Internet Providers besides Bell and Rogers

Sunday Rider

Sunday Rider

Well-known member
Site Supporter
Forum Sponsor
My Bell internet has been down since Tuesday morning. Bell said someone will come Wednesday between 12-5. Okay that’s life. Tethering iPhone for internet is slow but doable. Check Wednesday on Bell App, the tech was cancelled. Huh. I. CAll them and ask what happened, appears cable needs to be fixed and then apptmt scheduled. Thursday cable not fixed yet glad I went to work and didn’t wait around. Now tech coming today 12-5. Still not here. I moved from Rogers to Bell and have to say for 2 years Bell has been great. Not so much now.
Anyone loving who they are using now besides these 2 behemoths?

As an aside, it has been interesting to do other stuff besides the 2 hours of Netflix at night
 
Evoex said:
Had Teksavvy for 6? years before switching to Bell Fibre. No complaints, uses Rogers cable network.
Click to expand...
Seems to be a love hate relationship I guess. I had been a Rogers cell user since they were CanTel and then had a blow out with their costs and went on my son’s Telus plan and then Bell had this sweet deal and I jumped to Bell. Their Fibe has been great until now. Modem error reading that not enough signal from cable. I told them no has been here to touch the cable is the problem elsewhere? 🦗
Friday afternoon service call, not good for either of us 😂
 
Out of everyone I've used, TekSavvy has had the best customer service but they have pretty meagre offerings to my current address. Cogeco has been fairly good - one thing I appreciate is that they continue to just leave me alone and don't continually harass me with upsell calls. Bell's customer service is, uh... enraging. My personal experience with changing service levels with them or threatening to leave is the reps on the other end always telling lies of omission.
 
Sunday Rider said:
My Bell internet has been down since Tuesday morning. Bell said someone will come Wednesday between 12-5. Okay that’s life. Tethering iPhone for internet is slow but doable. Check Wednesday on Bell App, the tech was cancelled. Huh. I. CAll them and ask what happened, appears cable needs to be fixed and then apptmt scheduled. Thursday cable not fixed yet glad I went to work and didn’t wait around. Now tech coming today 12-5. Still not here. I moved from Rogers to Bell and have to say for 2 years Bell has been great. Not so much now.
Anyone loving who they are using now besides these 2 behemoths?

As an aside, it has been interesting to do other stuff besides the 2 hours of Netflix at night
Click to expand...
Your profile indicates you are in Aurora... Telmax has been wiring Aurora for two years now... maybe check them out.

telMAX

Get telMAX Pure Fibre Internet in Newmarket, Aurora, Stouffville, Richmond Hill & Brooklin. Upgrade today to Canada's fastest Internet!
www.telmax.com www.telmax.com

They don't service our area (yet) in Aurora. We use CarryTel on a Rogers Infrastructure.

Carry Telecom - Unlimited Internet Plans

Carry Telecom offers high quality internet services throughout Canada. Unlimited Data for All Plans
www.carrytel.ca www.carrytel.ca
 
nhoj said:
Your profile indicates you are in Aurora... Telmax has been wiring Aurora for two years now... maybe check them out.

telMAX

Get telMAX Pure Fibre Internet in Newmarket, Aurora, Stouffville, Richmond Hill & Brooklin. Upgrade today to Canada's fastest Internet!
www.telmax.com www.telmax.com

They don't service our area (yet) in Aurora. We use CarryTel on a Rogers Infrastructure.

Carry Telecom - Unlimited Internet Plans

Carry Telecom offers high quality internet services throughout Canada. Unlimited Data for All Plans
www.carrytel.ca www.carrytel.ca
Click to expand...
Thanks! Just checked TeleMax doesn’t service where we are but Carry Tel does.
 
Last edited:
If Quadro is in your area it's a no-brainer. So happy after the fiasco that is rogers.

Their phone support has a 1 minute average pick up time and you speak to some one local.
Instead of an increase I got a dividend cheque. (Not sure if the amount was more than a buck but just being on the other side for a change is great)
 
I'm constantly amazed (positively) by Teksavvy customer support. During the ice storm aftermath, internet came back and then we lost it again. Cell data didn't work either. I called Teksavvy, got a real english speaking person in two rings and they were happy to look me up and see if the issue was mine or a wider problem. It turns out that pretty much all of barrie was down so nothing they could do. I told them that I had no data and cell service was spotty at best so they pre-emptively scheduled a service call. If I came back online, they would see it and cancel the call. If I didn't I wouldn't be at the bottom of the list. A+.

They haven't been the cheapest or fastest for a long time. I am happy to support them as they fight back against the evil cartel and CRTC. I have had more emails telling me I was getting a lower price/faster speed than I have telling me the price was going up. FTTH was installed a few years ago. The last I checked, I could only access it by paying Bell. F those guys. I'm still on DSL through Teksavyy (so Bell still makes some money but less and I have Teksavvy as an intermediary so I don't need to deal with bell).

Now, using most of the 3rd party providers still leaves you beholden to bell and Robbers if there is an infrastructure problem.

EDIT:
FWIW, I had teksavvy DSL when I was in Aurora. At one point my speed was crap and a Bell tech came out to investigate. Somehow my house was wired to a DSLAM 5 km away instead of the one a few hundred metres from my house. Once they put me on the local DSLAM, things improved greatly.
 
Last edited:
Also a Teksavvy customer (cable internet), and they have been great. Yes they do use Rogers network, and most of the time when things do happen it's Rogers own fault, which is a bit of a problem, because Rogers doesn't communicate with Teksavvy on these issues. If they have an outage, you call in, Teksavvy doesn't know about it. I had a issue a few weeks ago, and it turned out Rogers was doing a planned upgrade in the area, was not communicated. (I saw them on my street).

Not sure where the OP lives, but I'm in Toronto, so outages get taken care of right away. I'm guessing if you are outside the GTA they might not prioritize things as quickly. (I see now you are in Aurora).
 
Tech calls at 6:40 just as I was down the road to pick some grub. Says I will be there in 20 minutes. Says I, me too. Very nice guy. Does his thing answers my questions and then some. Says there is a break in the fibre cable 600 meters out. He says that’s better than a break in the line in your lawn as that he can’t fix. I didn’t know that each home ran on a dedicated fibre strand. By 7:45 we were back in business. So all good. I am making my notes from my Monday call to the Loyalty desk with my unreasonable demands and see what happens.
Thanks everyone for the suggested Internet providers. It gives me an alternative, even if they are using the evil 2s lines.
 
If I'm not mistaken, no matter who you choose it will be on either bell or Rogers lines.
So having a damaged line, you're at their mercy...
 
Jampy00 said:
If I'm not mistaken, no matter who you choose it will be on either bell or Rogers lines.
So having a damaged line, you're at their mercy...
Click to expand...
Maybe further out. Quadro has been on a fibre laying rampage in this area. We hooked up after they ran it past the house a couples years ago.
 
One of the problems with smaller startup businesses of all types is the motto of the big guys "If we can't beat the little guys, we buy them"
 
nobbie48 said:
One of the problems with smaller startup businesses of all types is the motto of the big guys "If we can't beat the little guys, we buy them"
Click to expand...
That’s exactly what happened where I am. Aurora Cable was cable and tv provider. Then introduced Internet. Always great and quick service, then Rogers bought them out. Shoddy service and downtime.
 
timtune said:
Maybe further out. Quadro has been on a fibre laying rampage in this area. We hooked up after they ran it past the house a couples years ago.
Click to expand...
I checked them out and they only service that area around London. Too bad.
 
Fibre cuts are what they are. Half the time it's from a contractor digging without a locate, a quarter of the time a vehicle accident knocking down a pole, a quarter of the time it's copper thieves.

Last mile is expensive and fragile! Low ROI in low density too.
 
Aens said:
Fibre cuts are what they are. Half the time it's from a contractor digging without a locate, a quarter of the time a vehicle accident knocking down a pole, a quarter of the time it's copper thieves.

Last mile is expensive and fragile! Low ROI in low density too.
Click to expand...
Thieves steal Fibre hoping for copper?
 
Yup, all the time. Kinder surprise, adult edition. Won't know till you cut the cable and look inside the sheathing. Guelph two weeks ago was that, along the CN rail corridor.
 
I've been with a few providers. Spent the last 5 years on bell fibre - as soon as they laid fibre in our neighbourhood I signed up and never looked back at cable ever again. I constanttly threw up in my mouth a little dealing with bell, but there's just no replacement for fibre for speed and reliability.

In typical Bell fashion however you had to play the retentions game every 6-12 months to maintain a sane pricing structure as otherwise the price bloated quickly. That always sucked.

When the fibre infrastructure in our neighborhood reached the 5 year requirement where it was mandated by the CRTC that competitors be allowed to use their fibre, I switched immediately to Primus on their gigabit fibre plan. Fixed price with no mystery increases every few months, and I actually like their hardware a lot more - just a simple ONT vs the garbage bloated "Home Hub" modem/router combo that Bell insists you use which stupidly has NO bridge mode for those who have their own router hardware. Primus included a router as well, but I opted to use my own prosumer router instead and handle the PPPoE authentication through it directly.

Every bit as rock solid and fast as Bell was.
 
PrivatePilot said:
I've been with a few providers. Spent the last 5 years on bell fibre - as soon as they laid fibre in our neighbourhood I signed up and never looked back at cable ever again. I constanttly threw up in my mouth a little dealing with bell, but there's just no replacement for fibre for speed and reliability.

In typical Bell fashion however you had to play the retentions game every 6-12 months to maintain a sane pricing structure as otherwise the price bloated quickly. That always sucked.

When the fibre infrastructure in our neighborhood reached the 5 year requirement where it was mandated by the CRTC that competitors be allowed to use their fibre, I switched immediately to Primus on their gigabit fibre plan. Fixed price with no mystery increases every few months, and I actually like their hardware a lot more - just a simple ONT vs the garbage bloated "Home Hub" modem/router combo that Bell insists you use which stupidly has NO bridge mode for those who have their own router hardware. Primus included a router as well, but I opted to use my own prosumer router instead and handle the PPPoE authentication through it directly.

Every bit as rock solid and fast as Bell was.
Click to expand...
The funny thing is, when I had Bell fibre I had an ONT alongside the Home Hub. Folks online said plugging directly into the ONT wouldn't work and I took that for granted, but one day I decided to try it anyway just for laughs and it worked no problemo. I have heard that in installs where you don't have an ONT, their router actually has an SFP module installed in it... which you can just yank out and put into something else. That information is not current however

More or less the same situation with Cogeco, except they unofficially tell you that you can plug into the ONT... somewhere. Which is great because their router makes the Home Hub look good in comparison - the ONLY way you can configure or administer it is through an app, and even then you can barely do anything. Most people would probably be fine with it but it drives me insane. I still plug it in to give them line telemetry if I call tech support, but so far I've only called them twice and the problem was local outages both times
Forum Sponsor
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom