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rocca
Start.ca
Premium Member
join:2008-11-16
London, ON

rocca

Premium Member

Cable internet speed upgrade

We're happy to announce that effective immediately our 'Cable Basic Internet' service in the -red- network area has been upgraded from 3 Mbps to 6 Mbps. Customers already on the 3 Mbps profile will be automatically upgraded without charge over the next couple of weeks.

We expect to have a similar announcement for the Cable Advanced Internet package in the Cogeco areas soon, hopefully by the end of the month.
tcrasher
join:2004-06-01
Brantford, ON

tcrasher

Member

Is there going to be a speed increase for Cogeco land people with cable basic internet?

rocca
Start.ca
Premium Member
join:2008-11-16
London, ON

rocca

Premium Member

said by tcrasher:

Is there going to be a speed increase for Cogeco land people with cable basic internet?

Nothing I've heard of at this point.

Catness
@start.ca

Catness to rocca

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Hey Rocca,

Just ran a speedtest in Kemptville, ON after noticing some major speed on a download. Im on the 16mbs Cable, are you by chance testing upgrades in the area?

46666818 (banned)
join:2012-08-06

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Funny you are auto upgrading people. TSI isn't, man TSI used to be soo good, now it's #fail all the time.
ShawnR
join:2004-07-04

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Will the upcoming Cogeco announcement include any changes to the supported modems list?

rocca
Start.ca
Premium Member
join:2008-11-16
London, ON

rocca

Premium Member

said by ShawnR:

Will the upcoming Cogeco announcement include any changes to the supported modems list?

It may come before/after, but probably close to the same time.
rocca

rocca to Catness

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Working on some things in the background. Don't get too used to 33Mbps, but it should settle out around the 20Mbps mark for the Advanced package.

lowlevel
join:2008-02-27
Kitchener, ON

lowlevel

Member

How about upstream? 1M feels like 1998 to me :/
I don't really care about the downstream speeds much.

rocca
Start.ca
Premium Member
join:2008-11-16
London, ON

rocca

Premium Member

I remember 1998 a lot differently.

The profiles themselves are based on the incumbents and cable will always be very asymmetrical. That said, there will be another announcement in about a month with related news.

lowlevel
join:2008-02-27
Kitchener, ON

lowlevel

Member

Granted.. it just seems that the downstream has increased dramatically, while the upstream hasn't budged at all. 2 Meg would be 100% improvement.... oh well
46666818 (banned)
join:2012-08-06

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said by rocca:

I remember 1998 a lot differently.

The profiles themselves are based on the incumbents and cable will always be very asymmetrical. That said, there will be another announcement in about a month with related news.

Nortel 1meg modems.

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

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I just checked and am getting what seems to be 1.5 Mbps UPstream - which IS an improvement , but my DOWN channel is only around 10 Mbps, which I would expect to be higher at this wee hour.

Am on ADVANCED COGECO area plan, and I have not nudged my DPC3000 modem recently.

Should I do that ?

rocca
Start.ca
Premium Member
join:2008-11-16
London, ON

rocca

Premium Member

said by Davesnothere:

I just checked and am getting what seems to be 1.5 Mbps UPstream - which IS an improvement , but my DOWN channel is only around 10 Mbps, which I would expect to be higher at this wee hour.

Am on ADVANCED COGECO area plan, and I have not nudged my DPC3000 modem recently.

Should I do that ?

Any time you see speeds lower than you think it's a good idea to factory reset the modem. (not just power off) If it's still poor always test directly connected to the modem bypassing your router. I'd find a 2am slowdown odd as well, perhaps area maintenance but if persists try the above and if still no resolution give us a call. Thanks.
46666818 (banned)
join:2012-08-06

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Do I need to wait or can I start renting a D3 modem now and give you my D2 back?

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

4 edits

Davesnothere to rocca

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said by rocca:

[on Cable Internet] Any time you see speeds lower than you think/expect, it's a good idea to factory reset the modem. (not just power off)....

 
BTW folks, this means to Push and Hold the wee recessed button (on the back of most modems) for about 10 seconds with the modem turned on, using the tip of a pen or something similar, then Release and Wait for the modem to restart.

Anyway, at 9 AM, I first retested speed and it was same as at 2 AM.

NOTE : All of my speed tests today were performed at »nexicom.speedtest.net (one of their Toronto servers).

Next I did the modem factory reset - after things settled in, there was no improvement, but was not worse either.

(Bear in mind that I was not noticing any poor performance BEFORE all of this, but had just been catching up on posts in this forum, and noticed that even more folks had reported unexpectedly faster speeds than a week or two ago.)

Next, INSTEAD of hooking a computer directly to the modem, I did something else, and read on to see what and why....

Not long ago, I had switched my Linksys WRT54GL router's firmware to Shibby's mod of Tomato USB, in order to try the QoS, as I am a VoIP user.

For my 2 AM test, I HAD backed off the overall UP and DOWN numbers on the QoS Basic page, but doing that had only improved my UPstream at the time.

SO, now I unticked to completely DISABLE the Tomato QoS, and saved the settings.

Here is one of my next several tests :



MUCH BETTER ! (on the DOWNstream component)

My UPstream is actually a bit faster than shown, as I had about 20Kbps of upstream traffic running in parallel with the test.

The only degrade (which may or may not be related to the other changes, and may or may not be important anyway) is that my PING is now consistently in the low to mid 20's, where it had typically been 10 or 11 ms just before START's Cogeco speed improvement tests began.

And like I said, that may not matter.
Davesnothere

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said by 46666818:

Do I need to wait or can I start renting a D3 modem now and give you my D2 back?

 
I cannot answer that, but I will suggest that you almost certainly will like the result of such a switch.

jasmo34
join:2008-03-20
~ London ~

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Rocca...

That's great to see that speed increase on your BASIC CABLE INTERNET plan; at least for us low-speed-feeders.

Now that makes me think more about possibly switching to cable from my 5M DSL.

Q1) But... Is the UPLOAD speed really still mired in the mud at 256K? (Yuk! Come on 'red'!)

Q2) Might the speed increase cause a lot more load on Start's systems when your 'unlimited' users go from 3M to 6M, or are most of your cable users already on higher tiers?

Q3) Do you see any corresponding speed increase coming in the BASIC DSL Internet plan, since Bell's lowest plan is now 5M?

My Dell/Bell Grab'n'Go DSL trial on the other phone line is running out in a month and a half, and I actually have to make a decision sometime soon. Moving to Start DSL, my current modems will work, there is no installation charge, and I get 800K upload.

Off-topic rant... Big 'red' gets a big FAIL from me for cable TV the last little while. We are currently enduring our 4th outage in the last 7 days on analog cable; all channels, all bands clicking in and out every 2 seconds, from perfect picture and sound, to snow. They fix it, but the same problem comes back again and again. (Apparently, it's a 'known problem in the area'). Also, this morning, THEIR systems were down and they couldn't/wouldn't even take my info, and/or open a ticket! They told me to call back in an hour.

I must wonder if cable internet would also be affected by this type of failure! Hmmm! I would hate to move to a troublesome cable internet service, when my 5M DSL has been rock-solid and full-speed for 8 years here!

rocca
Start.ca
Premium Member
join:2008-11-16
London, ON

rocca to 46666818

Premium Member

to 46666818
said by 46666818:

Do I need to wait or can I start renting a D3 modem now and give you my D2 back?

I reviewed your account, yes you should have the D3 now. I'll get it setup, once you receive the new one please let us know and we'll issue a swap request with the network. Thanks.
rocca

rocca to jasmo34

Premium Member

to jasmo34
said by jasmo34:

Rocca...

That's great to see that speed increase on your BASIC CABLE INTERNET plan; at least for us low-speed-feeders.

Now that makes me think more about possibly switching to cable from my 5M DSL.

Q1) But... Is the UPLOAD speed really still mired in the mud at 256K? (Yuk! Come on 'red'!)

Q2) Might the speed increase cause a lot more load on Start's systems when your 'unlimited' users go from 3M to 6M, or are most of your cable users already on higher tiers?

Q3) Do you see any corresponding speed increase coming in the BASIC DSL Internet plan, since Bell's lowest plan is now 5M?

My Dell/Bell Grab'n'Go DSL trial on the other phone line is running out in a month and a half, and I actually have to make a decision sometime soon. Moving to Start DSL, my current modems will work, there is no installation charge, and I get 800K upload.

Off-topic rant... Big 'red' gets a big FAIL from me for cable TV the last little while. We are currently enduring our 4th outage in the last 7 days on analog cable; all channels, all bands clicking in and out every 2 seconds, from perfect picture and sound, to snow. They fix it, but the same problem comes back again and again. (Apparently, it's a 'known problem in the area'). Also, this morning, THEIR systems were down and they couldn't/wouldn't even take my info, and/or open a ticket! They told me to call back in an hour.

I must wonder if cable internet would also be affected by this type of failure! Hmmm! I would hate to move to a troublesome cable internet service, when my 5M DSL has been rock-solid and full-speed for 8 years here!

Q1) Yes.

Q2) Most of our customers are on higher tiers and we're sized well ahead of the growth curve.

Q3) That's a good question, we've been debating it internally. The costs for ISP's differ significantly between the 5/6M and the next step up so I don't suspect you'll see the 'standard' for example get a speed boost at the same price. It's more likely that the basic level stops getting offered by some ISP's. We don't have plans to do that ourselves and expect to continue offering the package through profile shaping at our LNS's.

Q-OTR) Also a good question, it depends on the nature of the outage with your TV service. Generally digital doesn't have the same issues as analog, ie either it will work or it won't vs snow) If you want to PM me your address I can look and see if anything jumps out as being a potential issue.

If you have any questions or need anything else just let me know.

Have a great day.

jasmo34
join:2008-03-20
~ London ~

jasmo34

Member

said by rocca:

Q3) That's a good question, we've been debating it internally. The costs for ISP's differ significantly between the 5/6M and the next step up so I don't suspect you'll see the 'standard' for example get a speed boost at the same price. It's more likely that the basic level stops getting offered by some ISP's. We don't have plans to do that ourselves and expect to continue offering the package through profile shaping at our LNS's.

Q-OTR) Also a good question, it depends on the nature of the outage with your TV service. Generally digital doesn't have the same issues as analog, ie either it will work or it won't vs snow) If you want to PM me your address I can look and see if anything jumps out as being a potential issue.

Q3) I was really thinking of your $24.95 BASIC DSL plan, now at 2Mbps. That's a good price point for light users, but since YOU control the speed being offered, perhaps you could bump it from 2M to 3M DL, and still keep your STANDARD 6M plan separate? It would basically be a marketing/good-will gesture!

OK... you would be giving us something for nothing, but this 3M speed might enable customers to watch NETFLIX BEST quality (NOT HD quality!). According to Netflix, we could get 30 hours of non-HD content (@ 2200 kbps/192 kbps) and only use up 31 GBytes of cap space.

Q-OTR) I'll IM you my address, just for fun, to see if cable internet in the area is or has been affected. (Cable is STILL clicking in and out here right now, from perfect picture and sound, to snow/static, every 2 seconds!)

edit1: cable TV has 'stabilized' again, for now...
46666818 (banned)
join:2012-08-06

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said by rocca:

said by 46666818:

Do I need to wait or can I start renting a D3 modem now and give you my D2 back?

I reviewed your account, yes you should have the D3 now. I'll get it setup, once you receive the new one please let us know and we'll issue a swap request with the network. Thanks.

cool

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

Davesnothere to jasmo34

Premium Member

to jasmo34
said by jasmo34:

....Off-topic rant... Big 'red' gets a big FAIL from me for cable TV the last little while. We are currently enduring our 4th outage in the last 7 days on analog cable; all channels, all bands clicking in and out every 2 seconds, from perfect picture and sound, to snow. They fix it, but the same problem comes back again and again. (Apparently, it's a 'known problem in the area'). Also, this morning, THEIR systems were down and they couldn't/wouldn't even take my info, and/or open a ticket! They told me to call back in an hour....

 
It's a ploy to upsell folks to their digital TV feed.

[Here, try on this slightly used tinfoil hat ! ]

jasmo34
join:2008-03-20
~ London ~

jasmo34

Member

> It's a ploy to upsell folks to their digital TV feed.

Yes, someday they will probably get me to upgrade, but not yet. I may even dump cable and just survive with my movies, some online streaming, and OTA TV (although in London, that's very limiting; I don't think we even get CBC OTA now, for HNIC).
46666818 (banned)
join:2012-08-06

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*checks mailbox*

:-(
arshad14
join:2007-03-04
L8B0M3

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Rocca, I would like to first say that I have never been as happy with an ISP since I started with Start. I was one of the people who joined Start during your pilot period. I just wanted to know that I initially signed up with your highest speed available at the time but now I am seeing that you also have a Pro package. Are we also automatically being upgraded to the Pro package if we signed up to the best package available way back when you started with Start in the Red zone in Toronto?

rocca
Start.ca
Premium Member
join:2008-11-16
London, ON

rocca

Premium Member

Hi Arshad and thanks for your support and kind words.

For the Pro package, it's a new tier with higher speeds (albeit not a lot higher in Red areas) but with 400GB usage as well. The previously highest package is the Advanced and that tier is the same speed/price/usage still. You of course can upgrade to the Pro no problem, but it's not automatic since it does carry a $10/mo premium over Advanced. If you'd like to get changed just PM me your account #, or email support@start.ca and we'll get you switched right away.

Thanks again and have a great night.
arshad14
join:2007-03-04
L8B0M3

arshad14

Member

Can't quite justify the $10 yet with only a 4Mbps boost. I'll wait till the upload speed gets upgraded too and will go ahead with it for sure then

You have no idea how relieved I feel now paying my internet bill knowing I won't be shocked with some sort of overages and that I have absolutely no issues at all whatsoever with my speeds and network