 Review by Guspaz 
UPDATED: 248 days ago
member for 6.7 years, 637 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Montreal,QC
 $37 per month (month by month)
 about 21 days
 Bell Canada
 "Great price, great service, easy to reach, care about customers, enormous caps."
 "Unlimited service no longer as cheap as Premium."
 "You won't find a better ISP for the price in North America. Maybe for any price."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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A bit of a rocky setup due to incompetence on Bell's part (took 3 weeks to get my dry loop activated). Not TSI's fault, they're at Bell's mercy for installation. They did their best, and gave me credit for the time.
Service has been very reliable and fast since then, and I'm quite happy. Having their own forum here on DSLR means a LOT more transparency, which is nice.
My only major suggestion would be a Montreal PoP. Because their core network is in Toronto, all your traffic has to go through there, which can add 10 to 15ms of latency to your first hop (mine is 17 with TSI versus 6 with Bell). If you're in Ontario, this will be much less and probably won't matter. If you're in Montreal, it's something to keep in mind.
Quite possibly the best thing is that when you call them, they have very short wait times, and no menu system (they transfer you to the first human they can find). Every single one of their tech support guys is very knowledgeable, and won't become confused when you start talking about DSLAMs and noise margins.
EDIT: I've decided that the added 10ms on the first hop from the lack of a Montreal PoP isn't worth an 80% rating in the service category; I'm not THAT picky about pings, and I'm quite happy with them just the way they are. So that rating has been bumped up to 100%.
EDIT2: TekSavvy recently doubled my cap, reduced my overage fees, and gave me the option of buying more bandwidth in bulk. I can't increase the value for money or services categories any more, but if the last edit didn't justify the increase enough, this one sure does. Install co-ordination, unfortunately, isn't something that an ISP can change once you're a subscriber, so it probably won't change.
Followup comments:  newf
join:2007-09-11
Brampton, ON | I could puke I read that review and am just sick that I didn't find out about them before I got involved with BS. 8-(
Is the $37 per month price $30 for the service and $7 for the dry line? | |
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Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
 ·Colbanet
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: I could puke Technically it is $29.95 for the DSL and $7.25 per month for my dry loop, or $37.20 plus tax.
I'll be forming a group with some friends to get the group rate in the future, at which point I believe my total cost will drop to $34.24 ($26.99 + dry) | |
| | | newf
join:2007-09-11
Brampton, ON | Re: I could puke Thank you, I saw the thread and think it's great they'd allow you to do so "retroactively", so to speak. I had a quick look at their pricing and didn't see discounts for contracts or prepayment. Do you know if either are available? | |
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Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: I could puke No, with TekSavvy it's always month-to-month, so you're never locked in 
$29.95 is the cheapest you'll find for regular pricing on DSL, though, with or without contract.
Acanac has a deal where it's $18 for the first year, and $34/mth after that, but their reputation isn't very good. If you absolutely need to save money, you might try them for a year, but be warned that they aren't too highly regarded around here. | |
| | | | | newf
join:2007-09-11
Brampton, ON
·Bell Sympatico
| Re: I could puke No, saving money isn't a big deal. At the moment, I'm paying for three connections. I just don't like paying more than something is worth or getting screwed when I buy something.
I've seen some of the posts about Acanac but I, also, saw where the owner??? responded to several and he made a couple of points I thought were quite good; there's not a whole lot he can do if BS screws him around...it's not like he can take his business elsewhere and he offers a money back guarantee.
A couple of people have mentioned that their customer service is awful but, as I've replied, I can't imagine how it could be any worse than BS'.
The $18.95 is just for the first year, I think, and then it goes to $34.95??? as I recall. If I weren't "involved" with BS, at the moment, I'd go with TS as, at my age, a year goes by very quickly. As I said earlier, I wish I'd known all this a couple of months ago. Sounds like I could've spared myself a tremendous amount of aggravation. | |
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Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC | Re: I could puke If you're paying for three DSL connections, you may want to consider MLPPP bonding. If you're handy with Linux or BSD, TekSavvy will let you bond two or more DSL connections to make them behave (on the packet level) as one giant connection. | |
| | | | | | | newf
join:2007-09-11
Brampton, ON | Re: I could puke I've only got the one DSL connection and one of the connections will be going in the, hopefully, near future. | |
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Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: I could puke It really is transparent, because it's done on the packet level. As in, either packets themselves are sent through alternating connections, or the packet itself is split in two. They're re-assembled on your ISP's end and sent out as if they came from a single source.
I'm not aware of any distro that simplifies MLPPP, and you should be warned that users have reported serious issues trying to get three lines bonded together (2 works reliably, it seems, but 3 causes issues).
The alternative is the non-transparent load balancing solution. As in, a router that load balances between DSL lines on the connection level. While not transparent, and individual transfers are limited to the speed of a single connection, multi-connection protocols (BitTorrent, accelerated HTTP, etc) would still benefit from the aggregate speeds. | |
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