Review by docbill 
member for 6.4 years, 133 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 41 days ago
 Stoney Creek,ON
 $55 per month- (month by month)
 about 10 days "Quality connection, excellent speed" "Still has a bandwidth cap, and $0.50/GB overage charge seems abit high" "Good alternative to Cogeco"
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I ordered Start Communications advanced cable internet last week. Now about 10 days later I have service. The cable modem arrived Tuesday, I hooked it up myself. Today the cable guy showed up and plugged in the outside line. I was rather surprised to learn the cable guy is not allowed to even touch the equipment. So this is definitely not a good service for someone like my Mother inlaw. But if you are capable of plugging in the cable modem, this is good service for you.
I did a quick speed test, and I got 30/2, which is better than what Start Communications advertises. I went with a rented modem, mainly because my experience has been that cable modems die every 18 months or so. As such, it did not make sense to purchase the modem.
The only downside, is I still think $0.50/GB is too much for an over bandwidth charge. If I consistently used 600 GB per month, it would be cheaper to have two lines than to pay the over charge. Actually, that is exactly what I am doing right now. I still have Bell DSL with bandwidth insurance, and my new Start Communications service. Eventually, when I run out the Bell special I'm on, I'll probably switch the DSL to another company, but I will continue to have two lines. Not just for bandwidth, but more important reliability.
- update 2013-02-25 -
I see that Start has lowed the bandwidth cap from 300 GB to 250 GB. There is no indication as to whether this will impact existing customers. My last bill still said 300 GB. Also I finally figured out why Start Communications bandwidth total does not match mine. Unlike most providers they really do measure in GB as defined by the standards committees as 1,000,000,000 bytes. Most providers measure in GiB but falsely label it as GiB. 1 GiB = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. My router also does that. Start is right, my router is wrong... But the other thing is in Cogeco land they don't count uploads, just downloads. What this effectively means though, is if you are comparing with say Bell Canada or Cogeco, you need to adjust your numbers. If for example Bell Canada lists your monthly download as 220 GB, you would add 10% to correct this number to 242 GB. That is what Start Communications will measure your download as.
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