Taking a New Plunge
People who know me probably know that there’s one thing that I complain about a lot: my internet. I’m in a building that only gets Telus internet. It’s a monopoly plain and simple. And we’re students, so you know that they don’t actually care about us. Oh boy, what a story.
It seemed to start fine last Fall, but only a month in the uptime was, well, terrible. We’re talking about wired DSL internet using a phone line. The technology is over a decade old; there’s no excuse for them to not have nearly perpetual uptime. I was with Shaw and little Access Communications on other work terms (both over old fashion coax Cable), and I never had a problem with either of them (ok, Access internet went down for a couple days. Due to a planned outage when they were upgrading their hardware. Which going by the small towns I saw in the area, was a satellite uplink. Which they managed to make more reliable than DSL in a major city).
The first Router/Modem they gave me (a Siemens or something) basically crapped out in mid-November. The tech guy who came out said that some of those are just defective (yep, not a lot of confidence in Telus at this point). So, they gave me a 2Wire, which I’ve seen before. It’s … better. Marginally. The internet still seems to go down for no reason sometimes, and the thing just lies sometimes that it is connected when it’s not. The only good thing I can saw about Telus is that they’re Customer Service is pretty good, but the fact that I’ve used it enough time to say that is embarrassing.
I would jump to Shaw in a minute if they offered it in the building. I would walk to Shaw (which is in the West end near 178 Street I believe) if that would get service from them. My only other option? Mobile internet through a wireless provider. Well, we all know that we in Canada pay more for wireless than any other Western nation, so the prices were predictably terrible ($60-$70 for 5GB? Are you kidding!?).
Except 1, That new guy in town, Wind Mobile.I happened to be looking and saw that they were offering an unlimited data plan promotion for $25/month for 12 months, and $45 regular. Just for comparison, my Telus High Speed plan is going to up to $39 this fall after the promotion I got on is done.
So, I said “let’s try it”. So I’ve got myself a new Wind data stick and plan (and paid nothing up front with their tab-thing) and a pretty cool new 3G router from Futureshop (because I had $30 in Christmas gift cards and nothing to spend them on). If you asked me a week ago, I wouldn’t have even known there was a such a thing as a 3G router because it’s not an area I usually browse in.
So, the return policy on this is 14 days, so I’m going to take the next 2 weeks to see if this can effectively replace my Telus service, including a trip to Vancouver mid-next week (which also happens to have a Wind Zone). So far the results are very promising (and got better when I didn’t have my Fido phone right next to the 3G Modem, which I’m guessing interferes with it because my speed shot up when I moved it).
Is this For Science? No, science would be interested if it’s possible (which is it). I’m doing this For Engineering, because I’m interested if this is feasible. So, this should be a pretty fun experience.
