Sympatico imposes a mandatory modem rental on its subscribers. The rental cost is $2/month plus GST and PST and incorporated into your monthly bill. This monthly rental is not optional.
Some users wish they could purchase their own modem outright and save on the monthly charge, but there is currently no option to do so. There are several good reasons for this:
1. It is a Bell Managed Solution. Even a Bell dedicated 10Mbps fibre connection requires the mandatory rental of a Cisco access router! Bell has traditionally offered complete "ready-to-serve" solutions instead of piecemeal offerings. Sympatico will also replace your modem free of charge if it stops working properly.
The only ADSL service that Bell offers optional modem rental is Bell Business Internet High Speed. (Incidentally, the majority of business subscribers opt in and rent their modems anyway.)
2. They want to maintain high service quality. All the modems that Sympatico has offered for rental have been rigorously tested and come from an approved manufacturer. Sympatico is understandably shy about having foreign modems from unknown origins connect to their network. This also reduces the number of tech support calls.
3. Sympatico wants to be future-proof. Since Sympatico's inception in 1996 up to March 2004, Sympatico has had 3 different high-speed platforms and used 8 different modems. With ADSL2 and VDSL on the horizon, Sympatico is poised to change platforms and modems yet again in the very near future. Sympatico has always upgraded your modem free of charge when necessary.
We have heard rumours that Sympatico has discussed implementing optional modem rental for a couple years now, but as the price of the modem rental has dropped from $10 to $2, this now seems unlikely.
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by quanta  edited by MacGyver
last modified: 2005-11-19 21:47:26 |
