ShastaBeam — Local services in Redding

I don't know why everybody is giving them such bad reviews, but here is my take:

My parents live right outside the city limits. They cannot get cable/fiber period. They originally had omnilogic paying $125 a month for 25 up and 9 down. At the time it seemed less pricy than it is today. The last 10 months or so that provider became astronomically slow, with roughly 9 down at best and many dropouts. Turns out onmilogic went out of business a while ago.

My parents decided to switch to shastabeam and i found out for them it is actually way cheaper for faster internet. 50 bucks for a year or 90 indefinite. What a difference that made. Now when I go over there they get consistent 75-90 down and 75-80 up nearly symmetrical(according to every test they and I have run). For 50 bucks??? that is unheard of.

What makes it even better is that they're adding fiber lines directly to their towers in the coming months/year to get full 1000/1000 fiber speed(WOW). I'm jealous; I live in the city and have charter which is nowhere near symmetrical speed, and no one is bringing fiber to my house anytime soon. Holy smokes that is a ridiculous deal.

According to my family's feedback, it has been very reliable and handles all their demanding needs. They can now stream on several devices in FHD (even in 4k if their shows supported it which they don't) without any hiccups at all.

The only caveat is you have to have your own router, which my parents do. Ping hovers around 26-28ms according to several tests I've run when I'm there, which is very VERY good for fixed wireless. No complaints from me or them even though its not my ISP. This company definitely made a huge comeback from the...

I have been a Shasta Beam customer for more than 7 yrs. Before that I had Hugh's net which was worse than no internet in my opinion. Shasta Beam was actually recommended by another internet company, which I think is very telling of their service. When we lived in our other home, there was some lag, and we would have to reset the router but when you live in the country you don't always get the best internet. A year ago we moved and we upgraded to the newer system. We went from Netflix and YouTube to all the streaming platforms and my son could game online! On November 1st we lost internet due to a sim card issue that they were trying to resolve but hadn't been able to yet. It sucked. I have seen reviews on here complaining about it. Upset they lost internet or complaining about not being able to get through to talk to someone. Here's the thing. They are a small business and have a few employees not an entire switch board. So lots of people losing internet means a lot of people calling and you just had to be patient. When the internet situation went down they didn't have answers for how long it will take to fix it. I could have looked at another carrier, but they require contracts and who knows if the service is good. I waited knowing that eventually Shasta Beam was going to get it sorted out because if they didn't the business could go under. Glad I waited because I'm back on track. The internet service has always been better than the competition, and I have always had really good customer service. Don't judge them based on the reviews of angry frustrated people when the business was doing everything they could about a situation that was out of...

Well, the internet service was very expensive and extremely slow at $180/mo (+high activation fee's) and I got around 2 mbps download/0.2 upload speeds. However, it was the only service without a contract so I needed something until Starlink arrived. They have a 14-day money back guarantee which is good, it worked just enough to be able to do paperwork and pay bills with.

I was going to leave a 5-star review based on customer service after 3-4 months with them as they can't control the speeds you get since they partner with AT&T cell towers but they didn't allow me to prorate the remainder of this month that I already paid $180 for once I got Starlink hooked up. I returned the unit and still lost out over an extra $120.

So while they seemed to have good customer service at first, don't get in the way of their profits. Starlink is much better at $110/mo and now I'm getting well over 100 mbps and never any slow periods!

Response:

Starlink does not currently have any data caps, it's unlimited. I have not experienced any speed throttling. They offer a 30 day policy on refunds.

About the proration, yes, you are correct that it's in your policy and many others. Usually when asked upon cancellation most providers would waive the fee's when switching towards the beginning of a month, but Shasta Beam would not, unfortunately.

I appreciate your response and will update my review rating more positively, for your effort. But to say (especially) Starlink has throttling & data caps is a bold claim when anyone can find that they currently do not (in the US) with a...