Monroe Utilities Network

Very poor internet provider.
Rates are much higher as they have no competition in the area.
My internet goes in and out all the time. Recently it wouldn’t stay connected for three days. Finally I called into customer service and the guy that answered said «oh, my system shows that you’re Internet has dropped 77 times over the last 48 hours». It then took two days for the problem to be corrected.
Longest I’ve had uninterrupted service is three weeks. I’m convinced that this small town service provider only cares about taking customers money and is capitalizing on no competitors.
I’ve been at my residents for almost a year and I’m not reviewing my lease, I’m moving out of this ridiculous place.
I hope one day soon a major internet company moves in an completely shuts Monroe internet service down.

Inconsistent speeds, insanely high ping latency, lowest of the low end hardware, rude customer service, poorly trained technicians, high prices, what else…
Pros:
I can sometimes do google searches.
Cons:
Inconsistent speeds — Let’s start here, the best speeds I’ve ever seen were about .8mb/​s. But it usually stays around .4mb/​s with frequent drops into the 50kb/​s area.
Ping — … I don’t even know what to say here. Consistent
1000ms+ ping latency. Just baffling.
Hardware — Belkin, bare bones, single band, 2.4ghz 802.11b router. Are these guys actually serious or are they joking… Its 2015, an 802.11n dual band router is like 50 bucks. Not to mention you pay Monroe utilities $ 2.00/month to rent this paperweight.
Customer Service — Incredibly long wait times blended with transfer after transfer to different departments that can’t even help you, makes for one stressful phone call. Or two… Or seven.
Technicians — Give a raccoon a butter knife and it could do a better job. After explicitly explaining the rooms I wanted and did not want my internet run to, the technician decided not only to wire every bedroom in the house (staying 2 hours later than he had to) but in two of the rooms he drilled a good ¼″ hole straight through my carpet and floor into the crawlspace below. I really hope he just forgot his V8 that morning and that’s not his normal work.
Price — The lowest plan of 1mb/​256kb is $ 21.99/ month plus the $ 2.00 rental fee of the router. The highest plan is $ 100/​month for 50mb/​3mb. I’m currently paying for the second highest package of 25mb/​2mb for $ 70/​month.
I’ve never seen the speed above .8mb.
To conclude, this service is not even worth the energy my body had to metabolize so I could type this. Now before you start defending them saying «but what if there’s nothing wrong on their end? What troubleshooting have you done to fix it?»
Short answer, a lot. My lan rig has an Asus PCE-​AC66 card that pulls 120mb+ from Comcast at my brothers place, I’ve replaced the router with an older nighthawk x6 I had, completely configured it per Monroe utilities instructions, the modem has also been replaced by a Motorola Surfboard that was collecting dust. I have tried changing my DNS to openDNS and googleDNS to no avail. I have called countless times and have even had the situation escalated without success. Such absurd ping results, slow and inconsistent speeds, and appalling customer service probably makes this the worst expedience I’ve ever had with an ISP. And I used to have Windstream.
I really try to stay positive when writing about poor experiences with companies but that was not the case with Monroe Utilities. I was so angry and frustrated with the whole ordeal I simply could not find anything pleasant about paying these people for their «service».