Wireless Internet in Minneapolis (Hills: sales, how much, home)

[po2ter]

I'm moving back to Minneapolis (Linden Hills/ Fulton to be specific) from the SW suburbs in the next few weeks. One of the interesting decisions we have is what to do with our internet service. I've been a Comcast customer for years and don't necessarily have any problems with them but I've never considered different options.

I work from home so a strong reliable connection is very important. The USI WiFi network in the city seems intriguing but not sure if this would be a good option for me. What have folks' experience been with this service or other options for high speed internet in Mpls? What are some of the pros & cons of going with a service like this or something like Comcast or Qwest? I also have a Verizon4G MiFi device I use when on the road that I'll be able to use to supplement whatever provider I go with.

Thanks!

[1stpontiac]

Originally Posted by po2ter

I'm moving back to Minneapolis (Linden Hills/ Fulton to be specific) from the SW suburbs in the next few weeks. One of the interesting decisions we have is what to do with our internet service. I've been a Comcast customer for years and don't necessarily have any problems with them but I've never considered different options.

I work from home so a strong reliable connection is very important. The USI WiFi network in the city seems intriguing but not sure if this would be a good option for me. What have folks' experience been with this service or other options for high speed internet in Mpls? What are some of the pros & cons of going with a service like this or something like Comcast or Qwest? I also have a Verizon4G MiFi device I use when on the road that I'll be able to use to supplement whatever provider I go with.

Thanks!

I don't have any experience with it, but these options...
USI Wireless - Pricing Information
...
don't strike me as particularly appealing. I think you can get at least 7Mbps through century link for the same or cheaper (they were advertising $20/mo recently), and I think their upload speeds are much higher than 1Mbps. Going from cable modem to this I think you'd find the speeds to be fairly limited.

[moving123456]

Clear WiMax is another option. It is the same service that Sprint is using for their "4G" connections.

Wireless Internet - Mobile 4G Wireless Internet Access from CLEAR

[DaPerpKazoo]

Don't forget that it's not all about bandwidth-- latency matters too. Depending on your specific location, clear/version can have crazy latency.

[lurpy1]

I have USI and I would rate myself as "satisfied", no better no worse. We have had outages, but we also had outages with Comcast, despite the fact that with Comcast we were connected via wired. I estimate I've had about 16 hours of downtime in the past year, which rates out to 99.8% availability.

If you are willing to bundle services and work hard to continually get Comcast to extend your promos or give you the latest and greatest, Comcast will have a better price. We were pissed off by the lack of transparency in pricing (never could answer how much we actually were paying for any single service) and found that sales reps were empowered to verbally offer promos when we asked for them but never apply them. Once we switched our home phone from land line to cell phone, our bundle prices vanished and that hastened our move to USI. I'd make it again.

It's also nice that anywhere in town where you can pick up the USI signal, you can use the service

Qwest/Century Link is very similar to Comcast in terms of approach, pros, cons