isp's in Ontario

[On2wheels]

It's that time of year again, my Rogers plan is up for renewal, but they're offering prices that aren't as competitive anymore. Anyone heard of Telcan or have experience? They seem like the best fit for me. Teksavvy isn't as competitive either, at least for new customers I find.

 

[JD]

I usually see good praise for these guys: https://oxio.ca/en though haven't used myself. I'm fortunate enough to have Bell Fiber here, so I can't see myself going back to DOCSIS (cable).

https://start.ca/ is a good choice too, but pricing isn't overly competitive.

You could check the sub-brands too, Fido and Virgin, they usually have lower pricing and if you have a cell phone with them as well, usually a bit less.

 

[On2wheels]

I think oxio and others are mainly focused on southern Ontario, where the population is so much denser. Even their discounted rates can't beat the special offer Rogers is offering me now, which isn't as good as most people on redflagdeals say they're getting from Rogers in southern Ontario, where the population density results in more competition from the little guys.

So it feels like even though I say I live in a 'near city' geography the economics of it all don't guarantee me the same offers from the big players as in other regions. Is that a fair statement?

 

[JD]

I suppose it's more about if you want consistent pricing or promotional pricing.

Bell & Rogers both offer better deals in downtown Toronto condos than the rest of Ontario, as generally those condos have a 3rd fiber provider (Beanfield, FibreSteam, Coextro, etc).

I guess you're outside of Ottawa? If Rogers is the only "real" provider for you, could be why discounts are limited. If Bell is only DSL service, it doesn't exactly compete.

 

[ZZLEE]

I have Rogers and I have Bell and likely Rogers fiber 3 km from my house. If you don't have High speed then look at Starlink.

 

[On2wheels]

Yeah outside ottawa, the big players are all here but only a few smaller ones, Telcan and Teksavvy at least, just in terms of speed vs price they cant beat the big guys for customer loyalty offers I'm getting. If price was my only motivator I'd likely go with Telcan. I think I'm going with the new Rogers deal at least for a few months. Telcan seems to have been in business a long enough time, I was worried about reliability, and them being at the mercy of Rogers when service goes out.

 

[sswilson]

Pretty sure the trick these days (if you're in a large market) is to swap between the two major players every two years in order to take advantage of their "new client" deals.

 

[On2wheels]

Difference between cable modems on the same 500 Mbps internet plan at the same time of day. 2 tests per modem.

 

[Herne]

Pretty sure the trick these days (if you're in a large market) is to swap between the two major players every two years in order to take advantage of their "new client" deals.

The downside of that is that you have to talk to Bell at least once every 2 years.

I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford some luxuries and only having to deal with Teksavvy is one of those. Slightly more than the swap/retention dept game, but that got old.

 

[Solace]

they are all literately the same shit, the smaller ones re-sell virtual space off larger providers or piggyback their own hardware onto their infrastructure.

support is all the same shit show, you get entry level reps following scripts with no technical knowledge of the product or hardware. any on-site calls are the same pool of contractors.

buy what is cheapest becuase there is no difference. i've seen monkeys in both light speed communications (reseller of shaw) and shaw themselves. i actually had to instruct their on-site tech how to fix the fucking problem at my place since i was having intermittent issues with packetloss (the shaw rep) after ditching lightspeed for not even ackowledging my problem and just arguing factors in traceroutes that actually clearly express the problem. i've also had to manually cycle my IP (thankfully shaw allows passthrough on their modems and is not subject to the god awful firmware they use) because shaw is too incompetent to remove a /24 ip block from public blocklists.