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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I've opened up this blog to allow anyone to post to it. However, I continue to moderate and will remove any inappropriate content, e.g. anything not related to high-speed internet access in the rural Ottawa, the Ottawa Valley, Eastern Ontario, and the Outaouais.
Xplornet Announces Plan to Deliver 25 Mbps Broadband Internet to 100% of Rural Canadians
8 Comments:
Chris, one thing you should note is that in many rural areas including Rural Osgoode, Bell has put a "stop sell" on DSL services as they intend to offer their Fibe service as soon as Oct 26 2014. Not only that, some addresses listed as not having DSL available now show as being Fibe compatible (whic is odd considering that the Fibe service is FTTN, which effectively uses ADSL 2+ for the last mile, so you'd expect the same restrictions). I have seen Bell trucks around doing work... I have more info if you want it. Do you not publish an email address anymore??
Very Nice Post....How to Improve Internet Speed
I looked into the new service they are offering by trying out some New Brunswick postal codes as it has been launched there. There seem to be 2 tiers, 10mbps and 25mbps, with a max upload still of 1mbps. To be fair though, the real limit to the plans Xplornet offers isn't just the speed, but the total amount of bandwidth they provide per month and without a reasonable option to even purchase more bandwidth (unless you consider paying $4/GB overages reasonable). The only real competition for rural Internet unfortunately though are the LTE modems with ridiculously low bandwidth caps, unless you have access to Storm or another WISP in your area.
On another note, Ottawa won't be getting more rural internet competitors anytime soon either, as the network Storm and others run on, EORN, has been restricted to outside the Ottawa area. Blame the city council for this one as they choice not to participate in the network adoptions and build-out. My beliefs is the city doesn't care enough to invest since they made the original deal with Xplornet couple years ago for them to provide 100% coverage for rural Ottawa, so they said why bother invest in another network.. So for those who are Rural Ottawa (ie Me in Carp) your kinda screwed.
Chris,
I can't seem to figure out how to add a new post. I just saw an flyer about a new Wireless ISP for the west end of rural Ottawa.
http://www.omnitecwireless.com/
I'm just in their coverage area and would be interested to know if anyone else were with them.
Hi Mike.
In order to keep down the spam (of which there is a lot), only I can start new threads on my blog. So.... I just added a new posting, looking for info on OmniTec Wireless. Hopefully we'll get some feedback soon. Thanks for letting me know about it.
-Chris
Howdy,
Regarding Xplornet being the preferred internet supplier in rural Ottawa (I live in Carp also, off David Manchester), I had an exchange recently with one of Councillor Eli El-Chantiry assistant, then with the Economic Development Officer. The agreement between the City and Xplornet expired more than two years ago. My e-mail conversation with the city occurred in late October. Nobody seems to be interested in providing high speed internet in our area (except for Bell and Roger via their mobile hubs).
And regarding Omnitec Wireless, I have never heard of this company before, but their coverage map shows that I should be able to get service from them (I hope that my darn trees are not too high) as I live off David Manchester, near Old Almonte drive. I actually work right across the company’s office building (on Gloucester) and will try to get some answers from them and share what I learn.
I have called them a few times but nobody picks up the phone and I cannot leave a voice mail. Hmmm! Not good.
Will send them an e-mail and see if they contact me back.
Chris, thank you for providing a lot of information on your site. I check it out once in a while.
Cheers,
André
I was chomping a the bit to switch to LTE from my constantly degrading 10Mbps 4G service (now down to a pathetic 1 Mbsp during peak times). However, after hearing from several tech that this new system doesn't support VPN and failing to get an adequate explanation as to why I decided I had enough of the Xplornet headaches and false promises. Storm is now servicing my area and they are installing service for me today.
Storm installed... Yesterday at this time I was getting 1.5Mbps on my 10Mbps Xplornet connection. Today with Storm I just got 12Mbps on a 10Mbps connection with a 25ms ping to boot. So happy to finally be done with Xplornet.
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