Re: Rogers Portable Calgary Review in Rogers http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20327931 en Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:53:38 EDT Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:53:38 EDT Re: Rogers Portable Calgary Review http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20442479 killjoy9994 : Yes, location would be key, but we always have 'five bars' on the modem.

Also I've noticed that it's dropping the connection more frequently now (several times a week) and quite often service is out for several hours. The modem always needs to be reset as it won't recover gracefully.

As to gaming, older low-bandwidth games work *okay*. Wolf Enemy Territory and Battlefield 1942 will allow you to connect to close servers and ping in the low 100's, although it's still somewhat sketchy.

I played CoD4 but I imagine it's a higher bandwidth game like Enemy Territory Quake Wars or Battle Field 2 which aren't worth playing.

Of course, this type of connection isn't designed for hi-speed gaming but is functional (if you don't mind the frequent outages) and are only using it for basic web surfing and email.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20442479 Tue, 06 May 2008 21:13:02 EDT Re: Rogers Portable Calgary Review http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20347156 StingerMoD : I'm house sitting for my aunt and uncle who have this service and man I hate it for what I do. The latency just sucks. I tried to join a popular Calgary COD4 server and had a ping of 400+ constantly. I can't wait to go home saturday to my shaw hi speed.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20347156 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:06:03 EDT Re: Rogers Portable Calgary Review http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20327931 mlerner : Keep in mind this is wireless and location is key. Your speed and latency are probably the result of your location to the tower.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20327931 Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:24:35 EDT Re: Rogers Portable Calgary Review http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20327767 Stewy :
said by killjoy9994 See Profile :

The fastest download you'll ever get is 59Kbs.
Also, I haven't noticed any 'throttling'
thanks for the review...

At that speed there is no need to throttle.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20327767 Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:39:07 EDT Rogers Portable Calgary Review http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20325398 killjoy9994 : I've tried searching for other Rogers Portable experiences in the Calgary area and didn't find any, so I thought I'd post this just to help anyone else thinking about subscribing or already using it. I'm hopefully being unbiased as we don't have Rogers out here in the West and therefore can't have many issues with them. In fact, it's a reasonable alternative to some who are tired of Shaw and Telus and it's not marketed here so it's actually hard to get the service unless you already know about it.

Rogers Portable

I've been using it for a couple of months and find it rather generally solid for what it does but occasionally spotty.

For day to day use it works and is quick enough. Low quality YouTube videos will generally download without pauses. The fastest download you'll ever get is 59Kbs.

For gaming it's pretty much useless. Pings and latency are too frustrating on old 'low bandwidth' games such as Q3 or Enemy Territory, unless you don't mind being in the 100+ ms range.

The connection drops infrequently but more often than I'd like, and unlike other services, such as Shaw or Telus, it doesn't come back within minutes, it sometimes takes hours but usually less than one hour. To me that's unacceptable.

Tech support has been prompt to answer and give me a human I can understand, but generally they've just walked me through the motions. When the modem decides to reconnect, that's what it does, seemingly on it's own will without any direct intervention from a frustrated help desk person.

Apparently you can move the modem around the city/country in locations that support it and still connect so there is the advantage for frequent travelers that want more than dial up connections for whatever reason but then you have to deal with the service going dead every once in awhile.

It might be useful for somebody that moves their home quite often, or if you travel around with your laptop. Technically it sounds like you could just plug in the modem wherever you are and connect your laptop to it and have a live connection. I'm not sure how well that works as I've only used it in one static location.

Also, I haven't noticed any 'throttling', but how could you at that download speed? I've also exceeded probably around 15GB of downloads in a month without any repercussions. Not that it's easy downloading that much on a slow and sometimes flakey connection.

To sum up, I don't know what there is to recommend about it other than if you don't have a choice for whatever reason. The price isn't worth the slow bandwidth and disconnection hassles. It works for the occasional email/web surfer that doesn't demand a 24/7 connection and wouldn't notice the (relatively) frequent disconnections but other than that it's pretty slow and unreliable. I do think it's a step in the right direction of having your own personal internet connection on demand regardless of location, but don't expect too much at the moment.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20325398 Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:29:47 EDT