ITWorldCanada: How competitive is Canada in broadband?

ITWorldCanada recently posted an article about Canada's competitiveness in the broadband Internet market. This is another article that is not specifically related to rural Internet access, but some interesting information nonetheless.

Me and Bell Portable Internet

I recently received a mailer from Bell Sympatico offering discounts on their various Portable Internet offerings, as well as half-price portable modems ($49 instead of $99). So I decided to check it out. I phoned up Bell Sympatico and asked about it. The rep (Fred?) said that instead of $49.95 per month for the (up to) 3 Mbps service, it would be $34.95 per month, and only $29.95 in a bundle (which I qualified for as a Bell LD and ExpressVu customer) for the first 12 months. And it would be $44.95 per month after 12 months if I wasn't in a bundle. And I had 15 days to return the modem for a full refund if I couldn't get a signal, but I should be able to get a signal.

My 1-year Xplornet contract expired in early June, so I decided to see if Sympatico Portable Internet would work in my rural Ottawa locale.

I visited the Bell World store in Barhaven, bought a modem for $49. First hiccup was that I was informed by the Bell World guy that it would be $34.95 per month in a bundle, and $49.95 per month in a bundle after 12 months. Hmmm.... a $5 discrepancy between the two Bell sources. I decided to check it out anyway, since I would still see significant savings in the first 12 months.

I took the modem home and following the instructions, plugged it into a wall outlet in my home office and waited for it to find a signal. No signal. Put the kids to bed. Came back. Still no signal. Tried the modem in various other rooms in my house. In a couple of rooms, I got 1 bar (out of 5 bars). But the booklet said that I needed a minimum of 2 bars to get reliable service and the more bars, the better. I got 2-3 bars in my guest bedroom, at the opposite end of the house from my home office. The Bell rep did say the tower was due east my house, and the guest bedroom is at the extreme east end of my house, so I guess that made some sense. Unfortunately, I did not really want to run a 70-plus foot network cable from my guest bedroom through the rest of the house to my home office, and my previous experience had shown me that my wireless router could not get a reliable signal between the two extremities (old house, thick walls, some brickwork).

So I packed the modem up, and took it back to the Bell World store for a refund.

So my little experiment wasn't very successful. I may try Rogers Portable Internet; it's the same network (Inukshuk) as Bell's service, but perhaps Rogers uses a different tower in my area.

Does anyone else have any Bell Sympatico Portable Internet experiences to share? Or with Rogers Portable Internet?

CBC: Small ISPs fight ruling that let Bell throttle internet speeds

Last fall, the CRTC made a controversial ruling allowing Bell Sympatico (and others) to throttle Internet speeds based on content. A group of small ISPs is now seeking to have that ruling overturned based on such grounds Internet freedom, monopolization, consumer costs, and user privacy.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/05/21/tech-bell-isps-internet-throttling.html

CBC Marketplace: Speed Bumps

On Michael Geist's website, he posts an article with a link to a November 2007 episode of CBC's Marketplace in which they supposedly test the download speeds of various ISPs.

The tests aren't really very scientific, since there are way too many variables just in the way they've set up the tests with the end-users, and the fact that each user only ran one test of one very large (700MB) file. However, there are a few accurate comments sprinkled throughout the exposé which warrant attention. I'd also suggest that if you watch the video, you also read the comments included with Michael Geist's article, since there are also some accurate observations.

The Latest on my Xplornet Service

As previously mentioned (in my comments of my posting of 'Life with Xplornet: After 5 Months'), I was moved over to Xplornet's 3.5 GHz service (from the 900 MHz service) and the host tower was upgraded in late January, after which time my download speeds improved significantly. Part of the speed increase was due to the fact that Xplornet gave me a free upgrade to the 5Mbps service until the end of February due to all the problems that I had between October and January. However, since the beginning of March, my service has been downgraded to the 3Mbps service, and my download speeds dropped accordingly.

Mostly the speeds are good, but sometimes they're poor; to be fair, sometimes they're super. There's a lot of inconsistency, and some days are better or worse than others. On my 3 Mbps service, I'm averaging 1.2 Mbps download through March, which I think is fairly reasonable; as I've said before, I'm not naive enough to expect 3 Mbps all the time. Looking at the details, I've gotten as low as 11 Kbps (yes, Kbps) and as high as 5.1 Mbps for individual downloads. For average daily downloads, I've gotten as high as 2.3 Mbps and as low as 50.39 Kbps. In other words, my speeds are varyingly fast and slow, and I can only guess at the reason or reasons. It might be traffic patterns (i.e. other users, since the bandwidth is shared), backhaul network congestion, target webserver load, atmospheric interference, etc. I work (for now) in the cellular industry, and these are all valid factors for affecting data rates to your web-enabled cellphone or smartphone (e.g. Blackberry), and they also hold true for fixed wireless service (since most are outside the control of the service provider). The ISP owns or controls very little of your end-to-end Internet connection. Equipment could be a factor, both in-home and out on the network. I try my best to keep my PC patch-current and malware-free. And yes, it could be policies implemented by Xplornet, as some people claim.

Remember, peak rate (i.e. the advertised rate -- you'll note that it always reads 'up to' or 'maximum' regardless of the ISP) is NOT the sustained or average rate, and ISPs don't publish their target sustained rates. They're not going to put a guarantee on down- or upload rates either, because of the variety of factors outside of their control that can impact performance. Mostly, it appears to be best effort. The fact that I'm occasionally experiencing download rates above the maximum for my service implies that Xplornet is not (or at least not always) throttling rates. On eight of 16 days in March on which I ran download tests, I got maximum download rates in excess of 3 Mbps.

If you don't think you're regularly getting appropriate speeds, you should complain (and I don't care who you're ISP is). If you're still not satisfied, complain with your wallet, either by downgrading your service (e.g. why pay for 3 Mbps when you're not even regularly getting 1.5 Mbps?) or by switching ISPs (if you have that option).

PC World Canada article on USB Internet Sticks

PCWorld.ca recently posted an article entitled 'Take the Internet with you: Canadian carriers offer USB Internet sticks' on their website.

The article basically describes the mobile Internet services available to laptop users (as opposed to smartphone users). Some readers may have heard or seen ads for Rogers Internet Stick; the article covers such services from Rogers, Fido, Bell, and Telus.

These services are different from the portable Internet services offered by Rogers and Bell on their co-developed Inukshuk network. For one, the data plans are more expensive, and two, the download and upload speeds are lower. Rogers and Fido use a GSM network, while Bell and Telus use an EVDO network. However, they are another option for high-speed Internet access for rural users, especially if you want to take your Internet access with you on the road.

Life with Xplornet: After 5 Months

My last posting on my Xplornet experience was July 3 (see archive), when I had been with Xplornet for 3 weeks following my conversion from Storm. It's now over 4 months later, and the adventure continues. Here's some of the things I've experienced:

• In August, Xplornet's email servers were unavailable for a couple of days. No email lost... as far as I could tell.
  
  
• In September, I had my antenna re-aligned at my own expense, because I had to remove it from my roof in August in order to re-shingle the roof. When I put it back up, it was pretty good, but decided to spend the $100 to get it accurately aligned for the best-possible signal.
  
  
• In early October (?), Xplornet's email servers were again unavailable for a couple of days. And again, no email appeared to have been lost.
  
  
• During the October 18-19 weekend, my service went down. I called Xplornet's customer support line. A recorded announcement indicated network problems in many areas, including North Gower (i.e. the tower servicing me). The service was eventually restored around 11am Monday, October 20.
  
  
• The next day, Tuesday, October 21, my service dropped 6 times during the afternoon, while I was telecommuting. It was still bouncing on Wednesday. I tried calling the custoemr support line, but after ~15 minutes on-hold, I hung-up and sent an email. Long story short, after several email exchanges and phone calls, my writing of a script to repeatedly test my connection using pings and record the results, and three different tier 1 support reps telling me the same thing each time (except for one who also told me the outages were 'momentary' despite the data I had provided), I finally spoke with a tier 2 support rep on the evening of Tuesday, November 4. That rep arranged for a work order to get an on-site visit by a technician; she said someone would call within 4 days to arrange for the visit. On the morning of November 8, the tech called me, dropped by within 3 hours, and replaced my 900 MHz antenna with a 2.5 GHz antenna, which required alignment with a different tower, farther away. (Aside: one thing I've never been clear on is why Xplornet wouldn't point my antenna at the tower, only 2 km up the road, that I used when I was with Storm. Instead, I was originally pointed at a tower 6 km away and now, supposedly off a tower even farther away.) This problem frustrated me because it could have been resolved a lot sooner, but was mishandled by Xplornet's tier 1 support team. Three different people reviewed my case and told me basically the same things, but added little value. They even appeared to have ignored the hours of ping data that I sent them. Since the antenna was replaced, my connection has been stable, even during heavy fog and freezing rain, but the speeds seem slower and appears to stall periodically.
  

So, June through September were pretty good months on Xplornet, except for the email interruptions. October was a very rough month for me and Xplornet. I'm hoping the next few months will be much better, to make up for it.

-Chris

Monitor Article: Portable Internet

In the October 2008 issue of Ottawa's own Monitor Magazine, there's a feature article entitled Portable Internet on page 26. The author, Eric Jacksch, tested Rogers Portable Internet service from his own home in Ottawa south and describes his findings, including upload and download speeds.

You can download the full October 2008 issue of Monitor in PDF format by clicking
http://monitor.ca/monitor/PDF/MONITOR_October2008.pdf.

Side note: I'm soooo glad that Monitor has started producing complete online issues (in both PDF and SWF (macromedia flash) formats). I've been having trouble finding the print copies, and although the feature articles used to be available on their webpage, the ads never were.

PCMag article: Why We Need White-Space Broadband

PC Magazine has published an article about using unlicensed white-space frequencies for high-speed Internet transmissions in rural areas.

In the USA, the government is requiring all TV broadcasters to convert their analog television signals to digital signals. This frees-up all the analog TV channels on VHF (channels 2-13; 54-216 MHz) and UHF (channels 14-83; 470-1002 MHz). These frequency spectrums (white-space) could be used for wireless high-speed Internet access, especially in rural areas where there is not a lot of white-space use to begin with. And because these are lower frequencies, especially the VHF range, the signals can travel much further, which also makes them suitable for rural areas.

I'm not sure how applicable the article is to Canada, since I'm not sure if the Canadian government is going to follow the USA's lead in the matter. If anyone knows for sure, please provide info.

Article: Slow road to high-speed Internet frustrating consultants

The October 10, 2008 edition of the Manotick/Winchester EMC features a front-page article entitled Slow road to high-speed Internet frustrating consultants. The article describes problems and frustrations associated with gaps in the high-speed coverage in the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry. The counties are looking to access some of the $30 million budgeted by the provincial government to improve rural high-speed access.

Anyone wishing to report gaps in the rural high-speed access within the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry should contact Actionable intelligence at 613-535-2673 or actionable.intelligence@rogers.com.