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Review by Madwand 
UPDATED: 205 days ago
member for 6.9 years, 1532 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Toronto,ON
 $17 per month (12 month contract)
 "Price & Extra bonuses - online PC - throttle workaround - anonomous surfing. Always expanding services!"
 "Bell gives substandard treatment if you have technical issues with your line (which is not Acanac's fault)"
 "You can't beat Acanac if you have good DSL connect speeds with another provider. As long as you understand DSL setup."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
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Tech Support:
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(ratings match consensus)
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I ordered the 1 year special at $228 upfront for a full 12 months. I gave Bell my 30 days notice and about two weeks before the end I ordered Acanac. I received my login details within 1 hour and was already using Acanac's service within a few minutes.
The first night was slightly choppy, but there were some small issues with heir Cogent lines. Everything was perfect come the morning. About two weeks later there were some Cogent issues again, but they only lasted for five minutes. It's now been almost two months and I'm a very happy Acanac customer. I just wish Bell did not reduce my line to the 5mbit service (which is what I am paying for).
With the Bell throttle, and the workaround I can easily get my P2P at 300-500K on a regular basis (assuming there are enough peers). I am extremely happy for this. Also, with an online PC I can use it without having work follow what I am doing. Also, I can block the DNS blocks from work by using the throttle workaround. i.e. using Facebook just fine.
Acanac has added new AGAS 7 & 8 and 9 and 10 will be online within the next month. The speed is 99% the same as with Bell.
I might in the future use MLPPP, but with the workaround I don't see the need. I would prefer a VPN or ipv6, but these will come out soon enough. I already know that Paul is working hard to keep his system up to date!
I really feel that I am a part of the Acanac team. I am excited for them with each new feature they introduce.
If you don't know anything about computers or DSL connections, I'd recommend that you stay with Bell though as you will probably have a lot of questions or potential issues that you might encounter, and a third party DSL provider may not be for you.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Acanac |
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Review by nancy.miranda
Posted: 213 days ago
(review was emailed from domain ontario.ca)
Toronto,ON
$18 per month (12 month contract)
 about 9 days
 Bell Canada
"Sales and Tech Help were very very good and helpful!"
"No music while on hold for techies.. :-)"
"So far - So Good! Have recommended them to others"
| Pre Sales information:
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(ratings match consensus)
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It took a little longer to get my DSL up and running because Bell Canada had to come to my house to "turn" something on. But so far the sales people and tech help have been very very good.
My speed is at 4.36mbs while on the internet. It drops because of Torrents, but I just put in a ticket for the "tunnel" for that one. All the ACANACA websites warn that torrents are slow... so no surprise when I joined up - Even the sales lady told me about apply for my free online PC so I dont' get the slow speed.
Good value - don't have to worry about reaching your "limit" as with Bell and Rogers. Let's hope it lasts!
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Review by mech9t5
UPDATED: 223 days ago
member for 333 days, 1 visits, last login: 208 days ago
undisclosed location
$27 per month (12 month contract)
"Price"
"everything else"
"Don't order here unless all you care about is price"
| Pre Sales information:
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(ratings well below consensus)
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Price: $19 + $8 (dry loop) = $27 /month all paid upfront.
Ordering: Was done on the online form. Indicated on the order that I did not require a modem but it was sent and billed anyway ($50 deposit). Had to get the modem sent back to them and get a refund on the deposit. Luckily that was not too painful requiring only a few emails with accounting/billing.
Installation: I was coming off Sympatico so I was using the Acanac username/pw within a few days. Initially, I had both Sympatico and Acanac overlapping for a week. After the first week, Sympatico was cancelled and Bell cut my phone line (dry loop). Specified in the order that I had existing dry loop with Sympatico. Better communication with Bell required? In any case, it took another 3 days to get back up and running.
Speed: When I had both Sympatico and Acanac, I could compare the 2. Sympatico was definitely faster. I was going through the same modem and the same phone lines. The only difference was logging on with a different password.
Performing a speed test on both Sympatico and Acanac resulted in the following:
Sympatico: 2500kbps down/650kbps up (consistent) with consistent 50ms ping
Acanac: erratic speeds. on a good day the same as Sympatico, on a bad day less than 1000kbps down and as low as 5kbps up (sometimes the speed test would timeout on the upstream test). ping was always >120ms
On average, I was getting about 1500kbps down and 300kbps up with >120ms ping.
Uptime: There were many outages and a lot of them lasted more than a few hours. On average there was probably around 1 outage a month that was greater than 30mins. When I was on Sympatico (5 years+), I only experienced a handful of outages that was greater than 30mins.
Support: When I complained about the speed (I called about 4 or 5 times), nothing was fixed. I got various excuses such as my modem was bad, i was using wireless, my router was bad, etc. It was never their problem but always someone else. It was not my equipment and it was not Bell because I was getting consistent speeds and compared everything directly when I had overlapping service. In the end, they said all they can do is send a Bell tech to my house to check my equipment and if nothing was wrong with my equipment, I would be charged $75. I knew it wasn't me but they wouldn't do anything else.
I mentioned numerous times that their ping times were way out of normal. They say their servers are in Mississauga but pinging a Toronto server takes over 120ms??? The routing is really messed up!! It should be no more than 50-60ms. They ignored that issue.
Cancellation: I sent a ticket into billing to stop auto renew 1 month prior to the 12 months being over. Got a response asking why I wanted to cancel. I responded with my reasons and asked them not to renew. 3-4 days go by and I never heard back from them. Followed up with another ticket and the ticket was ignored for another week before I followed up again. Finally got a response asking me again why I wanted to cancel and I had to respond again. Finally got them to disable auto renew after over 2 weeks. Good thing I followed up and also started the process 1 month in advance, otherwise they probably would just ignore my cancellation request and charge me another year.
Summary: Poor speeds, poor tech support, poor customer support (billing). For $19 a month I would live with all of that. But considering I had to pay $8 for dryloop fee as well, it is not worth it. I got a new customer deal at Rogers for $30 a month for 1 year. I would rather pay the extra money. Now my internet is fast. I click a link and the page loads up instantly rather than having to sit and wait for the server to respond. And, youtube videos actually load without having to buffer all the time.
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Review by rik
UPDATED: 251 days ago
member for 1.5 years, 27 visits, last login: 77 days ago
Vanier,ON
$37 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
Bell Canada
| Pre Sales information:
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(ratings match consensus)
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»477bc4f01c729.media.neutrality.c···B_01.gif
1./ What other options did I consider for broadband ?
Rogers, or Bell since Canada unfortunately has this "DUOPOLY" what choices do Canadians really have ?!
Luckily, I did found one -thankyou ACANAC !!!
2./ What SPEED/package did I order, at what monthly price?
5Mps/ADSL with a DRY-Loop and VOIP service, total monthly cost $37.90
(I only wish I waited for their $18.95/mo 5Mps/DSL package price 
3./ What good or bad experiences most struck me?
ok, HANG ON:
Well, to be honest, for me its important that ALL canadians get a fair shake, Rogers and Bell, and TELUS,... having been "gouge"ing us for some time now -ALL their telecommunications services are MUCH TOO Expensive in Canada.
ok, enough said:
I just wish Bell/Rogers/Telus/... all these Canadian? corporations would get out of the "RETAIL" market and establish themselves as the "wholesale" "source" providers' for all of our network needs. -with a gov't appointed body to keep their
prices to our smaller ISP retailers in line -with no funny business !
And let these smaller hands-on companies like Acanac, Tek-Savy, and many more... flourish and grow in Canada as our "retail" ISP providers.
Hey, WHO KNOWS CANADIAN NETWORKS BETTER THAN CANADIAN IT/TECHS ? - Did you get that "Bell", Rogers'" ?!!!
It would promote healthy competition,..., and bottom-line "LOWER" and "AFFORDABLE" overall monthly rates for all of us, no matter where we are.
So my experience with all this right now is:
Our "CRTC" is still stuck in 1989, and the sooner Canadian-consumers realize all of the the above, then the sooner we will all be paying cheaper rates for our Internet/VOIP/..., needs.
Maybe then, NortelNetworks can finally lay-down Fibre-Optics to every Canadian residence.
And NO, that's not a dream, it's a reality that should have been implemented by now across Canada. ....sooo WAKE UP! and smell your Java, Canada.
respectfully,
Rick.
Ottawa, CANADA.
PS: forget the "...NortelNetworks can finally lay-down Fibre-Optics to every Canadian residence..."
-tragically, and shamefully this probably won't happen by Nortel directly anymore.
:(
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Review by Dany
Posted: 258 days ago
member for 258 days, 57 visits, last login: 97 days ago
Montreal,QC
$18 per month (12 month contract)
about 2 days
"Prices, Community, Throttling Workaround (SSH AND MLPPP)"
"No "official" French support...but there is a forum section"
"Would recommend to anyone..."
| Pre Sales information:
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I have been with them for 9 months and I am highly satisfied. You can defeat throttling with SSH or MLPPP. I have tried both... and both work! When I had to deal with support (when I moved), everything was handled with care. I have been down for 2 days, but it was because Videotron had cut the wires and they weren't aware of it. They sent a tech on the next day and everything is now fine
The only thing I would say is that for 49.95, you can get a better modem than they provide (for me it was Aztech 605EU). Look at caneris.com I get better results with Thomson Speedtouch 516 than with Aztech 605EU
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Review by julienvf
Posted: 263 days ago
member for 332 days, 238 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Verdun,QC
 Business customer
$18 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Excellent service, good pricing!"
"No ADSL 2+ yet.. but in court against Bell on that point"
"Definitely make the switch from Videotron or Bell to Acanac!"
| Pre Sales information:
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Excellent service, good pricing! Can't wait to get faster profile than 5mb with the latest CRTC decision.
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Review by tkachuk
UPDATED: 264 days ago
member for 1 year, 44 visits, last login: 15 days ago
Newmarket,ON
$18 per month (12 month contract)
about 4 days
Bell Canada
"Weak tech support."
"Good price."
| Pre Sales information:
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Well I have been put on a 3 meg profile now. It took a couple weeks and alot of mud slinging. Not Acanac's fault directly, Bell is playing dirty. The bell tech who came to my house was nice. I will update again so everyone can see how my year goes.
Well after signing up and being happy my speed was cut to a 1.5 meg profile. I have contacted customer service and no one will do anything. The one tech told me that maybe I could get a faster connection with another ISP!!! I have quietly been trying to get my speed fixed with the tech department and the guy on here I always am the one that has to ask if any progress has been made. I always get fluffed off. B.S. from them I have had dsl for years and never had a problem nothing has changed in my stats, just my speed is slower, now stuck in a contract for a year, kinda funny how after the 30 day period was up my speed got cut in more then half and no one will help me or cares, despite all the nice things I said because I WAS happy. Now the only thing I am experiencing are the problems that other people warned me about before I signed up. This has now been a worse experience then with BELL.
you can view antics in forum here:
»my speed sucks again day later
Signed up Sun, Nov 9th 2008 @ 11:00pm. Modem recieved overnight fedex Wed, Nov 12th. Hooked up and active same day. Received my unthrottled connection bypass Thurs 13th @ 8:00am after requesting the previous night at 10:30pm. Signed up online paid with credit card one year term including tax and $49.00 modem deposit. $277.00. I have not had to call them once everything has been a dream with perfect communication via e-mail. Tracking number sent by them, all user logins passwords etc again sent by them. Even with the modem deposit, after 5 months my internet will be free opposed to using BELL. Which ripped me off and provided poor throttled (traffic shaped) internet access. I usually don't take them time to write reviews but Acanac.com, has truly exceeded my expectations.
Still running unthrottled and very happy. Dec 10th/08
Followup comments:  
Bellundo
@teksavvy.com
| Defecting You have to look at the line stats of your modem. You could have been on a remote with bell internet then when you went to a third party isp they took you off of it or bell did it on purpose to send out a calling card for people who try to do the same thing cancel with bell. | |
| | tkachuk
join:2008-11-13
Newmarket, ON | Re: Defecting Dude, there are no remotes where I live. I would be more inclined to go with the punishment conspiracy theory. | |
| | | | | | | tkachuk
join:2008-11-13
Newmarket, ON
2 edits | Re: Defecting My speeds are acceptable to me now. Not perfect or what I had but i can live with them and that's good enough for me for the price. I really hope they get their own equipment would make a huge difference not being at Bell's mercy. | |
| 
Fergless
join:2008-04-19
Toronto, ON
1 edit | BS From what I see Mr. tkachuk just can't get enough of bashing Acanac.
He's not a member at the Acanac Forum. We do have one you know, never complained once.
If you need help just ask, Simple. | |
| | tkachuk
join:2008-11-13
Newmarket, ON
 ·Acanac
3 edits | Re: BS Actually I am on the Acanac forum, and was quite happy at first. I even wrote nice things because I thought that Acanac was getting an unfair shake from people on here. I also recommended it to several people including my parents who are still with Acanac at their home, but they don't know the difference between a byte and a bite.
Young company, growing pains. I guess when I reflect after having things resolved to a point a can deal with 80% of my problems have been with bell, lines/profile changes. | |
| | |
Fergless
join:2008-04-19
Toronto, ON
·Acanac
| Re: BS If you're on our forum that's great.
I guess you used a different username like myself.
Yes I have to agree that people on this DSL forum give Acanac a hard time. I guess free stuff makes them think twice, not me.
Acanac is no longer a small company, and growing every day.
Small compared to Bell of course, Good things are happening very innovative company.
Bell is the only stumbling block, so hang in there and hopefully you'll get a nice workable line.
Tks
Fergie AKA Fergless. LOL  | |
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Review by lobo88
UPDATED: 268 days ago
member for 1.7 years, 116 visits, last login: 205 days ago
Petrolia,ON
$33 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
Bell Canada
"great price,no caps,no throttling"
"getting a good service at a good price"
| Pre Sales information:
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(ratings match consensus)
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been with acanac for about a month now and i am very happy with the service and when i have any questions they are answered anywhere from a few minutes to 24hours.overall if i keep getting the good service i will be a customer for a long time to come.
well, i have been with acanac for a year now and i am still enjoying their service. just renewed for another year. no problems with speed. not once had to call tech support. keep up the good work.
Followup comments: | | risingrocker
join:2008-02-20
Montreal-Nord, QC
·Acanac
| Re: Trolling other peoples reviews jackr who the hell do you think you are telling other people what to write about certain isp's ??? so far i have only seen your name plastered everywhere......i do not work for an isp but hey if your not happy with one isp get over it, move onto some other isp and get a life. | |
| | 
jackr
join:2004-03-10
Barrie, ON | If you continue in this manner, you're going to get yourself banned.
Calm down. Don't troll. Be constructive. Add value to the forum.
If you can't follow the rules, you're going to find yourself removed from the forum.
J. | |
| risingrocker
join:2008-02-20
Montreal-Nord, QC
·Acanac
| hold it there jackr jackr i am relaxed dude though you say i should write something constructive well come on dude if you would be the other person on the other end for a second you would also see some of your comments were deconstructive. what i am trying to point out is that for everyone, everything, everywhere and every price there is an experience tagged. so there are people who are happy with the service from a provider you or someone else finds crappy.
another thing internet does not rule human beings, its human beings that rule it. those who feel the need of the internet and ridiculous high speeds to fulfill their greed have a problem and that is................there is more too life than sitting in front of the desk. but don't get me wrong the internet is a very helpful tool from shopping to catching criminals.
i would like to wish all a good day. | |
| | lobo88
join:2008-02-21
Petrolia, ON
·Acanac
| Re: hold it there jackr well jackr i am not an employee of acanac and yes i just signed up.but for your information i have been hanging around dsl reports for quit a while and as far as me from refrianing from making comments you should do the same because all you do is rant and rave like a nut and say nothing very constructive.all you seem to do is whine and make yourself lik a fool. | |
| darknestgirl
join:2008-08-11
Montreal, QC | RE I'm not an Acanac employee and i've been with Acanac for the last 7 month and didn't have any problem at all.Never had to call support at all. | |
|
XAcanac
@bell.ca
| My fair review about Acanac I used to have Acanac for a year. It was working good for the first 8 months then near the end of my 1 year subscription I started to have a lot of drop connections. Sometimes it was down for about 15 min to 30 min. It was quite annoying. Call their support, they blame it on the line and advised me that they will contact Bell to send someone to check the line as Bell own the line. I would have to wait for Bell rep to come. However, I didn't wait but went to futureshop pickup a Bell DSL kit and set it up and got myself back online in a few minutes without any drop connection ever since. So I'm not sure what the mean by line issue but it works with Bell. My overall experience with Acanac is not that bad but it wasn't good neither I can't stand the drop connections. Sometimes it happened a few times a day. | |
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Review by benson.jin
Posted: 268 days ago
(review was emailed from domain mapleworks.com)
Ottawa,ON
$18 per month (12 month contract)
Bell Canada
"cheaper price means something only when the service is actually delivered"
"unreliable, slow internet along with rude tech support"
"Acanac tech support is rude"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
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Tech Support:
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(ratings well below consensus)
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My dsl service from Acanac is not usable right from the first day I got the service. The ADSL lights on my modem flashes for hours before it stabilized. Once connected, I have got a 1.4Mb/s download and 232Kb/s upload in a lucky day. The internet is neither stable. I could not stay online for more than 10 minutes. So it is basically unable. I emailed them about the problem. They told me they were under network attack, and told me to try again! I rebooted my modem and router many times, and still got nothing. I called in, had following conversion with the support rep:
Rep: what lights are on on your modem?
Me: the ADSL and PC.
Rep: PC?! What is that?
Me: My modem is GVC BB0040. It has a PC light to indicate WAN....
Rep: it is not our modem. We don't support it.
Me: but the DSL service is yours.
Rep: do you have a router?
Me: it doesn't matter weather I have connected it or not...
Rep: (yelling at me) I didn't ask you if it matters or not! Do you have a router??
Me: ...
Before I answered his question, he hung up! For a moment, I couldn't believe I actually contribute to his salary to bully me!
Also, you may find this interesting: Acanac doesn't have 24x7 telephone support. It does provide email support during weekend and nights. Of course, you have to find a way to email them, if you have internet problem.
It is the worst internet service and customer support I have ever experienced. To me, Acanac just beats both Rogers and Sympatico for the worst customer service title. I am cancelling it.
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Review by Fergless
UPDATED: 269 days ago
member for 1.6 years, 500 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Toronto,ON
$18 per month
Bell Canada
"Good DSL Support, Solid Community Forums, Easy to communicate with."
"Voip Support could be better."
"Best bang for the buck."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I have had a few little problems that turned out to be simply reboot modem and router.
I have called DSL support on occasion and the folks there were very helpful and true to their word.
I'm synched at 5056 and 800
I recently purchased a 2Wire 2700HG and it works flawlessly with their service.
Like I said best bang for the buck.
Keep up the good work Acanac.
UPDATE:
Well it's a little over a year since my last review and here's an update.
Still pretty much the same as far as Service and Support goes.
I have their Voip service as well and it works great.
The Free Online PC and Bitwise Tunnelier have solved the Bell throttling of p2p clients.
Acanac are testing equipment at the Bell Adelaide CO so we may not need to worry about throttling, and perhaps have ADSL2+ in the near future.
I am now a Moderator at the Acanac Community Forum and that's a lot of fun, most of the time.LOL
Still Best Bang for the Buck
Tks
UPDATE:
Just wanted to add, besides everything being stellar with Acanac, we're getting a second 10 Gig connection with a non-Cogent provider and peering through Torix in a few weeks. The SSH servers a being upgraded in a different configuration.
Looks like we'll have ASDL2 pretty soon and maybe even more after that.
Always something new and innovative going on at Acanac.
We Rock....
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