Just Wondering (Internet Speeds)

Glocky

Drinking your tears
Mine is still good - granted Rogers "Speedboost" skews the results:


211GB of data so far in my billing cycle Sept 21 to Oct 20, good thing I have unlimited :)
 

Glocky

Drinking your tears
http://www.rogers.com/web/link/hispeedBrowseFlowDefaultPlans

Extreme Plus 45/4 service = $77.99/month
Modem Rental (if you don't purchase; I didn't) $8
Unlimited addon $10
Potential monthly cost: $95.99+tax

What I did.... I called up and said "Why are you offering new Rogers customers better deals than an 16 year existing customer that has TV, internet, phone and cellular service with you?"

Result after 10 minutes on hold and 5 minutes of talking in a calm voice:
20% discount across all services (replaced 12% VIP discount, so about an 8% additional discount)
No modem rental fee, no HD PVR fees (added another box lol)

New math:
$77.99 - 20% = $62.40
$8 - 100% = $0
$10
Total $72.40 + tax

So $23.59 + tax a month savings just on my internet (Total discounting $116.96 + tax across the services)
Good thing for the unlimited... haha 271GB with 2 days to go
 

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Ghett0

DARKLY Regular
http://www.rogers.com/web/link/hispeedBrowseFlowDefaultPlans

Extreme Plus 45/4 service = $77.99/month
Modem Rental (if you don't purchase; I didn't) $8
Unlimited addon $10
Potential monthly cost: $95.99+tax

What I did.... I called up and said "Why are you offering new Rogers customers better deals than an 16 year existing customer that has TV, internet, phone and cellular service with you?"

Result after 10 minutes on hold and 5 minutes of talking in a calm voice:
20% discount across all services (replaced 12% VIP discount, so about an 8% additional discount)
No modem rental fee, no HD PVR fees (added another box lol)

New math:
$77.99 - 20% = $62.40
$8 - 100% = $0
$10
Total $72.40 + tax

So $23.59 + tax a month savings just on my internet (Total discounting $116.96 + tax across the services)
Good thing for the unlimited... haha 271GB with 2 days to go

That's how you work the system. Ever since I started working in call centers, I always spend an hour or two on the phone getting a better deal than they will reasonably offer. My argument is always the same. "Pull up my account. How many times have you seen this bill get paid late? Either you want my money, or you don't. And if you don't, then I know of a few companies who would be more than happy to take it from me. By my calculations, my business is worth <insert precise # including cents here> a year. Now, to me, that's too high. What can we do to make that look more like <cut number in half>?"

Them: "Well, I don't think I can go THAT low. Let me talk to my supervisor and see what I can do."

A few transfers to the loyalty department and authorizations later, and I can almost always get at least 25% off of my overall bill and some free shit. On my cell, I talk them into free caller ID and a "Student rate" even if it is out of season. For Rogers, I got a free HD box rental and I get one level higher Cable TV and Internet than I pay for. The names always change, but it's worth it IMO to save about $40 a month. That's $480 a year, enough to buy Christmas presents for my brothers huge brood of children with the savings.

The secret is to be firm with them, but not necessarily scream and yell at them. No one wants to help an asshole, but if you are willing to take no for an answer, than that is the answer they will give you.
 

OG buckshot jr

TD Admin
So I'm moving my whole house (internet, television and home phone) to BELL. I recently picked up a chick who is a high-up in BELL, and she's hooked me up with her VP, who has worked out a pretty good deal with me.

My internet will be 25 down and 10 up @ 100GB/month. Currently I have 15 down, 1 up (sad) @ 300GB. I barely download anything anymore, so I think I'm ok with 100GB.

I'm more interested in the Fibe TV. Tired of watching Indians and Pakistanis on Cogeco, fuckin every channel.
 

Ghett0

DARKLY Regular
FIBE TV is pretty win. The only downfall is that if the internets go down, so does the TV. For most of us, if the Imternet dies, watch TV. If the TV dies, play on internetz.

Assuming the phone lines inside your home / condo / apartment are solid and you're not one of these geniuses who thinks you can fuck with your modem and plug it in to a 200 foot phone cable and that won't affect your internet signal, Bell Fiber is the superior technology and has been for a few years now. The only beef with FIBE TV is the outage vulnerability which I mentioned and the lesser selection in channels. That and few of us have learned the BELL TV channel lay out.

Assuming you don't have rats in your house chewing on the phone cables, you should be pretty happy with the service IMO.
 

Low Budget

DGN Staff
Staff member
So I'm moving my whole house (internet, television and home phone) to BELL. I recently picked up a chick who is a high-up in BELL, and she's hooked me up with her VP, who has worked out a pretty good deal with me.

My internet will be 25 down and 10 up @ 100GB/month. Currently I have 15 down, 1 up (sad) @ 300GB. I barely download anything anymore, so I think I'm ok with 100GB.

I'm more interested in the Fibe TV. Tired of watching Indians and Pakistanis on Cogeco, fuckin every channel.

I bailed on rogers and got Fibe in May when I moved into my new place. Internet works great, tv works great, HD looks better than what I used to get with rogers. No complaints at all on my part, very satisfied with Bell Fibe.
I also have the 25/10 internet deal.


Posted using dat Q10
 

Glocky

Drinking your tears
Fibe is looking pretty sweet (especially the TV side)... only beef I have is that depending on where you live, they still provide "Fibe" even though the actual service is coming to the house via the normal copper phone lines, and will never live up to the speed rating.
My neighbourhood's copper is from the late 70's, and yet they will still let me try and order the 50/10 service. Maybe they'd rewire if I ordered? Or refuse the sale after and try to sell me dial-up :P
 

Ghett0

DARKLY Regular
Fibe is looking pretty sweet (especially the TV side)... only beef I have is that depending on where you live, they still provide "Fibe" even though the actual service is coming to the house via the normal copper phone lines, and will never live up to the speed rating.
My neighbourhood's copper is from the late 70's, and yet they will still let me try and order the 50/10 service. Maybe they'd rewire if I ordered? Or refuse the sale after and try to sell me dial-up :P

Bell sales people have no souls. They will sell you land on Mars if you are willing to sign a contract indicating you are willing to pay for it.
Iif your 25/10 is working, I'd stick with it. They have an auto-levelling program that sniffs your line capacity in the evenings and adjusts your speed profile to maximize your speeds. If your lines CAN'T support 50 mbps, even if they sell it to you, you'll get a lot of stability problems as their auto-sniffer continually tries to push your line to a higher speed profile.

This creates what is most easily described as a "Traffic jam", clogging up your line and creating intermittent disconnects, lag and rage, prompting you to call people in India who fux up all your shit until they land on people like I once was and I get to spend an hour bringing you out of the Wrath zone and fix the errs of bad techs and asshole sales cunts.
 

Ghett0

DARKLY Regular
Don't quote me on this, but I was told that rogers' signal is compressed, and since bell Fibe uses fiber optic, you get HD at it's full potential.

Posted using dat Q10
That's the coles notes.

The capacity of fiber optics lines is, in a word, gigantonormously huge. Many orders of magnitude greater than Coax. With all the traffic on the Rogers network, it dulls the effectiveness of the signal. The greater advantage of DSL technology (Fiber is essentially suped-up DSL with enormous capacities relative to traditional copper wiring) is that your line is your own; you do not share with your neighbours or fight for your portion of the allotted bandwidth on your HUB with your neighbours.

Your 25 MBPS is yours, and yours alone because your line is not shared with the other users on the switch. That allows FIBE TV to send ALL channels in HD and at the highest resolutions possible without having to worry about sharing or fluctuations.

Rogers is more like a communal well. The more buckets in the well, the less water you draw. This both lowers your internet speeds and, given rogers is chewing up a relatively inferior line capacity on coax with HD channels and Rogers home phone which is VOIP (which is monstrously inefficient in bandwidth consumption terms) the more time goes on, the shittier their service will become as it will not evolve with the demands of the user and the marketplace. They can make "bigger buckets" but they won't be increasing the capacity of their well in a way that can compete with Bell's Fiber lines.

This is why Rogers speeds will tend to fluctuate with the traffic in your region and the time of the day. That, and the DOCSIS level of your modem, which is a little technical, but continuing on the well analogy, higher DOCSIS = bigger bucket to draw more water from the well when competing with other "buckets".

Or, as Low Budget alluded to, Rogers line are sending weaker signals because they have less line to use.

Rogers r teh sux. Bell r teh winz. At least from a pure technology standpoint.

DSL is not without it's flaws, but it is, barring site-by-site variables, a far superior technology both now, and even moreso moving forward.

Ironically enough, the less people who sub to Rogers in your immediate neighbourhood, the better your signal will become because it is being split and shared with less people. So get off my network and get on Bell so I can hog all the Rogers signal to myself. :P
 

OG buckshot jr

TD Admin
LB is spot on - all cable/satellite etc. is compressed - even fiber. Because the bandwidth is that much greater with fiber, the signal can be passed on without nearly as much compression, therefore allowing a more full signal (audio and video). Fiber also exhibits much less latency, allowing tuning stations much, much quicker. It's easier to pass a better signal (better signal = more cars on a highway) through fiber (fiber = 10-lane highway) than through copper cable (copper cable = 4-lane highway). That's my analogy.

Either way, guys who have it: LB, for example, do you find it expensive? Basically, the deal I'm getting now is the "Better Package", but with a basic phone instead of the advertised 8-feature phone in the original package, for $135+tax for 12 months, then it goes up to $168+tax for the second year. Sure it's better than the retail, but it still seems expensive. The only thing I'm going to really love is much better television and a little faster internet. Home phone I could care less, although I would appreciate some caller ID without having to pay for it, fuck.

Currently I have:
- Teksavvy DSL 15down/1up = $32.99
- Teksavvy Home Phone with Caller ID = ?
= Teksavvy Total (tax in) = 69.xx
- Cogeco (Indian/Pakistani) Television = ~$75 (tax in)
Grand Total == ~$140. For the first year, Bell is very comparable, and I'll have much better internet and television.

Link To "Better Package" from BELL: http://bundles.bell.ca/en

Ghett0 - I have brand new fiber in my area (3 years old now), rated for 100/100 - and yes, they routed it right to our homes :D
 

MetalLobster

TD Admin
Wait, if you get fiber directly to your home, do they install fiber inside your home as well? I'm asking because they've installed a Fiber hub near my home and I'm curious.
 

Low Budget

DGN Staff
Staff member
Either way, guys who have it: LB, for example, do you find it expensive? Basically, the deal I'm getting now is the "Better Package", but with a basic phone instead of the advertised 8-feature phone in the original package, for $135+tax for 12 months, then it goes up to $168+tax for the second year. Sure it's better than the retail, but it still seems expensive. The only thing I'm going to really love is much better television and a little faster internet. Home phone I could care less, although I would appreciate some caller ID without having to pay for it, fuck.

So I have the 25/10/100 deal and I locked down on a 43.95/mo for that.

For the TV I also have the Better Package and I pay right now 73.45 for the first 6 months, then it goes up 17.82/mo. I have 3 digital boxes and one of them is free (15 for initial box currently free and 7 for each additional). So once the 6 months is up, I will be paying 135.22+tax for both Internet and Cable.

They also explained to me that the TV has it's own dedicated line and bandwidth. So they actually send you 50mbps, 25 for internet and 25 for your tv. And your TV does not iterfer with the 100gb monthly usage you get for the internet.

And are you talking about a home phone landline? Who uses those nowadays? I just use my cell phone. I don't have a home phone. And Fibe internet does not require you to dial in like your traditional DSL, so no need for a landline.

Posted using dat Q10
 

Ghett0

DARKLY Regular
Ghett0 - I have brand new fiber in my area (3 years old now), rated for 100/100 - and yes, they routed it right to our homes :D

When I left Bell, they were just rolling this out and had the X year plan to institute FIBE to all customers. It's a little slow coming to Ottawa because of the enormous costs involved and the low population density, but Fiber is the future while Coax is the past. They are flaws to Fiber, though they are relatively minor.

Eventually, most metropolitan centers will have Fiber to the Node if not Fiber To the Home IE right to your doorstep, minimizing the "weak link" that is copper wiring to an absolute minimum. In a housing neighbourhood, FTTN will run fiber optics to y what they call a "SLAM". In most apartments and Condos, this is inside the building, as the buildings are equipped with their own hardware. There are other concerns about making FTTN universally available,most of them involving the CRTC. In brief, if Fiber to the Node (IE, right outside your house) becomes universally available, then Bell MUST provide third party access of this technology to their competitors. IE Teksavvy, Distributel, etc....

So, there is something of an incentive for them to hold it back temporarily. Also, due to the enormous cost to install and maintain Fiber Optic lines, it only makes sense to make it available to the highest density populations (and thereby, the highest number of customers with the greatest return on investment) as possible. So, they went with affluent Toronto neighbourhoods first, which have had this technology for 7+ years in some instances, then to Montreal, which is where Bell HQ is located, and then to Ottawa which is a traditional "Rogers" stronghold.

From a neutral standpoint, the dog fight which exists between Bell and Rogers is even more fascinating than politics. It's not that much different., but people have equally emotonal and sometimes irrational opinions about their "Favorites" and are sometimes just as ignorant in their assumptions.

To put it simply, though, the Fiber vs Coaxial battle is Nuclear Warhead vs Crossbows. The Crossbow may have been an amazing development once upon a time, but now, it doesn't have a chance.

The Fiber technology is not yet perfect, but the benefit in Ottawa especially, is that the neighbourhoods in Toronto and Montreal that bore the brunt of the "Tral and error" approach. (Trust me, the worst day of every Bell employees life is always Launch Day. They spend weeks telling us the marvelous advantages of the incoming technology, and then they resent us when we have the unpelasant task of collecting all the data and reporting all the prolific bugs and flaws with the hardware that weren't included in the training.)

That's just part of the growing pains of change, though. At this point in time, most of the kinks have been worked out. Most of the limitations don't exist in the form of the fiber optics, but in the hardware attached to them. Not all "Slams" are ready to support the Capacity provided by Fiber Optics. Not all modems, despite being "Two in ones" with wireless capability, can transmit 50 MBPS wirelessly. (I had the distinct mispleasure of being assgned to "break the news" to thousands of clients who were SOLD 25 MBPS wireless capability with a new modem that, under the best of conditions, could send 16 MBPS wirelessly and listened to all the whining and complaining that followed.)

:fulloffuck:

Oh, and if there are any of those among you who were those whiny cunts who cried about all the broken promises and failings of the technology.... :milliondicks:

I assure you, I passed on your displeasure to the powers that be, and bore the brunt of the fierce resentment of my boss's bosses when one of George Cope's most trusted men in the Internet world invited me to a focus group where I made clear the many difficulties and, in essence, the monstrous FAIL that took place when Bell bruised their already highly tarnished reputation by letting their mouths write cheques that their ass couldn't cash, and that I took the tongue lashings for.

Shortly thereafter, they went on with their massive marketting blitz to try to save their "good" (lol) name in the marketplace, and I told Bell to choke on a million dicks and walked away from a company that "Valued my opinion" one minute, then tried to fuck me in the ass for expressing it in the next.

All that aside, though, the technology is sound, but make sure you look before you leap into the change. There are weak links in the system that the sales people don't know or care about. They just want the extra $20 for swindling you into buying shit you don't need. If I had a nickel for every little old lady who I had to get OFF of 50 up and 10 down because "She only used this damn machine for emails" I'd buy the whole company myself and fire all the soulless cunts they hire to do their dirty work.

Fascinating dynamics, the Bell-Rogers competition. It incorporates all the forces at play in our society. Technology, government regulations and laws, corporate financing and asset acquisition, marketing, advertising, psychology. You could spend years studying it and get masters degrees in numerous disciplines by EXCLUSIVELY studying the history and the dynamics of the competition between these two companies.

But again, the short version is, if the wiring in your house is good, then FIBE services are probably the best way to go.

For phone service and long distance, though.... assuming you can get a monster Fiber connection; use VOIP for home phone and long distance plans. Traditional phone wires and lines cost LITERALLY, a penny or two to maintain a month. And you pay what.... $45 a month with Bell? And people wonder where their bottomless pit of money comes from.

Fascinating stuff if you're interested in it, but terribly dull if you aren't.
 
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