Looking for reliable Internet Service Provider

EARTHLINK! Only dial-up available here but they're excellent.

I am actually looking for high speed access. I currently have DSL from VIPowernet. I had Choice Wireless DSL for a few years and they were just a unreliable as Innovative.

I've had great connectivity with Choice for a year now. As long as I have power I'm live and online. Maybe they're maturing and have more infrastructure and troubleshooting in place than they did in their start-up days.

If you are on STX PLZ contact Jeff who sometimes writes on this board. He just put our whole (60 units) condo association on high-speed. We pay $10.00/month for the service. (yes, t-e-n dollars). He is a fabulous computer guru. He is living with Becky R and Russell so you might PM them to get a message to him. He is the best.

Hi John.

If you're on STT I highly recommend Ackley.

Choice has the same problem as Innovative when it comes to customer service. The support people are poorly trained and they keep short hours! The main problem that I had with Choice was that as they added more customers they did not increase capacity so the performance got slower and slower. Then there was the time when I went up to the states for 2 weeks and came back to find that Choice had shut down my account, flushed two weeks of email and my webpage. None of it was recoverable! They don't back anything up. When I asked them why they would do this since I was on Auto-Pay with my credit card. They said that they heard a rumor that I was leaving island! That was it. No further explanation.

Ackley is Choice!

We use VI broadband and haven't had a problem yet. I think we pay 50.00 a month.

Hi John.

Sorry to hear you're having problems with your ISP. Your original post asked for two different things, a reliable VI ISP and one that provides 24/7 customer support. Ackley has been extremely reliable for us but they don't really offer customer support. They explicitly warn potential customers that they'll need to self-diagnose and self-treat unless the problem is obviously on Ackley's end. In general Ackley seems to cater more to techies than those who need help to keep their systems running. I've never heard of anyone cutting off service that is hooked into autopay as that's money in the bank and it seems odd that a business would close an account based on rumor but nothing that happens here surprises me anymore. Good Luck!

Thanks Shelly,
I think that's who I am going to try next. Several of my friends on STX have recommended them. They also supposedly have pretty good WiFi coverage of downtown Christiansted.

They can't be any worse than Innovative and Choice. I am just looking for someone who answers their phone on weekends and holidays.

dntw8up,
Ackley doesn't cater to techies very well either. I know because I am one. Most of their tech support people don't even know what the technical terms mean. I would never call Ackley until I had determined that a problem was theirs.

I have a network protocol sniffer and many other tools. I managed the Network Transports Group for many years at Microsoft and wrote the multicast code for the TCP/IP stack on Windows NT and 9x. I also represented Microsoft on the IETF and IESG for many years and co-authored a number of RFC's.

They were very good to me so now I am retired in the usvi. I just want a reliable internet connection. I have also tried Direcway but it was too slow.

And as of this writing we have been waiting THREE WEEKS for a DSL modem from Innovative - allegedly they are stuck in Customs, which makes no sense to me, but whatever. A week ago they were "in St. Thomas, will be in St. Croix tomorrow"...now at Customs? The complimentary dial up they were going to give us unfortunatey developed slightly prior to the Easter holiday, which I think must have started just after the St. Patrick's holiday.....and here we sit without anything other than a borrowed dial up from a friend who had mercy on us. Lost paperwork, unreturned messages....one lady, Ms. Merryfield, is trying VERY hard to get things going on for us, but it just ain't working out. Innovative strikes again...I could have had a modem sent from the states by now.

Also, just FYI - we signed up with VI Broadband while on the east end of STX and were assured if we could see Hovensa, we could use it here. Called two weeks before moving...everything was fine. Apparently talked to the wrong person, as that info was wrong, wrong, wrong. Unless you can see the EAST side of Hovensa, you can't use it. We are in Estate St. George, which is apparently no man's land - we can only see the west end of Hovensa, and there is a hill between us and Blue Mountain....Ackley can't cover us either.

Word to the wise...if you depend on the internet, as we do, for our jobs....make anyone you sign up with that isn't dial up do that site survey - phone reassurance isn't enough.

For what it's worth, I loved VI Broadband - it was very reliable and Mike was a nice guy.

Dear John Ballard,

Ackley Communciations is NOT Choice.

The owners sold VIAccess to Atlantic TeleNetwork (ATN, the parent company of Choice) about 5 years ago. Since then, Choice has taken their ISP in a different direction, so the Ackley family disassociated themselves completely after the sale, and started a competing ISP a few years later. That's Ackley Communications.

Ackley Communications is the only ISP in the VI to offer guaranteed speeds and service (the solution to the oversubscription problem that other providers have which you alluded to).

dntw8up, I know you are a satisfied Ackley Communications customer, but the customer service model you described has changed- Ackley *will* troubleshoot customer issues. They have a network monitoring system that helps diagnose the source of problems, and will work with customers to help determine the issue. John, did you deal directly with Ackley Communications at some point? I must say I was shocked to read your assertion that they don't cater to techies very well. On what basis do you say that?

Ackley covers St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix, Water Island and other minor outlying islands in the USVI.

As Becky R mentions, every high speed (broadband) provider in the VI (except Innovative/PowerNet) is a line-of-sight based service. So it's imperative to get a site survey by the requested provider to determine whether or not you are eligible for service.

Best,

LR

LR,
I stand corrected. I based my statements on my experience of several years ago. I was originally a Cobex customer who was sold to viaccess who was sold to Choice. The majority of my bad experiences were with Choice after I became one of their early wireless DSL customers on STX. I have had no dealings with the "new" Ackley at all. I was a Choice customer for 3 years and know very well how badly they support their customers.

I am currently an Innovative DSL customer. (for the next couple of weeks). Innovative customers lost their email services this weekend for 3 days and no one was available to call. They were all "at the beach".

The latest insult from Innovative came in the mail with my phone bill. They are offering a special, new customers can sign up for DSL for $34.95 for the first 3 months then $49.95 after that. This is limited to new customers,their existing "loyal" customers will have to continue paying $59.95 per month.

John

I called Innovative and complained about the new rate and they lowered it. If you pick up the phone things get done.

Also to Becky, I had the same problem wih Innovative's modems and I went out and bought my own at Office Max and it works great. Cheaper too.

Well, at this point we don't even know that the DSL line is active, or believe me, I would do SOMETHING - even pay the jacked up prices at Radio Shack.

Have written a pleading note - we will see what transpires today. Unfortunately, a menopausal out of control woman without chocolate doesn't seem to carry much weight here in the islands....

If you call Innovative they will lower your rate to $49.95 if you sign a contract committing to an additional 12 months of service with early cancellation penalties. I did call and they emailed me a copy of the new contract.

After losing email for 3 days this past weekend and realizing that Innovative tech support was not reachable all weekend, I would be unwilling to commit to another year with them.

John, a dumb question from a non-tech person here - but did you still have access to the internet? Was it ONLY Innovative-based email you didn't get? I use a private web-based mail and my job totally depends on it...although as mentioned in another post, other than a dish, I think I'm about out of options...

Becky.
For me it was only email that was affected. It turns out that the problem was that someone at Innovative forgot to re-register the domain name "vipowernet.net". This domain name expired on April 8 and by the 13th the DNS servers stopped resolving the name. So only inbound email and website traffic was affected, outbound still worked ok.

Unfortunately, Innovative took the weekend off. So no one was around to pay the $15 it would have cost them to re-activate the domain name.

Thank you - and for anyone that is interested, your DSL modem will be in "this afternoon". Yep. Okay. Holding my breath on THAT one.

John- I've built some interesting alternatives to Innovative, etc., perhaps satellite from a provider capable of up to speeds of 5mbps-36mbps inbound and up to 1mbps outbound would be more to your liking? It's not cheap, but it is available. PM me if you'd like more info...