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Internet speeds have been very satisfactory. I have not noticed any difference coming from Bell with double the download speeds. I'm saving about 50% over what it would cost me with Bell. I have not tried their TV or phone services. Some resellers charge a rental fee for the modem but Vmedia doesn't. Some lock you in for a set period so if an extraordinary offer comes up from another company you can't take advantage of it. Vmedia doesn't. You're free here. They don't even charge for when you ship the modem back to them. Plus Vmedia offers a generous referral system where both the person signing up and the referrer get $25. So by mentioning it to a few people you can pretty well get free service. Even better, learn how to share with neighbors so you can get screaming fast speeds at dirt cheap costs. Like $10/month each if done well. Of course this applies to any service. Before this I was with Can-Com (great company but a little more expensive than Vmedia) and Bell (good service, lousy website, fraudulent external sales people - check everything they promise with Bell first!). member for 11.9 years, 296 visits, last login: 6 days ago lodged 181 days ago
I would advise anyone in nova scotia to strongly reconsider before applying for vmedia cable internet and these are the reasons why... Signed up for vmedia cable 100/10M internet to be installed on the SEPT 3, same day as the cancellation as my previous eastlink 3rd party TPIA. (VMEDIA is a eastlink TPIA in this region) While on the phone during signup, the agent had messed up my CMAC for my modem (which is compatible) leading to no internet for the day. How I figured this out is I called VMEDIA on the 3rd due to internet not working and modem being locked, and had them try to figure out the issue. To no avail, I suggest that perhaps the CMAC is inccorect and apparently that was true. They informed me that the CMAC would take 24-48 hours to fix but it took 7 days to "allegedly" change. Internet still didnt work, so I called back and they believed that it could be a provisioning issue, and they issue a ticket to eastlink as usual and eastlink say that its not a provisioning issue. They sent a cable tech out on the 19th to come and take a look at the line. Everything seems to work, he was able to check the CMAC on file, and low and behold, THE CMAC WAS NEVER FIXED IN THE FIRST PLACE. Cable tech tries to change the CMAC and still no internet. Therefore probably a provisioning issue. I am estimating that the issue will not be fixed anytime soon. Internet has been down for 2 weeks and counting!!!!!! It is absolutely horrendous that something like a CMAC error takes a whole week to fix, and in the end still was not fixed. It took a technician to come over and it took him a minute to simply change a letter in the mac address. While it is clear that eastlink has no respect for VMEDIA and their clients because simple fixes like this wouldnt take this long had it been a eastlink customer. I have also asked to have the tech and management forward me the information to George Burger, who I know would be able to help in this complicated matter, but nobody in the company has been able to provide Mr. Burger's information to me. I have asked 4 different times to different people and none will come forward with this information. I am a student who just started college, and this has caused SEVERE inconvenience and stress. I have to use cellular data and have gone far beyond my download limits. I am looking at paying over $300 in data overage due to this mess, and I can't do anything about it unless I plan on failing my classes. I wish nobody will have to suffer the same problems that I do which is why i wrote this review. I am a member of openmedia and strongly supported Mr. Burger and what he is doing to lower prices for internet and his fight to defend consumer rights. I will continue to support 3rd part TPIA but what has been happening is downright frustrating. If Mr. Burger you are reading this I wish to be in contact with you. member for 4.5 years, 2 visits, last login: 4.5 years ago lodged 4.5 years ago
My daughter signed up for Vmedia service. Their sign up app presents you with a calendar so you can choose an installation date. The earliest one was 10 days away. Ok fine they're busy. It says installation is between 8am to 5pm. My daughter who is a nurse takes the day off and sits and waits... and waits... and waits... until 2pm she decides to call Vmedia. Sorry we never confirmed your installation date they said. So now she's out $600 bucks for taking the day off and Vmedia says a guy is coming out 4 days later (tomorrow) to "hook up the wires" (which are already there) but they also said their modem and router they purchased are not being shipped until Monday and they will have to install them by themselves when they arrive. This after paying $64 for "installation". So now over two weeks since ordering and no actual online date yet in sight. For all we know the equpment might be coming from China and could take 3 weeks. Not off to a good start with Vmedia, that's for sure. member for 16 years, 135 visits, last login: 30 days ago updated 5.9 years ago
We ordered the Vmedia Cable Internet in a Cogeco neighbourhood at the 15 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up speed. The install went smoothly. I arranged a disconnect date with Cogeco and then supplied that info to Vmedia. They scheduled the transition for the same day. After my last day with Cogeco ended I got up the next morning and plugged in my Vmedia modem and the service started working. That was pretty well it. I called the support line to ask if there was anything else to do? The reason was that I had been led to believe a Cogeco installer was coming to check but no one had showed up or left a message. It was explained that they are not normally sent for transfers and that it was only for new installs. Our modem is a Thomson 476. It does not require any maintenance and just works every day. If we suspect any speed issues then we just unplug it, wait twenty seconds or so and plug it back in but that hardly ever happens - like once or twice a year. The hardest part of the switch was saying good bye to Cogeco after many years of good service and after the many attractive offers they threw our way to stay with them on the day I phoned to cancel. My vmedia experience is a ten out of ten to-date. We use it for internet, VOIP phone service and streaming internet TV, movies (Amazon Prime / Netflix) and gaming. We recently upgraded to 40/10 (April 1/18). As before the speed increase went smoothly. On the in service date I reboot the modem and the service was running at a speed closer to requested speed. I did a couple of speed tests and concluded I was getting something in the area of 37/8. We decided to run several speed tests a day for a week and see if anything changes. For the next 7 days it was pretty well the same. On the 8th day however it tested at 42/10 and has stayed about same since. Needless to say everyone here is pleased. No technician visits required, no further phone calls, just works! with router QOS bandwidth settings on manual and set to subscribed speeds of 40/10 »[Cable Speed test: 38.81/11.67 15 ms] and for comparision »speedof.me/show.php?img= ··· 4240.png (Chicago) With router QOS settings on automatic »speedof.me/show.php?img= ··· 1043.png (Chicago) »testmy.net/78lzIcLov.png (Frankfurt) »[Cable Speed test: 43.34/9.43 15 ms] »[Cable Speed test: 43.56/10.02 16 ms] member for 6.1 years, 17 visits, last login: 4.3 years ago updated 5.9 years ago
Surprisingly good service, bundle with TV - I'm paying 1/3 what I paid to Rogers and the only real difference is the TV but it's minor once you get used to the menu options and navigation. Install people were great, frankly the toughest part was getting away from Rogers but once they did their part it was fine. Great follow up to ensure we were happy and tech support folks were very responsive. Looking forward to saving +$200/month.... member for 6 years, driveby review (so far) lodged 6 years ago
I would recommend that Vmedia as an internet and television service be avoided at all costs. After years of being a customer and putting up with choppy service and constantly out of synch closed captioning to save a few dollars, I switched to Rogers this past December. By law, Rogers has to inform Vmedia of the switch so they have the right to respond and retain their customer. I did in fact get a call from Vmedia on the day of the switch, but i was not home and no message was left. But Vmedia in their mercenary wisdom decided to act as if nothing had happened and continued to bill me without contact and without any service delivery and now refuses a refund on services not delivered. If you think the little guys behavior is going to be different from the big three, you are sorely mistaken. In fact, it is worse. I will be contacting the crtc. member for 6.2 years, driveby review (so far) updated 6.2 years ago
I am with Vmedia for a bit more than a month and I am disapointted. The internet service is good but the phone support is bad : Since Vmedia, my answering machine doesnt work anymore and Vmedia refuses to solve this issue. I have found the solution and sent it to them but they have locked my VOIP box and refuse to make the correction. It seems that they simply dont know how to configure their system properly and they ignore possible improvements. So, be aware of their service member for 6.3 years, 5 visits, last login: 6.2 years ago updated 6.3 years ago
UPDATE Dec 2017: In the process of getting my Vmedia gear ready for sale I discovered another thing that may be worth noting: The Vmedia hardware is definitely locked down. Most bothersome, the router's firmware locks down part of the PPPoE account name so that the router is only usable on the Vmedia network. I already mentioned that the built-in ATA is not usable with other VOIP providers. Vmedia conveniently does not have any unlocked firmware available. The Vbox is in theory usable without a Vmedia account but in practice not so much (it requires an Internet connection when being configured, it asks for an email in place of a Vmedia account, and then hangs). Furthermore none of this was communicated to me when I purchased the router. I regard this as bad practice given that the hardware was a straight purchase. In other word, I theoretically own the hardware yet in practice I cannot operate it. This being said, their router sold relatively quickly (at a bit more than half the price) despite the lock down. The Vbox is a hard sell, but that's probably because it is an antiquated model. UPDATE Nov 2017: Since my original review the price of Vmedia Internet plans has gone down (a thing that incidentally speaking was never advertised to existing customers, see below) so I upgraded to FTTN 50 for basically the same monthly fee. The line is theoretically capable of 50 Mb/s but in practice my speed was never higher than 30 Mb/s. What I called below the "occasional" slow downs have become bothersome; any kind of non-real-time traffic (which is incidentally most of the traffic in our household) bogs down during peak hours to the point of being painful. Even outside peak hours non-real-time traffic is throttled. I then concluded that enough is enough and switched providers; I thus discovered what was I missing all these years: beside the improved speed I realized that the latency on the Vmedia network is sky high compared to the competition and I discovered how much of a difference that makes. I suspect that what I called originally "conservative but working for the purpose" Vmedia hardware does work for the purpose, just not very well. On the TV side, Vmedia keeps promising on their fora updated hardware, but several informal deadlines for this upgrade have come and gone already. Right now they are still stuck at Android 4.4. Apparently the new Vbox will appear early in the next year, but that's already too late for me. Their TV offering is cheaper than the competition, but for me the price difference does not make up for the horrible network performance. Customer service continues to be a pain and if anything is becoming worse. In addition to what I wrote below on this matter, their on-line chat cannot be used for any useful purpose (as soon as something out of ordinary happens you are directed to call). Every call to the tech support is preceded by a long recording telling me what I can do on-line, how to reboot modems, and so on, that cannot be skipped. Overall I left Vmedia for the following reasons: (a) they prefer to manage traffic aggressively instead of provisioning their network appropriately for the anticipated traffic, (b) their price structure creates a multitude of tiers for their customers with older, loyal customers being at the short end of the stick, (c) the buffer bloat and latency are higher than the competition, and (d) the customer service is bad and becoming worse. If you can live with these shortcomings Vmedia offers great bang for your buck. For me in the end the savings did not outweigh their shortcomings so I left. ORIGINAL REVIEW: I have been a Vmedia customer since early 2015 with their FTTN 25 package (over Bell wires). The line has been mostly stable once the initial problems have been worked out (see below) and the advertised speed (25 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up) is bang on most of the time, with only occasional slowdowns at peak hours. There is traffic shaping on their network (mostly to ensure QoS for the TV data apparently), it tends to be bothersome now and then (at one point some Google servers became painfully slow), but most of the time is not noticeable. There are no blocked ports or any other nasty stuff on their network. The supplied router is a Kasda KW 5262 which is pretty stable, with a dated firmware, mid-range in price, and quite a bit locked down. While the usual stuff is configurable, part of the account name is locked down (so that you cannot take the router with you if you move to a different provider, but you can use it with a different Vmedia account) and the included ATA is not usable with other SIP accounts than Vmedia's (at least I could not figure out how to do it). Installation was painless, as in nobody coming physically to my place (I had ADSL with a different company but over the same wires before) despite Vmedia's dire warnings that a Bell technician will visit and I better be home or else. After a couple of hours of waiting it just drawn to me to power up the modem and the line was all there. There was no follow-up from either Bell or Vmedia. Recently their TV service has arrived in my neck of the woods (meaning Quebec outside the Greater Montreal area) and I am currently taking advantage of their free TV promotion. The TV package is decent and the (full) price is right. I cannot comment yet on its quality since I have not had the service long enough. Their Vbox is a dated Android box. It works well for the TV service as provided by Vmedia but not so much for anything else. Google Play as well as sideloading are enabled, but the box runs Android 4.4.x at best so most interesting apps are not compatible. I was hoping that the box will replace my multimedia computer, but this is sadly is not the case. In all I found Vmedia service solid. The hardware is conservative but works for the purpose it is supposed to serve, and the infrastructure appears rock solid. I see myself continuing to use their services. This being said, there are a couple of annoying issues with these guys that while not necessarily show-stoppers keep me looking however halfheartedly for alternatives. First here is my post-install saga: The wires from the Bell pole to my house were the original ones (from the fifties). An equally old surge suppressor (with a big coil and two big resistors) was present as demarcation point. The setup worked well at first, but then a month later the thaw came. I did not know it at the time, but the wire insulation was all but gone on the wall side, so when water started seeping along the wires the line attenuation went suddenly to some 50dB and the Internet went belly up. The first Bell technician that came saw the surge suppressor, changed it, and called it a day. Luckily for him (but not so much for me), it was a sunny day, there was no water on the wires, and so the line quality was great. This condition lasted for a honking 12 hours, and then the Internet went down again. I got the run-around from Vmedia technical support for about a week (they kept testing the line parameters and sent me a new modem for all the good it did) and finally (one week later) I got yet another visit from Bell. This time they checked the whole setup and changed the wires. Things have been solid ever since. Why am I bothering to tell this story you ask? Because it illustrates those two black marks I mentioned earlier. For one thing, technical support is hit and miss (mostly miss). It is strange (to put it mildly) and thoroughly unacceptable to draw a blank when mentioning a 50 dB line attenuation (and instead get the drill about what lights are on on the modem, followed by the request to reboot the modem, etc.). Next time I called, the same 50 dB attenuation drew a near-expletive from a different technician and a prompt ticket with Bell. This last person seems however to be a dying breed in the Vmedia family; I have yet to meet another one. More recently I was having a chat with a so-called technician about not being able to use my Vbox to log into my Vmedia account, we walked through the drill with modem lights and what shows on the screen and then to my surprise the Vmedia guy said (I paraphrase from memory) "Sir, it is complicated so you have to call our tech support line". It turns out that I had to upgrade the firmware, which was relatively painlessly (though awkwardly) communicated to me over the phone. The billing department is no different: I have received different (and contradictory) answers to my questions in a chat session and over the phone. It may be a coincidence, but the only competent technician I spoke with at Vmedia had a certain East-European accent, while all the clueless and near-clueless, script-following tech support had a certain Asian accent (which seems to be the norm lately); it would appear though I cannot be sure that their tech support has been outsourced sometime in the past couple of years. The biggest gripe I have with Vmedia though is customer appreciation. There is none to speak of. There was no follow-up after my month-long outage mentioned above and no financial compensation whatsoever. I basically paid one month worth of nonexistent service and nobody blinked an eye. When the rates increase this applies to everybody, but when they decrease they do so silently. I discovered by chance that the posted rates are lower than what I was paying; they did adjust my rate upon but not before my request. Currently new customers get a $0 dry loop. If however you are not a new customer you are SOL. Because of customer appreciation (or lack thereof) and poor technical support I have no loyalty to Vmedia. As long as their service continues to be solid and a good value I will continue to be their customer, but I will not hesitate to walk away if something breaks or if something of equal value or better shows up. member for 6.8 years, 133 visits, last login: 15 days ago updated 6.3 years ago
DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME!! This is one of the worst companies that I have ever dealt with. My fun began when I decided to save money and moved my home phone and internet service to them. I paid for the 75Mbps internet. Everything was great until the evening came around. I understand that high traffic times will result in a lower service. I started calling in when my download service started to go around 20Mbps. After almost 2 weeks of phone calls and emails, my internet was down to 9Mbps!! I finally had enough and asked them to cancel my internet, but asked to keep my home phone. Well, without notification, they cancelled it too and I lost my home phone number that I had for years. member for 6.5 years, driveby review (so far) lodged 6.5 years ago
Sure it's a little less than competitors like TS and Start but it's also throttled like crazy in the evenings. Many evenings of mine have been ruined as me and friends tried to play some Xbox games only for small (3.5Gb) updates to take HOURS. What should be a few minute download ends up taking up the entire time we planned to spend gaming. Support failed to mention that it could be their traffic management practices, and even sent a tech out. Fortunately I found more about it on their forum and they confirmed when called out on it. Do not recommend. member for 21.5 years, 145 visits, last login: 145 days ago updated 6.6 years ago
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