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Upgrades in Smithers??

For quite some time, I knew that Smithers was limited to 6 Mbit/s due to lack of infrastructure and/or due to population. While doing laundry at my folks place, I decided to do a speed test and I was amazed to see a speed of 13-14 Mbps downstream with 800 Kbps upstream. Sales at TELUS still confirms that the fastest available speed at the my folks' place is 6 Mbps for downstream. Does anyone know if upgrades are in progress and that what I am seeing is part of a testing phase?

I think I just answered my own question. After checking the gateway stats (V1000H), I found the gateway synched at the following:

Downstream Speed:  18247 Kbps
Upstream Speed:  945 Kbps
 

Congratulations!!.....enjoy your new speed!!.....

I'm east of you & we haven't had any ports available since mid July.....new people moving to town are SOL to get a Telus internet connection....they are not impressed!......hopefully Telus will get something happening.....glad to hear that they are working in the Northwest area.....

I can feel their frustration. Any location east of Terrace is getting screwed over by TELUS. CityWest will provide services in locations where TELUS won't provide service, but it's still limited to 5 Mbps downstream. Better than nothing though, or the limited caps on 3G/4G provided by the big three.

Um... Smithers is east of Terrace.
Do you mean west of Terrace? Such as Prince Rupert? That is CityWest territory, that's why they provide service
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I may work for, but do not necessarily represent the views and beliefs of TELUS Communications.

No, I do mean east of Terrace. Terrace and Prince Rupert are the only communities west of Prince George that have VDSL2 service. The smaller communities are stuck on ADSL2 or ADSL2+. I am well aware that Shaw does not provide service to communities west of Prince George (Shaw Direct being different), unless Vanderhoof is within that service area.

In a sense, I could blame CityWest for being the only broadband competitor.

Not sure if that qualifies as screwing you over... when you live in a smaller community it takes time to provide additional services.
If you want vancouver level services you live in Vancouver (and you pay their housing etc prices). If you want PG level services you live in PG (you pay etc etc). If you live in Houston, ft st James or many other communities you get those services.
TELUS expands services all the time and you will get upgrades eventually. Doesn't it make sense that the upgrades go where there is a larger population base first?
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I may work for, but do not necessarily represent the views and beliefs of TELUS Communications.

To a point, I agree with your statement. However, this town has been restricted to ADSL2+ infrastructure for the past 7 years. I thought there would have been some improvement in the area after being away in Edmonton for 12 years. I guess not. Plenty of people here are tired of not having services equivalent to Terrace. With our population growth due to CN and mining expansions, you'd think it'd be done by now.

When I see that 3G/4G speeds are double that of current DSL speeds, I think we have a right to be fumed. TELUS is obviously interested in making more money on wireless (overages = $) than keeping broadband up to date.

If it makes you feel any better, I live in a dense residential part of Vancouver and my area is ADSL2+ only still.

3G/4G is ridiculously oversubscribed, and can't really be compared to residential service. Apples and oranges.

For me, yes it can be compared. I live in area that's 4-4.5KM from the CO - getting 65-68db attenuation from my SpeedTouch. 1.44 Mbps downstream is all that I can get. During the usual slowdown on 3G/4G in my area, it's still faster than my DSL. During the day, 3G service hovers from 8-12 Mbps. Most areas of Smithers are from 3-6 Mbps on DSL. I know where the priorities lie, and there not in the right place.

How do you propose that VDSL2 would give you any faster speeds? It's still a DSL technology and limited by distance, even more so at faster speeds. So living as far from the CO you wouldn't expect any faster speeds with VDSL2 over what you currently have.