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Review by pir2 
UPDATED: 10 days ago
member for 17 days, 2 visits, last login: 10 days ago
 Orillia,ON
 Contract price not specified.
 "Been reliable so far"
 "Tech support is painful"
 "If we want anthing other than dial up, this is it."
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I have been satisfied so far, but not ecstatic. Speed is fair, don't like to pay extra for static I.P.
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 Review by Luvfishin
UPDATED: 12 days ago
member for 7.9 years, 2182 visits, last login: 1 days ago
St George Brant,ON
Contract price not specified.
"Faster than dialup"
"Still costly and latency as with all satellite net services"
"Am not very happy overall (costly and slow)"
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Update on November 12/09:
Finally dumped Xplornet. They are getting worse daily.
I signed up with a new wireless company here called Silowireless and am extremely happy. It's snappy and fast. I'll write a review asap.
I replaced my Direcway (Lincsat) with the new Telesat ka from Xplornet (formerly Lincsat) here in Canada. I simply wanted faster speeds and I certainly got that. It is costly, but I have no other choices. However, I am getting a 1mb d/l service with 256kbps u/l for the same price as my old 500 d/l and 50 u/l.
The only catch is the equipment (dish and modem cost $699.00 and install was $300.00) as it requires all new equipment and does not use any of the old Direcway equipment.
Install and setup took about 2 hours and it was a breeze. My dealer here always treats me well and does a great job.
Tech support is a phone call away and I have not needed them.
Connection seems better in rain/snow and no problems so far.
Value for the money is of course a toss up. I am in an area where I have no choice; and to compare satellite to cable or dsl is almost unfair. However, it could be less costly and monthly rates could be less. I pay $89.99/month plus tax and it is much better value than the Direcway which was identically priced.
So far, so good and I'll do an update in a while.
Speeds are averaging around 950 down and 250 up with bursts of up to 1.4 mb down and 380kbps up.
*Update* Upgraded on Feb 6/06 to 1.5mb down, 300 up and and impressed. Averaging 1200 down/300up and solid in lousy weather. No networking/router issues at all. Expensive, but my only option. Xplornet email doesn't want to work with my Yahoo...humm...tech was not helpful. Am using "forwarding email" to get my Xplornet mail.
*Update* Update on May 18/08 and am still getting the 1.5/300 KaBang service which is getting slower and for $149.00/month should be poppin'! Am told their sat space is overcrowded, but who knows. I have relocated my dishes to a very nice stainless pole mount (added new picture). I sure wish I was a wee bit closer for DSL as the satellite is very costly.
*Update* Update on March 11/09 and was getting unhappy as the KaBang service got slower and I was not happy. I downgraded to KaZoom 1/256 and pay $99.00 with no contract. (I don't want a contract as I'm hoping to bail, if I can) I really don't notice much difference and am saving $50.00/month. This service is a ripoff and I'm looking at some other options such as local wifi if I can get it here.
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Review by batt149
Posted: 36 days ago
member for 36 days, 0 visits, last login: 36 days ago
Lanark,ON
 Business customer
Contract price not specified.
"it exists, heavy-duty dish looks pretty cool, flashing lights"
"$800 install, $100/month, 300ms ping, heavy-handed shaping, frequent weather outages (mist, snow, rain)"
"go with the homing pigeons carrying 16GB USB sticks."
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There are no other broadband options in my remote area. I ordered the KaZoom package (1mb down, 384kb up) , $95/month. Equipment and install totalled ~$800. 3-year contract requirement. The following services are simply not feasible on this service given the 300ms round trip:
- online gaming on PC or Xbox 360
- VOIP
Surfing modern AJAX-style sites, which are very chatty in terms of sequential round trips, are very slow for a broadband connection. Older style sites load OK.
FTP of files approaches advertised bandwidth.
P2P is heavily throttled during day/evening hours, although in off-peak hours it may approach advertised bandwidth. Difficult and slow, but that file will arrive eventually (days instead of hours)
I do not use any of Xplornet's mail, news, hosting services and cannot comment on their quality.
XBox 360 sometimes has difficulty with the sluggish (300/500ms) latency of the connection and might give up on downloading game/OS patches.
I really expected better for $100/month. I expected the high latency (44000km round trip), but the traffic-shaping is a real deal-breaker.
Billing is via credit card-only, which is not favorable for me.
I purchased the equipment and installation from a 3rd-party, a small satellite shop in the Ottawa area. The installer did a great job, very professional, all wires square-routed and tacked, holes caulked, etc.
My cost over 3-years is around $4000. At this rate, my money is better spent on projects to get me to the nearest wireless/wired ISP (tower, lay cat5, etc).
I will not be renewing and would recommend:
- DO NOT purchase if you have any other non-satellite options.
- purchase the lowest level of service. The extra $$ does not get you much unless your primary usage is straight FTP at 4am.
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Review by bsigg
UPDATED: 46 days ago
member for 3 years, 42 visits, last login: 45 days ago
Swan River,MB
Contract price not specified.
"Sweet."
"None."
"It's awesome."
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Pretty sweet. It is so fast.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 78 days ago
(review was emailed from domain gmail.com)
undisclosed location
Contract price not specified.
"it works ... sometimes"
"some times it works"
"$50 / M to light surf. no video. no down loads. no uploads. no fun"
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$50 / M to light surf. no video. no down loads. no uploads. no fun. get to understand what FAP is before you decide. dial up is slow but at least with this pages open quicker... but again don't get excited about down loading anything
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Review by snowbelt
UPDATED: 98 days ago
member for 357 days, 26 visits, last login: 50 days ago
Thunder Bay,ON
Contract price not specified.
"Do not need to tie up the phone line"
"Nearly everything associated with the service"
"Terrible service. Worst company to deal with. Dial up is superior."
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Update:
This service is garbage. It has degraded so much since spring, and it wasn't good to start. According to tech support there are no problems and my signal is really strong. Tech support is inexperienced and can offer no help. Service is down about 50% of the time.
Dial up is superior in every way. Sustained download rates are slower than dial up during peak hours. When FAP limit is reached the service becomes unusable. I would never recommend to anyone.
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Using Telesat KA band equipment with 512k down 128k up. Very expensive for poor service. Cannot access major websites at various random points throughout day (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc...). Signal frequently drops out. Everything considered, this is recommended as a last resort only.
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 Review by dailyplanet
UPDATED: 118 days ago
member for 5 years, 618 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Colborne,ON
Business customer
Contract price not specified.
"Works as promised"
"Iffy during heavy snow or when a cumulus cloud farts"
"Expensive proposition but worth it to have high-speed"
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==UPDATE==
Ditched them when my anniversary came and went in February,2008.
System failed on 26DEC08 leaving me and my business high and dry. Blamed it on weather in our area (it was cloudy and a few snow flurries but nothing major). Finally on the 27th of December, spent two hours on the phone with a tech who finally pronounced it DOA. Modem or dish-radio? No one knew.
They immediately tried to sell me another package or charge 150+ an hour to come out and fix it (of course, warranty was expired a full year before).
The dish is gone from the house and the wiring is torn out. Will never go that route again.
================================================================
$1099 for equipment and installation...yike!
$89.00 for "KaBoom" package - 1 meg down, 256 up.
Three computers networked. Last night (fairly heavy snow) was the first time we noticed a slow down.
Have not done any significant downloading, but what we have done has been at or close to advertised speed (my one speed test was 778K down, 214 up).
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Review by BruceJohnson
Posted: 245 days ago
member for 3.9 years, 38 visits, last login: 17 days ago
Hardisty,AB
Contract price not specified.
"High speed"
"Inconsistent service. Bad Customer Service."
"Get only if it's your only choice."
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If Xplornet wasn't the only choice in my small town for high-speed Internet, I wouldn't be their customer.
I have the highest speed residential package plus static IP:
$59.99 per month + $9.99 for static IP. Including GST, my monthly bill is $73.48.
Speeds Up To: 5 Mbps download, 1.2 Mbps upload. By "Up To", they mean burst speeds, of course. Sustained speeds are generally around 700 kbps download, and 300 kbps upload.
The fastest speeds I have ever recorded has been 2 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload, and that was only for a few seconds in speed tests.
The order and install process was OK when I got it, because I was the first resident in my town (Hardisty, Alberta, Canada), to get it when Xplornet came to town. Apparently, wait time for installs now can vary wildly from days to weeks.
Equipment: Motorola Canopy Wireless
Customer service is poor. Level 1 Support is very limited in abilities and intelligence, but you have to go through their stupid checklist again (even if you've tried everything already), before you get Level 2 Support. Level 2 Support actually has people that think, but they are limited in what they can do also.
Xplornet's e-mail service is very unreliable, often several times a week not responding for minutes or hours at a time. They also use spammer techniques to get their own customer's e-mail out. All their e-mail servers are black-listed because of spam. Rather than solve the spam problem, they spoof the sending servers to get their customer's e-mail sent. Their customer's e-mails get sent, but recipient's e-mail services label the all the e-mails as spam.
Trying to get anyone with Xplornet to talk about this issue, or other systemic problems, has been impossible. I no longer even try, which I'm sure they appreciate.
Like I said, if I had ANY other choice for high speed Internet, I would switch immediately.
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Review by DarryDoo
UPDATED: 333 days ago
member for 9 years, 71 visits, last login: 325 days ago
Embro,ON
Contract price not specified.
"The only true high-speed available in my area"
"Never achieve advertised speeds. Signal drops. Oversubscribed."
"If it's the only game in town... then why complain?"
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I moved from an area that, at the time, had the highest cable Internet speeds in North America (10 Mb/s, in 2002). I now live in the country -- on a farm -- with the nearest town 15 min away, and the nearest city (London) over 30 min away.
It was Hobson's choice -- either dial-up (this isn't the 1980's!), or hybrid satellite -- down over the air, up via dial-up (sure, if I only want to browse the web), or Look hybrid (see previous), or satellite (way too expensive), or Xplornet wireless. A no brainer.
Xplornet also offers wireless service directly to the village about 3 miles away -- which is then connected wirelessly to a tower about 10 miles away. Luckily, I live on very high ground, and can connect directly to that tower 10 miles away, and thereby avoid the oversubscribed local connection.
I opted for the Xpress package, at a cost of $39.99 base rate, + $10 equipment rental, + $5 for use of the 900 MHz service (direct to tower). I also have a dedicated IP address, a $10 option, but have never been billed for it. Signup was simple: I visited the local dealer, signed up, and 3 weeks later the installer came and did a site survey to verify my connectivity, then installed the Motorola Canopy equipment on the house, aimed it, and then drilled a HUGE hole for the Ethernet cable (apparently he didn't know how to install the connectors, and the hole had to be big enough for the connector to pass through). He did plug the hole with caulking, properly grounded the equipment, and left a 50' coil of wire in my computer room. All for $250.
My advertised speed is 3 Mb/s download and 600 kb/s upload. Due to traffic shaping, these speeds are limited to 700 kb/s down and 150 kb/s up after about 3 seconds of data transfer. However, I rarely achieve even these capped speeds -- I'm usually around 300 kb/s down and 80 kb/s up.
Hardware is pretty reliable. Was replaced once in 3 years due to failure.
They don't provide NNTP -- in fact, they filter port 119, but my premium NNTP provider allows port 80 connections, as well as SSL. Email is outsourced to Tucows email service (not good: see »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucows#Bus···services), with no provision for secure POP3 / SMTP (even browser-based email is via HTTP and not HTTPS).
Customer support ranges from passable to laughable. As with most companies, first-level support is a joke; second-level support has gotten worse as the company has grown. The company's Marketing department has made numerous blunders over the years, two examples: for years, their own spam system marked all their emails as spam; they sent usernames and passwords to customers in "secure and private" emails. I've complained about these gaffes with absolutely no success. Although they fixed they fixed the spam problem, by -- wait for it -- not whitelisting their own addresses, but by... outsourcing their email servers. Really. I'm not kidding.
I am unhappy enough that I investigate alternatives regularly -- but cellular and WiMAX is not available here, and although there are other wireless providers nearby, none provide service here yet. Of course, DSL and cable will likely never be available here.
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Review by Tig3
UPDATED: 350 days ago
member for 3.4 years, 27 visits, last login: 349 days ago
Consecon,ON
Contract price not specified.
"Ease of install if you can see the tower."
"a bit more expensive for the speed available"
"Reliable with good technical support."
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I had problems getting DSL installed so I opted for the more expensive point to point wireless solution. Install was quick and flawless.
I am 14 km away from the tower but I can see it. Line of sight is very important if you are this far away.
I have the 3 Meg package. With static IP. My speed tests out at over 3 Meg down and 600 up. Cost is just under $60 after taxes etc
The tech came out to survey the site and gave me the option of on the spot install. Start to finish less than one hour.
They use the motorolla Canopy system. I have a reflector dish installed.
I needed to be able to use my VoIP gateway for internet at this location to give me any benefit. At first the VoIP gateway would not connect. Xplornet technical support was very co-operative when I requested setup information and changes to test different subscriber module configurations. In the end, the setup I required was only available to customers who had leased the optional static IP. All this was accomplished during the free trial period. I am leasing the optional static IP and I have no regrets.
I use this connection for work. One day the connection went down. I called support and found out that this was a scheduled maintenance outage. I commented how this impacted me and suggested that they should send and email to warn customers in advance. Now they send email warnings in advance. Nice to know they are listening.
There were some evening sags in throughput last year where speed could plummet to the point where VoIP became choppy. Although it took some time to resolve Xplornet was responsive in working on and monitoring the situation. Speed is consistent and better than ever now.
I have had this ISP for 18 months.
Update, December 2008
Still a happy customer. Speeds have increased. Over 4M down and 1M up. They do traffic shape but they were very clear about that from the get go. That's fair.
Customer service is still among the best of any ISP I have had. Only Teksavvy is in the same league.
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Xplornet
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huh?