[sllug-members]: Utopia providers

[Gary Thornock]

--- Mac Newbold <mac at macnewbold.com> wrote:
> Today at 12:50pm, Steven Retz said:
>> I am in the process of buying a house in West Valley City.
>> And like 2 of the 4 service providors for utopia, and would
>> like to get people's personal opinions about the providers.

>> I like mstar because you can get voip and tv thru the service
>> without going against your internet bandwidth and they are
>> ready to provide these services.

I haven't used their TV (I don't watch TV), but the phone service
through MStar is pretty average, and the internet service is
decent but no better than that.  On the plus side, though,
they do offer all three services independently, so you could
theoretically have their phone and TV services and still use
XMission for internet.

> I believe mstar also (optionally?) filters your internet
> content.  Some might consider that a pro, others might consider
> it a con.

MStar's filtering is optional.  XMission offers optional
filtering too.  In both cases it's free.  (I believe there's
still a law in Utah that all ISPs must offer optional filtering,
but they don't have to offer it for free.)

On the other hand, MStar does throttle unencrypted bittorrent,
so if you're planning to use that much, look somewhere else.

>> xmission I like because they have helped out the community,
>> but they don't provide any other services.

I was an XMission customer for several years, before I finally
had to switch because I can't get DSL at my house and XMission
isn't an iProvo provider.  I wish I could switch back.  I've
never seen an ISP with better quality of technical service or
customer service.

The *day* XMission becomes an iProvo provider, I'll be back on
XMission.  Until then I'm using MStar (internet only, with phone
through SunRocket), but only because I don't have any better
options.