My Rogers RocketHub Trial

Between August 16 and August 30, I tried-out the Rogers RocketHub.  My main reason for the trial was that the Rogers solution cost less but offered more data than Bell's TurboHub plan.  Rogers offered 20 GB for $90 per month, while Bell wanted $105 for 15 GB per month.  As a secondary reason, I was very annoyed with Bell constantly bombarding me with Data Usage Notifications which I could not click through (see previous post, The Most Annoying Thing About Bell's TurboHub: Data Usage Notifications).

You may infer from the date range above that my RocketHub trial was unsuccessful. 

It started well enough.  The RocketHub was easy to install and use; much like the TurboHub.  And during those first few, the speeds were great.  Sometimes it was on 3G and sometimes it was on LTE, but that didn't seem to matter too much, in terms of speed.  So I called up Bell and cancelled my TurboHub service -- and was reminded about Bell's 30-day cancellation notification policy.  Oh well.

After a few days, I started to notice that my service would get interrupted.  Out of the blue, my internet connection would halt.  I would reset (power-cycle) the RocketHub, and service would be restored.

Then service started dropping at least once and often several times a day.  Not good.

I made some calls to Rogers tech support.  They claimed that the tower wasn't overloaded.  They also didn't think that I had a faulty RocketHub, and so advised against getting it replaced.   They couldn't identify any problems.  But my RocketHub connection kept on dropping.  I also noticed that the RocketHub didn't have a port for connecting an external antenna, so if signal strength was the issue, there was little I could do to improve reception.

In the end, I was advised by Rogers tech support to return the RocketHub before the 15-day trial period ended, which I did.  The Rogers store rep had some problem cancelling my account; he had to made 3 calls to get the account cancelled.  Even then, I later ended up getting a bill from Rogers for 2 months of service (that I didn't receive).  A call to Rogers customer support resolved that billing issue.

Then I made another call, to Bell, to have my TurboHub service re-instated.  Since the 30-day cancellation period was not over, I was re-connected without charge.

So after a brief diversion, I'm back using my Bell TurboHub.  It's reliable but expensive to operate.