Bertram Internet — Local services in Random Lake

I put a 3 overall, but here's how that actually breaks down, and what you should expect from Bertram as a company if you're looking. This is after about 2-3 months with them.

Star Rating of their 450 Service: 5 Star If they have the "Freedom 450" service available for you, and you have a CLEAR shot at a tower that isn't farther than 5-10 miles away, it's great internet. We finally were upgraded (more later) and get very fast pings, great speeds, and are able to stream shows again and work from home. Just did a ping test and got 45 ms response, and 14.5mbps down and about 2 up. This is great internet if you don't have Cable or alternatives.

Star Rating for their other non 450 Service: 1 Star If you don't have the Freedom 450 service, don't even bother. You're better off getting a US Cellular 4g modem. They overload the old service, promising 3mbps and stable, but you'll be lucky to get .5mbps and expect to be disconnected continually. Don't believe them, don't believe that it will be stable, it won't be. (More on this in a bit).

Star rating for Bertram as a Company: -1 Star (If possible) While i'm glad we have the 450 service, and our internet woes are finally over, and we'll be sticking with Bertram, i can tell you that the experience up to this point was hell, and I've not seen such horrible business practices yet in my life. Let's break it down.

1st: Regarding their non 450 Service (their legacy service), they flat out lie to get you to sign on. They say it will be stable, but it's anything but. The reason is that they purposefully put on more people than the service can handle, still charging a good amount of $$, without telling you. While trying to get things moving faster, we had their technician on the phone asking which tower would be best, and each one was responded with "that one's too full too." Apparently this is common practice in the Wifi as a Service field, and is used to get enough $$ to upgrade to the better services (which they are upgrading, slowly, tower after tower to the better 450 service).

Needless to say, i would rather be told "We haven't upgraded that tower, they are all a bit overloaded, so you'll have internet, but it will be choppy with disconnects, and it's only marginally better than dial up until we get the 450 service on." Lying to customers is morally bankrupt in my opinion, especially with 3 year contracts involved.

2nd: Their customer service (Phone service) is all local, which means they only have phone service during 'normal business hours' on weekdays, and a limited time on Saturday. We've gone entire weekends without any internet at all because it went down and there was no tech support. And don't ever get excited about the "Chat with a live technician" on their site, it's never turned on. the 450 service is pretty darn stable, but you'll be on the phone a lot if you don't have the 450 service, and you won't be able to do much.

3rd: Service times. Again they are a smaller local company, which means they have a very small crew. By small, i mean like 1 tower technician, and only 1-2 installers. This means when something goes wrong, you'll be looking at probably a week till they can send someone out to take a look at it. For example, when they finally upgraded our tower to 450, it was a week to get the installer guy out, when it didn't work it took a week for their tech guy to get back from vacation in las vegas, then after they discovered it was a bad antenna it took about another week for them to fix and get ours back up.

4rd: Charges. You have to pay for the service tech to come out, which okay i can understand that. But I ended up with 3 total install costs. First time when they pointed to the farther tower (partially my fault when i requested there be the internet wire on one side of the house, not really meaning i wanted the satellite there), another time to put it in the right spot, and another time when they finally had the 450 service installed. So just be ready for some high upfront costs.

I hope this candid and thorough...

Chris (the third party installer) came out on time and called ahead as promised. He had done some pre-work (on his own time?) the previous night to make sure the installation went smoothly. I am very happy with the installation. I will update this post after I have spent some time with the internet service (Freedom 450/25 MBPS) itself. So far, so good! EDIT: After a month of service, there have been a few times that the internet was down, BUT they appear to be my own wireless router's fault (not Bertram). Bertram did make some adjustments on their end as well so not everything is running smoothly. According to my new Google WiFi, I'm pulling close to 20 MBPS total. That's fairly close to the advertised connection speed at 25 MBPS. If they ever offer a faster connection, I'll be the first one to sign up!

Update 4-28-2017 - After recent weather, my antenna is out of alignment according to Bertram's tech support. Their Tech Support guys have been phenomenal. My issue (and the resulting loss of a star), is that it going to take 3 business days to get a technician on site to fix my issue. Since my internet is down, this is unacceptable in my opinion. I've called every day since I brought the issue to their attention to see if I can get a tech sooner, but none are available.

Update 5/2/2017: Chris came out and moved the antenna on my roof and realigned to the tower. Everything is working much better.

Update 10-23-2018: I only say I recommend Bertram if you have limited options for broadband speed internet. My options included Bertram, a cell hotspot, or satellite. The last two didn't work for me as they have limitations that didn't work for me since I work from home and my family likes to stream videos.

Bertram at they least doesn't have data limits and when it works, it's good. Trying to get line of sight from your roof to a Bertram antenna is not always easy. Severe weather has a tendency to ruin your internet connection. Occasionally it can take 3-4 business days for a tech to come out to your house for service calls and their phone tech support, while great, has somewhat limited hours. My previous line of sight issues were cleared up more with the removal of a neighbor's tree limb. Bertram had also moved to an internal team of service technicians versus the third party company and I can say they seem better trained and have better customer service skills.

Overall, considering my options for living in a semi rural area, Bertram is pretty good.

Last, but not least, the cost for the service is relatively high. I pay a little over $150 a month for 25 MB download and 3 MB upload speed; their most expensive and fastest available option. Considering the FCC rates 25 MB per second as the broadband minimum, this is a pretty high cost versus all the options most urban areas have available to them.

UPDATE 7/30/2019 The last few months of this service were downright poor. Apparently, there were new(?) trees and leaves in the way and Bertram wasn't willing to send a tech to come identify the problem areas. To be honest, this internet service was a part of the reason I moved. I was never more happy to sign up with Spectrum and have solid, FAST (900 GB Download, 42 Upload) internet for the SAME $150 a month. The only good thing that came out of my last few calls with Bertram was that they let me out of the 3 year lease with penalty or early termination fee.

In the end, I really had a lot of problems that apparently could only be fixed by Bertram on their end. They experienced a lot of tower issues as well. I am downgrading my rating to a 3 star. Not great, barely tolerable connectivity, but when it's the only game in town, you don't really have any...

10 mbps internet plan. Speed regularly drops to 3-6 mbps for weeks on end, sometimes down to 1 mbps or less for days at a time, with massive ping spikes in the 1000's every few minutes. We've been with this company for nearly a decade and it's been a recurring issue the entire time, but has gotten particularly bad over the last 2 years. We've upgraded our in-home equipment several times and have had zero improvement. We get the run around every single time we try to report the issue. "Fixes" are always temporary. When it does function correctly it lasts for a few days and then reverts back to same problems.

Update May 2024: Another year has gone by and all of these problems have gotten worse. Speeds are consistently between 3-5 mbps daily, never coming close to the full 10 mbps. We haven't received 8-10 mbps in about 3 years. Speeds regularly dropping below 1 mbps throughout the day, becoming unusable for hours on end. Pages barely load. Used to watch videos in 1080p, now you're lucky to get consistent playback in 480p.

Update June 2024: After seeing this review, Bertram has offered to upgrade our service to a 25 mbps plan for a lower price. They sent a tech out to fix some issues, update equipment, and run some tests. Service was improved for a couple weeks, achieving full speed most days. This is always how it goes. The "fix" works for a week or two and then it's back to the same problems. There are often days with only 50-75% throughput. There are still really bad days with massive 1000ms ping spikes and DNS disconnects, rendering it unusable for hours. I don't believe this company is capable of providing it's advertised services. It's been years of nothing but false promises and failed delivery.

July 2024: Internet speeds have fluctuated between 0-3 mbps for the entire week. Currently experiencing 600 kbps download rate, (that's with a K). Dial-up performance in 2024. FCC needs to step in and hold these ISP's accountable.

August 2024: Zero improvement, arguably worse than it's ever been. Speeds continue to fluctuate between 0-3 mbps with an occasional "good" day about once a week where we...