[flamehunter]

We currently have Verizon DSL at 1.5Mbps for around $49/month. My wife saw that Shentel provides 5 Mbps for 39.99/ month. Does anyone have Shentel? Is their service good? Does any one know of any other options for faster and/or cheaper internet in Campbell county?

[LUconn]

how is Verizon $49? I thought it was $30.

[flamehunter]

That is what we pay with no home phone service.

[JDUB]

I had Jet Broadband, which is now Shentel, and kept it through the conversion to Shentel. Over a 4 year period I suffered through that company. I hate them so badly that I wouldn't even look at houses in areas that only Shentel serviced. The internet went out several times a month for days at a time, and they always blamed my router. Then when the repair guy came out, he'd blame the wiring in the house or a bad line at the road. When all was said and done, I'd been through 3 wireless routers, 4 cable modems, had my whole house rewired by them, fixed the line it came in on, and it still didn't work consistently.

I'd pay triple for verizon if it works.

[flamehunter]

Thanks JDUB, that's the info I was looking for.

[ALUmnus]

I had Jet Broadband, which is now Shentel, and kept it through the conversion to Shentel. Over a 4 year period I suffered through that company. I hate them so badly that I wouldn't even look at houses in areas that only Shentel serviced. The internet went out several times a month for days at a time, and they always blamed my router. Then when the repair guy came out, he'd blame the wiring in the house or a bad line at the road. When all was said and done, I'd been through 3 wireless routers, 4 cable modems, had my whole house rewired by them, fixed the line it came in on, and it still didn't work consistently.

I'd pay triple for verizon if it works.

I get this occasionally from them. They've even told me that if it's bad wiring, they can't help and I'd have to call an electrician. Now for the most part the service is fine, but they do go through spells where service goes out constantly.

[Hold My Own]

My parents live about .7 miles from my house (like a crow flies) and I live in a spot between the city limits and county line. Sure enough I dont exist to either the city cable company or county cable company (if I dont exist to them what are the chances I dont exist to the IRS and shouldnt pay taxes? hmmm) so my options for internet are Hughes net. I did that for about a month.... absolutely the biggest waste of money I've ever seen in my life....seriously who puts a 250MB limit on bandwidth now a days???

ANYWAYS I bought a wireless repeater and wireless antenna and beam my parents internet signal (Shentel) to my house. I now enjoy 10MB/s down speeds...it's simply amazing. Shentel has quality internet...much better than I was expecting. I dont care if my funds only allowed me to live in a cardboard box, that box would still have high speed internet...it's simply to valuable to anyones life.


Anyways all that to say Shentel is amazing...now I say all of this with not knowing how much my parents pay for internet a month...I would imagine it's rather expensive, but for what we're getting (or I'm getting for that matter ) its worth it.

[Hold My Own]

EDIT: I just saw Jdub's post....if this would have been 6 months ago I would have said the EXACT same thing. Their service was spotty and etc etc...however, the majority of the issues was with my parents router and not having the latest firmware...once I upgraded that we now have about 15 devices connected to the line. Their customer service is pretty much useless...but VZ is the same way...I mean at least Shentel's customer service reps are dumb as bricks but live in Rustburg! VZ rep's have the worst accent EVER and say their name is BOB...sure it is buddy. CS is bad with both companies...I personally shy away from VZ because of having to share the connections and not having a dedicated line (I'm not sure you have an option with VZ here to have a dedicated line...maybe you do).

I'm not sure what your bandwidth demands are...but I know for a fact that VZ wouldnt meet the needs I have. My fiance has VZ and parents have Shentel...so I'm comparing both current services.

[flamehunter]

Thanks HMO. Our service from Verizon has been very good. We have not had internet go out at all that I can remember. We are looking to upgrade speed and I was interested in hearing about Shentel's service since their deal could save me some $. Sounds like a mixed bag. I agree on the Verizon Cust service though, what few times we have dealt with them, they are robots somewhere reading a script for the most part.
So, if I bought an antenna and wireless repeater, would your parents signal reach my house???

[Hold My Own]

Ha, quite possible. I know I'm picking up signals (unsecured) that I've never seen before!

See if Shentel offers a 30 day test period...if they do I'd give them a shot. Nobody around can compare to their speeds.


But...when VZ FIOS comes around, that's a different story.

[ALUmnus]

(like a crow flies)

I like it

[ECUnited]

Since it's been about a year since the last post on this topic, I want to bring it up again. I'm up on Candler's and originally the only option I had was VZ. I'm supposed to be getting 3Mbps, but rarely get over 1.5. I had them out two months ago, and the tech told me that had throttled me back to 1.5. He called had them set me back to 3MB and things were great, until this week. Been traveling for a couple of weeks and came back and checked, and I'm back to 1.5. Called VZ and went through the painful process of talking with a tech until I lost patience telling them it was on their end and not mine. Bottom line, as long as I'm getting 1/2 of what I'm supposed to be getting, then according to VZ that's within the acceptable range. They say I'm still set to be getting 3MB, but my download rate is only 1.7.

So.....again I'm exploring options, and Shentel is the only other possibility. Now that I'm working from home, it's crucial that my connection be reliable, and at least 3Mbps for VOIP. Any updates from anyone who has Shentel in the area and don't hold back your opinions (not that anyone on this forum has ever been accused of being bashful)

[flamehunter]

We did switch to Shentel several months ago and have not had any problems or interruptions with our service. I think we have 5 Mbps and are paying a little less than we were with Verizon with the lower speed service.

[ECUnited]

That is horrendously slow. I get 15 Mbps for $49 through Comcast.

Comcast is not an option. Only options are VZ and now possibly Shentel. Only TV option we had was DirecTv or Dish, but I chunked DirecTv and went to free over-air with an antenna. Works great.

[flameslinger]

I've had Shentel in Campbell county for about 2 years. Pay for 10Mbps, and end up with a little over 8Mbps, which is fast enough to do anything I need. No problems streaming TV and movies, and I work from home, so I use the internet all day every day. Service has been out maybe 6 times in 2 years, and never for more than 6-8 hours. Would I prefer Comcast? Yes, it was a little faster for less money, but since this is my option, I am well pleased with Shentel.

[El Scorcho]

I do not miss the Lynchburg area ISPs.

I pay $40 a month for 12Mb DSL via Windstream and it is rock solid. Zero complaints.

Of course, the alternative is "50Mb" cable from Time-Warner for approximately three quarters of my yearly salary. So, maybe I'm being too hard on Shentel & Comcast? Nah.

Verizon was fine for me in Lynchburg, but at the time the fastest speed of DSL they offered was 7Mb. I lived with it, but I wouldn't want to go back.

Free advice: Never get cable Internet if you live in an apartment building. Especially in a college town.

[jbock13]

I just switched from Verizon DSL to Comcast. It was okay, but DSL just wasn't cutting it with multiple devices. I'm now getting 25 MBPS as opposed to 1.5 (the best we could do with Verizon), and sure it's a little more costly but it's just fine.

[Echomalleus]

First off, I want to echo a previous post... this time a year ago, I would have screamed from the mountain tops to run from Shentel. Now, I fully recommend them. Backstory...

We moved to "Rustburg" (across from Hyland Heights) 3.5 years ago when Jet Broadband was in charge. They offered 8mbps down/384kpbs up for $40/month. It was great. Only thing was the 70GB monthly cap, which when using our Netflix account really made things difficult. Around the fall of 2010 Shentel bought them out, and lifted the cap restriction...hoozah I thought! However we soon realized why the cap was in place. The infrastructure was so poor that we could barely run a youtube video. We decided to get dish network and ditch netflix until the internet was fixed. Over 2011 it seemed that there was progress, albeit slow. Shentel took out ads stating how they were pumping $30 million into the system to upgrade everything.

Long story short, fastforward to 2012. We're now paying $50 a month for 10mbps down / 2 mbps up and I can honestly say we're able to squeeze almost everything out of it, even during the primetime night hours. We'll be dumping our dish and moving back to netflix when our contract runs up in a couple of months. Would I recommend Shentel? Now-yes. Prior to 2012-no.