Update 8/6/13:

Signup between August 6th and this Friday August 9th, mention OnwardState when you call in to signup and get your first month free! Call (814) 867-2100 to signup.

It’s back to school time. Time to haggle with roommates and decide who’s bringing the TV. Time to chip away at your schedule to ensure you won’t be getting out bed before noon.

But one of the most important decisions — and one that is most often overlooked — is internet.  That is how you are reading this post, isn’t it?  That is how you will get most of your school work done, right (Wikipedia doesn’t just copy and paste itself)? And, of course, you might want to stream TV, video, music, and check Facebook from time to time, too.

We have a suggestion for you.  Our parent company also owns and runs getwireless.net, which is a totally local Internet service provider which is owned and operated by Penn State graduates.  Getwireless is focused on providing high quality Internet to Penn State students.

It was started in 1996, by Daniel Myers. Myers is a 1992 Penn State grad who also runs StateCollege.com and pays the bills for Onward State so that we can continue to do what we do.

Originally, getwireless.net was started as a business class Internet company just serving local and regional businesses, which it still does, and then in 2004, Dan had the opportunity to buy a local competitor that was serving the downtown student buildings.

Getwireless replaced all of the infrastructure with much higher capacities and much more redundancy.  Now, according to Dan, “Almost every building we serve has a redundant connection and tons of bandwidth. Our goal is to provide business class service to every apartment that we serve.”

“Uptime and speed availability are super important. That is why we over engineer everything that we build and we are continually upgrading our infrastructure.”

Getwireless serves a majority of downtown student apartment buildings with their service. The connections are provided either with Ethernet to your apartment or via an ethernet port on a modem that connects to business class equipment in the basement of the building, all designed to provide you the best connectivity possible.

If you live in any of the following buildings you can sign up for service so that it is installed, tested and ready to go when you return to school:

Alexander Court
AllenWay Building
Ambassador
Hamilton Court
Barcroft
Beaver Hill
Beaver Terrace
Bryce Jordan Tower
Burrowes Corner
Calder Commons
Campus Towers
Cedarbrook
Centre Court
The Collegian
Crestmont
Dale Building
The Diplomat
Fairmont East
Garden Apartments
Garden House
Garner Court
GlennLand Building
GN Centre
Graduate
Greenwich Court
Hamilton Apartments
Hetzel Plaza
Highland Towers
Hiland Court
Legend
Lion
Marion Place
Meridian on College Avenue
Mr. Charles Apartments
Murphy Apartments
Nor-Lea Building
Obrian Place
Park Place
Penn Towers
The Phoenix
Rapid Transit Apartment  – 111 S. Allen Street
Starbucks Apartments
Sutton Court
Town Square
University Gateway
University Towers

Here are some of the packages that are offered:
12 mb/s – $29.95/mo
20 mb/s – $34.95/mo
50 mb/s – $59.95/mo

To signup visit their website here:
http://www.getwireless.net/residential-internet/psu-students/

Or you can call them with questions: (814) 867-2100 or email [email protected]