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Review by jagerman See Profile

  • Location: Kingston, ON, Canada
  • Cost: $49 per month (month by month)
  • Install: about 15 days
Fast, consistent speeds; good price; reliable
The best ISP I have ever used, highly recommended
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

I've been with Start since summer 2012, since shortly after they launched TPIA service in Cogeco territories, and have been very happy, recommending the service to friends. Having used many Canadian ISPs (both Cable and DSL, both incumbents and independents), I can easily say Start is the best ISP I've ever had.

My connection has been reliable from the beginning, my speeds have been consistently a little faster than I am supposed to receive on my plan.

The order and installation was a little annoying because I had to wait at home for a Cogeco tech to show up (who only gave a time window of "all day"), but that is entirely out of Start's control; they were happy to let me choose the day, at least, which was great.

The other issue I considered not rating as "Best" was value for money: on that note, I think that Start is actually offering the best value for money possible, but unfortunately, CRTC rulings about traffic capacity costs force Cogeco plans to be stupidly expensive and/or limited. Again, this is not Start's fault in any way, of course, and if the capacity prices get fixed to reasonable levels, I fully expect Start to pass on the changes through lower prices and/or higher traffic caps (which are already quite good).

I really love this ISP because in part they are very open and honest with their plans; their forum on here regularly has posts about their network expansion, plan changes, etc. Moreover Start appears to be very conservative in their network infrastructure, pre-emptively obtaining extra capacity rather than waiting until customers start seeing congestion issues.

I trust the way Start operates and will continue to use them myself and recommend them to others.

member for 13.1 years, 365 visits, last login: 287 days ago
updated 11 years ago