As you may or may not already know, the days of the unlimited internet died in Canada this month.
Gone are the days where one wouldn’t need to worry about limits and extra charges because Shaw and Primus have decided to go the way of Bell and Rogers. They have decided to use caps and extra fees.
When I had originally joined Bell Sympatico years back I had a relatively inexpensive plan and unlimited internet for years.
The speed of the connection was o.k but this was prior to the higher resolution videos on Youtube, the site I frequent the most, and eventually I wanted to upgrade to a faster connection.
Unfortunately when I was offered the faster connection, at a cheaper price, I was introduced to capping. I was limited to a 60 gigabite amount with optional extra gigabites for a few dollars more.
I was not informed that I would have my uploads and downloads limited to 60 gigabites so I was disappointed. But I had never surpassed 40 gigabites anyway, so I managed it.
A year or two back Bell contacted me once more. They were offering a faster connection and more discounts. But this time I scrutinized the offer and found out they were going to reduce my uploads and downloads to 40 gigabites.
Yes, they were going to take $10 off my bill. But I would then need to pay $5 of it back to get extra gigabites to cover the higher amount of transfers I was now at because of chatting and the 720p videos on Youtube.
I of course explained the situation and the salesperson concured that it wasn’t in my best interest to take this offer.
If I had taken the offer I wouldn’t have able to try Netflix. I wouldn’t have had the chance to view many of the 1080p videos on Youtube, which can add up quite quickly.
To save broadband I view most of the videos at 480p. But since the introduction of widescreen video it still adds up. And I would find it impossible to limit my usage to 25 gig cap that is currently being offered to some Bell customers so I wont be changing my plan soon.
Unfortunately for us Canadians, it appears that we are doomed to have the most expensive Internet fees in the world, as determined by Harvard in eary 2010.
Our infrastructure is aging, resulting in additional expendatures, and WIMAX will not be possible until 2012, well after the Analog to Digital transition of Canadian television networks.
Then there’s the issue that WIMAX could be controled by many of the major players like Bell and Rogers, who own some of the television networks.
Are they going to offer competitive rates with WIMAX or play monopoly to pad their stock value ?
Will they play the illegal download card as an excuse to cap WIMAX transfers and/or whine about their landline expeditures ?
I don’t know but i’m sure we’re going to need to fight at least one of these issues to try to keep our prices from skyrocketing.
So much for the promises of inexpensive access.
I decided to chat with a Bell rep and was offered Fibe12 service at a discounted price.
For $3 more I got twice the speed and was offered an extra 40GB of transfers for free.
I accepted but I also printed the conversation out, just in case. And unfortunately I didn’t really get an answer in regards to Bell’s IPTV service, now called Fibe TV so I joined the notification email list for that service.
If Bell offers something better than Rogers in price when it comes to television, I will jump on it.
I wasn’t going to mention the problems i’ve had today but seeing that Bell decided to do disrupt to my connection while I was waiting for the Fibe 12 service, I just had too.
My speed went from 6.03 megs per second according to speedtest.net to less than 2 megs per second, so it is quite unbearable to try to watch 720p videos now.
Why did they do this ? To make me really happy when I got Fibe 12 in two days ?! Cause it’s making me miserable NOW.
I can’t watch 1080p videos, at all. And everything is so slugish. They’re definately not getting on my good side with this, as i’ve mentioned to the customer service person who noticed my account was screwed up.
Shall I make a wonderful entry at Digital Forum ?
Back to 6.03 megs per second, after a night of no internet access.
I had attempted to speed things up by restarting my modem. But unfortunately for me Bell was having major password issues at the same time.
I had Bell reset my password numerous times because it didn’t work. So you can guess how happy this camper was.
Seriously, Bell should provide their techs with as much info as possible, a quickly as possible, to avoid frustrating attempts at fixing something that can’t be fixed by a tech.
If I had been informed they were having password glitches within a few seconds of my call I would have called it a night. After all, I had spent over 15 minutes on hold.
Instead I was subjected to pointless procedures, some of which I had already attempted. Yes, the technician insisted. 🙁
After twenty minutes of tinkering with settings and physical resets of the modem the tech tried to change my password on his end and was refused access by the glitch.
I haven’t checked with Digital Forum yet but i’m guessing someone posted their nightmare there already. The glitch wasn’t limited to my city, as made apparent by the long waiting times.
Argh!
Well, since my last post I was without Internet access. Someone at Bell had botched my upgrade to Fibe 12 service.
What I found the most annoying was the need to repeat the issues, over and over and over. You would think the ticket would have information relating to the issue and would be accessible to all technicians. But no. It appears that is much too efficient and logical.
I had come to a point where I was on the phone with the competition, Rogers, and was requesting information on their rates. After all, I had the time…