Northland Connect Broadband LLC

The installer arrived on time and went about his business. He was friendly. He installed everything, brought the cable through the exterior wall, hooked it up to the (rented) modem and then my computer. I was doing things in other rooms of the house. As he was working, I smelled a faint charred smell that I wrote off as his tools or an outside fire. It was a nice day and the windows had been opened all day. When he was about finished, he showed me the connection and tested it. While the connection was fast, it wasn't nearly as fast as advertised (12 megabytes per second) and has never been, even at night when he said the speeds would be fastest. I don't think it has ever reached 6 megabytes per second, and averages about 3. He then asked me if I had any problems with lights in my house. I said no, then he said he may have drilled through a hot line. I checked the circuit breakers and noticed one had tripped affecting the area where he had drilled. He said he would fix it within a week. I was quite angry and upset. He seemed concerned, but not enough. He should have told me immediately when he thought he drilled through a hot line. Shortly after he left, I smelled the faint charred smell again in the house. Then some smoke detectors started sounding. The sound was the type they make when they no longer have power going to them, not the type they make when they detect smoke. So the circuit through which he had drilled was the one that provided power to about half of my smoke detectors. At this point I knew A: he had drilled through a hot line and not mentioned it to me for more than an hour, B: If something was smoldering in my wall, I wouldn't be warned because my detectors weren't working and C: There was a faint charred smell. Many frantic calls later, I made them send an electrician out right away who fixed things. They were going to wait a week. In reviewing my contract afterward, the internet provider states that they are in no way liable for damages during installation, but luckily I think drilling through a hot power line exhibited gross negligence on their part and they realized it. Be aware of the contract before you sign it. The only way this could have been worse was if the installer didn't mention it to me at all. I still would have been able to prove he did it, because the charred damaged lines were quite visible when the electrician opened up the wall. My service, which is the new Exede satellite service, is so-so. Recent heavy rains have made it unusable about 25% of the time. When it had slowed to a crawl (about 100 kilobytes per second, about 1/100th as fast as they advertise), I called support, who had me do time consuming inane things that have nothing to do with my connection. The last straw was when they told me to do a complete system virus scan, even though I told them my system had done one about 2 days ago automatically. I told them the scan would take hours, and they told me I could call them back when it was done. I knew my system was clean and just let the thing sit. After a total of about 24 hours of a very slow connection, whatever problem they had on their system had cleared up, but I had wasted an hour or more on the phone with someone who was obviously inexperienced and technically inept. Living in a rural area limits one's choices for internet service. Choose carefully. Read the contracts.