Joined with Carrytel

Jason · July 13, 2019, 03:29:02 PM

Members might remember us talking about Carry Telecom in the past here (do a search if interested). They offer internet and phone services (VoIP only for home phone) to Ontario and have some really good deals. For the same speed that I have with Start.ca, 40/10 Mbps with unlimited cap, they are about $20 less per month (i.e. $30/month).

So I finally decided to bite the bullet and give them a try. It's only been a few days (switched on Wed) but so far so good.

It didn't require a home visit though annoyingly they did charge $49 as an activation fee, something Start didn't do as long as you had an cable TV or internet before them. There's no monthly charge to use their modem which also has built-in wireless (or at least mine does, they don't advertise this), but there was a $49 deposit refundable on service cancellation and a $10 fee for shipping the modem. Though if you want, you can drive to their office in North York and pick it up. You can also choose to buy a modem from Carry or bring your own.

Also had to ship back Start's modem (and their little android box which was part of the TV service I had with them) on my own dime.

The hardest part of all of this was contacting Carry to arrange an activation day and then contacting Start to arrange deactivation for the same day. On the day of activation, I just unplugged the Start modem and plugged in the Carry modem. Ethernet internet was available right away.

Then I just logged into to setup wireless with my preferred SSID (Hobbiton

) and passphrase and proceeded to check other settings. It even allows for two SSIDs although I'm only using one. I guess that's to allow for guest users? Strangely the firewall was off so I turned it back on. They also had WPS turned off which I think is super important. WPS can he handy for setup but it's really not that hard to do it the right way and the problem is that people use it for setup and then forget to turn it off.

Now that I think about the firewall may have been off because they expect people to use their own routers so you wouldn't want to contend with configuring two firewalls in that case. But I'm happy to have it all on one box, at least for now, as it's easier for my wife to reset it. The modem has the standard 4 Ethernet ports and a USB port. I'm wondering if this might allow for network storage.

I have the manual but haven't done more than skim through it. They didn't include a setup guide with the modem which seemed odd but again they probably just expected people to take their existing modem out and replace it with this one and not bother to use the built-in router capabilities although with more than one Ethernet port, that's bound to confuse many.

Regarding payment, they ask for a credit card (or virtual cc) initially but once you're setup and have paid the first bill, you can login and choose to be invoiced and pay it that way. The modem deposit is charged right away, the rest (shipping fee, activation fee, first month's bill) is charged on the day you're activated.

If people are interested, let me know and I'll post back in a month or two letting you know how it's gone.

Update: Forgot to add that if you move or choose to upgrade the service it's another $49 activation fee. So even going from 40 MB to 60 MB will cost you. So best to grab the speed you want now if you think you might be upgrading any time soon. This is annoying but I guess with a no frills service of $30/month and no other ongoing charges they have to bill for extra things that Start would do for free.

ssfc72 · July 19, 2019, 03:38:30 AM

Interested. Please post again, later, to report your Carrytel experience. :-)

Jason · July 19, 2019, 05:42:36 AM

Quote from: ssfc72 on July 19, 2019, 03:38:30 AM
Interested. Please post again, later, to report your Carrytel experience. :-)

Will do, probably after a month of service and after three months. After that I will only post if something goes wrong or they up the price.

Jason · August 10, 2019, 12:00:54 AM

I said I'd post after a month of service with Carrytel so here's my report and it's short and sweet. Working great, no problems to report. Haven't experienced any outages. Speed is consistent slightly above the 40 Mbps that we paid for shown by testing with speedtest.net.

If anybody is thinking of jumping ship to Carrytel now or later, you can use this promotion code for a one-time credit of $10. Full disclosure: Carrytel also gives me a credit of $20 for each person that signs up.

WA103641

ssfc72 · August 10, 2019, 02:55:27 AM

Thanks for the update, Jason!
Do you know if the promotion code is only valid for a short time or would it work in about a year from now?

Jason · August 10, 2019, 09:49:57 PM

There's no expiry on it. It should work anytime in the future.

Jason · November 16, 2019, 11:55:18 PM

Checking in, service still works great. I think my modem with Start before must have been defective or just crappy because we had to restart it ever week or so. This one has only had to be rebooted maybe twice in 4 months.

Jason · December 19, 2019, 12:02:26 AM

Five months now and haven't had any problems.

One thing I forgot to mention before when I was first setting up the cable modem/router combo is that the firewall was mysteriously disabled. That's a terrible way setting as the default. So I really recommend you check the firewall settings by logging into the router and making sure it's enabled. If all your computers have their own firewalls (not usually enabled by default in many Linux distros), it doesn't really matter that much but it is an extra layer of protection.

ssfc72 · December 19, 2019, 05:40:28 AM

Thanks Jason! Maybe you could show your speed test for 7 pm instead of 5 am, to get a better idea if it slows down a lot, from more Carrytel users being online at that time of day.

I checked out their webpage again and just out of curiosity, I went through the process of getting the internet service. There was no option to buy the modem, only the free rental of a refurbished modem. With free rental of the modem, I don't know why anyone would pay to buy the modem, other than to get a modem that maybe is not refurbished. Very curious!

Jason · December 19, 2019, 07:25:49 PM

Good point, Bill. I hadn't noticed that you couldn't buy the modem but yeah, no point really unless you just happen to have one and like it better. It's a modem combined with a wireless router. So somebody might want to use a different one, I suppose with different features. Although I think you can put it in bridged mode which means it becomes just a cable modem and you can use your own separate wireless router.

Keep in mind that time wasn't 5 am here, it was showing it as GMT time, same as here. That's just a weird thing I have to do to keep Windows and Linux time the same.

As for the speed test at nearly 7 pm, here you go:

ssfc72 · December 20, 2019, 06:43:01 AM

Ahh, GMT time zone, yes, I missed that.
Thanks for running the speed test again. Running the test in the local evening time, would give a better indication if there was a capacity problem on the Carrytel servers.

Jason · December 21, 2019, 11:30:54 AM

Quote from: ssfc72 on December 20, 2019, 06:43:01 AM
Ahh, GMT time zone, yes, I missed that.
Thanks for running the speed test again. Running the test in the local evening time, would give a better indication if there was a capacity problem on the Carrytel servers.

Yep. I hadn't ever noticed a time when it's slow and I do fair a bit of downloading at all different times. And even though we have only a 40 Mbps connection, I still like the part where it says we're faster than 86% of Canada. It makes me feel all warm inside.

Now Buster can jump in with his speed test and make us all feel bad.

But, to be honest, when you can download 4K video at 40 Mbps and downloading a distro takes only about 3 minutes at that speed, I don't really see the need to spend extra. At least not until I strike it rich by getting a job teaching high school and retiring. ;-)