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Review by bcdsg 
Posted: 149 days ago
member for 149 days, 1 visits, last login: 148 days ago
 Lawrence,Douglas,KS
 Business customer
 Contract price not specified.
 about 1 days
 "Excellent service support, these people really care"
 "Coverage can be spotty, check before signing up"
 "Great alternative to corporate Internet"
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Lawrence Freenet is our alternative service provider at my office. I'd have them in my home, but can't get full coverage where I live. Ironically can't get cell phone coverage either. I think that's one of the key. Don't expect coverage to be universal with them. Use due diligence and make sure you can get signal, and when necessary, rent a PepWave or similar device from them.
People complain sometimes about them because they get signal to their laptop but fail to realize that their transmitters at the lightpole are much stronger than the ones in your laptop. They'll be happy to check and test for you. They simply don't have the resources to offer 100% service everywhere
Fortunately, I get their signal direct to my building. I understand it's wireless to my building, and then it's Ethernet inside and included with my rent. I didn't have to do any setup for it. It's about similar speeds to my cable modem for downloads but uploads are about 75% the speed of download while at home it's only about 15%. Skype in particular works AWESOME on their system.
Because of bandwidth caps, I tend to do more of my heavy downloading at the office, where they have NO bandwidth caps.
On the rare occasion I had problems, Josh's friendly team helped me right away. I just call or stop by and they fix it right up. No 9am-5pm service windows the other ISPs have in town.
I think one difference with a community vs corporate provider is these guys are grass roots. They take a portion of the fees they collect from subscribers and donate service to low-income and non-profits. I volunteer at one of those non-profits and can confirm they do give that free service. Maybe I'm a bit biased because of that.
This is like the local Mom & Pop grocery store down the street, as opposed to the Mega-Mart. They might not have all the greatest stuff, but they truly care and try to make a difference. I like that. I want to do business with people that add to the community rather than take from them.
If you want the FASTEST internet in town regardless of cost, go elsewhere. If you want reliable, quality Internet at a fair price with a company that gives back, and you check to make sure you are in their service area, you can't go wrong with Freenet.
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Review by oowhistle
Posted: 160 days ago
member for 160 days, 4 visits, last login: 137 days ago
Lawrence,Douglas,KS
Business customer
$23 per month
about 1 days
"Mobile, Fast"
"Partial Coverage"
"Great value if you live in coverage."
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I recently signed up for Lawrence Freenet at my apartment complex. At our complex there is no cable internet service and so I thought I would try to connect to a neighbor's wireless signal.
I discovered Freent when I turned on my laptop and saw their SSID.
When I connected, it sent me to a portal page where I could sign up for a day of service for 2.99/day or subscribe to a monthly service for 23.98/Mo.
I tried the service for a day and it worked great so I signed up for monthly service. The service has been very reliable at my apartment.
The bonus is that I can use the service in other places in town. Their coverage at my regular coffee shop in Downtown Lawrence is pretty good and I can use it at my girlfriends apartment too.
I've noticed that some areas of town don't have much (any) coverage, but from their website it looks like they are expanding.
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Review by pops333
UPDATED: 161 days ago
member for 161 days, 2 visits, last login: 159 days ago
Lawrence,Douglas,KS
$33 per month
about 330 days
"Non-profit company which supports the Lawrence community"
"Very unreliable, frequent outages, very slow connection most of the time"
"Not worth it"
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I got Lawrence Freenet because I didn't want to pay for a phone line to get DSL and I was incorrectly told I couldn't get cable internet in my apartment. I ordered the Freenet monthly service ($21.98 later raised to 22.98 per month) and rented a PePwave Surf AP 400 (for $11.00 a month).
The customer service is not very good, although they will usually return your calls within 3 days. The biggest issue I have with their service is that it is extremely unreliable and the connection is very prone to cutting out. They say that you shouldn't run torrent services (because Freenet throttles bandwidth) but really you can't run online games, watch streaming video (unless you wait several minutes for it to load), listen to online radio or even browse the internet at a decent speed. About a quarter of the time the webpage will not load and you get sent back to the "Welcome to your Internet Serivce" page where the router will attempt to reconnect you (although this fails to happen about half the time).
Although this ISP does use 10% of its proceeds to provide free internet service to local residents in need (i.e. those on SSI, foodstamps, etc) it doesn't really provide that great of service.
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Review by kae
UPDATED: 1.3 years ago
member for 7.6 years, 221 visits, last login: 12 days ago
Lawrence,Douglas,KS
$22 per month
about 4 days
"It's fairly cheap and affordable"
"Data throughput is not consistent and has several outages"
"Faster than dial-up, but was not totally reliable and best when closer to antennae."
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The only cable modem provider in Lawrence, KS is Sunflower Cable and while the service is pretty good, they only give you 40GB of download and upload data per month any amount over that is charged at $2/GB. So I was seeking a replacement.
I could see the Lawrence Freenet antennas from my house, so I figured that I'd give them a try.
I ordered the Residential Rate (or Laptop service) for $19.95 (which is now $22.98) per month. The download speeds are advertised as "Up to 7 Mbps" and Upload is "Up to 512 Kbps" and you get one dynamic IP address. I ordered this online at their webpage (»www.lawrencefreenet.org/). Once I paid my monthly fee and registered my login, I could now connect to their wireless service, which I could see when my wireless internet adapter browsed for wireless connections at my house.
The problem was that even though I could see the Freenet antennas ( one was about 1/2 block away and the other was about 3/4 block away), I was too far to keep up a connection on my laptop. Turns out you have to be within a couple of hundred feet or you need to have some extra equipment like an access point (AP).
Since I was too far away from the nearest antenna, I ended up needing to have some extra hardware. It's a wireless access point router that is keyed specifically to their network. I decided to purchase the access point device for $199. The brand was Pepwave and the model was a Surf AP 400. I could have rented it for a monthly price, but after about 18 months, I would end up paying the purchase price anyway, so I decided to purchase it.
The nice thing about the service is that you can travel around Lawrence, KS and have wireless access. The bad thing is that when you move from one AP to another, you must login again. That can be a pain, so it's not very good for maintaining a connection while you're moving (such as a bus or car).
The top speed I received was around 700Mbps. It seemed to be able to average 700Mbps for a short time, but it would then often drop to 200 or lower. Several times the AP connection to the network dropped. You can tell when the AP drops because your browser gets re-directed to the AP's webpage that shows a signal strength indicator saying "reconnecting..." or you can see the lights on the AP change to Red. Also, several times the network just stopped and I couldn't tell why. Power cycling the AP box would sometimes fix the problem, but sometimes the service was just not available.
I eventually decided that it was not worth keeping the service.
For a cheap and fairly easy connection, Lawrence Freenet would be good. Lawrence Freenet also gives back to the community by setting up free internet service for needy families in the area that can't afford internet service. You can read more about that on their website.
The drawback that I saw was that download speed was too variable. I experienced several dropped connections and service interruptions. While I liked being able to access the network from almost anywhere in Lawrence where there are antennas, I didn't like having to login each time I connect to a new AP tower.
If Lawrence Freenet installs an antenna closer to my house, I would consider trying them again.
Brand/Model of the equipment was
Brand: PePwave Model: Surf AP 400
More information can be found at »www.pepwave.com
More information on Lawrence Freenet can be found at »www.lawrencefreenet.org/
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Lawrence Freenet
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