Canadian Broadband → Xplornet, "enhanced" wireless internet, WTF ?

About their fixed wireless internet service.
I live in rural Ottawa.

1) 3 year contract with $450 cancellation penalty. They demand the customer takes all the risk. 30 day money back guarantee is not good enough.

2) fishy shady nebulous access plans. $39 for internet, $49 for what they call "enhanced" internet even though it's the same speed offering. "Enhancing" what? Them pestering me with less throttling, traffic shaping?

3) Nat'ed. No skyping, bittorrenting, etc, unless you pay $10 extra for a static ip address. I'd like my ip address to rotate to be honest.

Near Toronto, I've heard of wireless companies that offer internet without any contract at all. They know that their customers want internet for years to come, and choose not to intimidate their customers, unlike Xplornet.
They install their stuff, leave, and customer is happy for years on end. Some customers might quit after a while, and so what.
If a friendly open policy attracts more customers in return, they win. Why is Xplornet so aggressive and customer unfriendly?
I've wrote them a few times about this, but had absolutely no effect. The customer is clearly never right with them.
What gives? Do they *want* my business at all or what?

The consensus is that they exist solely to harverst broadband stimulus funds.

Buyer beware.

Yeah, they've got a pretty poor reputation for both quality of service and quality of customer service. They're on the record as saying they drastically oversell their nodes past the point of service degradation.

If you need wireless - as much as I hate to say it - Bell or Rogers are both better choices.

You got it my friend, Barrett Xplore goes around the country eating rural broadband subsidy grants designed to bring high speed/decent capacity broadband to farmers/countryside dwellers.

Around here they've taken the federal funds, the provincial OMAFRA funds and most recently money from the county (Hastings) under the guise of providing high-speed wireless broadband.

Sadly this isn't what you get when you pay for it, but since there's nobody around to complain loud enough they get to keep doing what they're doing, stealing public funds (like Bell) and providing shit service.

They don't even answer to anyone in the public eye for their shitty service, just hiding behind their 1st level support...

If there's a company that needs to go down quickly, it's these guys (after Bell is long dead, or just chopped up into competitive bits).

*edit*
There's a big reason they treat the customer like they do...
Lack of choice! There's barely any competition in the rural fixed wireless market, where Barrett goes, other wisps don't.

Looking at them more closely, they're just like Bell.

Oh yeah and also: www.xplornetsucks.com

»www.quintenews.com/2010/ ··· astings/

It also really sucks to see that all of the local media give these guys free ad time in the local papers and on the radio...

The older folks like my mom back in my hometown where I grew up think this is a great deal and are thinking it's like DSL/Cable service but wireless.

Oh how they'll all be so shocked to find themselves FAPped when trying to watch youtube or download windows updates...

Sorry for the rant, bullshit scam companies like Barrett Xplore / Xplornet just really get under my skin.