 Review by milnoc 
UPDATED: 105 days ago
member for 8.7 years, 2693 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 H2Z
 $126 per month
 about 10 days
 Bell Canada
 "Simple rate plan, reachable and comprehensible support staff, no contracts, no caps, and it works."
 "Give TSI the circuit number of your phone line if your local provider isn't Bell"
 "It's reasonably priced, well supported and it works. The $126 cost is for my two business lines."
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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ORIGINAL REVIEW
I used to subscribe to Sympatico until I've received a call indicating they were planning to cap the connection unless I paid more money. That was the last straw for a service which always tried to push extra services through the sales staff instead of improving the network through the technical staff.
I learned about TekSavvy via dslreports.com. As I did more research, I discovered how much people really like the service, and that a representative from the company regularly posts messages on the various forums on a regular basis i.e. Rocky.
I ordered the 5 Meg service for $29.95 per month around May 26 so that hopefully it can be set up on time on June 6 at my new apartment located in a new building. Not only did TekSavvy manage to have the new connection working in a new building with no previous phone number as scheduled, the connection was also available at my OLD apartment a few days before my move using Bell's old modem! This was a bonus for me since Bell had cut off the Internet access through their servers on June 3.
I purchased an UNBRANDED speedtouch 516 from TekSavvy (I can't stand branding -- it always seems the provider's bugs are installed at the same time as the branding). I connected it to the phone line and to the router, powered everything up, and my connection was already active before the computer finished booting up. I did a few tweaks and now achieve an average speed of 4000/640.
My Sympatico speed at the old place was 2300/640 for an advertised limit of 3000/800, limited well below their advertised speeds because I was afraid Sympatico would cap my bandwidth if I agreed to move to the faster speed tier. What I get now with TekSavvy's may not be their advertised top speed, but it's faster than at my old place, it's more than sufficient for my needs, and it's not capped which is a good thing since it's not unusual for me to hit 200 GB of transfers per month from time to time.
In brief, I now pay $20 less per month for almost double the download speed and no caps. And if I have any problems, I can reach someone whose speech I can understand and who actually knows something about the technology they're supporting.
So yes, I'm VERY satisfied.
UPDATE: MARCH 30, 2008
The price went up in January because of the huge increase in bandwidth consumption. But instead of imposing an unannounced fee hike, TekSavvy was decent enough to ask its subscribers what they thought of the new fee schedule. It received overwhelming support for being fair.
I purchased the fixed IP option, which makes the VPN and FTP connections a whole lot easier to use. I don't have to maintain an account with dyndns.org anymore.
The download speed is still consistent, but the upload speed dropped a bit, from 640 kbps to 600 kbps. This isn't a big deal since I don't use the upload pipe all that frequently to begin with.
There was also an unannounced downtime a couple of months ago. I call them up and let them know of my problem, and they immediately asked if I was in the 514 area. Not only did they already know of the problem and had already issued a ticket to Bell, but their support staff was already advised of the problem so that precious time wouldn't be wasted over the phone!
The only hiccup in the service is that certain forms of traffic are now being throttled at night... by Bell! Bell had decided to implement traffic shaping technology without telling anyone about it, and are also throttling the connections to ISP resellers like TekSavvy! So now everyone is pissed, including TeKSavvy's owners! As expected, TekSavvy is fighting back.
Finally, TekSavvy has just announced the availability of home phone service. I was so pleased with the high speed Internet service up to now that I signed up for the home phone service on the very same day of its announcement! That's how happy I am being a TekSavvy customer!
UPDATE: MARCH 29, 2009
I was so satisfied with TekSavvy's home service that I went ahead and ordered two DSL lines for my new business, which I would combine together in an MLPPP set-up. The result is that my business now has a speed profile of 10 Mbps down and 1.25 Mbps up.
The only major problem during the installation process was that Bell rejected the original installation request five business days later because they didn't have my local phone company's circuit numbers for my phone lines. My local business phone service provider is Distributel and not Bell, which was clearly indicated to the CSR during the order process. One quick call to Distributel later, and I had the circuit numbers for both lines which I relayed to TekSavvy.
I consider the circuit number issue a fault on TekSavvy's part simply because they should have been aware of this particular issue with third-party telephone providers. Still, to TekSavvy's and Distributel's credit, both companies quickly went into action to resolve the problem as quickly and as efficiently as possible, unlike Bell which insisted in delaying the installation process another five business days.
Once the lines were activated, all that was left was to correct the speed profile on both lines to maximize their throughput. I now have an extremely fast Internet service which only costs my business a fraction of the cost of the nearest competitor.
UPDATE: JULY 14, 2009
Everything still works perfectly, both at home and at work. Even the switch to ERX07 for my MLPPP connections went perfectly, all performed on-line via this Web site. No phone calls required.
The office lines have a combined cap of 400 GB, but I've yet to reach that. I'll have to find an abusive application to use up that bandwidth a bit. 
UPDATE: AUGUST 8, 2009
The price went up by $4 to cover the cost of MLPPP support on the second line.
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