), and business 4/4 ($160/mo) and 7/7 ($380/mo)
* Setup fee plus equipment = $285 after rebates for the residential 6/6, $275 for the business 4/4
* I asked what their usage limits were: "If we see sustained usage above 1 mb/s CIR we usually talk to the user"
* Setup time is usually less than a week
* Residential plans have a best-effort SLA while the business plans have a 24x7 SLA with rebates for SLA violations
* Business plans can be shared and residential plans cannot
* There needs to be a clear line of sight to the tower (in my case, the Oakland Hills ridgeline)
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Unwired Ltd
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I'm still ecstatic to have these speeds and reliability. You think web surfing feels zippy on a premium cable/DSL line? You'll actually notice a difference with this. And if you're a web developer moving large files around and poking around on servers, it's an absolute dream. The fast uplink enables me to run my 24/7 webcam project like nothing else for the price could: »