Review by hollap0 Location: Val Caron, ON, Canada Cost: $53 per month Install: about 1 days Brings entry broadband speeds to rural areas Atrocious ping spikes Everything about this experience has been sub-par.

Pre Sales Information: Install process: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:

We first signed up with Rogers portable internet 4 years ago. A salesman knocked on our door out of the blue and introduced this service to us. I was impressed with what it could do, 'specially after being stuck on dialup in our area. If I were to guess, his modem was probably completely unlocked and able to achieve speeds that ours cannot. Regardless, first 6-8 months was a dream. Pings were always under 70ms when communicating to anything in Canada and the upper U.S.A. Now since I can remember we get constant ping spikes and perhaps 4days of smooth access to the internet a month. Gaming... forget it. Youtube... grab the bag of chips it's gonna be a while. Email even takes a minute to send without anything attached to it. Overall I'm disgusted with the performance. In the early stages the service was probably not oversold unlike it is now. Why can't I get the 16Mbit feed that's 1mile down the street? The few times I talked to tech support the gentleman was unhelpful and sounded like he was reading pre written responses while answering me. "Everything is good on our end sir" Of course it is, you're paid to say that. Please explain my 2000ms ping please. Still looking for a solution to that problem.

Now a couple of final points:

- I would go back to dialup but the fact I'm studying internet/server communication at school I need whatever speed I can get out of this home connection.

- P2P is not throttled with this service

- With 4 computers in the house dialup is no longer sufficient, neither is this but...

- I have the 1.5Mbit/256Kbit connection

Moya @rogers.com Moya Anon 2009-Sep-5 7:25 am Now i know that i am not alone in this sh**t I have been told repeatedly by tech support that "seems fine in our end", some of them had the audacity to tell me to take my PC to a PC technician. note that not even a year ago i had my portable modem replaced. it is true that i was very happy with it till the last month or so, it starts acting up weird, most of the time now after a period of time while browsing the web it looses connection and i try renewing the IP but no luck the only solution is to reboot the portable device. Enough i am done i will return it or i will ask to send me a new one. 2009-Sep-5 7:25 am: · hey mods ·
	Toonces @brantford.ca Toonces Anon 2009-Sep-8 3:33 pm Re: Now i know that i am not alone in this sh**t I know the feeling. My connection hasn't been realistically usable. I also know the feeling about being a short distance from line high speed, both cable and dsl. The government handed out lots of cash to bring high speed to rural areas. I guess "reliable" and "affordable" weren't part of the equation. I'm going to just assume now that Rogers will basically reply with the "sucks to be you" 2009-Sep-8 3:33 pm: · hey mods ·
Moya join:2009-09-05 Scarborough, ON Moya Member 2009-Sep-5 7:33 am I have been told repeatedly by tech support that "seems fine in our end", some of them had the audacity to tell me to take my PC to a PC technician. note that not even a year ago i had my portable modem replaced. it is true that i was very happy with it till the last month or so, it starts acting up weird, most of the time now after a period of time while browsing the web it looses connection and i try renewing the IP but no luck the only solution is to reboot the portable device. Enough i am done i will return it or i will ask to send me a new one. 2009-Sep-5 7:33 am: · hey mods ·
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Review by outreach417 Location: Toronto, ON, Canada Cost: $45 per month (month by month) Install: about 1 days Installed and set-up very quickly, easy to follow instructions The connection reliability is increasingly worse. There must be congestion and throttling Should work much better than it does for the price

Pre Sales Information: Install process: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:

I tried DSL from Bell and they were unable to provide clean service, problems with the line filters that need to be plugged into every jack (if you can find them all). Had cable, but I relocate seasonally for my job, so thought portable would be easier, just pick it up and go - and that is the easiest part, I've used it several locations in the GTA from downtown to the burbs. When it works the connection is the 1.5mbps as advertised, but this has deteriorated over the last several months regardless of location - on average it is half to one third that. (I've used it for almost 3 years). Daily, the wireless modem must be reset several times to re-establish the connection. Opted out of Rogers DNS so not much tech support, so the DSLReports tweaking assistance and forums have been indispensable. For example - the default Windows MTU of 1500 is too large, see a lot of packet fragmentation - even the 1400 "default" suggested by Rogers is too big, so tested and tweaked it back down - when I hit the right MTU size, speed jumped considerably. There is still a lot of latency variation - when it's good it's sub-100 ms, but ranges as high as 1500 ms before dropping entirely. Using DrTCP to tweak RWIN seems to have helped this slightly. If I was gonna stay in one place for more than a couple months, I'd switch back to cable or DSL.

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Review by Adam20 Location: Sarnia, ON, Canada Cost: $45 per month good price/no contract inability to provide useful support not sure

Pre Sales Information: Install process: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:

********UPDATE MARCH 23/08

After all was said and done I still was not able to get the connection functioning properly, even though I was blanketed with coverage, and many calls and tickets to support did not fix anything.

I must say the attempts that I had from technical support were very polite, curteous and very professional, which was very surprising to me.

Billing credited me all amounts that were charged during bills received from signing up for service, some 250$, it only took a handful of charges, although each agent told me they would credit charges, there was a glitch in the system, even the Supervisor told me theres strict notes to credit the charges for my experience.

No harm done, gave me something to play with after work.

I updated the rating to reflect what I feel to be correct.

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So I got the package today with my rogers wireless modem, after only 2 days i was surprised and happy, I got real good deal with it too. I was excited to try out the new technology since I sell it on a regular basis. Get it, plug it in... nothing, call them get transferred 7 times and then the last guy says, we are going to open a ticket. You should get a call within 24 hours.

24 hours wtf, this is supposed to be plug and play. No troubleshooting done either other then unplugging the power and plugging back in. Also I had 4 bars of service, not just one at one point.

So far. Service Sucks, Support Sucks. Product Sucks.. I will update if/when I get online with it.

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Review by Deep Dish Location: Canada Cost: $50 per month Install: about 30 days Quick and easy to install. No Rogers technicians coming to your house. Network owned by Bell and Rogers partnership. Very expensive for only 1.5mbps service Very easy and convenient, just too expensive for the speeds they offer

Pre Sales Information: Install process: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:

I purchased the 1.5mbps service from Rogers (fastest as of March 24 2008), as well as I paid for the wireless modem. I paid $100 for the modem (one time), other wise I would be paying approximately $10 monthly for modem rental.

From what I experienced, the Internet runs best with a " 5 light " signal strength as it gives you the full 1.5mbps (burst up to 2.5mbps from my experience). When I placed the modem in my basement, the best I could get was " 2 light " signal strength, which was comparable to 33.6kbps modem connection, so it's best to place the modem on the top most level and near a window.

I did have some issues having the modem turned on for a long period of time (i.e.: 1.5 - 4 days) where the connectivity would just become slow, which the quickest way to fix is just power cycling the modem. Since I like to have my modem on 24/7/365, I simply use a timer (the ones used for outdoor Christmas lights) to power cycle the modem for me at night.

The disappointing aspect of this is that the service has been out for about 2 years now, and the speeds remain the same. For about $2 cheaper, I could potentially have a 7mbps cable link to my house (in my case, I had issues with Rogers technicians in the past to which I resulted in going with this service instead).

However, the network to which the Portable Internet runs off is owned 50/50 by Bell and Rogers. It seems as if they have money to invest this technology to further improve the speeds and service, but I could be wrong. The partnership network is call Inukshuk, and the website is: »www.inukshuk.ca/

gurn @rogers.com gurn Anon 2008-Mar-25 12:41 pm good review first i'd like to say i found your review informative, On the other hand im not sure what you expect from "portable" internet. As the service is meant to be moved around. That is the draw to someone like yourself who is in the cable footprint of rogers. If your not moving it around i would strongly suggest getting cable internet. Your situation is like someone who does not have a home phone and uses a cell phone instead, paying a bit(sometimes a lot) more then just a home phone, but the cell phone never leaves the house. I think you would benifit more from rogers wireless gateway modem, or regular modem. You said it yourself, the cable is cheaper and faster. It sounds like your house doesn't have cable in the walls? I believe rogers has options for installation. Good review just the same. i didn't know about the power cycling needed with PI. I wonder if something technically could be done to that modem to fix that issue. 2008-Mar-25 12:41 pm: · hey mods ·
	Deep Dish join:2006-08-17 Canada Deep Dish Member 2008-Mar-30 4:12 pm Re: good review I agree that the smarter option is Rogers Cable. Unfortunately, where I reside, the home owner despises Rogers. Since I have a cellphone with Rogers, I have the options bundled and ended up being a bit cheaper at the end (although I did not note this on the review). I use Rogers Portable as a secondary source to the Internet. I do have DSL, which unfortunately only gets me 1.5mbps due to the distance to the CO. 2008-Mar-30 4:12 pm: · hey mods ·
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Review by snoball Location: North Vancouver, BC, Canada Cost: $55 per month Install: about 7 days Reliable instant on metro area portable wireless internet connection Low/slow upload speed plug it in anywhere and your online - super portable

Pre Sales Information: Install process: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:

virtually problem free and easy to use, just plug it in (after a onetime initial phonecall/setup/auto-register process), it's not extreme high-speed service but more than adequate for browsing and email, download speed is adequate for software updates, only one brief service outage experienced in eight months of constant use

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