unWired Internet Guide: Your Guide To Plans, Speeds, and Cost

✦ Edited and fact-checked by Eric Chiu, our Tech Editor with over ten years of experience covering home and wireless internet technology.

What is unWired internet?

unWired is a California-only regional internet service provider (ISP) that sells two entirely different internet products. Its main fixed wireless internet service uses one of more than 200 local towers to deliver home internet service. Its newer service, NextGen Fiber, runs high-speed fiber internet to your door in four Central Valley cities.

This guide covers what speeds you can expect from each, what customers report paying, and why you won’t find a general price list on the company’s website.

unWired internet plans and pricing

Like many regional ISPs, unWired doesn’t offer standardized pricing or list prices on its main website (beyond a boilerplate starting price of $59.99 per month) — you’ll have to input your address to get specific pricing and service options for your address.

For reference, we used an existing address in Fresno, Calif. to check unWired’s internet pricing. However, unWired says that infrastructure, speeds, transport costs, and available capacity affect pricing from area to area, so every rate is quoted per address. Take this pricing as a guideline rather than a set figure.

Example unWired internet pricing

Data effective as of post date. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change. See full disclaimer for details.

Every plan includes unlimited data with no contracts and no hidden charges. However, fixed wireless performance tends to be unpredictable because of how sensitive towers can be to factors like local network traffic and how far your home away is from a tower.

The honest read: your tower decides your ceiling, and the spread between towers is enormous. For context on how per-megabit pricing compares across the market and to learn more about alternative internet options, our ranking of the best internet providers and rural internet guide are useful yardsticks.

Where is unWired internet available?

unWired serves California and nowhere else, covering roughly 17,000 to 19,000 square miles from north of Sacramento down to the base of the Grapevine.

Fixed wireless does the heavy lifting fo unWired’s network, reaching across 17-plus counties from towers and grain silos to water towers and tall buildings. Recently added communities include Vacaville, Isleton, Lost Hills, Orland, and Corning.

NextGen Fiber is far more concentrated. Coalinga came first through an $11 million build spanning more than 4,874 addresses, and now serves over 1,500 customers. Wasco followed with $10 million covering nearly 6,000 addresses citywide, alongside builds in Parlier and Gustine.

One quirk to plan around: because fixed wireless needs line of sight to a tower, and because unWired caps how many subscribers share each site, availability can genuinely stop mid-street. Treat any city list as a starting point and check your exact address. If fiber has reached your town, our roundup of the best fiber internet providers shows what that upgrade is typically worth.

What equipment comes with unWired internet?

unWired fixed wireless requires hardware on the outside of your house. A technician mounts a small receiving antenna, usually on the roof, and aims it at your serving tower — which is why professional installation isn’t optional and why a single tall tree can disqualify an address.

Newer towers use receivers that are capable of gigabit speeds and noticeably better at handling obstructions than older fixed wireless gear. Whether your site has been upgraded is worth asking outright, since it directly sets your speed ceiling.

NextGen Fiber works the way any fiber service does: your address gets a buried line to the property and an optical network terminal indoors, with no antenna and no line-of-sight requirement.

One detail to settle before you sign: unWired’s receiver is their property, and at least one customer has reported real difficulty getting hardware removed from their roof after canceling — which can hold up a new provider’s installation. Ask how removal is scheduled, and get the answer in writing.

What do unWired internet customers say?

Feedback on unWired divides along a sharp line, and it isn’t the usual one.

Among online commenters, unWired’s service experience earns real praise. Reviewers repeatedly mention reaching a human on the first call, installers who phone ahead and arrive on time, and multi-year stretches without an outage. Phone tech support runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which is rare at this scale.

Third-party validation backs that up. The Wireless Internet Service Provider Association named unWired its Wireless Internet Service Provider of the Year in 2023, and the Fresno Bee’s readers have voted it Best Internet Service Provider four years running plus Best Customer Service in 2024 and 2025.

Critics generally drag unWired’s pricing against major ISPs and occasional repair waits of two to four days. unWired is absent from our own internet customer satisfaction survey of more than 8,000 customers, which reflects its size rather than its performance — the company reported just over 29,000 total connections in 2024.

Ultimately, the pattern among online unWired commentators is that it’s a provider that’s very good at the parts a local ISP controls and constrained by the physics of its network. In areas with no wired alternative, that trade is usually worth making. Where fiber has arrived, the math changes.

unWired internet FAQ

CableTV.com editors created this article using original analysis and proprietary inputs, with AI tools assisting in drafting. The final content was reviewed and edited for accuracy and quality.