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?
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?
posted by Chris Spencer at 9:19 pm
14 comments
14 Comments:
Hate to disappoint you, but Bell & Rogers both use exactly the same set of towers - the only differences are in the network after the towers.
Of course, to be annoying they both use the same model of modem, but each programmed to only authenticate with their own network - so if you want to switch from Rogers to Bell or vice versa you need to buy a new modem.
I ended up switching from Bell to Rogers after 18 months as I could no longer get a reliable download bandwidth of > 500kb/s from Rogers. Bell has a cheaper 500/128kb/s option available so I now get approximately the bandwidth I pay for.
Warning. Getting Bell to honor its "bundle discounts" can take a lot of time on the phone talking to service reps: I never did manage to get the bundled rate for the first month of service.
I also received that flyer about Bell and wondered about it's viability as well. Thanks for posting your experience.
I recently had RipNET out to the house but despite surveying at 84 feet high, they could get no effective signal from Kemptville. Xplornet is sucking right now because of the summer foilage. I'm hoping it returns to a higher speed in the fall when the leaves drop.
What are you using now?
@ ohpinion8ted
I'm still using Xplornet... and yes, my download speeds have been half of their typical values for the last month or so. I was averaging 1100-1200 Kbps, but am now getting only 500-600 Kbps down. I was going to call them to complain.
BTW, I don't think Xplornet's current slow speeds are entirely due to foliage, as I am getting decent speeds during weekdaytime hours. Things only seem to slow down in the evenings and weekends. So Xplornet may have over-subscribed their services.
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I'm just east of Ashton Ontario, and I can definitely state that Bell is overselling their service. They confirmed this on the phone (told me that the tower is overloaded).
latency swings between 70 and 3000+ ms. Close to 50 (fifty) % packet loss.
Browsing the internet is absolutely awful. Skype just doesn't work. Online gaming can't work. VPN doesn't work. Remote ssh'ing will just stall. Transferring files will stall and time out.
I want to switch to Xplornet, but I'm worried about their aggressive attitude towards customers with their $450 cancellation penalty, and the fact that they leave people peddling with local dealers, who then purposely install the modem in an iffy place to ensure more maintenance work down the line.
(I know for a fact that many do this, *on purpose* !).
I'm fed with the abuse customers have to endure.
@Anonymous:
I wasn't aware of Xplornet's $450 cancellation fee. Is that with or without a contract? Also, Xplornet used to have a 30-day money-back policy.
I've certainly had my share of problems with Xplornet (and with Bell Sympatico, way back in the late 1990s when I lived in Kanata), but since January, I've noted that on the rare occasions that I've had to call Xplornet, they on-hold time has been short and the problems resolved promptly.
I have the 3Mbps Xplornet service and I seem to be getting okay service since my host tower was upgraded in late January. I've been monitoring my download speeds, and since February 1, I'm averaging 1.3Mbps down, with peaks (bursts) well above 3 Mbps (I hit 6.1Mbps recently).
(Aside: This morning, my service has been slow. It might be the heavy rains and low cloud cover, but I'm only getting about 200 Kbps down right now.)
As I've said many times before on this blog, it is unreasonable to expect to always have 3 Mbps down on a 3Mbps service, since there are too many factors, most of which are outside of the ISPs' control (since no one owns the Internet and the diverse networks which comprise it). No ISP can guarantee their speeds. That said, if you're getting, on average, less than ~1/3 of the advertised maximum speed of your service, you probably should complain. It may not help, but if you don't call them, it definitely won't help.
I use my home Internet service for VoIP calls and VPN traffic, & watching streaming video, and it's usually acceptable. And that's the acid test -- the end-user experience.
If Bell's is not satisfactory, and you have other options, you should explore them. Check if there are any other Xplornet customers in your area. Find out if they have an overall better experience with Xplornet than you have with Bell. If they do, then switching to Xplornet will probably be a vast improvement for you, and the $450 cancellation fee won't matter.
-Chris
Guy from Ashton again.
Bell Wimax is now worse than ever.
Bell actually admitted they oversold the area but promised that they would be adding more nodes.
Well, after months of crappy service, it has only got worse.
25+% packet drops, massive delays before anything happen, dns name lookup timeouts, web pages needing refreshing 3 times before loading, youtube is unbarable.
I'm so utterly sick and tired of Bell it just aint funny.
I've had Roger's Portable Internet for over a year now. Great the first month. I was using Xplornet's sattelite serveive prio to that and it just was brutal with VPN so I switched to Rogers's and like I said it worked fine for about a month. Since then lot's of packet loss, horrendous slowdowns and basically unusable for periods of the day. I have no doubt the servive has been oversold (at a premium price I may add) and that is what is causing most people's connection speed woes.
I live North of Ashton and have been using Xplornet for about two years. I've been frustrated by the inconsistent speeds and latency. Sometimes it's excellent and other times it's awful. If they could only be consistent then I would be a happy customer.
I recently decided to give Bell's portable internet a try as a backup. My intention was to have two systems so I could switch between them when one was slow. I was able to get 5/5 bars from one window that faced the tower but the speed was appallingly bad. It varied from 50kb/s to 200kb/s with latencies anywhere from 500ms to 8000ms. This made it virtually unusable. Some nights I couldn't even connect at all.
I wanted to give it a fair chance so I spent 10 days working with their reps trying to fix the problem. They eventually admitted that the tower was over congested.
I canceled the service but decided to keep the modem. I may try it again in 6 months to see if it has improved at all.
I'm near Dwyer Hill and HWY 7 and the tower is congested. Worked ok for a few months but now not useable. Bell is working on it.
The Bell portable Internet service is no longer available to new customers in Ottawa area. I guess they decided not to do any expansion to address the congestion problems.
Posted via 295.ca dialup since my SimplySurf AP has totally disappaeared.
@Mark...
I suspect Bell is trying to push people from a mediocre service onto their new Turbo (HSPA/HSPA+) service, like their Turbo Hub (http://www.bell.ca/shopping/en_CA_ON.Turbo-Hub/70193.details).
I mean, why would they expand old technology when they have new tech.
-Chris
@Chris - I could believe Bell has business motivation behind the unavailability of Bell Portable Internet except...
(a) it is still available in some areas, just not here (See * below)
(b) my neighbours who have Bell Portable Internet say the service is randomly crappy, which sounds like it is over-subscribed
(c) comments from Ashton guy from July last year...
* available in: Simcoe County, South Glengarry, Laurentian Valley, Middlesex County
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