Frequently Asked Questions

What does it cost?

There are 4 costs involved:  membership fee, monthly service fee, equipment fee and installation fee:

1. One time membership fee to join the coop of $75

2. Monthly service fee is $74

3. Equipment cost vary between roughly $100 to $420 depending on what is needed for a good link. Typically they are between $175 and $360.

4. Basic installation is $180 and is provided by a third party professional installer who would work directly for you.

Can I install the gear myself?

We do not encourage this; mounting and particularly aiming of the dish is not always straight forward, particularly if you do not have line of sight to the tower.

What kind of speeds can I expect?

Generally, maximum download speeds will be between 10 to 25 Mbps.  Speeds will vary throughout the day, they will vary depending on your particular location and will even vary depending on what “speed test” you use.  The goal of the coop was to provide download speeds of up to 10 Mbps, so I’m happy we have surpassed that in most cases.

Are there data caps, overage charges, etc?

Absolutely NOT!  You use the service when you want and use it as much or as little as you want.  

Is there a contract?

No: It’s month to month. You can cancel anytime.

Is the service reliable, is it working good?

Yes.  There are certain locations that can be challenging and conditions (weather, etc.) which can have impact on marginal links. We have worked hard to reduce or eliminate these issues and provide as robust a network as possible.

What if it doesn’t work at my location?

You’ll get a full refund in most cases. The only exception are non-standard installation charges which do not apply to most users.  We have never had to give any refunds, however.  We run a 3D topographic simulation of the link before hand, so we have a good idea of what we're dealing with. If there is any question, we'll do a physical on site link study before hand. There may be a charge for this on site visit. The bottom line, we do everything we can to know the service will work before we install it.

Can you make it any cheaper?

We would like to but, as a small neighborhood co-op, we don't have the economy of scale to make that happen right now. We are focusing on re-investing in upgrading the network rather than lowering prices. I can say our service is a bargin compared to satellite and cellular services. A significant number of our users have switched from those services and never gone back. Those services often have data caps anywhere from 50 GB to 300 GB per month (for higher costs). Our average subscriber uses 580 GB per month and that number goes up continuously.