[kwlug-disc] OT: Non-satellite alternatives to Rogers Cable?

[unsolicited]

Speaking from very bitter experience, they are right.

When Bell (Golden) upgraded from 3 (?) Mbps to 5, and I wasn't seeing 
any improvement (a year later), I got Execulink to get Bell to check 
the line. They took me from 1.5 Mbps to 512 Kbps, and I had to beg to 
at least get back to what I had before.

The only other way I could have gotten better service would have been 
to cancel my service for some months, then reconnect, and hope I got a 
better DSLAM connection. And there was no guarantee I would.

I ended up going to Rogers, and haven't looked back since, except for 
the price - 'til recently. Since then I've learned I'm 6km from the 
C.O., so nothing is ever going to help me on a DSL line. Bob - I 
think, if you know you're 5+ km from the C.O., you're right to not 
play with it.

The last few months I've been watching the Acanac forums, and not 
liking what I see at all. Poor customer service capacity, and many 
inconsistent reports of < 5Mbps service - with no effective recourse 
(on 15 Mbps lines). [They blame cable congestion, if they say anything 
at all.] I'm tempted, to go through the hassle of their customer 
service and purchase a +$100 modem, but not so much so far that I've 
gone ahead and done it.

There seems to be a better feeling at TekSavvy, at least they seem to 
have a responsive customer service department, but the TekSavvy AU 
policy is almost as bad as Roger's (no services, port 25 blocked), 
while Acanac doesn't even have an AU policy (at least as far as 
internet use goes).

Moral: The grass isn't always greener, and the effort required to get 
over the top of the hill to see is non-trivial, if it goes sour.

Oh, and to fire up a 2nd cable service, at least until the new install 
is proven, is an $80 charge. And there are lots of forum posts on 
transfers from Rogers to Acanac where multi-month service delays (so 
no internet in the mean time) are reported.
Bob Jonkman wrote, On 10/28/2011 12:39 AM:
> On 11-10-27 09:28 AM, chaslinux at gmail.com wrote:
>> Talking with Bob before it sounded like his download speed was similar 
>> to mine without MLPPP?
> 
> Yes, but both Teksavvy and I know that I'm on a line that's been badly 
> provisioned by Bell.  I'm getting 3Mbps down / 800kbps up on a line that 
> should be 5Mbps down / 800kbps up.  Teksavvy says that requesting Bell 
> to fix this profile may just result in something like 5Mbps down / 
> 500kbps up, and I believe them.  Mostly I find 3 Mbps down fast enough, 
> but 800kbps up is already too slow.  Anyway, the persistent connection 
> (always on) is more valuable to me than raw speed. And since I'm using 
> MLPPP I've managed to evade Bell's throttling, so I'm really getting 3 
> Mbps, not whatever Bell's throttled throughput is.