Welcome to the self-proclaimed Rural Ottawa High-Speed Internet Blog. High-speed Internet access is virtually ubiquitous in the urban and suburban areas of Ottawa, but when I started this blog in 2005, only about 60% of the rural areas of Ottawa have coverage. However, even for rural citizens, high-speed Internet access is becoming as necessary as telephone service. Happily, high-speed coverage for rural Ottawa has increased significantly, and not only is coverage reportedly above 90%, many rural residents and businesses now have more than one choice of high-speed ISP.

This purpose of this weblog is to track news and events related to high-speed (broadband) Internet access in the rural areas of Ottawa and, to a lesser extent, in nearby townships.

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Monday, December 18, 2006

XplorNet Wireless High-Speed available in Rural Ottawa?

I was checking out the XplorNet website today and discovered that they now provide fixed wireless high-speed Internet service at least in the Kars area. I clicked on their For Your Home link, entered my postal code (K0A 2E0, which is the code for all of Kars) and was informed that in addition to several satellite services (most of which I already knew about), they are now providing several fixed wireless high-speed service options in the area, at prices comparable to DSL, cable, and other fixed wireless services.

They're currently offering four package with prices ranging from $29.99 - $59.99 per month for speeds from 300 Kbps to 5.0 Mbps. The Zoom package is $39.99 per month for speeds up to 1.5 Mbps and 2 email accounts. All packages offered free installation if a 3-year contract was signed.

I'm not sure how much of rural Ottawa is covered by XplorNet's fixed wireless high-speed services, but it may be worth checking out. If anyone finds out anything more on XplorNet's availability, please let me know.

posted by Chris Spencer at 11:14 pm 2 comments

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Chris,

What speeds are you achieving with your Storm wireless out where you are?

Bob

December 21, 2006 12:26 pm  
Blogger Chris Spencer said...

I'm getting around 1.5 Mbps during downloads, typically. I know Storm advertises peaks of up to 3.0 Mbps, but I rarely notice anything above 2.0 Mbps. Still, I'm not complaining at all. Firstly, the average up- and download speeds that I'm getting are fast enough for me to work effectively from home (simultaneous email, netmeeting, xterms, and VoIP), and streaming video buffers faster than it plays, so as far as I'm concerned, it's all good.

According to Speedtest.net, I was getting 1745 Kbps down and 913 Kbps up, to a server in Montreal (closest server) and 1568 Kbps down and 632 Kbps up to a server in Toronto.

December 21, 2006 5:02 pm  

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