Review by xploited 
member for 152 days, 0 visits, last login: 152 days ago
updated 152 days ago
 undisclosed location
 Contract price not specified.  "Worked awesome for a month, higher than rated" "Network is total garbage" "Don't use Xplornet, ever - and definitely don't sign a multi-year contract"
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I live in rural Alberta. I signed up with Xplornet for terrestrial wireless 5mbs account ($90/mth) a few years ago when signs went up in my neighbourhood advertising a new ISP. I Googled their name and came across a lot of negative chat about their satellite service, but couldn't locate anything related to terrestrial wireless specifically.
My previous ISP was all but collapsing. They were using unlicensed frequencies with a Motorola system, and bandwidth had degraded to dialup speeds, so staying with them wasn't an option for me. I decided to try Xplornet. The installer assured me I had 30 days to try the connection out, and if it sucked I could cancel the contract and walk away.
The installer (and sign poster) was a local guy moonlighting, not a professional hired directly by Xplornet. Despite that, he did an efficient, quick job of the installation, but it should be noted that half of the infrastructure was already in place, he just had to swap the radio transmitter out and setup my account. The tower is 4km away, we have direct line of sight, and the receiver has never shown less than 5/5 lights.
For the first month I got astounding bandwidth. I signed up for 5mbs and was actually getting closer to 6mbs, so I was ecstatic because the contrast with my old ISP's performance was stark.
After that, it slowly degraded as more people were signed up, and I wasn't surprised at all. After a few months passed, I was unable to muster more than about 1mbps at any time of the day or night, often as slow as 0.5mbps for hours (10% of theoretical max). I could not watch a single YouTube or Netflix video without restreaming 5 times or more.
Numerous calls to Xplornet yielded all kinds of stories. One week it was a rogue player in my neighbourhood, another week it was a server in the backbone misbehaving. I followed up with each technician calls dutifully, and yet the speed never improved. I spent hours and hours working with them, I gave them every chance to correct the problem and was willing to help test solutions.
I tried all the usual things - powering everything off and on again. Disabling my firewalls, rechecking the modem status lights, wiring computer direct to transmitter, I upgraded the CAT5 cables between my machine and the transmitter, you name it, I did it. I followed every instruction the level 1 & 2 techs gave.
The ping times to my gateway (the first hop after my machine) have degraded to the 200ms range, and packet loss is approaching 10%. When I complained to Xplorenet about this, I received a snarky reply saying that the operating parameters for the system are "up to 200ms" and so they would take no corrective action. This effectively renders the system useless for gaming or any other realtime purposes. Remember, this is not satellite, and in the beginning ping times to gateway (not the internet) were always 20ms.
Here's the bottom line: Xplornet does not have a minimum bandwidth or service level.
No matter what package you pay for, they will not correct low bandwidth issues no matter how much you complain to them. Half of the techs I talked to were useless (one had no idea what a "ping" was) and the other half just gave me a verbal shrug when we'd exhausted all the possibilities and delivered me a canned line about not guaranteeing bandwidth.
The gateway ping issue is likely caused by oversubscription - they have oversold the tower in my area and now will not correct the situation. I asked when they will be fixing the problem and they stated that they "hoped" enough people would move to the new 4G satellite system to bring the loads down, but they wouldn't commit to anything. Downgrading to a lower package would not help - even at the lowest package I would not be getting anything like what I was paying for.
Do not sign up with Xplorenet.
They oversubscribe to maximize profits, and when your connection degrades to uselessness, they will laugh in your face and do nothing. Tech support is non-existant, a bunch of kids on the other end of a phone who aren't empowered to do more than read steps from a list to you.
That they can sell a package and fail to deliver any more than 10% of the service should be considered fraud, but currently is not. There are no laws against this in Canada. I feel bad for the rural municipalities who have invited Xplornet in to provide internet services, and inevitably find out how poor the service actually is. Let's hope the government of Canada wakes up and does something about this practice soon.
When my contract is up I will be leaving Xplornet and never looking back. I warn anyone and everyone I can away from their service, to save them the headaches I have experienced.
Comments:
 | | | couldn't agree more Rural Ottawa here...been an Xplornet subscriber for a year now with 3Mbps/3.5Ghz package and have had the same experience. I work from home and so am sensitive to bandwidth problems. The service is usually tolerable on weekdays until about 4pm when performance nosedives. It's always poor on weekends. I've also heard the "up to 3Mbps" BS from them along with the other nonsense they throw at you. Me: "the ping time to my default gateway is 2000ms" Them: "what operating system" Me:" take your pick, Windows XP/Vista/7, Linux, IOS, etc" Them:"what antivirus are you using? what browser are you using? did you clear the cache?" wtf!!!!! They seem to have no way to verify that the problem is at their end and so all they can do is blame your equipment. Typically when it's really bad like 2 or 3 SECOND ping times it will resolve itself, but the people on the phone won't have a clue.
My only other ISP choice was Telus/Bell/Rogers using their 3G hubs. I tried a Rogers hub and it worked very well but the cost is too high. The $10/GB for exceeding the plan limit was the deal killer, even with the undocumented $50 maximum (which they could rescind at any time).
perterbed, thanks for the links. I feel like I'm being fleeced and it would be interesting to see what the consumer complaint agencies would have to say about this.
Yeah, they suck »testmy.net/qTEaZ1L.png | |
|  | | | Another duped Xplornet customer Rural Ottawa - I have been with Xplornet for 4 years. The first year with Satellite - sucked. Then I moved to a house that could see a tower - thank god. Initially, my speeds were awesome. I am on the $50 household package. I get 4GB per day download without throttling. My speeds were great 1/2 meg per second download. My VOIP Vonage phone worked great.
Now, I just got off the phone with the Xplornet tech support. I was complaining about latency, lost packets, generally slow speeds.
His answer was that the tower was sold completely (they have stopped selling on my tower) and this is why I have service issues. No solution for my problem except to complain on this website.
I feel duped and ripped off. Wireless has the ability to compete with wired ISP's and then they oversell the towers and screw the end user.
I will be complaining to the CRTC and my MP..... Xplornet sucks! | |
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