Who’s Hot, Who’s not. A Review of SE Idaho broadband Providers.
Equipment Needed
This will be a rather short section as most of the equipment used is pretty straight forward.
CableOne 
CableOne uses a really straight forward equipment setup. They use the existing coaxial cables that your cable television also runs over for a transport method and a cable modem that you can either purchase on your own, or rent from them for an additional $5 a month.
If you would rather purchase your modem (Which I would recommend) and save yourself $60 a year, you can use any of the following CableOne approved modems.
Qwest
Qwest also uses a really simple equipment setup. Being the company that owns all our local phone lines, it makes sense for them to use that as their transport method. If your home has phone lines, and you live within their serviceable area (check here) chances are you won’t have any problem getting DSL.
You can also rent the Actiontec® GT701-wg from Qwest for $5 a month, or purchase it directly from them for $59.99. You may also choose from a list of approved Qwest DSL modems.
MicroServ
We will only be reviewing MicroServ’s wireless equipment as their DSL equipment is the same as Qwest’s. If you are willing to sign an annual contract with MicroServ, I would really recommend doing that unless you are willing to shell out $300 for their setup. The antenna/modem is really an amazing piece of equipment as far as wireless equipment goes, but as wireless is still a rather new technology the equipment has yet to come down in price.
Teton Wireless
Teton Wireless uses a little bit different setup. As far as I know you cannot purchase the antennas they use. I had my own when I had them and they still used their own. Not a big deal though really unless you want to retain ownership of all your equipment. I wasn’t too persistent about the issue, but maybe if you were they would sell you the equipment or use your existing equipment, provided that it was compatible.
They also use the same Motorola Surfboard SB5100 modem as CableOne. You can purchase it directly from Teton Wireless for $80, or it could be had for a little less else where.
August 26th, 2005 at 8:21 am
I like your website, it has eye appeal and easy to navigate.
I noticed you do not list Fairpoint as local broadband connection.
Gene A Crawford
August 29th, 2005 at 5:49 pm
I like your website, it has eye appeal and easy to navigate.
Thanks, Gene. We have worked quite hard to find a design that is (hopefully) easy for all to use and navigate.
We did not list Fairpoint for a couple of reasons.
1) Their web site(s) had little to no information, especially when it comes to their technical support. This article relied heavily on the information made publicly available, which, fairpoint made either very obscure, or non-existent.
2) There isn’t really any one “fairpoint”. They operate mainly through third party retailers, whom, as luck would have it, are mostly our competition. I just don’t feel comfortable sending our traffic to our competition, for any reason.
Thanks for posting though, hopefully we’ll be able to keep some content here for the local area that people will be interested in. If you have any ideas, please feel free!