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 Review by WiFi 
member for 10.9 years, 257 visits, last login: 15 days ago
updated 15 days ago
 NiagaraFalls
 $9 per month about 55 days "Poor customer and tech support, no redundancy (1 transit provider - Cogent, no power or data backup)" "Mediocre value, inexpensive at the cost of service outages"
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**VOIP services ONLY.
I purchased a refurbished Cisco PAP2 adapter for $60 plus $100 administration and number port fees.
The service was on out of the box but there were no instructions to customize the features as I had been told existed. There was no documentation on the website so I had to call to ask what to do. After 10min of messing around and generating a master password, which I thought would have already been done, they emailed the instructions.
Logging in I noticed it was not my phone number. I called and was told they had programmed somebody else's phone number into my ATA. No kidding... I received two calls for someone I had never heard of and they insisted they were calling a totally different number. IT was fixed, new passwords generated and I had to start over and set everything up again including voicemail. (So did the other customer because their account had to be reset.)
The next day I found out that CID blocking does not work. They tested with their own adapter and called to say it should work. I was told to return the ATA for testing, I made yet another trip and sure enough it didn't work. They didn't know what was wrong and could not offer an immediate solution. I left and called back a day later because it still was not working. They said I need to bring the adapter back and they will give me another one. Another 25km trip to pickup a replacement.
IT worked but now the new ATA had a long delay of almost 25 seconds before any number called would start to ring. I called back and they realized that the unit had not been fully programmed. They would not give me the password to access the programming and walk me through fixing the known issue and said if I wanted it fixed to bring it back. It was just before Christmas, I was busy and therefore had to wait two weeks which also cost me another 50km round trip. It was reprogrammed and it's now working as it should. (I asked if they test before sending equipment out and I received no answer. Hello??)
Four trips (about 200km total), a few phone calls and emails, two major system outages all in two months.
Days from order to DELIVERY was 7 days. Days from order to consistent working service - 55 days and even then there are regular system outages.
UPDATE: There have been numerous system failures in the past year. In each case I find out from Alan (the owner) tht he does testing the live system during the day and if he makes a mistake, everything including all of the Internet customers lose service. (Live system testing during the day? What happened to standard maintenance and testing during non-peak hours?)
Feb/13, the company moved out of Niagara Falls and went to Burlington. They took the system down to switch over and left all customers without service for four days. (Technically it was one day, however, there were three days of terrible call quality and I know some Internet customers that said dial-up would have been faster.) I tried calling and emailing - they host everything themselves including their own email and phone so even they could not answer their own phones or send email. All my email was bounced back - host not found.
The worst of it is their failure to communicate with the customer base. They never inform the customers when there might be a maintenance window.
The company has no redundancy - no fail over power, transit provider or even a backup system for their own phones and email. Pathetic service.
I was thinking of having them host a website but I found out that they don't have any data backup system. They don't even backup email. No thanks!
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 Review by WiMax
member for 9.8 years, 78 visits, last login: 20 days ago
updated 42 days ago
- Canada
- $10 per month
- about 45 days
- "Terrible tech and customer support, system crashes frequently leaving me without service"
- "Never should have left Vonage."
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UPDATE 29Jan13 Down again and this was planned maintenance...during the day...again? As usual, one thing they are reliable for is not communicating anything to their customers.
UPDATE 28Sep12 iKtel has provided ZERO communication to customers about this week's network outages. They promised they would do this. Yet another failed promise.
UPDATE 26Sep12 9am network down again and back up an hour later. No communication to pre-warn customers.
UPDATE 25Sep12 Yesterday the entire system went down at about 3p. Their own phone system was dead. They didn't respond to any emails. It came back online at about 8am this morning - 17 hours without any service! I just received an email from their tech support to say, "Sorry for the inconvenience, we were doing system maintenance. We'll send out a mass email to all customers soon to apologize again." In other words, nothing has changed. The boss, Alan iKponmwosa, insists on continuing to conduct testing and maintenance on LIVE systems during business hours! Proof that you get what you pay for. Four major system failures in six months, all of them during the day and all as a result of system testing. I'm going back to cell phone only with Wind Mobile. I'll pay more that iKtel but at least the service works!
UPDATE 26Aug12 Today I learned that the company is moving to Burlington. As usual, no communication. Are they going to leave Niagara customers hanging?
UPDATE 10Mar12 This week my ATA failed and I diagnosed it to a faulty power supply. I tried to call iKtel and was stunned to find out the only phone number on their website is out of order. I found their local number, called and they told me to go to Walmart to buy a replacement and said I would have to pay for it! NO WAY! A two month old ATA (third one since subscribing in November) was still under warranty!! Begrudgingly they allowed me to drive to them to pick up a new power supply and then complained to me that they had to take it from a new ATA and send it back. So? Is that my problem?
This company gets nothing right. They gave me a dud ATA that didn't support CID blocking and tried to tell me because I didn't have their Internet it was a problem at my end. They finally exchanged it after admitting there was a problem with some ATA's. Next one was worse, make a call and sit for 40seconds before the phone would ring. I had to take it back TWICE for them to fix right! They don't test any of the USED gear they sell before giving to customer.
The worst - four major systems crashes from December/11 - Feb/12. Not once did they advise after the outage what the issue was or even an apology. Met the owner and told him I was not happy that one of his staff told me that it was Cogeco that screwed up and then he tells me it was really him testing his LIVE system during the day!
The last outage was because of a major power failure in Niagara Falls. They don't have any redundancy to cope with this - no power backup systems, they even lost their own phone system.
They have no redundant bandwidth supplier so when their Cogent backhaul goes down, it affects everyone, there is no fail safe system to fall back on.
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 | | niagra falls Most horrible tech support and customer service ever !!!!! Call in to report a problem only to be told well no one else is complaining .. clearly they are. tech support refuses to notify owner of complaints. MOST HORRIBLE SERVICE EVER NEVER USE IKTEL!!! | |
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Review by brawnybronco
member for 1.4 years, 20 visits, last login: 207 days ago
updated 242 days ago
- undisclosed location
- $30 per month
 "It's cheap"- "horrible communication"
- "meh"
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Updated reviews: Since the issues have cleared up I've had few issues. But my biggest complaint is the complete lack of communication when there are the scattered issues. Outage for 5 hours? No notice. No followup.
Original Review (I won't take it down):The ISP is a scam. 99% of the time you'll be lucky to get 1/10th the advertised speeds. The support is non-existent with the owner\tech blaming everyone but his own service. Asking to be downgraded for cheaper results in him making excuses for you to continue paying more for the same service as those paying for the bottom tier. It is currently taking me 1hr on to download a 85mb file, on my laptop leeching off a neighbor (with only 2 bars) it took 10 minutes. The best part is that he's going to DOCSIS 3 in Feb! So that modem you bought a month ago needs to be upgraded. Who would have thought that a Nigerian would be running a con?
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Review by ITTech
member for 1.4 years, 3 visits, last login: 254 days ago
updated 254 days ago
- L3J3W2
- Contract price not specified.
- "Cheap"
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Cheap
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 Review by Celery
member for 9.3 years, 1473 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 260 days ago
- St Catharines,ON
- $32 per month
- "Cheaper than Cogeco, better caps."
- "80GB cap on an 8Mbps profile is bad, but it's better than Cogeco!"
- "Cheap, but good."
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Iktel used to have issues with slow speeds, but those have been worked out and I've had near perfect speeds.
I have been having consistent speeds, great streaming of movies via Netflix and am paying around $32 a month including taxes.
No service issues since the slow speeds, which was 6 months ago.
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Review by GreenEnvy22
member for 1.8 years, 407 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 344 days ago
- St Catharines,ON
- $45 per month
- about 7 days
- "Prices and cap ceiling are good. Speeds have been fixed"
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I got Iktel in the late summer, and for a couple months it was great. Speeds were quick and it was reliable. Then starting in October/November, speeds began dropping massively. Speedtests were getting a max of 6-7Mbps instead of the 16 they were a couple weeks earlier. Uploads remained at the proper 1Mbps.
Allan, the owner/operator, said they were oversold/congested, and that they were upgrading the connection by the end of November. That upgrade did not fix any issues, they actually seem worse now. If I have a download going, my wife often can't even surf any webpages, she keeps getting timeouts. Speedtests show sub 2Mbps frequently.
Update June 2012: A few weeks after my initial review (several weeks ago), Iktel solved the issue. They say it was a Cogeco issue. Since then, speeds have been good, and reliability has been good too. My only remaining complants with Iktel are that tech support isn't very good, and the website is a mess. But I can live with those because the price and performance is good.
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Review by iamdrumming
member for 9.9 years, 1633 visits, last login: 3 days ago
updated 1.2 years ago
- Niagara Falls,ON
- Contract price not specified.
- "Price. Speeds are back to normal"
- "Wish for more communication"
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As an updated review, it seems that things are back to normal at ikTel. Speeds are good, and you can't beat the price for a Cogeoc TPIA. I recommend them. Just wish their doors of communication were more open to their customers.
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Review by jandsbob
member for 1.4 years, 17 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
lodged 1.4 years ago
- St Catharines,ON
- $45 per month
- "its cheap"
- "its dial up speeds"
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I ordered the 14Mb package for 45 a month and get blazing speeds of up to 200Kb sec. The tech support consists of the owner Alan blaming everyone but his service for the issues. Avoid at all costs.
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Review by AwolRJ
member for 6.3 years, 293 visits, last login: 216 days ago
updated 1.4 years ago
- Niagara Falls,ON
- $54 per month
- about 20 days
- "Cheapest in Area and no implemented caps so far..."
- "Getting to be congested"
- "Worth it if they upgrade there equipment like promised."
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Was very happy to get away from bhell a few months ago and this service was great. Just lately getting some congestion at peak hours. The owner promises everything to be back to normal by end of the month and if it does I recommend this isp to anyone in the area. If he doesn't upgrade he may go out of business as fast as he went in!
Edit: While it appears it aint back to normal even though he said he upgraded equipment. He is now blaming it on Cogeco when he said in the beginning he was totally segregated from there network, he is now flip flopping and saying cogeco is throttling and implementing caps on his customers! I can't recommend this Service to anyone at this time!
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Review by eotsuka
member for 7.7 years, 221 visits, last login: 317 days ago
updated 1.4 years ago
- St Catharines,ON
- $34 per month
- about 14 days
- "Very reasonable fast cable internet in the Niagara Region."
- "Only one transit provider (Cogent)"
- "Go for it, it is the best provider in the Niagara Region"
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Was on Bell Fibe 16 plan but we noticed that we kept going over the limit and our free 4 month promotion was coming to a end.
So with some research I found ikTel Networks on DSLR and figured I would try it. I used the SB5101 (Used Comcast cable modem) - not the approved SB5101N but it works regardless.
The plan I am on is the Pro plan (14mbps/1mbps down).
Only problem is because of the install time to install - this was due to the rush of student installs in my area.
All in all great service, and low price.
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