| My experience with Xplornet In rural Ontario there are very few options for Internet access. My parents decided to upgrade from dial-up to Xplornet last year and I'm here to share our experiences with you.
Setup was fairly simple - we were told that we could only get a satellite signal from where we are, but after constructing our own tower we were able to get wireless signal. We signed up for their Zoom ($44.99/month) package which provides 1.5Mbps down.
Speeds are achieved as bursts - it will look very accurate during a quick download speed test but it drops during prolonged downloads to around 600Kbps. Pretty good for standard browsing, and definitely better than dial-up but we still have to let videos from sites such as Youtube buffer quite a bit before watching.
Reliability is sometimes questionable. The towers will go down occasionally, while other times the technical support team will claim everything is working great and be unable to explain an outage. At one point we went through all the troubleshooting steps to have the technical support agent inform me that our equipment is broken and will need maintenance. By the next morning our signal was great with no maintenance.
Accessibility is severely limited. Gaming is crippled unless you purchase a static IP for $9.99 extra. For many games you will be unable to connect, many others will show you a limited server list. This makes no sense, since a static IP is not required with any other service provider that I have used (Bell, Rogers, University of Toronto, Acanac, RipNET). Another weird issue I have encountered is with watching MegaVideo - after 72 minutes MegaVideo will block access. On Xplornet, this time is occasionally already used...
Overall, I would say that if there is any other option, choose it. Most providers will give you more service for less cost. |
