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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Thursday, July 26, 2007

XplorNet flyer

I received an XplorNet flyer in today's snail-mail. I suspect that everyone with a Kars postal code (KOA 2E0) got one.

The flyer is advertising a grand opening special of $0 for hardware and installation; I suspect this is with a 3-year contract, which XplorNet has been advertising on it's website for a while. The flyer is also advertising a 30-day money-back guarantee, and free StarChoice satellite with all connections, but details are not provided.

The contact info on the flyer is DigitalCity at 1-800-868-1602 or 1727A St. Laurent Blvd., Ottawa.

I know that XplorNet has also been active out in the Almonte/Carp/West Carleton areas.

posted by Chris Spencer at 1:02 pm 3 comments

3 Comments:

Blogger Josh said...

I got the same flyer yesterday and I live in Merrickville (well outside of it). This guy was the most knowledgeable that I've spoken with. Turns out the Smuiths Falls tower was only switched on Monday or Tuesday (July 23-24) and they're mandated by teh city to have another 42(?) or 54(?) towers set up by Sept 1st this tear and that my lil area was going to be on the grid by then.

July 26, 2007 3:58 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I live just east of Ashton and someone on our street just got wireless XplorNet installed. I went with Storm who hit my area just before XplorNet did (strange how that happened eh!), but am very interested on how good the service is (especially the [up to] 5Mb service) as Storm is only 3Mb at the moment. That being said, i am extremely happy to finally see the 'digital divide' closing and availability and choice of ISPs growing for rural area's.

July 27, 2007 10:25 am  
Blogger Chris Spencer said...

Yes, nothing like a little competition to get things moving along. I also noticed how Bell and Rogers pushed out their unplugged/fixed-wireless modems at around the same time that Ottawa announced it was awarding the $750K contract to XplorNet.

I'm curious to find out more about XplorNet's service as well. I'm with Storm (3Mbps peak), and generally happy with the service (8-9/10) but it is rare that I get higher than 2Mbps during speed tests, and seem to typically get 1.0 - 1.5 Mbps. However, it allows me to telework without significant delays, so it meets my needs.

July 27, 2007 7:59 pm  

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