Xplornet Fixed Wireless Review
The following posting came via email from Chris K. near Osgoode, and is posted here with his written permission (note: edited for content and URLs).
I live on 2nd Line Road and I have resisted the urge to go with Ripnet or Storm and Arryba never was able to get a good enough signal at my house.
Well in August Xplornet put one of their antennas on a local farmer's silo! Not only that it was almost right across the street from me (basically the antenna is about 1.5kms south of Dalmeny Road between 2nd Line Road and Stagecoach). So when I got back from holidays I signed up with Xplornet.
I have to say that so far this has been a mostly pleasant experience. Xplornet uses Digital City for their installations and they were very prompt. Also, Xplornet has refreshingly good tech support--you talk to a real live human being very quickly and I have never been routed to an off-shore call centre--plus the technicians seem to know what they are talking about. One weird thing is that the installers use Cat 5 cable, but they aren't allowed to cut the cable or use shorter lengths, they they looped up about 40ft of cable and left it tied up outside my house.
The Xplornet wireless service uses the Motorola Canopy products which seems to be a robust platform. Installation was free (with a 3 year commitment) and the prices are good with no limits on downloads. For me performance has varied quite a bit since I got the service from outstanding to pretty mediocre--I guess this is normal on shared bandwidth. Most of the time I can measure 2-4 Mb transfer rates using speedtest.net (uploads are pretty consistent and under 400kbps). When things are not going well, I sometimes get speeds of 500-900kbps (this has actually only happened twice), but it's still broadband so I guess I shouldn't complain. Ping times are acceptable for most things.
After 2 years without high speed internet I am pretty darn thrilled to be back in the saddle.
Next step is to get VOIP up and running so I can ditch bell! (My phone lines are the worst I have ever seen).
-Chris K.
I live on 2nd Line Road and I have resisted the urge to go with Ripnet or Storm and Arryba never was able to get a good enough signal at my house.
Well in August Xplornet put one of their antennas on a local farmer's silo! Not only that it was almost right across the street from me (basically the antenna is about 1.5kms south of Dalmeny Road between 2nd Line Road and Stagecoach). So when I got back from holidays I signed up with Xplornet.
I have to say that so far this has been a mostly pleasant experience. Xplornet uses Digital City for their installations and they were very prompt. Also, Xplornet has refreshingly good tech support--you talk to a real live human being very quickly and I have never been routed to an off-shore call centre--plus the technicians seem to know what they are talking about. One weird thing is that the installers use Cat 5 cable, but they aren't allowed to cut the cable or use shorter lengths, they they looped up about 40ft of cable and left it tied up outside my house.
The Xplornet wireless service uses the Motorola Canopy products which seems to be a robust platform. Installation was free (with a 3 year commitment) and the prices are good with no limits on downloads. For me performance has varied quite a bit since I got the service from outstanding to pretty mediocre--I guess this is normal on shared bandwidth. Most of the time I can measure 2-4 Mb transfer rates using speedtest.net (uploads are pretty consistent and under 400kbps). When things are not going well, I sometimes get speeds of 500-900kbps (this has actually only happened twice), but it's still broadband so I guess I shouldn't complain. Ping times are acceptable for most things.
After 2 years without high speed internet I am pretty darn thrilled to be back in the saddle.
Next step is to get VOIP up and running so I can ditch bell! (My phone lines are the worst I have ever seen).
-Chris K.
posted by Chris Spencer at 8:44 pm
12 comments
12 Comments:
That sounds tremendous. I ive in Hallville (approx. 7km south of where you say that antenna is located). Methinks I'm going to have to follow up on this next week. Should inquiries go to the local installers (Digital City Kemptville is probably my closest) or straight to XplorNet staff (who eem to be headquartered in New Brunswick?)
I think you can do either; contact your local Digital City or contact Xplornet. I can't seem to find any of the Xplornet flyers I've received.
I've recently moved out west of Carp and after reviewing dozens of coverage maps, it looks like Xplornet is my only option for broadband. I haven't signed up for the service yet because I found the website: http://www.xplornetsucks.com/forums/
The number of negative reviews posted concerns me.
Is anyone else having trouble or are happy with the service?
I also find it interesting that after a 30 day period, most posters on that forum are reporting a consistent drop in date rates.
A couple of points to consider (w.r.t. previous posting):
1. Any large ISP (and a few small ones) will have unhappy customers, for a variety of reasons. Try looking at Sympatico or Rogers, and you'll find similar horror stories.
2. The xplornetsucks forum seems to have a number of satellite users who are posting in the wireless forum.
3. People seem to be complaining about speeds well below advertised speeds. Keep in mind that advertised speeds for any ISP and any medium are peak speeds; average speeds tend to be much lower. E.g. When was the last time you actually got 56 Kbps out of your dial-up? People who know say that anything over 40 Kbps is acceptable/reasonable for dial-up. For my 3 Mbps wireless service (with another ISP), I typically get 1.0 - 1.5 Mbps down. I VoIP and NetMeet regularly, and only rarely notice a lag.
4. Wireless is by definition not a physical medium, and environmental/atmospheric factors can cause retransmission of any corrupted data, which will significantly reduce effective speeds.
5. I'm not saying Xplornet hasn't over-subscribed their service or throttle-back after 30 days, and I am not saying they have. This would be difficult to prove either way.
6. I don't doubt that most if not all of the postings on xplornetsuck are truthful. However, there seems to only be a handful of different posters, which may indicate a very small set of users, given that Xplornet is nation-wide. There is one poster, Veritable, who purports to be a dealer and who seems to say that there are legitimate concerns and that Xplornet's customer service is poor. Veritable recommends contacting your dealer (e.g. DigitalCity), who may have an easier time accessing Xplornet's level 2 support staff and thus may have more luck in getting a user's problems resolved.
I'm not and have never been serviced by XplorNet, not do I receive any remuneration of any kind from them.
I am hoping to find out more, as I have at least one friend on Xplornet wireless (but currently less than 30 days).
If you have no other Internet access choices except for dial-up, you have to ask yourself if you want high-speed bad enough to live with these short-comings, like typical speeds may be significantly (50%) less than advertised 'peak' speeds. Even 1.0 - 1.5 Mbps download (instead of 3.0 Mbps peak advertised) is 25x - 37x faster than typical real dial-up speeds of 40 Kbps.
-Chris
I have Xplornet wireless internet 3000kbps down and 600kpbs up. I can tell you they are overloading their towers after a while. 3:00pm to 2:00am I only get like 200-300kpbs with a lot of huge lag spikes (every 15 seconds). I won't say everything I already said on Xplornetsucks.com(my name is Lateralus on the forum).
I saw someone posting some kind of Ip we can enter in the explorer browser : http://169.254.1.1/ password : xyxyxy and look what I found
Sustained Uplink Data Rate
300 (kbps)
Uplink Burst Allocation
5000 (kbits)
Sustained Downlink Data Rate
700 (kbps)
Downlink Burst Allocation
30000 (kbits)
You can't say they aren't limiting the speed, I don't see the "sustained downlink and uplink" written in their contract. Funny isn't it ?
Hmmm. I guess that's what they mean when they say "up to 3000 Kbps". If the burst rate maxes out at 3000 Kbps, that technically meets the advertised rate. But sustained rates of 700 Kbps down and 300 Kbps up (23% and 10% of burst respectively) seems low, at least to a layman like myself.
I wonder if this is standard/typical/average across the industry? I'll see if I can find out anything.
I wish I could find this info out for my ISP and several other of the more popular ISPs, like Bell and Rogers.
I also live in Kemptville, close to Hallville actually, on that side of the 416. I've had xplornet since Feb. 07 and at first the service was quite good. I went from DSL to wireless when I moved into a rural area. I was happy, and customer service was good for the first little while as well, promptly reaching a CS rep whenever I called.
Over time my service has deteriorated, and the last several times I've tried to call customer service it's been a nightmare. I waited on the phone for 4 HOURS one day!!! I work from home so I had no choice but to wait. I got through to someone who told me the box on my roof was toast and they had to send someone to repair it. They NEVER came. I called the local xplornet repairman, and they were nice, but they were never contacted by xplornet for a service order to my house. The box started working again mysteriously and I haven't had 4 spare hours to get through to a rep again for help. My internet speeds are pathetic these days, it's embarassing as I am a software developer working from home. My co-workers who also tele-commute make fun of me for the slow speed internet I have, and it affects my productivity on a daily basis. In addition as soon as there's any sort of rain my internet goes down.
Other neighbours of mine have gone with ripnet, and they've had a much better experience. I would definately not recommend xplornet.
Sorry that I took so long to get the above comment published; it sat in my Inbox, unnoticed by me, for 2 weeks.
That said...
I know the wait-times on Xplornet's support line can be very long, but if you need new gear and they haven't sent anyone, you really need to call them back and ensure that they send someone. I've generally found them responsive once I've actually gotten ahold of them; at least once they called me to see how I was finding the service. You're paying for services that you're not getting, and you may have suffer through short-term pain for long-term gain.
-Chris
I live just South West of Osgoode and I have had Xplornet Internet services for about 9 months. I had Ripnet for three years before that. Both have been reasonable for speed and service, but Xplornet was ~$40 a month cheaper, so no brainer.
Where Xplornet has really fallen down is with their ipTALK VOIP (Voice Over IP) offering. I got it and kept our Bell service a month to make sure ipTALK was workable. It was and was $35 per month cheaper than Bell. All was well until the last week in December when Xplornet changed their ipTALK platform from an external provider to their own servers. It have never worked right since and today a level 2 Xplornet tech support person said that they can not figure out why no one can call in on our phone or why our voicemail is not working (both server side issues). Xplornet didn't want to pursue it any farther since I made the decision two days ago to return to Bell for phone service.
The tech said sorry but I would be without a phone for five days until Bell could reconnect me, as Xplornet has no idea why my ipTALK is not working.
I would strongly recomment to anyone who is considering Xplornet VOIP ipTALK services that they look for phone service elsewhere.
My ISP experience (Internet) with Xplornet has not been bad, but my ipTALK experience has been the worst home Information Technology experience I have ever had.
Explornet has admitted to me their tower in Metcalff is overloaded. I subscribe for 3mb/sec and consistently get .1mb/sec with timeouts all evening. Not a good situation for $60 monthly. They have offered to get me pointed to another (under utilized) tower with a new technology radio. They say the service will be ok there. If not its Ripnet for me. I could not believe how many months it took me to get them to admit their tower was overloaded. Countless level two calls. I was so frustrated.
Bill
greely
Digital City was at best, hacks, my dish fell off the roof and caused 350 dollars damage, digital city promised to pay and renagged, Andre Lahai is a con.
I am an installer for Digital-city and am about to take then to court for non-payment. What sort of company chooses to not pay their employees?
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