Where can I find the cable vs phone company tv commercials?

Has anyone else heard of open range communications?

• This company was given $374 million from the federal gov't to expand broadband coverage into rural areas unserved by DSL or cable broadband. They started back in 3Q of '09 to start this project. Trouble is, there website is a joke and there customer service consists of about 3 people who cannot tell you where they service nor provide anything on their map of where they service. I also received an ad call from the retailer ad looking for sales reps for satellite TV sales i posted on craigslist from a kid in arkansas who said they were only paying him $20 a sale. The girl in there customer service dept finally told me, after me grilling her for answers, that they service most of there home state of colorado, a small tricket of alabama and one tiny community in arkansas. There plan in there website calls for a 5 year plan to cover 573 communities and 6 million subs. It's been a year and they've acheived maybe 5% according to where the girl told me they covered. Also, the kid who called me upset about them told me that they were down to himself and one other sales rep because the product was only available in a competitve ISP market where people have been able to get HSI thru not only the cable company, but DSL thru the telco. So...........It seems now that a company can borrow 1/3 of a billion dollars of funds that our nation doesn't have to be just another ISP in a small town, totally negating the sole purpose of the stimulus funds to bring INTERNET TO UNSERVICED RURAL AREAS. Meanwhile we have a no named company, that you'd have to dig up to find anything about, operating on minuscule overhead creating barely any jobs and not providing internet access to the proposed target holding 1/3 of a cool billion. BTW, this ingenious technology is just 4G wimax that's set up on cell phone towers with a 2-3 mile radius. Sound familiar. Clear wimax. Accept they used private funds. Not tax dollars. I guess i don't really have a question folks. Just wanted to share this info with my fellow taxpayers. Once again, the name of the company is OPEN RANGE COMMUNICATIONS! in colorado. Please read the entire post and then check out the company on a google search before commenting if you're going to give a serious response to my post. Thanks for reading my justifiable rant folks. P.S. Working class taxpayer=Swindled and Scammed

• Answer:

  I'VE HEARD OF OPEN RANGE...PLEASE ALLOW ME: Our experience: We recently purchased OpenRange & we live in one of those Alabama rural areas you mentioned in your "rant". Our local area consists of several small towns running along the state line between AL & GA. After researching OpenRange a bit, making a few phone calls & talking to a local partner listed on the OpenRange website (who has, by the way, a very solid reputation in our area), we decided to have the rep come to our home for a demo. Lucky for us, we were able to meet Haden Giddings,General Manager for Alabama. We were very pleased with his presentation & felt he gave direct answers to our questions. (I know because, as I said, I already researched the company a bit online back to 2008 & spoke to a few of the partners.) We purchased the modem & have been using it ever since. Had a few tech issues which were resolved in a timely manner. Take into consideration this is a new ISP around here! Thus far, we have been very pleased with OpenRange & their timely response to our needs, customer service, and performance of the Freedom 4G modem. It's sad that the employees you spoke to felt the need to down the company & vent their issues on a business call. We have not been on the receiving end of Colorado employees' negative attitudes/comments. On the contrary, they have been very positive, helpful, very busy, but not rushed, and cheerful, in any of our conversations with them over the last few weeks. Let me tell you about DSL/HSI through the phone/cable companies in our area: Until recently, we had a locally owned independent telephone company going back as long as I can remember. It was purchased by Knology not too long ago and they offer a bundle package to include phone service, cable TV or whatever, HSI, etc. In addition to Knology, we also have Charter Communications who apparently outsource their tech support, customer service, etc., to other countries. With Charter, it is nigh impossible to get a rep on the phone, anwers to questions, correct errors on our bills, etc. Locally, there are only a few areas , most of them close to the interstate highway, where one can retrieve a satellite signal, say from DishNetwork, Direct TV, etc. The big one, AT&T (previously BellSouth), is not available in any of our towns. A lot of folks in this area are very tired of poor or no service/response, down time, and so on...the cost of having a home phone with Knology or Charter with or without a bundle package is unbelievable. Alot of folks typically go with some other company for long distance (like MCI or whatever) to save a few pennies. Having experienced the service, response, etc., that each of these companies exhibited over the last several years, we were more than happy to investigate other possibilities for our communication/technology needs. Knology now has the phone monopoly around here and they WOULD NOT grant OpenRange a local prefix!! A Knology supervisor confirmed to me that if we went with OpenRange, our phone number would be a long distance one! Meaning: it is considered long distance for our next door neighbors' to call us! (Unless of course they go with OpenRange for phone service, they already purchased the modem for their PC!!) Happily for us & several of our friends & relatives, their unlimited cell phone plan makes the long distance thing a non-issue. To our way of thinking, OpenRange reps have responded to us very well & the service has been great! Especially considering that they are a newer company with new company issues & a few wrinkles to work out. (i.e., I know they recently changed systems & will also double their download speed this month.) Performs very well now! With more accurate information, we can make better decisions. So...if you know of newer info, please let me know. But, this is what I have so far...Thanks, an OpenRange Customer