Hello all,
I was finally able to make a trip back to the island this weekend and even though it's as beautiful as ever despite the plague of mosquitoes, I was disappointed to find out that tds has not kept up with the internet demands of the island.
I spent several hours trouble shooting issues with my dad's hardware store network only to find that we were not getting the speed of internet that WE PAY EXTRA for. I placed a call to TDS who then discovered that the island is now maxing out it's mainland link during peak internet usage. (evenings and weekends) They indicated to me that it could be months or even years before this problem is fixed.
At this point they are still allowing new people to sign up, so they are basically selling a product (bandwidth) they don't have.
I wanted to see if anyone else out there is experiencing slow speeds? If so, I urge you to call TDS if you are not getting at least 80% of the speed that you pay for (that is their guarantee). If you are not getting the guaranteed speeds during peak times, the quality of the wiring at your home and other things could be to blame as well, but the main issue appears to be that our microwave capacity is just not enough.
Your internet speed can be tested by visiting the following website: http://www.speedtest.net/
If the island is going to continue to grow, access to digital media is necessary. As more people use more bandwidth (netflix, hulu, HBO GO, skype) this problem will only get worse until even basic web browsing and e-mail will cease to be functional.
Forrest Powers
Beaver Island internet capacity and TDS customer concerns.
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forrest.powers
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Marie S Powers
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carolburton
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Forest,
I am grateful that you could explain the difficulties in the internet service. I know we have to live with some things but an explanation is nice instead of just feeling ripped off for paying the rates that we do for bad service. I have called continuously for the last 2 years putting in orders to fix and check my service. To no avail and with no answers other than to change to another modem which I sit 8 feet from as the only option they can give me. As a matter I have a ticket for my service to be checked right now. If I could work directly off of my Verizon phone I would but that is just unrealistic. I am paying about $80 a month for this service (no phone just internet) that works when it wants and not when I need it. Can you suggest another option in that price range that may work as an alternate option? Would a hotspot on my phone be a viable solution? I have tried Dish but they do not offer Internet service on the Island. Any suggestions that you may have would be helpful.
Thanks for looking into this and letting us know how to check our service. Carol
I am grateful that you could explain the difficulties in the internet service. I know we have to live with some things but an explanation is nice instead of just feeling ripped off for paying the rates that we do for bad service. I have called continuously for the last 2 years putting in orders to fix and check my service. To no avail and with no answers other than to change to another modem which I sit 8 feet from as the only option they can give me. As a matter I have a ticket for my service to be checked right now. If I could work directly off of my Verizon phone I would but that is just unrealistic. I am paying about $80 a month for this service (no phone just internet) that works when it wants and not when I need it. Can you suggest another option in that price range that may work as an alternate option? Would a hotspot on my phone be a viable solution? I have tried Dish but they do not offer Internet service on the Island. Any suggestions that you may have would be helpful.
Thanks for looking into this and letting us know how to check our service. Carol
burton
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JamesBoyle
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carolburton
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forrest.powers
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Carol,
Sorry to hear about your service. I know a lot of the islanders are happy just to have any "high speed" internet at all, but like I said, with the increased bandwidth demands of things like netflix, hulu and HBO go, the problems will only get worse for the rest of the island.
That being said, I think you have a couple of options. If your verizon phone has coverage at your home, you could theoretically get a cellular modem or hotspot to use as your primary internet. http://www.verizonwireless.com/internet-devices/
Another option would be one of the satellite services that you mentioned before. I know for a fact that both Hughesnet and Exede offer service on the island. I think the problem you could have run into before was simply that your address might have not be in their database and neither Dish or Directv actually offer satellite internet themselves, they resell Hughesnet and Exede. These services do have lower download caps which may be limiting to some, but if you are just looking for something better than dial-up, these are a good option.
Sorry to hear about your service. I know a lot of the islanders are happy just to have any "high speed" internet at all, but like I said, with the increased bandwidth demands of things like netflix, hulu and HBO go, the problems will only get worse for the rest of the island.
That being said, I think you have a couple of options. If your verizon phone has coverage at your home, you could theoretically get a cellular modem or hotspot to use as your primary internet. http://www.verizonwireless.com/internet-devices/
Another option would be one of the satellite services that you mentioned before. I know for a fact that both Hughesnet and Exede offer service on the island. I think the problem you could have run into before was simply that your address might have not be in their database and neither Dish or Directv actually offer satellite internet themselves, they resell Hughesnet and Exede. These services do have lower download caps which may be limiting to some, but if you are just looking for something better than dial-up, these are a good option.
verizon hot spot
I have a 4G hot spot which we use. It works good the only thing is it has a 20 gig a month max transfer
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BobTidmore
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Last Result:
Download Speed: 3.939
Upload Speed: .745
Latency: 30 ms
June 30, 2015 at 3:34:10 PM EDT
Using the TDS speed test site.
http://speedtest.tds.net
Download Speed: 3.939
Upload Speed: .745
Latency: 30 ms
June 30, 2015 at 3:34:10 PM EDT
Using the TDS speed test site.
http://speedtest.tds.net
As Forrest said, I would confirm there is satellite available, I would say "as a backup" --JamesBoyle wrote:What about Dish or Directv. I thought they offer internet through the satellite?
www.exede.com
(which is the replacement for the older wildblue, viasat)
or
www.hughesnet.com
I used satellite internet here from 2001 until DSL came to town in 2008.
Latency is the major drawback. 1000 ms latency is noticeable and in my opinion, for any use other than single large file transfer, side by side I'd choose TDS DSL over satellite any day even if the system is burdend down to 1 mbps with the island full for the 4th and the hotspots providing a lot of access to our tourists because so far the latency has remained low on DSL even when the system is heavily loaded.
I haven't used exede recently. I went somewhere this year where hughesnet was provided in a rental and the hughesnet was noticeably slow for me.
On hughesnet, count one-one-thousand every time you click on an imap email and then see the icon change from unread to read one second later and so on.
If you didn't have DSL for a month, you would get used to it and adapt your perception and not notice it (I got used to wildblue before 2008) but side by side it's definitely a secondary option right now.
The other drawbacks of satellite are that weather drops them out once or twice a season. It takes a downpour or the really wet snow and on the second one I got smart and put it on a pole mount because of course it only happens at night after dark but I don't miss going out and cleaning off the dish in a heavy snow in January.
Also look at the amount of bandwidth per month you get over satellite for the price. In some areas exede has a 150 GB/month plan but I don't think that's available for the 49782 beam.
Last edited by Jeff on Tue Jun 30, 2015 5:54 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Re: verizon hot spot
When I tested Verizon in November it was really fast here.stardust wrote:I have a 4G hot spot which we use. It works good the only thing is it has a 20 gig a month max transfer
11/19/2014 6:07 PM EST
70.194.6.248
Download Speed:
29.18 Mb/s
Upload Speed:
5.53 Mb/s
Latency:
45 ms
Test Location
Chicago, IL ~ 250 mi
This was tested on Barney's Lake Road with a verizon MIFI 5510 using www.speedtest.net
The big drawback is that verizon doesn't have coverage for much of the Island (including me now.)
And the price is very high compared to TDS DSL.
10 GB / month : $80
15 GB / month : $100
20 GB / month : $140
30 GB / month : $225
40 GB / month : $300
50 GB / month : $375
60 GB / month : $450
80 GB / month: $600
100 GB / month: $750
prices from www.verizon.com -- 6/30/15
If you watch a movie a day on netflix/hulu/hbo/etc., you can easily use 50 GB a month so that would become very very expensive on Verizon right now.
Around the holiday there was a double bandwidth deal I believe competing with AT&T but that's gone now and I have no idea if there will be another one -- I'm not sure what the trend is in cell phone pricing if you want to use enough bandwidth to replace a main broadband connection vs. a little bit of data for phone which is what the competition seems to be on. Sprint is lower cost for bigger bandwidth use, but provides no coverage here.
On ebay there are some grandfathered unlimited verizon sim cards / mobile hotspots for sale but I have no idea if these would work or be a complete waste of money -- I would worry that they could be cut off at some point in the future and pushed to the current rate plan above.
There are also a few wholesale / value added (?) verizon/ATT resellers such as www.bluefirebroadband.com but I have no idea if these would be workable or if they would be cut off at some point in the future and pushed to the current rate plan above. (Millenicom was one that was in a similar business model a year ago and their customers were cut off overnight and pushed to the current rate plan.)
Last edited by Jeff on Tue Jun 30, 2015 6:44 pm, edited 8 times in total.
As you can tell, I'm really thankful for the service that TDS provides to the Island. It has changed my life and my ability to be on the Island; before TDS, I simply couldn't work and accomplish as much and probably couldn't be here at all now. (I'd have to budget $1400 a month for a T1 which was only 1.5 mbps up and down and I'd have to move to a location closer to town to reduce the install cost which was also high (thousands!)... maybe I could have buffered it with a commercial satellite option which was better than consumer satellite in terms of overloading but that was hundreds per month, a few thousand to install, and a bad contract if anything changes... puts it in perspective how far we've come after 2008 in what we do get per dollar spent.)
The first line tech support can be frustrating - like everyone else, two years ago when everyone was slowed down to 1mbps during peak Island usage I spent hours on the phone. Every time I had to reset the modem 4 times before they would put in a ticket and it was hard to reach someone who knew what the system status was.
I'm definitely also frustrated when the service is highly loaded and it makes it much more difficult for me to get work done, but I realize that it would be very difficult to provide the service they do day in and day out so I think it's always important to be thankful for Rick and the service TDS does provide, even when asking them if there is anything we can do to help them improve the system.
The first line tech support can be frustrating - like everyone else, two years ago when everyone was slowed down to 1mbps during peak Island usage I spent hours on the phone. Every time I had to reset the modem 4 times before they would put in a ticket and it was hard to reach someone who knew what the system status was.
I'm definitely also frustrated when the service is highly loaded and it makes it much more difficult for me to get work done, but I realize that it would be very difficult to provide the service they do day in and day out so I think it's always important to be thankful for Rick and the service TDS does provide, even when asking them if there is anything we can do to help them improve the system.
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forrest.powers
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Cathy: Your speed is unacceptable for what you are paying. It's below what they guarantee in their fair access policy.
Bob: that might be a fair speed depending on which tier you subscribe to.
I totally understand what Jeff is saying, Rick and TDS have made a tremendous positive impact on the island, and maybe I've been a bit spoiled living off the island with five choices of high speed, low latency isp's. However, the policy of continuing to subscribe customers to an overloaded system is something that all ISP's that I'm aware of avoid. I was once turned down DSL service in the holland area because my neighborhood was overloaded.
While it isn't trivial for TDS to improve the microwave link to the island, it is imperative. I urge everyone, especially those on higher tiers to call like I did. You have effectively paid and continue to pay for service they are not providing you. I would certainly not accept this, no matter where I live.
I spoke to a high level tech support agent at TDS Arecently who told me that no one from the capacity team at TDS was even aware of the issue, even though my dad has noticed issues for more than a year.
Bob: that might be a fair speed depending on which tier you subscribe to.
I totally understand what Jeff is saying, Rick and TDS have made a tremendous positive impact on the island, and maybe I've been a bit spoiled living off the island with five choices of high speed, low latency isp's. However, the policy of continuing to subscribe customers to an overloaded system is something that all ISP's that I'm aware of avoid. I was once turned down DSL service in the holland area because my neighborhood was overloaded.
While it isn't trivial for TDS to improve the microwave link to the island, it is imperative. I urge everyone, especially those on higher tiers to call like I did. You have effectively paid and continue to pay for service they are not providing you. I would certainly not accept this, no matter where I live.
I spoke to a high level tech support agent at TDS Arecently who told me that no one from the capacity team at TDS was even aware of the issue, even though my dad has noticed issues for more than a year.
Last edited by forrest.powers on Wed Jul 01, 2015 9:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.