Northern Utah ISP providers

dtaylor26-p40 · #1

Does anyone have any preference on ISP providers they have used in Northern Utah? I'm familiar with Qwest for DSL and Comcast for cable, but don't know if anyone is using any other providers. (I'm guessing no stakes have ponied up for a satelite connection, so I won't even go there). I'm not trying to establish one provider over another, I'm just curious as to who people are using, and why.

Also, do the providers in this area allow for residential connections, or do they charge the more expensive business options for LDS meetinghouses?

CTR IP.

mkmurray · #2

dtaylor26 wrote:Does anyone have any preference on ISP providers they have used in Northern Utah? I'm familiar with Qwest for DSL and Comcast for cable, but don't know if anyone is using any other providers. (I'm guessing no stakes have ponied up for a satelite connection, so I won't even go there). I'm not trying to establish one provider over another, I'm just curious as to who people are using, and why.

Also, do the providers in this area allow for residential connections, or do they charge the more expensive business options for LDS meetinghouses?

CTR IP.

Are you specifically asking about ISP providers for a meetinghouse?

nmecantwin73 · #3

Xmission provides ISP DSL service in Northern Utah, as well as other regional areas (www.xmission.com). Though you still need to pay Qwest for the phone line. I prefer Xmission as their support is great, and they are local to Salt Lake City, though they are expanding regionally.

dtaylor26-p40 · #4

Yes, that is the question I'm asking. (I was going to just say Yes, but apparently I need at least 10 characters.

)

jj47-p40 · #5

Comcast seems to think this is a business connection. Also, they could not find any building cabling information so they told me they could not connect to an "unknown address." I will be meeting with one of them at the site tomorrow. I wonder if someone from the 20th floor could go negotiate with them for a "charity" price and give us a contact person at comcast to make this all easier.

Johnnie47

tonyduf-p40 · #6

John Lockwood wrote:Comcast seems to think this is a business connection. Also, they could not find any building cabling information so they told me they could not connect to an "unknown address." I will be meeting with one of them at the site tomorrow. I wonder if someone from the 20th floor could go negotiate with them for a "charity" price and give us a contact person at comcast to make this all easier.

Johnnie47

I am also with xmission and very happy with their service. If they are going to do maintenance on their system they will send you an email as to why and what they are doing, and if their system goes down (which is seldom if ever) they will also send out an email a to why it went down and what they did to correct the situation. Also they send out email notices from time to time telling about upgrades to their equipment. Since my son has CompTIA Network Certification he also uses xmission because he can get ip-static addresses from them; which you can not get from qwest or cable.

Also be careful about cable services, especially their phone service, because if there is a reason, storms or whatever, that the power lines are down you could be (at least temp orly) without service. To see what I am talking about, the next time your power is down go down the road and see all the generators comcast has set up along the powerline route.

In addition be careful about getting tied in to long term contracts that you may wish you could get out of sooner.

Finally be sure to look into the possibility of fiber-optic, or high speed wifi service availability in your area. For example Sprint Wi-Max which is already deployed in some metropolitan areas
, is scheduled to be deployed in Utah around December 2008.

#7

Surprisingly,there are many more ISP's available than one might think, including shared DSL (phone service required), dedicated DSL (no phone service needed), wireless (get a broadband connection from a local mountain top), etc., etc. You can check HERE for ISP availability in your area and customer reviews.

For DSL, make sure you know your approx. distance the nearest CO (Central Office) as this has a direct bearing on the connection speed you may get.

tonyduf wrote:...Sprint Wi-Max which is already deployed in some metropolitan areas, is scheduled to be deployed in Utah around December 2008.

This will indeed be a blessing for us bandwidth hungry geeks!

tonyduf-p40 · #8

Mikerowaved wrote:Surprisingly,there are many more ISP's available than one might think, including shared DSL (phone service required), dedicated DSL (no phone service needed), wireless (get a broadband connection from a local mountain top), etc., etc. You can check HERE for ISP availability in your area and customer reviews.

Here is a must read for ISP seekers: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,13021249

JamesAnderson · #9

There are also several ISPs operating using the UTOPIA network, which also promises to have speeds of 50mbps soon, if not immediately. Provo's iProvo will soon have this speed, but there are questions about this company in the media given some issues in the recent past.

Comcast is looking at deploying 50-100mbps cable speeds (especially where they have fiber to the pole attachment) sometime this year. I've got no confirmation on this save for a comment by a Comcast employee over the phone when inquiring about something going on in the media about them.

Satellite is slow, less than 1mbps. There may be latency issues with that too, because you have to send or receive via the bird and that actually can take half a second because it's 1/10 second to the bird, 1/10 second back to the ground server, 1/10 second back to the bird and then 1/10 second back to you, and then add to that any other response time.

So DSL, wireless, WiMAX, cable, and fiber optic are your best options.

There's one I've heard little about, and that's BPL, or 'Broadband over Power Lines'. The FCC approved that a couple years back, but have not heard of any BPL ISPs in Utah yet.

#10

Thanks for your input. Always interested in hearing what's on the horizon, even though we will take into consideration it's from unofficial sources.

JamesAnderson wrote:There's one I've heard little about, and that's BPL, or 'Broadband over Power Lines'. The FCC approved that a couple years back, but have not heard of any BPL ISPs in Utah yet.

Although "approved", BPL is being hotly contested by the ARRL (Amateur Radio Relay League) as causing interference to licensed stations from an unlicensed source, therefore in violation the FCC's own rules. It has not been widely deployed and some think it will probably die.