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Review by dikbozo See Profile

  • Location: Regina, SK, Canada
  • Cost: $27 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 2 days
  • Caps of 100 gigabytes/month
Tech support is 24/7 and very knowledgeable.
Sales support is too interested in upselling.
Good for those who know or can determine their own needs. The tech savvy prefer this to local telco.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

I have been using the 5 Mbps down/1 up package since it was introduced locally, I honestly don't remember how long ago this was. The price as now bundled is substantially discounted from $45 to $25. The data caps that are referred to in their literature are implemented through traffic shaping rather than by monetary penalties as yet. Go over the cap and suffer slowdowns. My cap is set at 100GB /month and I go over it very regularly. I do imagine the 20+ years as a customer does matter here as Access was originally set up as a non-profit co-operative rather than a strictly for-profit commercial entity. I have spoken to people in Saskatoon that have the alternatives of Shaw or SaskTel and am happy I don't have those problems.

Ordering was pretty painless, as I recall the January day back in 2001. The tech showed up on time, listened carefully to my request and went about his job in a friendly efficient manner. He was clean, well dressed and careful and respectful as regards the extra long line I needed at the time. He was clear about potential problems due to this extra length, several of which did occur though 3-5 years later.

I don't recall the exact brand or model of the modem installed but it worked as advertised giving me my 1 Mbps down/1 up (at the time what was offered) connection. There was a speed bemp up to 1.5 down a year or so later that was given at no additional cost. The jump up to 5 Mbps did require a modem swap that I ultimately took in to them as the service tech would have taken 2 weeks due to demand at the time. The current state as regards speed changes requires no modem swaps and is accomplished at the central office. The current tiers are quite reasonable, going from 1.25 Mbps/128k (yes they really do) to through 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 50 and a top of 100Mbps. The upload speeds do indeed suck with nothing above 5 Mbps. This is a Canada wide problem apparently.

The reliability of the ISP on this case is very high. Putting aside the electrical disruptions over the past 13+ years, I would suggest my personal down time would be measurable in numbers of hours but not into the 20s. Most technical glitches I have run into have been resolved over the phone, including an intermittent router that was not in the brief of tech support. I have had 2 modems die on me, the exchange process on these was utterly painless.

UPDATE: June 24, 2015

The update here is good news. Same old same old which means great uptime, soft caps (no cost over limit but throttled) and as advertised speeds. They offer 6 month perks for subscribers on a par with those for new sign ups, i.e. 10Mbps for the price of 5, half price when bundled. Sad to report the demise of after hours tech support. Overall no issues or problems. Good to see a new ad for 100 Mbps service availability through out the city. Speed bumps are now near instantaneous through customer support and not tech support.



member for 19.7 years, 67 visits, last login: 5.2 years ago
updated 8.7 years ago


Review by aaronparks45 See Profile

  • Location: Greensburg, Green, KY, USA
  • Cost: $45 per month
  • Install: about 2 days
Smokin Deal, Blistering Fast, No Hassle Install
Cant think of any!
Best bang for the buck in this area... period.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
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Value for money:

6meg for $45, rocksolid 5.7meg or better downloads. Technician arrived on time, exactly as scheduled. Fast, friendly, local, and what a bargain!

Folks, you cant beat the deal in this area. I had 1.5meg through Windstream and it performed as advertised, but for the same price as my now insanely fast cable from Access. And unless you live in downtown Greensburg, you cant get anything faster from Windstream. Oh yea, Windstream blocks the good ports for your downloading pleasure... BOOO! My Access line is wide open

Access has packages from 512k all the up to 8meg, no matter where you are. You DONT have to have cable TV service either. They are so flexible. I cant really say enough, so heres how the experience went, shouldnt leave any questions for you.

Walked into Access office on Tue, spent 10 minutes browsing packages and speaking to staff. Made our choices, scheduled the install, paid cash upfront to start services.

Technician arrived as scheduled on Thur at 9am. He was very friendly and fast. However, having your own knowledge of internet stuff helps, Im not sure how they handle non-techy type folks. He was here about 15 minutes total, leaving me with 2 TV's on cable, an operational internet connection, a new modem, and my own copy of software. Speed was verified before he left.

Now here I sit, happy as can be, with 6meg service for the same price I was paying for a fraction of the speed.

member for 15.9 years, 14 visits, last login: 13.7 years ago
updated 15.8 years ago


Review by biles See Profile

  • Location: Regina, SK, Canada
  • Cost: $45 per month
High download and upload speed, Great tech support. 2 static IPs. New modem whenever you want
Download cap
More customer oriented than the competition. Cap is bad for heavy downloaders.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

$45 a month if you don't have cable. If you are a university student, you can get the same service for $25 a month. Compaired to the competition, this is a great ISP. On average I get 4.5meg for 5 meg service. Pings are around 97ms and upload is around 890kbps of 1meg. If you have a problem, they try to fix the problem asap. I haven't had any service disruptions besides a bad amplifier. They fixed that the day I called.

member for 22.1 years, 1253 visits, last login: 7.4 years ago
updated 17.4 years ago


Yeah No
@regina.accesscomm.ca

1 recommendation

Yeah No

Anon

I went to Access because of people telling me it's faster...

But honestly, it's been nothing but headache after headache with this ISP. They claim to be professional, yet they have yet to do their own cable drop in the city, they simply mooch off pre-existing network infrastructure laid by SaskTel, and then they least the smallest possible bandwidth in order to cut costs as bad as they can. Then they advertise a 5 Mbps line, of which you are only allowed to freely use 4.5% of, as they impose an unadvertised limit of 70 GB per 30 day period, including upload and download. If you do the math, a 5 Mbps line should theorically give you 1500+ GB of throughput per month, yet you are allowed to use 70 GB, approx. 4.5% of what you are paying for. Their Technical Support is amateur at best, and they really don't care about complaints, or even concerns put forth by customers. Of all cable companies, they are probably the most unsecure, as it's easy to go and capture packets (downstream only, but still, that's a huge security hole) from anyone who shares the same pipe as you. Honestly, for the price, Access Communications is a distant 2nd rate to SaskTel in Saskatchewan. Just so everyone doesn't think I'm being bias, I'm currently subscribed to Access, and I'm counting down the days till I switch back.
Yeah No

Yeah No

Anon

Re: I went to Access because of people telling me it's faster...

I forgot to mention, the entire reasoning behind their bandwidth cap is due to the fact that they are too cheap to install and maintain their own network infrastructure. People like to say they are faster and better than SaskTel, yet Access goes through SaskTel since they are the only company in Saskatchewan who runs and maintains a network infrastructure in the province. The cap from Access is a result of Access trying to cut costs by buying the absolute cheapest and smallest line from SaskTel to run their internet through. Reliability really has nothing to do with Access, if SaskTel is down, Access is down. So the high level of reliability actually comes from SaskTel, and not Access Communications. Another thing worth noting is the fact that You can get the exact same speed line (or faster) from SaskTel for the same price or less. For $9 a month more, you can even go and get yourself a 10 Mbps line from SaskTel, which is twice the speed of Access' fastest line, and there is no upload or download cap... Imagine that.

Anyhow, I just felt compelled to save people from the same terrible service I've been stuck with for the past few months. Thankfully I'm done with Access at the end of the month. For people who say that the average internet user doesn't need more than 70 GB per month, all I have to say is that with a 256Kbps line, you can actually manage to get 79GB per month... So if you're one of those "average" internet users, all you really need is 256Kbps, and not a 5 Mbps... So in light of that, why cap the faster lines, as the people who subscribe to it are obviously intending to use it... Otherwise everyone would just get a 256Kbps line, since they all provide the same amount of throughput at the end of the month anyway.... Just a thought, but one that should save a lot of people time, money, and frustration dealing with an amateur company.

Monopoly guy
@regina.accesscomm.ca

Monopoly guy

Anon

Re: I went to Access because of people telling me it's faster...

lmao..u think sasktel would allow another company to use thier connections and compete with them..go to jail..do not pass go.

FYI..access comm has their own fiber optic line that leads into the city ( AND NO SATILITES ITS A HARD LINE)..and they pay AT&T or another one of the networking giants who OWN the internet and are the ones selling the bandwidth and UPLOAD costs more then DLOAD hense the reason we dont get 10 up 10 down..and honestly with your lil bandwidth usage statement..are u at home 24hours a day always downloading? 70 gigs is ezily 70+ movies...there is not enuf days in the month.. o btw..try to host a online game with sasktel..U CANT as they dont even assign u your own static ip..and NO they are nvr down at the same time..unless the POWER goes out..do some reasearch b4 posting your fabricated and assumed evidence.
DaMizZa
join:2007-08-02

1 edit

DaMizZa

Member

Re: I went to Access because of people telling me it's faster...

As far as the bandwidth statement, does it matter if I am at home to download? Does what I download matter? Does the time of day that I download matter?

That depends, with Access it does. With SaskTel it doesn't.
SaskTel also offers Static IPs, weird.

SaskTel doesn't try to hide their business practices from the general public. Access does. Nowhere, in any ad or even online do they even make mention of their Cap policy. Even if you read through all the fine print when you first sign up, it makes no mention of it.

Bottom line is, why pay the same amount, in some cases more, for less service? Would it make more sense to pay $5 for a 5lb bag of potatoes at one place, when you can pay $5 for a 20lb bag of potatoes at another? The difference in that analogy may seem exageratted, but in reality it's much worse. Like I said, at 5 Mbps, you should get 1500+ GB per month of throughput. With SaskTel, you do, with Access, you get 70 GB.

So I mean, yeah, some people seem religious towards Access, and that's their choice, I'm not trying to change their minds.. But what I am trying to do is let people know what they're getting into when they sign up for Access, because Access doesn't.

So stay with your Access internet, limited to the throughput of approx. 256 Kbps, regardless of whether you have 5 MBps or 10 Mbps, that's totally cool with me. I'm just saying for people who haven't tried either yet, for the same price or less, you can go with SaskTel who will give you the full 1.5 Mbps, 5 Mbps, or 10 Mbps that you pay for, without limits on throughput.

Just out of curiosity, I just want to know how you justify Access being a better ISP... Cause I just don't see it at all, and I'm sure many people can agree with that.

Hosting a game server? Sure hope you don't get capped, or that server will be pretty empty thanks to some extreme lag caused by a throttled connection.. As long as you have Access that is.

For the record, SaskTel doesn't get a choice, a lot of competitors use SaskTel's network. Not by choice of course, but see SaskTel faces a disadvantage in terms of competition due to more restrictions and regulations from an organization called the CRTC, which forces them to let these competitors use their network. Even with these restrictions placed upon them, Access still doesn't seem able to compete with the level of service. Once they get rid of their cap non-sense, then maybe they could be considered a decent alternative, but until then, it's pretty much a no-brainer.

And while it can be argued that SaskTel is a Crown Corp and has unlimited funding from the government, just realize that SaskTel has not received any government money in over 80 years... They actually give the government money (Which helps keep your taxes in Saskatchewan lower), and at the same time put in an exponentially larger amount of money than Access back into local communities through sponsorships and donations... So really, better service, better community, and more government income that isn't out of your pockets, does it really sound so terrible?

UknowNothing
@accesscomm.ca

UknowNothing

Anon

Re: I went to Access because of people telling me it's faster...

Read the back of your contract. At no time does Access offer "unlimited bandwidth" regardless of what you think. They offer "unlimited connectivity." Which means you are free to surf the web 24/7/365. Just because you are downloading more than 70GB of illegal pirated movies, games, software..and obviously you are if you are using that much bandwidth, doesn't mean that they need to allow you to do that. Most companies have a cap, some may be higher than others. Access does NOT use any of Sasktel's service in Regina. Don't go slandering a company before you know the facts, and it's quite obvious that you do not. Maybe Sasktel can dump 600 Million (taxpayers) dollars to improve their system. Access does a great job on ALOT less than that. With 600 Million dollars Access could provide cable to the entire provence for years...
omega1682
join:2003-03-07
Regina, SK

omega1682

Member

access

Access has just recently introduced a new service. Access Xtreme Internet. The speeds are 10mb down and 1mb up. I just signed up and it is only $10 more dollars then the 5 meg line. I am very excited and this is awesome.

Sasktel sucks. Access is the way to go.

justaguy_sk
@regina.accesscomm.ca

justaguy_sk

Anon

Increased 10MPS Service Available

Its great that Access came out with 10MPS service, but with their 70GB cap, it is nothing better, only faster. Access needs to get out of the antiquated CAP issue and start delivering a servide that allows its customers to use the features they are paying for.

For me - I was an Access guy until this latest crap. Looking into Sasktel, as the 70GB cap doesn't work with my current volounteer work with developing and testing software in my spare time for major companies around the world. Without people like myself, you wouldnt have Adaware, Mozilla, and other software programs that benefit the user community as a whole.

Wake up Access before you find someone else muscling in on your customers and see your base of customers leave for a real Internet provider.
robert_sk
join:2007-09-07
Regina, SK

1 edit

robert_sk

Member

Access throttling cap raised to 100 points/month

Access Communications has recently changed their "throttling candidate" cap from 70GB to 100 points/month. The points system works on WHEN you download, not how much you download, so if you schedule your large downloads for early in the morning/late at night, you will almost never hit the 100 point limit.

Review by saskjohnny See Profile

  • Location: Yorkton, SK, Canada
  • Cost: $27 per month
  • Install: about 3 days
Always Free Service Calls. Consistent Speeds. Always Right Near Advertised Speeds.
Superior Company! Customer Service Is Stunning! Speeds Are Awesome.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

Access has been one of the best companies I have ever done business with. They are always very fast to answer questions. Dealing with any line issues has been a suprisingly pleasant experience. I one had an issue that caused me to lose cable/internet and they arrived 15 minutes after I called on a Friday evening! (Turned out to be a simple connection that had to be replaced.. For a total fix time of 5 minutes or so).

I've always seen very consistent speed tests using broadbandreports.com, regardless of time of day. (Even though I am always told that in general cable users experience slower service the more people on-line in the neighborhood, etc).

Others have posted comments about a bandwidth limit of 70 Gigs. While I will admit that I never realized there was a limit, which probably should be noted more clearly... I don't think that realistically average users will be affected by this limit. It's actually pretty high. General Internet use is not going to come close to that limit. I believe that the people affected by numbers like that are mostly those that are downloading music/movies. (Though I am sure there are some out there that download tons of shareware, etc or something too). I once downloaded movies (a practice I have since stopped).. They were an average of 700megs. It would take downloading 100 movies a month at that rate to hit the limit. For music, I see a high average being 5 meg per song (usually less it seems though). That would require (unless I miscalculated) 14,000 song downloads. Now, it's just my opinion, but I think that 99% of LEGITIMATE downloaders aren't going to hit these numbers. (The 1% that does is going to be either spending a ton of money at iTunes or is a software developer downloading huge amounts of development kits or something!)

Again, the download limit should be advertised, however, at those numbers it's going to be very unusual for people to hit it that are downloading legitimate items. (My opinion)

member for 18.7 years, 20 visits, last login: 16.3 years ago
lodged 18.7 years ago


Review by omega1682 See Profile

  • Location: Regina, SK, Canada
  • Cost: $51 per month
Very Fast Download and Upload speeds
Cap you at 70 Gigs per month
Great Overall
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
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I have used Access Communnications for 4 years now and I have been very happy with their service to date. They are very reliable with their connection and their customer service is above all the rest.

They sometimes have to do maitenance, but this is only 15 mins at a time, is during the late hours of the night (3:00am-3:15am) and they e-mail you each time it is about to be done.

Their advertised speed of 5 megs dowload and 1 meg upload is rarlely below what is advertised.

The only problem I have is that they "Cap" your monthly usage. If you use more then 70 gigabytes per month of data... both upload and download combined, then they will "downgrade" you to a lower speed. (high speed lite, high speed ultra-lite)

All in all I would reccomend Access Communications to everyone I know.... as they have never let me down.

member for 21 years, 323 visits, last login: 11.1 years ago
lodged 18.8 years ago


Review by hrobins See Profile

  • Location: Regina, SK, Canada
  • Cost: $45 per month
  • Install: about 7 days
Quick Install Time
They cap you
Good for people who can't get DSL, but can get Access
Pre Sales information:
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Value for money:

Called in for install and was able to get up and going within seven days.
With the recent upgrade to 5meg/1meg tier, makes your internet connection rock.

member for 23.4 years, 3301 visits, last login: 350 days ago
lodged 19.5 years ago


thecabled00d
@estevan.accesscomm.c

thecabled00d

Anon

7 days????

Hello,
I was just looking at your review and I would strongly disagree that 7 days is an acceptable waiting period for Access Communications. Unless it is extremely busy, you should be able to get hooked up in no less that 3 business days MAX. The vast majority of the time it is less than 3 days even. Anways...yes the 5mbit has set a new standard for your basic Highspeed, and of course it rocks. Just defending the time of installs a little. Also, for new subscribers the costs is much less than $45.

lineman230
@reverse.accesscomm.c

lineman230

Anon

Accesscomm Bandwith CAP it s real !!

They now offer higher speeds but they are also capping montly bandwith usage. They fail to mention this on their web page and when you talk to them..the normal user will be capped at 50 gig per month, if you go over you will be cut off with out warning. They will then give you the " you cost use money line and that they dont need you type of business or they will charge you the business rates that, start at $100 per month. This also has a cap of 5 gig a day, so if you are a big downloader you still may find yourself getting cut off. Since the introduction of the faster speeds (due to the dsl provider increasing it speed at no additional cost) Accesscomm has turned into provider that I would not personally recommend if you like to use the system that you pay for to the fullest. I seems odd to offer 5-6 meg speeds and then not allow the subscriber to use the system

Bonz_Number1
@regina.accesscomm.ca

Bonz_Number1

Anon

Re: Accesscomm Bandwith CAP it s real !!

they have raised the cap to 70gb and they do not cut you off without warning i was warned 3 times (i got up to 120 gigs) then they cut me down to light speed. so long as you pay your bill they will not cut you off end o story

adama23
@regina.accesscomm.ca

adama23

Anon

Good service, GARBAGE CAP

I love their speeds and customer service, but the 70gig cap is ABSOLUTE GARBAGE and they know it. It's almost 2007 and they're living in 1999. Hopefully find a better isp soon