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Review by aractel 
member for 9.3 years, 0 visits, last login: 9.3 years ago
lodged 9.3 years ago
 Scarborough,ON
 Business customer $600 per month- (6 month contract)
 about 2 days ""static IP, high upload, competitive pricing, dedicated phone line, contract not required, allows servers"" "You gotta pay $ Extra for a 2end Ip" ""Good for power users w/money / new areas w/new+short loops""
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This is a preliminary review, based on my experiences up to my first day of service. I will update this as time goes on.
1. First and foremost, you do not need to have landline service to get their DSL! Aractel provision a dedicated phone line for their DSL. Unfortunately, I had assumed I would need to have phone service to get DSL, so I already had it by the time I found out that Aractel didn't need it.
2. 768/768 SDSL + static IP starting at $45/month. I know you can get this high upload at this price point in some parts of the country, but not in my neck of the woods. Since I run a mail and web server, this is a very good thing.
3. Published bandwidth cap. Bandwidth cap is obviously a negative, but at least they tell you what the cap is. My greatest fear will be that the bandwidth cap is too low for my needs. They do offer higher caps, for more $/month.
Anyways, I first contacted Aractel around the holiday season. For some reason, I decided to call them to place an order on 12/24, when I'd expect sales people would be on holiday. I got a tech support person, who was friendly, answered my questions and actually able to put in the order for their 768/768 residential service @ $45/month. They give you the option to go month-to-month or sign a contract for 1 year or longer. They give you some financial incentives to go with the signing a contract; their promotions seem to vary periodically. I went month-to-month because I didn't find much information, and because I don't know if I'll be able to stay under their bandwidth cap. I opted to lease-to-own the DSL modem for an extra $5/month, rather than purchase it. They do not give you the option to use your own. I was told the provision/install would span around 10 business days. I was a bit skeptical, having gone through a couple of DSL installs in the past that spanned 1-2 months.
The dedicated phone line was run to my home while I was out of town. The note left on my door was a bit cryptic with no company or contact information, stating that "they" were able to complete some phone work to my home without needing access to the premises. A couple of days later, I got a call from someone at Aractel to schedule an appointment to complete the installation. Installation was scheduled for 1/13, close enough to 10 business days after 12/24. On the morning of 1/13, someone called and let us know that they were running a couple of hours behind schedule. This was a welcome surprise, in that they actually took the time to call and let us know about the delay rather than just showing up late. The tech arrived, and the install was complete in all of 15 minutes.
I ran a couple of bandwidth tests and got around 740/720 on the first and 730/530 on the second. So far, I feel confident that I will be able to get reasonably close to the 768/768 in general. Latency is excellent, = 10ms to their DNS servers, and around 20-80ms to most of the sites that I commonly access. Reliability so far has been great, but really too short of a timeframe to pass judgement.
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