FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
In most cases, we already have! Over the last twenty years we’ve been placing fiber in all of our communities in preparation for this project, and now we’re extending these connections all the way to the customer’s home. In parallel with the in-town construction we will begin to deliver fiber to the rural households as well. All customers will be notified prior to deployment in their community. Our goal is to have 100% fiber in our service area by the end of 2024.
As a rural telecommunications company, we recognize the importance of providing state of the art service to all our customers. As a result, we will be delivering fiber to the rural households and businesses when possible. If the customer makes a request to deploy fiber outside of the current infrastructure delivery, such as to a bin site, there may be an additional installation fee.
Click here to see if fiber is available to your home and link to Fiber Buildout page.
Construction begins with the fiber optic infrastructure that we have already deployed and are currently still deploying throughout the service areas. One call will be made to inform local utilities to mark existing sewer, water, power, and gas lines. A fiber site survey will be conducted prior to any burying within your property. At that time, we would appreciate it if you could inform the tech of any specifics that will aid in burying your fiber without causing any damage to buried pipes/wires. We will ask you to mark and locate any specific items that may be obstructed during deployment, such as sprinkler lines. The fiber will be buried from an underground vault, through your yard in a very thin line approximately 8-10 inches deep and you will notice very little difference in your yard when construction is complete. Construction crews will be mindful of your landscaping and will work to minimize any long-term impacts to the appearance of your yard.
In some cases, the fiber will run directly to your house and to the current box you already have on your home for DSL and telephone access. In other cases, a new location may be chosen if it is determined to be a better location to receive the fiber.
During the construction process there will be no interruption of service. The only interruption of service will occur when we are ready to convert you to fiber.
Customers can select the speed plan that best meets their household’s needs. Fiber will allow us to deliver much faster internet speeds than we could with DSL and the technology will allow for even higher speeds in the future without significant additional construction.
That’s great! Please check availability at our Fiber Buildout page and submit a request for additional information or fill out the Request a Callback form on this page and a member of our customer service team will call you to start your order.
We will be very careful burying the fiber and our fiber technicians are very mindful of your property. We will do our best to return your yard or property to its previous state and you should notice little to no difference once complete.
The flags in your yard are marking utilities so we are aware where different lines, such as electric lines, gas lines and water lines, are buried when burying fiber.
The main line is buried 42 inches deep. The lateral lines to the easements or right of ways are buried 24-36 inches deep. The fiber drop to the house or pedestal will be roughly 8-10 inches in depth.
When we do the first step after mainline construction which is a fiber site survey, we will mount a 2ft x 2ft board with all our fiber equipment on it. At this time we will also run a small conduit to the outside box, to house the new fiber. Additionally we will run any new lines we need to be able to make the transition to fiber fast and seamless.
Hamilton is switching to an all-fiber network. In order to provide the best service possible, we will move all customers to fiber. Once the fiber to the home conversion is complete, we will no longer maintain our old infrastructure consisting of copper lines.
As with all wireless routers, it depends on the age and capability of the router. Most routers purchased from Hamilton should be able to deliver the speed you have purchased. However, for subscribers selecting one of the higher speed plans, it may be beneficial to upgrade to a Wi-Fi router that has greater bandwidth capabilities. These higher speed wireless routers are available for purchase from Hamilton or a number of other retailers. Customers may also wish to subscribe to Hamilton Managed Wi-Fi offering extended Wi-Fi range and parental controls in the home.
As with our previous technologies, your telephone will continue to function in the event of a power outage. To accomplish this, we will be installing a battery backup unit, often called a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) next to your new fiber modem. This UPS will allow regular corded land line phones to work during a power outage and to maintain the ability to connect to 911 emergency services. When a power outage occurs, you should ensure that you have one corded single-line touchtone phone connected directly to the Wi-Fi gateway or your in-home wiring (wall jack) or the phone jack mounted on the board with our fiber equipment. If you connect a cordless phone, it will not function without a separate battery backup, and not all cordless phones are so equipped.
A backup power supply (battery) is required for your digital voice service to remain in service in the event of a power outage. The backup battery will ensure that corded landline phones continue to work during a power outage and are essential to maintaining the ability to connect to 911 emergency services from your digital voice service. You should ensure that you have one corded single-line touchtone phone connected at your residence. The backup battery installed will only supply backup power to your voice service. Please follow the instructions included with your battery for proper use, storage, and care. You should periodically remove and test your battery to verify both operation of the backup battery and its condition. The backup battery is expected to supply power for up to 8 hours in the event of a power outage depending upon battery age, usage and environment. The estimated life expectancy for the battery is 5-8 years depending on power outage frequency and environment. At the end of the expected battery duration, Hamilton will provide a backup battery replacement for you. If you have any questions on how to request additional backup battery power that will extend past 8 hours or obtain a replacement, please contact Hamilton at 402-694-5101.
Through email (info@hamilton.net), phone: 1.877.426.5638 or 402.694.5101, or mail: Hamilton.net, 1006 12th St., Aurora, NE 68818.
Please call our office at 402.694.5101 so we can update the password in our server. Once that is complete you will need to update the password in your email program.
Yes. You can set up an automatic recurring monthly payment or one-time payment online.
- Log into your eBill account through my.HamiltonTel.com.
- Select Pay Bill from side menu bar.
- Select if you are making a one-time payment or setting up a recurring payment.
- Enter the banking information from your checking account.
All services have a billing cycle of the 1st to the end of the month.
Log into your eBill account through my.HamiltonTel.com. Select Pay Bill from the side menu bar then indicate that you are setting up a recurring payment. Enter the banking information from your checking account. You may also call customer service for additional assistance.
Have your current statement ready and visit Ebill.HamiltonTel.com to register. Select invoice preference under “Manage Account” to go paperless today!
Yes. Hamilton Managed Wi-Fi is a mesh Wi-Fi system that replaces all current routers or Wi-Fi access points.
Your service includes two (2) Plume SuperPods, and access to the HomePass® app and all of its features.
The two (2) SuperPods that come with your service are perfect for most single story, 2-3-bedroom homes. Larger homes may need additional Pods to cover additional bedrooms and additional levels.
Three Pods + Service $10.45 per mo.
Four Pods + Service $12.95 per mo.
Additional Pods $2.95 per mo.
The HomePass Control™ feature allows you to set limits on a person, an individual device, or even for a whole location – like a child’s bedroom. In addition to having the ability to approve or block specific websites, you can also control how much time your children spend online or on a specific device.
The Hamilton Managed Wi-Fi Pod Protection Plan covers your Plume SuperPod equipment in the event it is unintentionally damaged. The fee of $2.00 per month covers all SuperPods in your home.
Single router Wi-Fi systems can give you the speed you need as long as you’re close enough to the router. Wi-Fi extenders or repeaters can improve coverage, but are often complicated, unreliable, and degrade performance. Plume HomePass is a cloud coordinated Wi-Fi system that replaces your current router and gives you stable and consistent Wi-Fi coverage and speed in every room within your home using blazing fast tri-band SuperPods coupled with auto-channel hop technology.
Hamilton Managed Wi-Fi enables connectivity to all your internet capable devices, wired or wireless.
Plume HomePass is designed to spread out device connections throughout the home. While it is not a hard limit, connections of more than 45 devices per Wi-Fi band are not recommended.
After you have your SuperPods, simply download the HomePass app for onto your smartphone. The app will walk you through the process.
The pods are portable, so if you move to another home within Hamilton’s fiber service territory, you can easily take the same pods with you when move. However, if you move out of the service area, the pods do need to be returned to Hamilton when you cancel your Hamilton Managed Wi-Fi service.
The number of channels you receive will depend on which package you choose, and if you select any movie packages. Cobalt TV® offers more than 200 channels. Please refer to the Packages Tab for detailed channel information.
We have done an analysis of TV services offered in this area and have found that Cobalt TV beats other television competitors in five key areas:
- Price – Cobalt TV is less expensive than other services for comparable packages.
- HD – Our equipment is less expensive per TV and is HD ready and compatible, so you will receive every channel available in HD on every TV. Plus, we have more HD Channels than ever before.
- Picture Quality –Cobalt TV offers premium picture quality allowed through digital transmission without the delay or issues due to inclement weather that affects satellite TV service.
- Whole Home DVR – Not only is our whole home DVR less expensive, but it has new, unique features not available with any other service, like the Restart or Telephone integrated features, and the ability to check your Voice Mail from your TV.
- Professional, Local Service – With Cobalt TV, you can trust that your TV service will be installed and supported by local, friendly representatives that you know and trust. We are also close to your home and we can support you both over the phone and we have a technician there quickly, ensuring your service is installed and supported both timely and professionally. With Cobalt TV, there is no contract and no fine print – so no guessing as to what your bill will end up to be. It’s straightforward and simple.
You do not have subscribe to Hamilton Internet or to Hamilton Telephone to receive this service. Cobalt TV is delivered through Ethernet which requires an Internet and Telephone line to deliver it to your home, so additional fees apply to your Cobalt TV service if you do not have Hamilton Internet and Telephone. For Cobalt TV customers who have a phone line but choose not to have Internet with Hamilton, there will be a $9 charge for last mile transport. For Cobalt TV customers who choose not to have Telephone OR Internet, there will be a $42.00 charge, which will show up on the customer’s bill as “last mile transport”.
We will package your boxes and include instructions which should make set up very simple and you will be able to pick up your equipment sooner than if we have a technician come to your home. If you are unable to set up the service yourself or would prefer, we are happy to install the service for you. There will be no fee to install the service in your home and we will schedule an install for you with our first available technician.
Your Internet speed will not be affected by the television service. Even though IPTV is delivered over Internet, it does not use your Internet access. If you have a 250 Mb Internet Speed plan, you will still have 250 Mb available for Internet access. There is an exception with our whole home Gig internet plan. With a whole home gig internet plan the Cobalt service will use a tiny fraction of that gig speed to process the TV channel data.
Your phone line will not be affected by this service. You will be able to use your telephone at any time, regardless of the use of your TV.
The TV service will not interfere with game systems and the game systems will not interfere with streaming for the TV service.
There will be no service contract to sign. We encourage you to sign up for IPTV and try it out. We are so confident you will be happy with the service that we do not have contracts. If at any time or for any reason you are unsatisfied, we ask that you share it with us so that we can resolve any issue you are having. We will ask that you sign a contract when you receive your equipment that states that you will return your equipment to Hamilton should you discontinue your service.
The DVR for Cobalt TV is a whole home DVR that allows you to record, watch, rewind, and store programs from any TV in your home. With the DVR, you can record between 120 ‐ 140 hours of programming. You can also record two shows and watch a third at the same time.
A special feature of Cobalt TV, which is unique to any other service, is the Restart feature available on the Set Top Box and the DVR. If you turn the channel and see a program that you want to watch but find that it’s halfway or almost over, you can restart to the beginning, and if you have a DVR you can restart it to the beginning and then record. (There are certain channels that do not allow this feature). Other unique amenities of Cobalt TV include integrated telephone features such as the ability to retrieve voice mail messages on your TV screen.
You can have TVs in your home share the same set top box. The TVs that share a Set Top Box will always be tuned to the same channel, which could work nicely if you like to go from room to room watching the same program. You will want a separate Set Top Box (STB) for each TV that you want to function on its own.
Yes, you can get our service! We will check your area to see the bandwidth currently available and will determine if there is anything else that needs to be done to ensure you receive excellent picture and streaming.
The protection plan covers the cost to replace equipment that is unintentionally damaged. Equipment may be damaged if it is dropped, if liquids are spilled on it, if lightning strikes or for a variety of other reasons. If undamaged equipment is defective or does not work, Hamilton will replace that equipment for you with or without the protection plan.
We have made a significant investment in the equipment that you will have in your home and the prices to replace equipment vary from $75 ‐ $300 depending on the equipment. You may easily have a combined total greater than $1000 worth of equipment in your home that you can insure for $5.95/ month.
Contact Diggers Hotline before you dig. Don’t dig up more than you bargained for!
A call to 811 connects you with the Nebraska One-Call Notification System when you can request the location of underground facilities. Nebraska law requires that everyone planning to excavate (or otherwise disturb the ground) must first call the state one-call notification center at least two business days, but not more than 10 days, before the work is scheduled to start. Except in emergencies, Locate Request made after 6:00 pm Central Time, or on weekends and holidays, will not be dispatched until 7:00 am the next business day. This service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is a free call.
To contact Digger’s Hotline call 8-1-1, or toll free 1-800-331-566. You can also access the Diggers Hotline website at: www.ne-diggers.com.
Hamilton Telecommunications will install and repair the wiring inside your home or business. For information call our Business office at 402-694-5101.
Unplug the telephone and plug another telephone into that jack. If the second phone doesn’t work, the problem may be in the telephone wiring in your home or leading to your home. You can exchange defective telephones leased from Hamilton for another telephone. Return customer-owned phones to the original supplier or follow the instructions on the warranty. If you ask for a Hamilton repair technician to visit your premises and the problem is in your equipment rather than Hamilton’s, you will be assessed a premise call charge.
Plug a telephone into the jack nearest to where your telephone line comes into your premises. If the telephone works there but nowhere else, the trouble is probably with your inside wiring.
If you have subscribed to Hamilton’s Inside Wire Protection Plan, there will be no additional charge to have Hamilton Telecommunications repair your wiring problem. If you do not subscribe to the plan, you can have Hamilton repair the wiring for an additional charge, repair it yourself or have another contractor do it for you.
If you are unable to determine the source of your telephone problem, call repair service at 611. We will test the line and determine whether the problem is in our lines and equipment or in your phone or inside wiring. Hamilton Telecommunications will repair any problems outside your residence at no charge.
Need Remote PC Support?
If you need remote PC support please call us at 402.694.5101.
Only click here if directed by a Hamilton technician.