[FreeSpirited1]

Questions to anyone in the Houghton/Hancock area:

What you think of your computer connection, who is your service provider, and does the connection ever go down, and if so, how often?

This is critical because we run an online business and need reliable service 24/7 and a very fast connection (business class speed, maybe T1 service) that we can count on 100% of the time.

We're not house hunting til Spring, so no hurry but this is a huge concern obviously since it is how we pay the bills

Looking forward to your responses as they come along.

Thanks, all!

[bryan61]

The cable provider in the Escanaba area is Chater Communications. I think they are available all over the UP. I know of many government agencies and businesses that used their business packages.

Back in the dial up days UP logon used to have their main services out of Houghton hancock. Im not sure waht kind of broadband they might offer but I pretty sure they cater to business also

[jeeg]

Charter is indeed in Houghon/Hancock (spouse is an employee there)

[FreeSpirited1]

if either of you have experienced any outages, though, using the internet or is it a pretty reliable connection.

Especially interested in what you may know, 'Jeeg'...spouse working there and all.

Is it 100%? We've always used Time Warner and it's solid.

Thanks again!

[SpaceGhost79]

I don't know if anything is 100%, but I've been using Charter for the past few years and the only time I've ever had an outage is when some bonehead cut the wrong line and pretty much the entire U.P. lost connection for several hours. Other than that extremely rare occurrence, I haven't had any problems.

[jeeg]

Originally Posted by SpaceGhost79

.... and the only time I've ever had an outage is when some bonehead cut the wrong line and pretty much the entire U.P. lost connection for several hours.

That's happened twice since we moved up here in April of '06.

I personally had a week of shoddy connection when they were rebuilding the main cable trunk (fiber optics) out at the main road.

Other then that it would be once every three months or so it might go down for a few minutes whether for maintainence or problems...... but I have this computer on almost 24/7 so most people probably wouldn't even notice that much.
We have the 10 meg home hook-up and it's very fast.

Should of talked to the spouse before typing all of that.
Business customers can get something called a "Static IP" which I guess means you're connected 24/7 to a very fast (up to 16 meg?), very secure line?
(I'm being told this as I'm typing)
She doesn't deal with the business customers, but if you go to the Charter.com site, click on business, click on Internet & data processing, then on the left you'll have a bunch of categories that should answer your questions.

[New_Horizon]

When we've visited we saw Pasty.net and Jammadots (sp?) in the UP might be worth looking into.

[Lindseyup67]

IMO Charter cable and all of their services are outrageously priced, prob due to the fact that they have the market cornered up here. I have DSL thru ATT/yahoo...pay $19.95/month and have never had a problem with it. A hugely better alternative to Charter!!

[johnnygtar]

We run our businesses online so reliability is important when we move to the U.P.
We've got Charter here where we live in California. It's expensive but at least we'll know what to expect! LOL

[SpaceGhost79]

Charter will probably be losing a lot of business in the Marquette area soon as Northern Michigan University plans to install a WiMAX network this fall. This will allow anyone with an NMU account to access the internet from their house for free, provided they are within the coverage area. I'm not sure which areas will be covered, but I expect it to be the entire City of Marquette and they are planning on parts of the surrounding areas like Harvey (they're going to look and see where the most concentrated areas of students/employees are). Needless to say, the moment this happens, a lot of students and employees will be dumping their Charter cable modem service. I hope my area is covered. Saving another $50/month would be very nice!