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TSI Marc
Premium Member
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON

TSI Marc to shwatkin

Premium Member

to shwatkin

Re: Start.ca VS Distributel

Oish. More widely available? How do you figure that? Unless you're on aggregated we largely have the same footprint.

Being down? How do you figure that? What you see is DHCP issues that effect any of us equally.. It just so happens we have way more subs than any others so more people are on here voicing their concerns.

For capacity issues, with the exception of the St. Laurent POI just this past week that's getting an upgrade next week, we haven't had any POI congestion since we lifted stop sells earlier this year.
Radar73
join:2008-01-20
Ajax, ON

Radar73

Member

said by TSI Marc:

Oish. More widely available? How do you figure that? Unless you're on aggregated we largely have the same footprint.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but start is aggregated, hence more widely available than TSI at the moment, is that not right?

TSI Marc
Premium Member
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON

TSI Marc

Premium Member

said by Radar73:

said by TSI Marc:

Oish. More widely available? How do you figure that? Unless you're on aggregated we largely have the same footprint.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but start is aggregated, hence more widely available than TSI at the moment, is that not right?

There are a few factors here. The first is that each incumbent is different and not all independent ISPs have infrastructure to all incumbents. We have Aliant, Bell, Telus, Vidéotron, Cogeco, Rogers and Shaw. So on that alone, I would say that few are as widely available as us if any. We've stopped that expansion more than a year ago but once things settle down, we will surely continue to expand that.

Now, within each one of those, that's where you get into the aggregated vs. non-aggregated on the Cable side. For the DSL incumbents, we already have their entire footprints. Similarity with Vidéotron, we have their entire footprint.

That leaves us with Rogers, Cogeco and Shaw.

Each one of those have specific reasons for the state they are in.

For Rogers, its a simple matter of rapid growth. A couple years ago, when we first started up with them, the only thing available was non-aggregated. At the time, you had to build or buy connectivity to each POI you wanted to serve. At the time I think there were something like 50 POIs just for Rogers. We connected to 19 of them. The majority of all the major centers they serve except for Barrie (don't ask me how we managed to miss that one). Today they split one of them into two and created the Comstock POI, so we now server 20 POIs I believe. Today we have over 75 gig links (with 10 more on order) going to all those 20 POIs and they all aggregate back to something like 6-8, 10 gig links.

Cogeco, we have a single gig link to the Chatham POI and it back hauls to our office in Chatham where we have multiple links going back to our main POP in Toronto and out to the web from there.

For Shaw, we have a single gig link with a second on the way aggregating to our POP in Vancouver.(We also have a POP in Halifax where we aggregate all of Aliant.)

All three are currently on the non-aggregated TPIA since they were all setup prior to the big CRTC decision. (Remember that late last year a CRTC decision was made to change the way we interconnect with the Cable co's networks.. That's where this aggregated vs. non-aggregated business started)

For Shaw, the result of the decision is that they now have more aggregated POIs than they used to have non-aggregated.. Odd result but that's what happened. We're in the process of migrating but we're not sure yet what coverage we'll have

For Cogeco, we are essentially very close to go live BUT, the usage is so crazy high, that the roughly 1000 users we have in Chatham would take something like a $10/mth price hike just to break even, not even making any profit. So, we're reluctant to go live with it now that we've done the math even though I said we would, I'm now inclined to wait until the new year (there are also other factors that are delaying this that will become known soon).

For Rogers, we simply have a massive migration to do and it's just not simple. We have agreements that need to be dealt with for the existing gig links that would all be dropped if we migrated.. Rogers is working with us to come up with a plan. We met with them last week and we have a plan to begin by enabling the rest of their POIs first, sometime in Feb or March, then start migrating one POI at a time over to the aggregated model and by end of year we should be fully migrated.

So really, we should have all of their entire footprints in the first few months of the new year... Getting back to your original question, I don't know where others are at but at least now you know where we are at hope that helps.

shwatkin
Premium Member
join:2007-10-02
Newcastle, ON
Asus XT8
Asus RT-AX92U
Nokia XS-010X-Q

shwatkin to TSI Marc

Premium Member

to TSI Marc
Sorry Marc, wasn't trying to pick on TekSavvy (I was a TekSavvy DSL customer for years) but the fact is there are some major urban areas serviced by Rogers (Barrie and Oshawa to name two from this thread) that you cannot get TekSavvy cable. And most often in those areas (again Barrie and Oshawa to name 2) you can get Distributel cable service. Also for the same 28/1 package TekSavvy is $12 more a month than Distributel. I love TekSavvy just wish that they had cable service available in my area when I decided to make the jump from DSL. At this point I don't see any reason to pay $12 more for the same speed tiers though (not that it matters as TekSavvy still doesn't service my town).

No hard feelings and I hope to see your service available in more areas soon.

Upsidedown
@utoronto.ca

Upsidedown

Anon

Long story short.

-Start covers Telus, Bell, Rogers and Cogeco's footprint.
-TSI covers Telus, Bell, parts of Rogers and Cogeco. Not sure about Videotron.

Start is more widely available in specific cable provider's footprint.
Teksavvy has/uses more cable providers, but doesnt cover 100% of their respective footprint.

Although I wouldn't really include Shaw, TSI covers one market. Cant even get it in Edmonton or Calgary.

Also, I for one don't take companies seriously when they say things like coming soon, or upgrading very soon. Everybody has a different interpretation of that, and if you don't meet expectations, it just hurts your own rep. Perfect example of that is Mobilicity, especially when their "retention" says they'll be improving coverage soon in the downtown core.

TSI Marc
Premium Member
join:2006-06-23
Chatham, ON

TSI Marc to shwatkin

Premium Member

to shwatkin
No worries shwatkin, I hear you. For my part, I was more pointing out the fact that those two cities hardly account for the whole country...

I do agree about those two cities though.. we wanted to turn them up but given the CRTC proceedings at the time. It just wasnt possible, we ran out of time. I do believe that we have some areas that they dont also though but its a moot point.. it is what it is for those few areas. In a few months it will all be history anyway.
TSI Marc

TSI Marc to Upsidedown

Premium Member

to Upsidedown
said by Upsidedown :

Although I wouldn't really include Shaw, TSI covers one market. Cant even get it in Edmonton or Calgary.

Vancouver is the third largest City in Canada population wise. Just FYI..

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

rocca to Upsidedown

Premium Member

to Upsidedown
said by Upsidedown :

-Start covers Telus, Bell, Rogers and Cogeco's footprint.

I don't normally hop into sales threads (especially 'us' vs 'them' ones), but just a slight correction on the above as we're not in Telus area. Right now mainly just focused on all of Ontario, which we cover with Bell, Rogers and Cogeco.

ErrorError
@start.ca

ErrorError

Anon

Why does Start's website qualify DSL in Edmonton if you guys dont cover Telus? Man, I was JUST about to wean my sister off of Telus' stupidity.
Guru
join:2008-10-01

Guru

Member

said by ErrorError :

Why does Start's website qualify DSL in Edmonton if you guys dont cover Telus? Man, I was JUST about to wean my sister off of Telus' stupidity.

What method did you use to qualify? For DSL, you use phone to qualify not by address I believe. *Correct me if I'm wrong!

ErrorError
@start.ca

ErrorError

Anon

I punched in my sister's postal code after clicking on "High Speed" and it says she can get DSL 2, 6 or 15.

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

rocca

Premium Member

The main services page uses the postal code to determine the cable zone. The highspeed availability link is the main tool that does qualification and can check phone #'s for service (ie postal codes are too large to do useful dsl qualification). It's a good point for out of province searches though, I'll see what I can do. We don't do any advertising outside of Ontario so it hasn't come up before.