Internet Fail
I live in Canada. I love this country, but I hate the price of internet here. Maybe I’m asking for too much: I want fast internet with uncapped and no shaping goodness for a reasonable price. You can’t find that here. For example, Bell throttles all torrents between 4pm and 2am. So your torrent, legitimate (Linux anyone?) or not, will drop to 20kb/s during these hours. It’s the most annoying thing in the world, and I would like to punch them in the face.
Then there’s TekSavvy. Independent, new, they offer 10 mbps down, 1 mbps up with unlimited transfer, and presumably no traffic shaping for $55 plus the cost of a modem (~$75). This isn’t bad, though I dislike the fact that you can’t go higher than 10 mbps. I expect people will tell me they have DSL offerings which are cheaper and faster, but I’m no fan of the phone line. I like things in a tube. Also they don’t offer anything else, like wireless, so I can’t bundle my services and save, which I’m a fan of doing.
There’s only one more option in my area: Rogers. In Canada, having the privilege of three choices for internet means you’re spoiled. Most areas have two, or one. Anyways Rogers has a bunch of plans, but their Ultimate, while sporting a hefty 50mbps down and 2 (what the fuck?) mbps up, costs $99/mo. In addition, you have to get their SUPER SPECIAL fuck you in the ass modem which is also more money, and has a router/wireless built in. That doesn’t help me, because I have my own routers. Yes, I have two. I need them. Also, Ultimate only has a 175gb cap.
So let’s do the bandwidth math here. 50mbps is (maximum) 22.5gb per hour transfer speed. With a 175gb cap, you can effectively use your internet for 8 hours before you go over the cap. While I’m sure those would be the best fucking 8 hours of your life, are they serious? There is no unlimited bandwidth option either. Rogers is also known to shape your traffic, though so far they have left me alone.
I’m with Rogers. I called them asking for more bandwidth, and told them I refuse to upgrade to the special needs modem. Apparently, there’s no way. I’m stuck with my package, and my bandwidth cap. So I guess I’ll just end up paying extra for bandwidth over-usage each and every month.
If the ghost of Ted Rogers is reading this then I have a message for you: one time I spit gum on your ugly road, so I win, you pricey bastard.
Not everyone downloads 24/7, can you please provide calculations for say … me
sure. let’s see, you download as much as a grandmother, and we divide that by the fact that you never play starcraft 2 with me. this results in: nobody cares.
Really though, SC2 is not taking up any REAL amount of your monthly allotment. 2D needs to find another excuse, like how he’s terrified of the incalculable moisture of the zerg.
/like
CRTC must die. They have not done much to help us; on the other hand they have helped the Bell/Rogers duopoly immensely. If they’re not going to regulate on our behalf, then we need deregulation.
the CRTC has also been known to censor things :(
Sorry I didn’t see this post till today. In any case I’ve had a lot of success with Bell’s Fibe 25 service. I hate both Bell and Rogers but prefer each for their own services (Rogers for wireless & tv ’cause they’re easy to negotiate pretty sick deals) and Bell for their internet
I currently pay $57.95/month for my Fibe 25 service with its 25mbps DL / 7mbps UL… needless to say the DL caps are gay–set at 75GB–I don’t experience traffic shaping either since I only use newsgroups (gave up on torrents over a year ago). The thing i like most about Bell though is that even though there’s a 75GB DL cap, you can add 40GB more for $5, up to a maximum of $30 more for the month (that’s 315gb). After that it’s unlimited as they cap out the overage fees at $30/month.
So for roughly $100 a month you get unlimited bandwidth usage with 25mbps speeds which equates to 3mb/s dl speeds on newsgroups… obviously not as fast as Rogers’ “ultimate” internet but still pretty sweet!