Steve_P

I think both Telus and Shaw can suffer from the same problem Shaw less so. Depending on how many people are on a node and if all on using the internet at the same time there can be some loss of speed.

I live in an older neighbourhood with more older people who tend not to use the internet as much as young families in the newer neighbourhoods, so I have a very consistent connection.

I have a friend who lives in a newer neighbourhood with the same internet package that I have and he says he cannot get the same speeds I get with my connection, however he still gets speeds much faster then Telus can offer him. He has tried going with Telus and their ADSL package a couple of times and returned to Shaw both times, saying Telus does not work for him.

Neither of us do much if any streaming but do download a fair amount of data.

Novocastrian

Thanks for that link. I've just used it and I have 13.5 Mbps download and 0.85 Mbps upload. This is an Orange.fr ADSL line in a small town.

Does that seem OK?

Steve_P

I can't say whether or not that is a good speed, but the speeds you get from that link depend entirely on the speed and how busy the server you choose is.

The two choices in Calgary give me very different results, one I get download speeds of 38mbps the other 51mbps.

orly

Seems fine.

TS00

Plenty for most uses, I'd be happy if I could get that for under $70 (I can't).

energysolutions

Interesting.......

Looks like Shaw is the safer bet

energysolutions

We are spoiled in the UK, while $70/month (£44/month) is not cheap by any stretch my prospective wages are more than double what I was on in the UK, so its all relative

energysolutions

I consider anything over 2 "bearable" and speeds over 5 "good", anything less can be frustrating, particularly if you plan to do anything demanding like stream

13 is pretty good for an ADSL line

Its also worth mentioning that the system is only as good as its weakest link - many times I have came across someone with a superfast connection and a heap of a computer with a crappy processor, hardly any RAM and riddled with viruses but theyre convinced the ISP is the problem!

Of course I have also witnessed this the other way round (good computer - crap connection)

energysolutions

True, different times of the day will no doubt yield different results as congestion ramps up/down

Novocastrian

I get that (and a landline, unlimited internet and TV over the net) for about $70. It would be less if I hadn't chosen a couple of premium bundles on the TV.

energysolutions

Thats pretty good - whos that with? I assume you are talking about Canada.....?

energysolutions

Has anyone used "Wind" mobile in the Edmonton area?

Ive read some reports that its the one to have around there - can anyone confirm?

orly

Wind are the cheapest generally (unlimited on just about everything for $30/month). The trade off is that they have limited coverage to a few major cities so if you travel a lot they might not be a good bet. Also a bit more limited on handset choice and they use different frequencies to the other providers so it's not just as simple as bringing an unlocked phone. Need to check if it's compatible first.

If you're fairly central and well within a coverage area then they seem good.

I live just out of range so I'm stuck paying Bell $67 a month. Moving closer to the city (Guelph, ON) in a few months and I'll be switching to them.

bgpz

We're moving (still within Hamilton) and are ditching Cogeco for Teksavvy.

25 meg down / 10 meg up on dry loop for ~$70/month all-in (including dry loop rental, taxes, DSL modem rental etc).

Installation took place the end of last week, speedtest shows that we're getting as close as dammit to theoretical max.

For the 25/10 service, right now you have to rent the Bell modem ($8/month) but TS say they are hoping to allow people to buy soon. From what I understand, it's because this is using FTTN (Fibre To The Neighbourhood) and there's some technical reasons as to why only one type of modem works to support these speeds right now. My networking so-called "knowledge" is very rusty, so apologies for lack of specific detail here - but a more clued-up colleague who has also gone TS recently confirmed there are valid techincal reasons for this.

The thing I've been impressed with so far with TS is their customer focused attitude. Totally consistent with what I've heard from friends and colleagues. They also seem to be very pro-consumer in terms of what they offer in terms of service (even if you go with the 300Gb monthly download cap, there's no cap between 2am-6pm, IIRC - and they've just announced that there's going to be no upload cap at any time - very useful if you do cloud-based backups of your own files)

The only thing with DSL is that they can't guarantee your actual line speed. It's only when you have it set up, that you will be able to find out. At least with Teksavvy it's a rolling monthly contract, setup costs were pretty low (~$120 including first month for us) so not throwing huge amounts of money away if you find you're not close enough to a local exchange to get the speeds you were hoping for.

For phone, I've set up an account with voip.ms - if you're not confident with getting a bit hands-on with such things, there are plenty of full-service VOIP offerings out there... but I've really not found it that hard - I'm picking it up myself via a couple of blogs that have some decent how-to guides, and the voip.ms documentation seems OK. Costs will vary according to how you want to set things up, and we're not fully moved in yet so don't have an established usage pattern, but there's no question we'll be saving a lot compared to before.

Quick mention re. TV - we're going to try out Netflix and some other online options. I've got a VPN that has worked for iPlayer/4OD but we didn't use much because of piddling Cogeco bandwidth caps. We'll probably have some fun with that very shortly - particularly if we can set things up to download overnight Also planning to check free-to-air digital TV options, from previous experience this will very much need to be something we discover once we're physically in there - but our 6 year old daughter is just as happy using her iPad or a laptop to view her favourite things, so not sweating this much right now

In short - definitely check out Teksavvy. Early days for us so far, but very pleased indeed.

energysolutions

Very detailed answer - thanks!

So far it seems the two choices for ISP are Teksavvy and Shaw

I had a quick look at voip.ms - what advantages do they have over Skype (who I imagined I would have to pay a subscription to in order to call landlines and mobiles in the UK without getting completely ripped off) for example?

Do you simply pay a monthly subscription and then make calls as usual but they are automatically routed through the internet (as VOIP) by their equipment? Or have I got it wrong?