Why I hate all Canadian Internet providers.

That's the problem: we sit beside the whole 'nexus'. And Canada has one main pissy little string of fiber with a few small branches off it.
One crashed logging truck took out services to all of northwestern BC for a day 2 years ago. One crashed router knocked out out ALL the ATMs in northern BC a month ago.
Just a couple weeks back one bad router took out connectivity to Msoft, Google and half the US for 3/4 of BC.
We aren't Europe or the USA with a real "Net". Like I said, more like a tree. All our main cities are strung out near the border. There aren't enough cross connections into the US at the border either.
It will take 5 - 10 years to get to the infrastructure level where we could match the US and Europe today.
And there's no guarantee - the telcos may not to invest the money they're hosing us for. Not unless the Boardroom sees return on investment. We're all hooked up already in the main population centers, there isn't any real ROI hooking the small ones.
And there is no way to "order them to" since deregulation.
That's my whole fucking gripe, Joe Blow thinks I should be obligated to spend $1000 to get his $20. Joe Blow thinks the gov't should order me to spend $1000 to get his $20.
Then Joe Blow shows up at a vote every four years and reaffirms business is doing it right. Joe won't wait for the market forces he believes in to work!
This country isn't built yet and it will take a hundred years to match the gains made from 1945-1965 relying strictly on the free market to finish the job.

I always said Canada was 20 years behind :lol:

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There's also all this "throttling" thing. Since all Internet providers for DSL use Bell lines, they are all throttled to 30Kb/s after 5pm. Yesterday I was updating my Linux box and it took me all the evening for 300Mb ! Before I went with Bell, I was with another provider: 29,99$, 4mbits, unlimited, no throttling.

My turn make somebody unhappy.
10Mb is about $40, the new one is 30Mb don't know the price.

I pay $40/mo and have no cap.

Note: You are made aware of what the terms are before you ever sign up with these companies, so why are you crying foul? The providers didn't knock you over the head and force you to sign with them. Granted, if you don't have any real options, it sucks (been there many times), but you still agreed to the terms. If you don't like it, you have two choices - change your surfing habits so you don't go over the cap or disconnect your internet. It really is that simple.

Satellite has dreadful latency. Horrid for playng games, expensive, slow.
Where do you live you can't get a DSL or cable?

Thought you might like this Herb.

I never heard of bandwith in 1999 or early 2000's and then I noticed they created it just to milk more money out of people for something that barely costs them a few pennies.

I won't go back to Shaw. Shaw treated me badly. I was one of their early customers. I had a contract stating I had unlimited bandwith for a certain payment a month. It was alright at first but then I was having speed problems. I heard from someone later that they were cramming more people onto a single line, meanwhile they fed me the usual Shaw BS. Finally came the day they called me up (and they did this to others) and told me I was using too much bandwith and that if I didn't cut back, they would charge me business rates. I reminded them of the unlimited bandwith contract and his exact reply was "yes, but it doesn't mean unlimited".

That was enough for me, I closed my account and moved to Telus. I get great service and I don't get bothered about bandwith. I get no phone calls.

And now I may switch to Telus TV since Shaw has failed to maintain a proper service for at least the past year and a half. I get digitization of the picture and high pitched squeals when trying to watch almost anything. My friend in a different area 10 miles away has the same problems so it's not me. In the past 2 years I have had them out to my house to replace cable outside my house, they replaced cable and other stuff on the power poles that was over 2 decades old. They have boosted my signal, I have installed the best cable money can buy and still when I call they give me the same old "I want you to check the connection to your TV". I got angry and gave him a history and the guy on the other end got snotty at me. I told him your poor service lost me to Telus for the internet and now I'll be talking to Telus about their TV.

Yeah, I don't like Shaw. They were nothing like Roger's Cable and wasn't worthy enough to clean their boots.