Who’s Hot, Who’s not. A Review of SE Idaho broadband Providers.
Overall Customer Satisfaction
CableOne 
CableOne has earned a 5 star rating from us. Overall we have been very happy with CableOne. Their service is very stable, their tech support is great, and the speeds are awesome. We would definitely recommend them to anyone. The only thing that I personally wish CableOne would improve on is their upload speed, but that’s because I do a lot of uploading for my work, a lot more than most people.
From working on computers in this area, we have not encountered more than a handful of people that were dissatisfied with their CableOne service, and it is very simple to set a computer back up on their service if we have to re-install the computer. Keep up the good work, guys!
Qwest
Qwest has also earned a 5 star rating. We would really only recommend Qwest for DSL in this area, because no matter who you go with, you are getting the actual DSL circuit from Qwest anyway, and they are a lot cheaper than anyone else. Qwest really has excellent technical support, very knowledgeable people in their DSL center, and their website is just awe inspiring as far as the amount of information it contains.
From a computer repair technician’s standpoint they are great. Their setup is also pretty plug and play, very simple to setup or re-attach a computer to if we have to do work on it. Always nice to work with them as well.
MicroServ 
For a local ISP MicroServ is pretty great. They’ve really come a long way as far as broadband is concerned. If you all ready have a television service that you are happy with, I would really recommend them for a wireless broadband connection. Their setup is amazingly simple. The main area I would like to see them improve on is technical support and maybe some cheaper equipment prices.
From working on customer’s computers that had MicroServ Wireless though, it is a breeze to hook back up to. Good choice of equipment, they’ve really simplified wireless!
Teton Wireless 
Teton Wireless started with a really good idea. They are still the only company (That we know of) that provides both cable television and Internet over a wireless connection. Pretty cool concept. Still don’t have Comedy Central, but hey, that’s a whole ‘nother issue. For as large a company as Teton Wireless is, you would expect a lot better technical support. I am very disappointed in them as far as that issue. The service is great for the most part, the equipment is reliable and so Is the service.
From a technician’s standpoint the setup could be simplified. You have to set a static IP address in the main computer or router for their service to work correctly. This is not that good for an novice computer user. It would really be a lot better if they would set that up as DHCP, or dynamic so the customer never has to worry about any of that technical stuff. They service an area larger than that of MicroServ’s, which is a pretty large area (Idaho AND Montana). I won’t even get in to the website aspect of this. We’ll just leave it at, come on guys, pretty, pretty, please with a cherry on top, give us some support here!
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!