Here at Cruzio, we’re always looking to upgrade our network infrastructure and our members always get moved to the newest service as soon as humanly possible. We use best-of-breed technologies to connect as many people as we possibly can to the best possible broadband. Right now, as AT&T continues to pull back from supporting and maintaining the copper lines, we’re aggressively building out our independent, Net Neutral fiber-wireless network and moving as many of our Velocity ADSL users over to that service as quickly as we can.

If you’re upgrading from Velocity to Cruzio’s locally-owned and -operated, independent, open and Net Neutral network, here are a few things you might want to know.

What’s the new service all about?
For most folks, this is going to mean switching you to our ultra-fast high-speed wireless service, Wireless Pro. We call it Pro because it’s professional-grade — perfect for connected homes, home businesses or small to mid-sized businesses of all kinds. And our new low price means anyone can afford it.

How’s this going to work?
First step: a site survey. Site surveys come with no commitment or cost, and typically only take 20-30 minutes for our friendly, professional techs to get on the roof of your building to check line-of-sight to one of Cruzio’s many access points and plan any potential wire-runs from the roof to the building. We don’t need you to be present for the survey but if you’d like to be, no problem.

If you happen to be in one of our Certified Buildings (generally an apartment or office building), or if your house had Cruzio Wireless Pro in the past, things are even easier and we can generally skip the survey step.

Once we’ve confirmed eligibility, we’ll schedule the install. For new installations, we’ll mount a small receiver on your roof or eaves and then run wires into your home or office to connect to your wifi gear. If you’ve been living with older copper wiring, you will love the difference our professional work makes. The install will take a few hours and we’ll need a responsible adult there so we can access inside the property. Our techs carry ID and are great with friendly pets.

Is it good for WiFi?
Absolutely. Your internet will be faster. To take advantage of those speeds, you need a good wifi router. If you’re currently renting hardware from Cruzio, we’ll swap that out at no cost to you for a shiny new model. Cruzio recommended hardware is fantastic, and it’ll give you great wifi speeds and coverage and allow our techs to best support your service in the future. If you don’t currently rent hardware from us, now’s a great time to start. Just add one on the upgrade order form and we’ll install it when we upgrade your connection. If you’d prefer to keep your own hardware, no worries. We just can’t provide the same level of troubleshooting and don’t always anticipate performance will match the gear we recommend and deploy.

What about phone?
With mobile phones in all our pockets, we’ve found that many people aren’t using a home phone anymore. If this is you, great. The new service is internet only and blazing fast for all your cloud-based services. If you do still want to keep your phone, the new service doesn’t come with phone included but, don’t worry, we have options. Our recommendation would be to switch to a Voice over IP (VoIP) phone solution. Your new, faster, super-low latency internet service is perfect for VoIP service. There are many VoIP providers, but our research has found that Ooma is one of the best out there. You can grab an Ooma device at Best Buy or Amazon or, if you prefer, you can purchase the unit from Cruzio. It’s not a Cruzio service — Ooma will provide the phone connection and bill you going forward (it’s around $20/mo, much less than a standard landline), but you can get the hardware from Cruzio for $30. Your current phone will plug right into it, and you can keep your current phone number.