Need advice, comparing Canada ISP Service

zynizen

zynizen

Registered
I'm on Rogers Hi-Speed, have been for a year, but haven't been very pleased with the service. I am thinking about switching to Bell Sympatico but I was wondering if anyone is happy with their service?

I would like to compare the top service they offer, who has either and what are your thoughts?

Rogers Hi-Speed Extreme Plus - 16mbps down / 1mbps up (Cable)
Bell Sympatico High-Speed Ultimate - 16mbps down / 1mbps up (DSL)

I dont know where else to post this question, there aren't many forums I've found that discuss these issues.

I basically just want a super-fast connection that isn't prone to slowdowns during peak hours or intermitten stoppage in service due to issues.

Thanks everyone! Specifically, I'm in the Ontario GTA area.

Also, I am running a Macbook Pro & iMac 20" Wirelessly to AirPort Extreme 802.11n, The hardware is 100% reliable, I've found lately and over the last 3 months that the connection just quits every so often and slows down significantly. thanks again
 
Moved to Bob's Place because there's not really anywhere to talk about this kind of general topic.

I have Sympatico but I've been with them for many years. New Sympatico customers are subjected to a 60GB download/upload limit before being charged extra. Since I've been with Bell for so long I'm still on unlimited but you won't be able to get that.

The Bell DSL above 6-7 Mbps is not available in all areas, but you are in the GTA so you might be lucky and have it available. But you will still have the cap which is ridiculous with a 16 Mbit connection.

Rogers has a 100GB cap and throttles bittorrents no matter if they are legal or illegal(copyright infringing) files you are downloading.

I suggest you check out this other website which is more focused on this topic however because this forum is not really focused on debating different ISP services. The site is http://www.dslreports.com

Check out the Bell Sympatico forum and Teksavvy forum. Teksavvy is a very good ISP from what I've heard and you can get an unlimited account with them if you think you would go over the 60GB limit from Bell.
 
zynizen said:
Rogers Hi-Speed Extreme Plus - 16mbps down / 1mbps up (Cable)
Bell Sympatico High-Speed Ultimate - 16mbps down / 1mbps up (DSL)
Click to expand...
It would be interesting to find out what the actual average downstream speed is for both services, rather than their advertised upper limit.
 
Thanks for the info Captain! The Actual average I've noticed on Rogers so far for the time that Ive been with them is about 7-7.5, not a full 8mbps on their lower end, and sometimes it just hovers around 5/6mbps. I think somewhere they say "UP TO 16mbps, or UP TO 8mbps" Pretty lame, seeings how out west in Canada, Shaw/Cogeco advertise 25mbps for the same price Ontario charges our 8/16 downstream.. and still, the upload speeds are always at 1mbps. What gives? I was talking to a Cable Op one day and he had an uncap program running on his laptop before installing the service, and he was sucking down around 50mbps and upload rate was around 4-5mbps, (some test they do in all areas to see how congested they are before capping your connection)

Can you believe that? No joke, I saw the screen myself, it was ridiculous. So the companies can definitely handle the speed.. so why not offer it?

The reason I was able to see this, is because I used to work for GeekSquad a few years ago, and mentioned I know all about the way the cable system works, etc. so I wanted to see what they actually do before leaving your house. (He was fairly trusting at the time and actually let me view it. pretty nice of him)
 
All ISPs say "up to" because they don't want to guarantee you anything with a residential service. You can get a business service and then you are usually guaranteed uptime and whatever speed they say you get assuming your line can handle it.

The reason they don't give you the full speed of their network is because if everyone had that then there'd be huge congestion problems. They're already seeing that with Rogers and now Bell in some areas where they have too many subscribers for the bandwidth allocated to that area.
 
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