 Review by Island Jeff 
UPDATED: 9 days ago
member for 3.4 years, 1127 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Beaver Island,Charlevoix,MI
 $99 per month (24 month contract)
 about 16 days
 "Simply amazing to have low-latency broadband at last"
 "Not wild about the actiontec modem's firewall/setup/documentation but works ok"
 "Simply Excellent! THANK YOU to TDS for providing this"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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~~~ 12/27/08 Update ~~~
Received a system PM prompting me to update the review. Nothing much to report -- I've used the system heavily these past months and am still 100% satisfied. Great service at what I feel is a fair price for this market. Rock solid system as good now as the day it was installed. Thank you TDS.
~~~ Original Review ~~~
I've only been a TDS DSL customer for 1 day now, but after waiting for this for 8 years on Satellite (Starband, Wildblue), couldn't contain my excitement on finally re-entering the 21st century. TDS DSL is simply amazing compared to any other option ever available here (with the exception of T1s at $800-$1100/month)
Thank you TDS!
Added: I have now been on TDS DSL for a month and a half and am extremely impressed -- being online ~8 hours per day, I have not witnessed a single glitch, disconnect, slowness, etc. It has been flawless. I expected good service, but with a brand new service here actually expected some issues. I'm blown away by not only how quick the connection is but how rock solid reliable it has been. Well done TDS! Updating rating because in the scope of things install and tech seem better than 4/5. (I'd like to see the rating options be more granular than 1/2/3/4/5 as the results are then displayed in percentage; I'm now giving install and tech support a 5 because they were a whole lot better than 80%. Previously I had given them a 4 because I would have liked to see the paperwork shipped with the modem instead of separate as mine lagged behind by a day causing confusion (which number the dsl was setup on where we had more than one line) and related, to get a simple answer there was some hold time involved. But these issues are really minor and don't warrant knocking 20% off, so I wish there was something between 4 (80%) and 5 (100%) possible to give... I'd honestly give them 100% on presales, reliability, services, and value, 95% on install co-ordination, and 90% on tech support.)
Followup comments:  
spider died
@cox.net
| yay!! I am so happy for you!
You have been putting up with underpar services for so long..
This is the least you deserve..especially since you have been so helpful on the satellite boards.... to everybody.. congrats, goodluck and whatever else. yeah have fun!!  | |
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Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18
 ·WildBlue
 ·TDS
| Re: yay!! Thanks so much!
Being here 30 miles out in Lake Michigan I absolutely love everything about it with all my heart with the one exception that I've really missed and longed for a solid low-latency Internet connection for the last 8 years since having to give one up when leaving the big city where I went to school. Satellite provided a lifeline since 2001, but now this TDS connection is simply amazing in comparison. I am so happy with it that I can't put it into words! I imagine they felt the same way the day electricity came to town.
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Wildblue in Lake Michigan | Color Printing Forum
Unhappy with noticeably slower secure sites, higher latency due to 11/17/06 firmware changes | |
| weierj80
join:2008-05-16
| TDS... I had some issues with them initially too. Took almost two weeks for them to get my DSL turned on (they had turned on the service to an empty apartment in my building by mistake apparently). As far as the constant dropping, that previous message about "every 23 hours" is 100% correct! I had the same issue. After 5 heated phone calls to support I figured out what the deal was (got fam who work for Verizon...little hint, when you finally talk to someone from a phone company demand to be put through to escalation...makes them a little jumpy). TDS uses temps for just about everything, I don't even know if they employ permanent staff. This includes some of their techs (I know I've applied). The constant dropping has to do with their primitive system for load balancing their DNS servers. If your using one of their modems or routers this doesn't seem to be a big deal (for reasons I cannot explain) , however if your like me and using your own router you'll have to power cycle to get things back "...or... Use OpenDNS. OpenDNS is free, you set up and account, add their addresses into your DNS fields in the router and TADA! No more resets. 3 months power cycling every day...haven't had to do it since adding OpenDNS.
PS did I mention it's free? | |
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Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18
·WildBlue
·TDS
| Re: TDS... I first ran with the supplied actiontec modem only for a couple of weeks with no issues. I now have my own router (smoothwall box) behind the tds modem because I like its easier firewall rule input, squid, and usage graphs per client -- I set the actiontec modem to transparent bridged. I also have had zero drops and no glitches at all and no dns errors with the smoothwall box set to pickup dns servers via dhcp from TDS. (I did run my own dns server with treewalk and use opendns on a previous satellite system, so I don't doubt your advice if the dns server that serves you is having issues) Also don't mean to be a TDS-fanboy, but my TDS service has been perfect so far for the last two months. Being on satellite for so many years, I expected some glitches here and there, maintenance windows, etc., but so far I have had zero downtime with TDS which has been quite nice in this remote location!
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Very happy TDS DSL user | Wildblue in Lake Michigan | |
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