SubscribeAlaska Communications has found a marketing angle to combat Alaska’s dominant cable operator — GCI, which has slapped arbitrary usage caps and overlimit fees (up to $30/GB) on its customers. ACS has made cap-free Internet browsing a hallmark of their marketing campaign:
Alaska Communications vs. the Cable Company
Why Alaska Communications Home Internet is the best choice.
No Nasty Surprises on Your Bill
Tired of nasty surprises on your cable company’s Internet bill from the cable company? With Home Internet Service from Alaska Communications, there are no overage charges. Surf, stream, download, watch, and play – all without worry of “extra fees” for going over your bill. With Alaska Communications Home Internet Service, you won’t go over – it’s unlimited!
No Data Limits
Say you hopped online just a bit more this month – surfing, watching your favorite streaming movies, or maybe the kids were trying to win the online tournament of their favorite game while you were posting to your favorite social media site. We don’t think your Internet should be capped or “throttled.” That means, if you get close to your data limit, the cable company will slow down your Internet to limit your connection. With our Home Internet Service, you’ll get to use the Internet the way you want to – at the speeds you deserve!
ACS recognizes the truth for most broadband customers: They loathe usage caps and throttled broadband speeds, overlimit fees and bill shock. Nobody should have to learn what a gigabyte is and be forced to watch a usage gauge before deciding whether or not to use the Internet as they wish. We congratulate ACS for delivering consumers a better choice in broadband and a worry-free Internet experience. We hope this will send a message to GCI that Internet Overcharging is unacceptable.
Stop the Cap! recommends our Alaskan readers patronize the state’s largest cap-free ISP: ACS.
Here’s the flip side of that though: Alaska Communications is slow, unless you’re getting their symmetric Ethernet package…their fastest package tops out at 10 mbps for over $100, whereas competitor GCI’s lowest tier is 10 Mbps (and GCI offers 22 Mbps in newly upgraded areas). The company is also expensive for a given service tier. 320 kbps is $49, 1 Mbps is $69 and $89 buys you either 3 Mbps or 4 Mbps, depending on line conditions. Oh, and you have to buy a landline from Alaska Communications to get their DSL service, which tends to have a pretty sizable… Read more »
By the way, some of the information that I mentioned in my comment was gathered while I was in the state (primarily in Fairbanks) last week and the week before that. 10 Mbps symmetric ACS Ethernet is fun to use but my bet is that it’s pretty darned expensive.
I’ve been on ACS’s unlimited 10Mbit down/1mbit up service since the day the launched it. They do bundle a phone line with it as part of the ‘package’ and yes, your bill is a premium compared to unlimited lower 48 providers @ $109 not incl. taxes/fees. I also have ACS’s business lines for my company as we terminated our contract with GCI there as well, those can be faster but yes, they cost 2-3x as much, however they do have SLA’s and full support plus Cisco hardware included. GCI has always tended to have slightly better latency via their Fiber… Read more »
Thanks for providing a counterpoint to my point. I merely sampled a half-dozen or so connections when I was in the state, and when I was on GCI cable-based service things appeared to work just fine. Then again, I wasn’t aware of what the speeds at a given location were /supposed/ to be.
Scott, Thank you for all your info.
It really helps. I have a 200,000 MB plan, “22” Mbit for about $90 per month. This month, Jan 2014, my bill came for $285 because of overage. I went over by 50% of my monthly plan, but still my bill came 200% over. I just signed up for the 30-day free trial with ACS unlimited.
wow… CRY ME A RIVER are you sad because youre able to physically download over 200gb EVERY SINGLE MONTH? You dont even know how good you have it. use a bandwidth monitor and never complain about internet price again while you are downloading faster than 1mb/s….
Corrections to Ian’s post:
You do not need to purchase a landline with Alaska Communications Home Internet…it is available as a stand-alone product.
In regards to the speed comparisons: I’ve experienced several instances where I’d purchased 15MB from GCI only to discover I’m getting about 6 or 7MB after running a speed test. ACS delivers the speed purchased in every case that I’ve tested and aims for the best possible customer experience.
I’m still waiting for ACS to come out to the Mat-Su Valley. I have very bad internet out by Knik, which
is 768k.
Was I not surprised when I got my $650.00 lifeline phone bill from ACS. I had been a never wavering customer with MTU/ASC since the mid 80’s; some dumb thing about loyalty to the telephone company. “Damn it, Janet” retired. Her girl friend called her that too. It was from the Rocky Horror Movie, so she liked it and that’s how I remembered her name. She was even better than Lily Tomlin at resolving issues, not to mention service with preferred customer ‘benefits’. With my $35.00 unlimited portable Clearwire 2MB service and GCI’s flat <$10.00 including tax cell phone service… Read more »
I have switched to ACS because of paying close to $300 dollars one month because everyone in my household at the time streamed music and movies, used services such as Voyage or VoiP on top of surfing the web causing us to go over our cap. That was just too much. Higher speed is great but if it cost so much that you can afford to put food on the table then I’ll take one slower speed and wait. Caps are useless and a poor excuse to gouge customers.
I switched to ACS about 3 months ago. It’s only $89 per month and my family and I watch all the netflix movies, sports, pandora, vevo, etc…… without worrying anymore about going over. It was the best decision I’ve made for a long time. I wished I could have made it earlier or at least before I paid $285 to GCI for one month because I went over my usage just by 20%. The speed is slower, but nothing slows down while watching movies or live sport events through my Roku. You cannot notice it that much or most of… Read more »
uuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhh NOONONONONO gci offers cable. yea there’s a cap. WHO CARES ITS 1MB/S DL SPEED!!!!! guess how fast my horrible evil lame stupid acs internet goes? 32kb/s. never more, some times less. “fastest in your area” forget you jerk. acs should be horribly embarrassed. they’re talking about 3g/4g improvements when i have FREAKING DIALUP FOR THE COST OF DSL anywhere else in the country i could gey 10mbps for what i pay!!!!!! KANSAS CITY MISSOURI HAS GOOGLE FIBER. 1GBP. NO LIE. oh yea its free too haha novel concept, 3000x better service for nothing. acs is horrrrrible i wish they… Read more »
anchorage jerks having luxury of choosing your speed, comparing against others…. this is alaska. its rural. you cityslick pansys are good, NOW ACS WORK ON THE REST OF THE STATE, YA KNOW THE MAJORITY??? anchorage fairbanks and Juneau are just fine for a WHILE. i would do horrible horrible things for a fraction of your fancy high speed… ITS NOT FAIR I WANNA MOVE TO KC MISSOURI AND LET GOOGLE FIBER TOUCH MY BAD PLACE 🙁
I have been waiting for ACS Internet services (4G cell and Broadband) in Delta Junction for 19 months. I live 4 miles from Delta Junction and apparently it’s no mans land. For broadband their coverage map shows service across the road but not on my side of the road. When I called for service I was told I was 1000 feet from an already overloaded access point. They offered to put me on a waiting list. Well I’ve been waiting! There are 20 homes within that 1000 feet. AT&T has been offering 4G service in Delta for about a year… Read more »