Internet Speeds in Bozeman

[rangerider]

In a rural area here, we have one option wirelessly and that's GlobalNet. Spotty service, and we've been down for as much as two days at a time - funny..but no allowance for that on the monthly bill. Service interruptions are common, and starting around 0800 when the crowds come on it gets slower and slower. 1200-1300 very slow and then gets better in the afternoon. Same goes for evening, slows down again. Sunday mornings are great, we actually have decent speed and streaming music/video works fine. Imagine that...;-P

The Rural Broadband project is headed out our way, don't know if they'll get as far as our house or not. My fear is they'll require a bundle for decent service/prices, and despite having little to no cell service here we have not much use for a land line or TV. So it looks like we're stuck with what we've got; checked into sat service, but it's expensive for little more than what we've got going on now.

[livetoski]

Originally Posted by CTC

We have a bundled cable modem through Optimum. I just checked and my wireless connection is at 54 Mbps. Service is very good-I cannot recall the last time we lost our internet connection.

OMG, I will be in heaven! We are currently on the NSW South Coast, Australia. On a good day I get 8mbs and on a bad day less than 1mbs and that is on the fastest plan available. I will be able to more than halve my work hours. Yippee!!

[romath]

Optimum has diiferent residential levels, basically slower, fast, very fast. I switched over from Bresnan's Triple Play to Optimum's, which is the medium level and faster than Bresnan's at about the same high post-intro price (~$140/package). Optimum claims 15 mb/s on a cable line - Optimum Speedcheck - West - but no other speed check site comes close to that. In any case, downloads are fast and steady. Uploads are capped (around 250 kb/s), such capping being normal. As for wi-fi, maybe it's because my laptop uses an Atom 50 cpu, but it's pretty slow.

Afterthought: Optimum was very slow about notifying people about switching over last year, vs. the we're going to be switching over in the coming months announcement; in fact, I'm not sure they have completely. At least, I never got a notification, but went into the Bozeman office last summer and asked when my bill jumped to $165. It turned out that the process had officially started a month earlier, so they switched me over and fixed the billing. Phone customer serivce has improved a bit too, but it's still in a distant call center (and there's no email, one has to call about everything). Optimum is prone to storm failures, a very touchy system so it seems. The installation/repair service is also hit and miss, with their own techs being very good, but some of the other contractors for installs being incompetent. Fortunately, I haven't had to deal with that often. I saw a recent customer satisfaction survey that didn't include Optimum, but did show CenturyLink (formerly the horrible Qwest) at the bottom of the barrel. Aren't their lines DSL speeds, i.e., in the 2.5 mb/s range?

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by ElkHunter

I just checked my speed and it is 54 MBPS. I am not tied to cable, nor am I tied to a phone line. I have a MIFI device and I get those speeds no matter where I am at, as long as I have a cell signal. I live in the country. I have traveled with this device and even with 1 bar of service, I get that speed.

It is through Verizon and runs $49.95 a month. So if Bozeman has Verizon towers, it would work there too. It powers up to 5 devices at once with WIFI.

Yeah, but what's your download limit? Every service I've looked at only allows 2GB per month and after that charges $10 or so per GB (which is insane; per the agreements between the various backbones, it costs them nothing for download and only 5 CENTS per GB for upload).

If I so much as listen to internet radio I can easily chew through 2GB in just two days.

[MontanaFan]

My experience has been to go with Optimum. I know performance varies by subdivision and cable sharing, but you do not want to use CenturyLink. That is a bag of hurt. Is there anyone here that uses Lightnex? Very curious to know how good they are.
I am averaging 14mbps down and 2mbps up with Optimum.

[ElkHunter]

Originally Posted by Reziac

Yeah, but what's your download limit? Every service I've looked at only allows 2GB per month and after that charges $10 or so per GB (which is insane; per the agreements between the various backbones, it costs them nothing for download and only 5 CENTS per GB for upload).

If I so much as listen to internet radio I can easily chew through 2GB in just two days.

$49.95 a month gets you the 5 gig plan. $69.95 gets you the 10 gig plan.

I moderate 3 websites and have my computer logged on before 6am and don't log off until after midnight, 7 days a week. 5 gig is perfect as I usually run about 75% of the 5 gig. BUT, I do not do music, movies (except checking out the youtube stuff you guys link to. hahaha). So lots of data and pictures, but no movies or music.

[AnTiKrauss]

The Internet service in Bozeman is the worst I have ever experienced, and I lived in bush Alaska for six years. Montana overall ranks 70th behind 69 other states and foreign countries. The interruptions in service force me to have two ISPs just to be employed online. Montana ranks that high only because selected businesses put in their own high speeds, but the public has no access to those lines. Montana ranks that high because a few corporations have installed their own high speed operations, but the public has no access. The ranking is from the Washington Post's GovBeat blog, January 8, 2015, [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/01/08/how-state-internet-speeds-compare-with-countries-around-the-world/]How state Internet speeds compare with countries around the world - The Washington Post[/url]

[Reziac]

Fixed link. The URL thing needs its quote marks.

Well, here I am two miles out of Laurel, and I have these choices:

Fixed wireless, 4Mbit, $70/mo. (or 7Mbit, $100/mo.) plus $200 installation -- way outta my budget.

DSL, 1.5Mbit (supposedly, but it's seldom that good) -- $40/mo. tho after I raised all kinds of hell about the lack of anything better, CenturyLink gave me a $15/mo. deal for six months. We had quite a disagreement over whether a mere 10,000 customers suffices to encourage 'em to upgrade the 40 year old equipment that's the real problem here. (I will say their tech support is the best I've seen, at least if you're getting a tech or top-tier. Dunno about if you bring your own modem. DSL modems have only about a 3 year lifespan which causes lots of problems.)

Satellite, $80/mo. plus $200 installation, 1Mbit max and a 10GB data cap and $20/GB after that. (Data caps are dandy if you never, ever stream or download anything and only visit static sites.)

[Note that fixed wireless and satellite don't work well, or sometimes don't work at all, in bad weather. What do we have lots of in MT?? Yes! Bad weather!!]