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 Review by Luvfishin 
UPDATED: 14 days ago
member for 7.9 years, 2184 visits, last login: a few hours 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: 38 days ago
member for 38 days, 0 visits, last login: 38 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 (hidden by request)
Posted: 80 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: 99 days ago
member for 358 days, 26 visits, last login: 52 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: 120 days ago
member for 5 years, 618 visits, last login: 2 days 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 DarryDoo
UPDATED: 334 days ago
member for 9 years, 71 visits, last login: 327 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 jimmybarnes
Posted: 1.2 years ago
member for 1.6 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.6 years ago
Pearson,Atkinson,GA
Contract price not specified.
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:::.. testmy.net test results ..:::
Download Connection is:: 784 Kbps about 0.78 Mbps (tested with 1024 kB)
Download Speed is:: 96 kB/s
Upload Connection is:: 120 Kbps about 0.1 Mbps (tested with 386 kB)
Upload Speed is:: 15 kB/s
Tested From:: »testmy.net (Main)
Test Time:: 2008/08/13 - 5:13pm
D-Validation Link:: »testmy.net/stats/id-15UE349VL
U-Validation Link:: »testmy.net/stats/id-064J7N8IR
User Agent:: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.0.04506) [!]
I have had these speeds for about 7 months,,they say everything looks good to them,, what do you think?its getting hard to pay 79.95 a month for this
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Review by xplornetbtch
UPDATED: 1.5 years ago
member for 2.3 years, 8 visits, last login: 325 days ago
p2a3j7
Contract price not specified.
"I can get some sort of broadband in Northern Ontario"
"You go over average usage in an hour the cut your bandwidth by 25 percent"
"This can only be a last resort service"
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I was sold from Anikast to Xplornet. So I did not get it installed by Xplornet.
I had no other choice. I was with DirectPC/Bell. They shut down and I had to buy a new dish and modem and go with Anikast/Telasat/Bell.
I ordered the 500 Down and 100 up package. The package was $54.00 a month.I have yet to sign a contract with Xplornet. I just was transfered over a month ago.It's just a new name on my credit card.
The modem I have with this system is a Surf Beam. This is a KA band system.
When I called to get some new email addresses things seemed to go good. I needed the In/Out codes so I could get them working in Outlook.
The problem with Xplornet is the FAP/Fair Access Policy.
If you use more the the average usage in an hour. The next hour they cut your bandwidth by 25 percent for an hour. So you buy bandwith from Xplornet and you use it. They cut your bandwith down. This sorta defeats the purpose of getting bandwidth.
I ask the Tech guy how much bandwidth can i use before it will be cut back. He tells me It's an average and it changes all the time so I can't give you a number.So you never know when you are useing to much and will get cut back. The record of how many times you have had your bandwidth cut back only goes back a week. I was cut back 7 times over the last week.
Another thing is if you call over slow bandwidth they tell you to do 4 tests on their test site over 24 hours. This is the same site Anikast used. If you don't do the tests over 24 hours they will not let you go up to a level 2 Tech guy. So if you have any bandwith problem it will take a least a day.
The bottom line is I have had this system for 18 months. The seem to do their work on the system from 2 AM until 6 AM Eastern. Every now and then it will be out, but not very often. I would say, It's 98 percent up time over 18 months.
Let me on your luck with Xplornet
I cancelled my Xplornet service Feb 2008.
I had no contract and it was still a pain trying to cancel.
I sent them an email letting them no I was canceling.
3 days later it was still working.
I call them up a the girl goes, anyone could be calling to cancel the service and would not cancel my service until I filled out a form from their web site.
I told her I do not have a printer. So I can't fill out the form. She told me to go to my public library and get a print out there. The closest library to me is 40 K away or 24 miles. I told her thats not happening.
So the next day I sent in a hand written fax notice of cancelation(with no form att).
So a few days later some other girl calls and says, she will let me cancel. But before she trys to get me back by boosting me up to the next package of 1000K down for a few days to check it out. I told her I was at 1000K down until you bought me from Anikast and you cut me back to 500 down. When you go to the 1000K service you get what you paid for with the 500K package and Annikast knew it and boosted me up for free. So I would get what I was suppost to get.
I have had internet service in the Bahamas/Europe/ The Toronto area a few and out in British Columbia.
I have delt with at least 10 Co's over this planet.
Xplornet is buy far the worst Co I have ever had to deal with for a internet connection. They sell you a service for 500 K down and you are lucky to get 200 to 300 K down unless it's 3 AM. Quit a bit of the time you get less than 200K down.
You call Tech and they give you the run around. Like they don't know they have oversold the service and your beam is full. Then I head down to my mail box and I have another flyer for the service.
The service is so oversold they put up another sat for southern/eastern Ont.+ they are putting up wireless towers to make more space on the beams.
I would stay clear of this Co at all costs.
One more sleazy thing they do is. When they sign you up you have 30 days to cancel. They don't FAP you until the 30 days has gone buy. So when you service does not work as it should. You are locked into a contract for 2 or 3 years. I looked at the contract and it is 8 pages long. First of all you need a lawyer to understand it. But the bottom line is everything goes against you. You can't cancel for poor service. If you have to move you are out of luck. If your house burns down they want you to keep paying for the service.
It's an outrage these thieves are still to be in the biz.
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Review by jnmontario
Posted: 1.5 years ago
member for 1.5 years, 40 visits, last login: 199 days ago
undisclosed location
Contract price not specified.
"I have internet"
"They HEAVILY throttle and block ports"
"Avoid them if there are any alternatives unless you ONLY surf."
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So I got an email from Storm (a great wireless ISP in Ottawa area) a few months ago saying that they'd been bought out by Xplornet. I was a bit trepidatious about it but figured what the heck, can't be all bad. Well, now that I've had Xplornet for 3 days that I can look back on the Garden of Eden and see how green it was. Xplornet's policies SUCK!
I first noticed that my WoW/LOTRO patches as well as ANY service needing non-port 80/21/110 didn't work any longer. When talking to Xplornet CSR's (which always take a min. of 1 hr. on the phone) I was forced to get a static IP which has NOTHING TO DO with port forwarding, yet is their way of charging a premium of $10 extra per customer per month that knows the internet or uses it to its fullest (skype/gaming/torrents/iRC etc...). They simply could have put my NIC in the DMZ and still had dynamic IP addressing and I would have had normal access to the internet.
I sucked it up and got the static IP. Now, utorrent works fine now. WoW / LOTRO patching works fine. Dloading SUSE works fine. Skype works fine.
To boot, They HEAVILY throttle their connection. If you go to speedtest.net you get a rosy picture of xplornet's dl/ul speeds - roughly what they adverse because they burst their data flow for 10-15 seconds at the advertised rates. After this 10-15 seconds the traffic shapers kick in. If you look at sustained dl/ul that you get a good picture of how badly they throttle their connection. I have a '3 Mbps' connection. This should theoretically give me speeds of around 366 kB/s. Their sustained UL/DL speeds are 80-84 kB/s (and I've got a solid signal to noise ratio). After talking to a tech, their 1.5 Mbps service has a sustained cap of 70 KB/s (should be 183 Kb/s) and their 5 Mbps service is capped at sustained 100 KB/s(should be 610 KB/s). To summarize, you get ROUGHLY 1/4 OF THE ADVERTISED SPEED. Their upload rates are even worse - marginally better than dialup - and I'm not joking, but I won't get into that on this post.
For those of you from Storm - or any others looking for a wireless ISP because you're in the boondocks, check out Bell's WiMAX. Do yourself a favour, the Xplornet help desk folk are nice (or at least have been for me) but their policies are DRACONIAN.
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Review by bonnie212
Posted: 1.9 years ago
(review was emailed from domain verizon.net)
Rockton,Winnebago,IL
Contract price not specified.
"it sounded good because it would be just one bill."
"It won't let me e-mail without getting a failure notice"
"Need help now."
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I have had this same network for 3 years and it isnt getting any better. Just more expensive. Something needs to change. I've gone through 3 different services, and thought I had found the right one. I was WRONG>
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Xplornet
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Re: Wildblue is the actual review above
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