Conway Corp tech took 5th at a national broadband contest, and how's your internet?

Saw this a while back and meant to post it. One of the Conway Corp broadband techs, Manion, placed fifth at a national broadband skills challenge. Here's the writeup if you missed it. Fifth in the whole country isn't bad for a town our size.

It got me thinking, because my sister-in-law in Little Rock was complaining again at Thanksgiving about her internet bill. She's paying around $90 something and says it drops out every time we get a good storm. Mine out here in Beaverfork has been pretty steady, and I can count on one hand the times it's gone out since we got on the fiber. Power is a different story, but that's mostly the ice and the old trees.

I've always thought having our own city-owned utility was one of the smart things Conway did way back. My daddy used to say so too. Not everybody had that and you can tell when you talk to people in other towns.

So what's been your experience? Speeds, outages, how fast they got somebody out to you? Or has anybody had a bad time with them? Curious whether it's just me being happy with it.

Same here on Prince Street. Fiber's been steady for us and the few outages I remember were short. Kids stream and game at the same time and I haven't heard a complaint. Nice to see our techs get some credit.

That's the real test, kids streaming and gaming at the same time. When mine come over with the grandkids every device in the house is going and it never hiccups.

Prince Street is closer in so I wonder if you get power back faster than we do out here in Beaverfork. Last ice storm we were dark way longer than the internet was, which seems backwards but that's trees for you.

Trees are always the culprit around here. The fiber is mostly buried so ice doesn't bother it, but the power lines take the beating. Whenever there's a limb down on a line, that's usually what does it.

One thing I did for the home repair side of it: picked up a little battery backup (UPS) for the fiber box and router, maybe 50 bucks. It won't run anything big, but it keeps the wifi going a few hours when the power flickers or goes out, so I can at least check the outage map and keep the phones charged. Might be worth it out in Beaverfork where you're dark longer.

Agree with you on the city-owned thing too. Fifth in the country is a nice bit of bragging rights for those guys.

Take care

Good call on the UPS, clay. I did almost the same thing but for a dumb reason. I run a pellet smoker and do a lot of overnight briskets, and a power blip at 3am will kill the controller and you wake up to a cold grill and a 14 pound hunk of meat sitting in the danger zone. Had that happen once last winter during that sleet we got and I about cried. Now the smoker and my wifi probe base station are both on a little UPS. Only needs to ride out flickers, not a full outage.

The fiber part is why it works for me. The probe thermometer talks to my phone over wifi, so I can sit at the lake with the dog and check the internal temp from the trail by Beaverfork without hauling anything back home. Never once had Conway Corp internet drop on me during a cook, and I've done a lot of cooks. Power flickers, sure. Internet, no.

Fifth in the country is cool. Those guys earned it.

Thanks for adding Prince Street to the mix, Austin. So far the thread has covered Beaverfork, Prince Street and the lake trail, which is a decent spread of the city.

Everything posted so far has been positive, so I'd like to hear from anyone with a different experience. If you've had an install delay, a billing problem, or an outage that took a long time to fix, post it. A thread of nothing but praise isn't much use to someone deciding whether to switch. It would also help if people said roughly what speed tier they're on, since Barb asked about speeds and nobody has given a number yet.

I'll add one thing from the coffee shop side, since I spend a fair amount of time in them. Anyone working remotely in Conway has probably noticed that the wifi downtown holds up well even when the place is packed at 8 a.m. That's a small but real reason the local broadband matters for local jobs, and it's part of why the recognition for the techs is deserved.