Rogers or Sympatico

[juxtaman]

If you live in Canada there are only two choices for broadband, Rogers Cable or Sympatico..

I have used both but i want to hear your side of it.. the pro's and cons. If you have a boradband service in othe rparts of the world you want to comment on please do.

I know this much about sympatico: Almost trouble free and faster, easy isp sharing through router, but they capped their upload download to 5 gigs and extra charges over, anyone with kazaa quicly cancelled.

Rogers: Slower, maybe, 2 downtimes in 1 month, great web services and email, extra for isp no router sharing, but unlimited which means so much.. better online support and you get the tv channels for free.

What are your experience and suggestions to new users to broadband?

[rafiki55]

well in BC, and I use the Telus ADSL. The support was lacking in the past, but it's been better recently. They also say there's a limit to d/l and u/l bandwidth, but they don't enforce it and don't charge for over use. I personally like DSL...if you can get it in your area, try it. There are some great deals with ADSL right now...like cheap, cheap modems...too bad I got mine a year ago, before all these great promotions.

YARR!

[luffmcgruff]

Over here in England, we have one of the lowest %'s of broadband coverage in Europe and N.America. SO be thankful you even have a choice!

[mx_kid]

Im on blueyonder's 1meg line....wooo wooo! The UK is coming on line baby! Slowly...

[luffmcgruff]

It's not like I can afford broadband neway. I get to use my uni's T3 during the day, but at evenings and weekends I have to make do with my lowly 128k ISDN

[alkilla]

My understanding is that rogers is moving to some limit as well. I believe they will announce this at the end of summer. Rogers is much faster that sympatico ( d/l and u/l ). Check out http://www.canadianisp.com , I found something that I might just get -
http://www.tht.net/n/internet_access/adsl_personal.htm

Personal ADSL
(3 mbps down/640kbps up)PPPoE - $69.99(canadian)/ month
**Unlimited download data transfer**


BTW: Rogers kicks sympatico's ass, i'd like to see u d/l at 330kb/s oh and my linksys router is working just great, and no i dont pay extra

[flipshark]

I have sympatico highspeed (is that broadband??) speed is always 10.0 mbps and have had it since January and have had no problems. Only time I couldn't access it was when the power was out on the whole street during a storm j/k

And now they have high speed ultra which is suppose to be better.

[alkilla]

are you joking? sympatico caps that 10mbit line even more than rogers.....

[flipshark]

Originally posted by alkilla
are you joking? sympatico caps that 10mbit line even more than rogers.....

I only go by the bottom corner of my screen and it's always

Sympatico
Speed: 10 mbps
Sent: some number
Received: another number

I haven't experience any slowing since January (seriously) and after coming off a 28k on dialup before jan, this seems like the speed of light to me.

[juxtaman]

a great place to clock and tweek your speeds is http://www.dslreports.com, you can compare your speed to other people with same provider in your area, and it give you help on tweeking.

I know about the uk problem, Btconnect is branching out broadband by the end of the year, hoever it will probably be buggy for the first year

That tht.net is really expensive since your have to leave a deposit and you have to buy the modem...

[alkilla]

you guys are ignorant yet funny.

[aversion]

Originally posted by alkilla
you guys are ignorant yet funny.

how worldly of you.


I have sympatico and not being candian know nothing of rogers except all the horror stories I hear from the guy downstairs that has it. I have sympatico by proxy so I never had to make a choice between them. It's never been down and the customer support is ok.

My dsl with telstra in sydney was twice the price and half the speed.

I can't believe anyone is still using ISDN, do they still charge you by the minute? ISDN is a big reason why dsl rollout has been so freaking slow in england, BT milked everything it could out of its isdn customers before bringing in a technology that's much faster and subscription based. BT are retarded.

[mx_kid]

I think BT charge £80 ($100) for installation....LMAO!! Are they stupid?! I paid £0...NOTHING! BWAHAHAHAA!

[juxtaman]

i just did a flash site in the uk for a design company that had a huge studio, but because the were a studio in the country side they didn't have broadband...

When they were previewing my work they said "too slow, takes too long" pain in the you know what!

I think the problem with the UK is access, its such and old system.. they should do it all wireless since the uk has the best wireless system anywhere (pcs, mobiles) and so on


I wonder why star hasn't done broadband through cable.

It seems BT has a monopoloy and no one cares about anywhere outside of london.


Anyone heard of internet access through satelite? Aol Time warner was trying low level broadband through satelite. anyone else heard that?

[aversion]

Originally posted by juxtaman

I think the problem with the UK is access, its such and old system.. they should do it all wireless since the uk has the best wireless system anywhere (pcs, mobiles) and so on

the UK has one of the best digital line networks in the world, there is a problem with access in remote areas but there aren't many of them in england! Certainly it's not more of a problem in England than anywhere else.

the problem really is BT more than anything else. They were 100% reluctant to roll out ADSL for a few reasons, amongst them their ISDN contracts, and perhaps more importantly to the bean counters the unbundling of the local loop to allow other telecom companies access under anti-competition rules. Allowing other companies access would have opened up the way for much cheaper DSL and more competition. Instead BT have been painfully slow in enabling their exchanges for DSL, especially those outside of big cities. It's just classic stalling tactics.

I remember three years ago when oftel, the telecoms industry regulator, was trying to hurry BT up on DSL and BT was complaining it couldn't find enough people willing to test the system. All the private companies were up in arms! They had thousands of people beating down their door asking for DSL and BT couldn't find a hundred beta testers?? Ridiculous.

the worst thing is that BT was one of the first companies in europe to have ADSL up and running, England could have been a year/nine months ahead of the rest of europe in broadband, but no, BT had to screw it up.

I hate BT.


A wireless network isn't a bad idea, England has a great mobile network, I was suprised at how far ahead europe is in this field than north america, but the network is changing as we speak and the GPRS network will be outdated in a year or so for 3G (if telcos can still afford to get the network up and running after spending stupid amounts of money on licences).

[enstent]

I am using sympatico in Toronto and I think it is pretty slow.

I went here http://webservices.cnet.com/Bandwidth/ and did a bandwidth test and got 582 kbps.

[aversion]

Originally posted by enstent
I am using sympatico in Toronto and I think it is pretty slow.

I went here http://webservices.cnet.com/Bandwidth/ and did a bandwidth test and got 582 kbps.

hehe I have the same set up and got 752kb/s

too many factors effect these tests as any surfing, maybe you're quite far from the exchange?

[juxtaman]

Rogers.. 476 kb/s,

i close kazza and outlook and hotsync and i get

826 kb/s

so i can go dramatically from one speed to another just with programs running.


You also have to remeber that the server that's testing you might be slow aswell... even though they are testing the speed of a downloaded image from their server to your computer if 1000 people are doing the test it'll say your the slow one, they don't normally account for their network congestion.

i suggest if you want a real test wait until about 1 in the morning, find a local dsl testing service like http://www.dslreports.com and close all your programs except ie ofcourse and test it there.

Don't let the name fool you, dsl reports covers all access types, i found them particulary helpful because they have an analysis section where they check your system out and offer tweaks for speed. Although it does require for some for your firewall to be taken down and i skipped those.

[juxtaman]

Another inetersting thing aboud broadband that seems to go unoticed is port scans and backdoor attempts. If you have a good firwall with reporting you'll kwhat i'm talking about. Every 2 hours or so i get an attempted access to my personal computer. The thing that really surprises me is that there isn't much informtaion on this for the common user who doesn't know about this. I told my girlfriend about this and cleaned out her registry because she had a sub7 on there.

People are far more at risk with broadband then they know, with file sharing programs like morpheus or kazaa people leave their information unsecure, go into kazza under documents and type resume or invoice and see what personal information is accessable.

The problem is no one from the access provider ever says "we get alot of complaints about port scans, here's a shareware firewall" they don't say anything because of the histeria over feeling unsafe.. i mean can really panic about computers because they don't understand.

[juxtaman]

Oh and someone was saying rogers is faster than sympatico?

look at this

http://www.dslreports.com/archive

Sympatic # 64, Rogers #82