Canadian Broadband → Does Bell screws its reseller's customers?

I've had the same DSL service for almost 10 years, the bell monthly cost for the equipment, over 10 friggin years, doesn't come anywhere close to the 4000$ or whatever I've paid so far... The hardware has been paid a long time ago, and the maintenance is frankly negligible considering the monthly cost of the service.

Fact is it's nowhere near costing Bell 25$ a month for one DSL card... NOWHERE NEAR... So going by the assumption that 2 or 5 mbps cost 25$ or the same for Bell, and so bell should charge the same, is ridiculous.

Fact of the matter is that if you offer 5mbps internet to X customers, EVERY customer should get the same deal, those who get less than half the speed aren't getting the same deal, and they shouldn't pay as much. It doesn't matter if both connections cost 50 cents per month to Bell (and I doubt it costs significantly more...), it's besides the question. It's about equality and getting what you're paying for.

Imagine if some cellphone customers could only talk 50 minutes per month instead of 150 because they were further from a Rogers antenna... It would be fucking ridiculous, as are these 'up to 6mbps' dsl connections...

If I get a 200$ tax return because my social number ends with a 1 while my neighbor gets 500$ because his ends with a 3, which is as arbitrary as "how far are you from A", it would be BS. Same goes for DSL service.

It's about delivering the product you are selling. IF you can't provide a 6mbps connection, don't sell it. Only giving access to a portion of your customer base to 5mbps is asinine if you're charging the same amount of money to others for a shitty 2.5mbps connection...

Again, bell is shit. We have some of the worst internet on teh fuckign planet, and not only is it the worst, it's some of the most expensive... WTF is wrong with Bell & their shitty service, no reason besides greed & incompetence that we have such shitty service. It's fucking shameful.

My internet is rated 'D' by speedtest.net... 'D' FFS ... And the f***** clowns at Bell don't give a shit, and continue to sell their piece of shit "up to X" service, happy with their duopoly with Cable internet... And there's no way out... Any dsl provider goes through bell, and going with Cable would cost me it seems around 275$ in setup fees, and I don't doubt I'd get equally shitty service going through Videotron, with pings going up during peak hours, transfer speeds going down, and a bunch of other issues...

It's a f'n joke...

Or take water. If you got half the flow of water because you're farther from the town's water pump... And so it would just drip slowly and be much worst than others who just happen to be closer to the arbitrarily placed water pumps... You'd have to wait 12 seconds to fill up a glass of water instead of 5, or take 15 minutes to fill a bath instead of 6 or whatnot... Your toilet wouldn't flush well... Again, it would not pass...

Why does it pass for internet? Why do some customers get a shitty service compared to others? Because Bell is too cheap and greedy to build a fucking decent infrastructure? Yes? Why are consumers accepting that? Why is there not more noise & pressure on Bell to provide a decent service?

And FWIW... (at this point not much because it seems that nothing will be done and I'll be stuck with my shitty 2.4mbps crap internet connection, since I'm not interested in the least in those interleave shitty pings)

> dsl show rate
Data Path : Interleaved
Downstream Bit Rate : 3840 Kbps
Upstream Bit Rate : 800 Kbps

> dsl show perf
Downstream :
Noise Margin : 10.5 dB
Attenuation : 31.0 dB
Output Power : 21
Upstream :
Noise Margin : 6.0 dB
Attenuation : 21.5 dB
Output Power : 10

ROFL whats absolutely the best about that your modem stats suggest Line issues 21 Up attenuation suggests less than 2 kilometers to the Slam. P:) hence 6 meg should be easy. but On a side note Bell Does not advertise 5 meg or 6 meg They advertise as u suggest UP to which is what they can offer. unless u would like there website to have a package for every single profile in the system which would amount to over 100 packages, Now if you truely Cannot get more than 2.5 mbps perhaps you should Opt to signup for a up to 2.5 meg Speed connection to save the Money. and alot of those connections also have Unlimited quite cheaply

So the bell distance issue is bullshit and I have line issues? Lol what a surprise.. Thats why I said bell is shit, a bell tech left a message sayin I was too far fir anytging more than 4mbps, which turns out to be 3.2 in actuality for download speeds.... So suggestions?

Want more speed? Switch to one of the FTTN service tiers if you qualify. You'll be put on a remote.

Distance or noise, all that matters at the end of the day is SNRM and at only 10dB margin on downstream, you are pretty much at the limit. Since you are on legacy-GAS DSL, Bell has no obligation to move you to a remote.

As Guspaz and others have said, the only way to force Bell to move you to a remote (if available) is to upgrade to ADSL2/VDSL2 speeds. The other alternative is switching to cable.

Alright thats what ill probably end up doing (10M dsl2).... 4-5$ extra per month, 100$ setup fees blow though...

You appear to have a noise issue on the line.

At that attenuation of 31, you have the speed for someone on a clean line with an attenuation of around 47.

You will want to capture the stats again a few times over the course of a day to see if the noise margin is jumping around, and sometimes in the case of a short, attenuation values can jump. So keep an eye on the values to see how much they change over a day.

You will also want to check different jacks in the house. Ideally, if you can test at the demarc and pull the stats this would be best. This would eliminate your house wiring as an issue.

Normally noise margin will drop about a max of 3 points when going from interleave to Fast. In your case that would be borderline connection issues. So not worth it.

If you aren't a gamer, then stay as is.

If you are a gamer, then I guess you want that extra ping response. Bell won't go out and fix an issue like this, unless your stats are jumping around, or affect phone (if you have phone). It's the wire-pair you are on, or your house wiring.

The alternative to you checking if it's your house wiring, cuz we determined you are lazy on the previous page, is to call your ISP and ask him to get your speed lowered to a 3008/800 profile with Fast path. This you would be able to handle w/o issue, provided your stats aren't jumping all over the place.

At a 31 attenuation you should have 5-meg, but that would require you to check your house wiring before pushing your ISP to put you on a diff wire-pair by Bell. And Bell may not bother. Depends on how much your ISP can push the issue.

And that is the nature of shitty DSL.

He's better off changing to cable. I *think* the best price going so far is w/ teksavvy.

24.95/month for 5-meg cable, 300-gigs. Or about 5$ more for unlimited.

He's been paying Bell or Bell-resellers for a decade and has had crap. Time to toss Bell to the street and never look back.

Well First things first the downstream attenuation is not what ya look at for distance, you look at the upstream atten, his is 21.5 so it suggests around 2.5 clicks at the far end usally but there could be bridge taps who knows what on his line so he could have any number of issues. so yes i would vote line problem of some sort what kinda i Dunno have u plugged directly to the demarc to check if its internal? before u order a Tech and Get dinged.?

And that is the nature of shitty DSL.

its not a marketing ploy?

like, paid shills and hell mothpieces to just make people give up and pay more for nothing ?

oyoyoyoyoyooy

Thanks ! Yeah I'm pretty sure I'll go with cable now, I've not heard from Velcom for two days, and the last test they had me do was disconnect all phones & plug modem directly on the wall, then test speeds... Not better. If it didn't work, they were supposed to ask Bell to put back fastpath, nothing since then, still interleave...

So probably Teksavvy 32$ 7mbps 300 gigs plan & IP phone service. Or maybe 14mbps 300gigs for 38$, hmm... Anyhow, I'll see. Time to ditch Bell for good! Actually, I should have done this sooner... I guess when I joined Velcom some years ago these plans weren't available yet, or I missed them somehow...

Thanks for the help all!

Oh, so what kinds of pings should I expect with cable? What about downloads and uploads? One thing with Velcom, 300KB/s was always available plus connection was stable and pings were decent (13ms 1st hop), no matter the time of the day.

You're looking at the prices/plans for Ontario, switch your province to Quebec as the plans/prices are different.

Damn... Nice catch! You're absolutely right... The Qc plans are worst... Much worst... an 8mbps plan & 75 gigs for 30$, 300 gigs is 40$... 20mbps 75 gigs is 40$ and 50$ for 300 gigs...

Damn, so this blows, 75 gigs isn't enough, 300 gigs more expensive... Bleh, there is indeed the 5mbps 300 gigs for 25$, but it's upload is 1mbps, hmm, not bad, we might have a winner. It's not 10mbps, but it would be a clear upgrade from Velcom/Bell dsl! Faster AND cheaper!!!

Velcom: 8mbps 300 gigs 40$, only 3mbps 25$...

The speed for the 8Mbps plan is supposed to go up to 10Mbps but I'm not sure if new TekSavvy customers are getting that speed upgrade right now or not, the best would be to post in the TekSavvy forum and ask.

One thing I would recommend if you go with cable is to spend a little bit extra and buy a Docsis 3 modem instead of a Docsis 2 as the as the Docsis 3 modem will allow you to upgrade to the faster speed tiers.

GirgleMirt Bell is a plague but we'll never be able to purge them.
They will lie and mislead as long as it makes/saves them money.

I can barely sync at 3.5 yet follow one wire two blocks and the sync is a strong 7.

Problem isn't in my house (all new wire) nor is it the wire to my dmarc (also new, dmarc is new also)
The wire from neighbour hoods box to the next one (two blocks away) is junk.
The technician found most of the pairs to be dead and several lines are using a wire form two separate pairs just to work. Insulation is rotting away and several bridge taps exist.
He filed a report and a line tech came out and confirmed the poor state, and proceeded to get authorization for replacement.
It was denied due to upgrades for the area being scheduled within the next 3 years.

That was back in September of 2010
I've called Bell this year to get an ETA about for fibe service (figure these are the upgrades referred to as nothing has been done yet)

I was informed Belleville is on no upgrade list whatsoever so it will not be this year. (yet this September makes the end of the "within three years")

Belleville isn't a little town is the middle of nowhere either (401 - 30-45min west of Kingston) and I'm almost in the middle of it.

Not sure price wise how they measure up on cable but DSL wise Ebox is a great Choice for ontario girglemirt take a look.