Peterborough Linux User Group (Canada) Forum

Linux & Android => Marketplace => Topic started by: William Park on October 06, 2017, 10:58:12 PM

Title: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: William Park on October 06, 2017, 10:58:12 PM
Lots of people (in Kitchener/Waterloo area) are talking about

    - http://www.carrytel.ca/internet-plans.aspx
    - http://www.carrytel.ca/rfd-special.aspx

Cable 75M/10M for $35 and 250M/20M for $55 are pretty good price.  Maybe too good to be true?  Any comments or rumours?
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: Jason on October 07, 2017, 03:00:05 AM
Never heard of them before but I don't think I heard of Start Communications either until Bob mentioned it. Great prices though I find it weird that they don't have an address lookup to find out what is available at your location. I'm personally suspicious, not that it's a scam, just that they can provide decent service and support at those prices. Not sure I'd want to chance going to them even with free installation because if they turned out be shit, I'd have to pay the installation to come back to Start.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: bobf on October 23, 2017, 05:15:05 PM
I'd *love* to think that we can all double our speed for almost half the price, but it sounds like every loss-leader I've ever heard of in the past 40 years... You jump over, they double the rates, and go under in the undertow of the mass "abandon ship!"

Who doesn't want twice for half?! <^8# Maybe the first hundred-thousand customers who make the leap get to KEEP their rates for the next 5-10 years... (Suuuurreee!! Sign me up! <^8#) 'Cuz they'll be around for the long haul...?

And then I opened my eyes and realized I would have to throw off the blankets and give up the pillow, and get started on another every-day day... Yep, bona fide cynic - can someone tell me where I pick up my paycheck?! <^8#
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: dougal on December 22, 2017, 12:53:43 AM
I'm wondering if anyone is using Start Communications locally? and if so what's the experience been like?
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: Jason on December 22, 2017, 01:31:31 AM
Other than occasional issues (maybe once or twice a month) with network going down for maybe an hour very late at night (like 3-4 am, no comments please!), never had a problem with Start. I pay for 40 down and 10 up and this is what I get:

(https://plugintolinux.ca/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fbeta.speedtest.net%2Fresult%2F6901281471.png&hash=1582bb8b51ca3594acea64461375ab99dabc6098) (http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6901281471)

Bob has it for sure and I think Bill has it now, as well. They've also increased their speeds and bitcaps over the years (no bitcap with my service now) with no additional charge. There's another thread on Start Communications here:

http://forums.plugintolinux.ca/index.php/topic,134.0.html

If you do sign up, I'd love it if you mentioned my name. They give a $25 referral credit when friends sign up. Regardless though, I'd still recommend them. Same lines as Cogeco/Rogers but cheaper.

Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: fox on December 22, 2017, 12:01:01 PM
Do they have tablet data plans?
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: Jason on December 22, 2017, 04:22:18 PM
Quote from: fox on December 22, 2017, 12:01:01 PM
Do they have tablet data plans?

Both Carry and Start are home internet providers, although Start also has home phone plans. They aren't mobile service providers.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: dougal on January 16, 2018, 11:57:48 PM
hey Jason et al. i'm typing in my address on start.ca and there saying 'no service available' for that address and consequently not for cameron street either or uptown, so i'm a bit perplexed ...carrytel shows service for my addy. any thots on this?
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: Jason on January 17, 2018, 02:43:22 AM
That seems pretty extremely unlikely (that they don't provide service to a Cameron Street address), seeing as how they're basically a reseller of Cogeco services. Does Cogeco serve your place? Are you in an apartment? I'd give them a call (or email them) if their address search isn't working correctly or not showing your address. Could just be incorrect information in their database.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: dougal on January 17, 2018, 02:18:07 PM
i'm attached to cogeco now....so i'll follow up with a call to them directly, could be just a software glitch as u suspect.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: Jason on January 17, 2018, 08:23:04 PM
Yeah, you should have no problem them. And my guess would be that you'd have a maximum of 120 Mbps service like me. I'm also in the south end. So I'm thinking you probably have the same pricing and choices that I do. I'll list them the options so you have some info before you call:

15 Mbps service (2 Mbps up), 200 GB usage, $40
40 Mbps service (10 Mbps up), Unlimited usage $50
60 Mbps service (10 Mbps up), Unlimited usage, $65
120 Mbps service (10 Mbps up), Unlimited usage, $85

$5/month rental for a modem or you can buy one

Also curious, where did you find an address checker on the Carry Telecom site? I couldn't find one and thought it was kind of weird.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: dougal on January 18, 2018, 11:11:26 AM
thanks Jason
 
Hello Dougal,

I was able to find one other person who actually lives on that street with our services. I am very optimistic that we can get service to your location.....

strange they can't commit at this point.

start.ca email reply has the same options you gave:

-Home Cable 15 for $40 +tax, speeds of 15 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload and 200 GB of usage monthly
-Home Cable 40 for $50 +tax, speeds of 40 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload and unlimited monthly usage
-Home Cable 60 for $65 +tax, speeds of 60 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload and unlimited monthly usage
-Home Cable 120 for $85 +tax, speeds of 120 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload and unlimited monthly usage

If one of these stands out to you we can always book a transfer of service! This will waive the $25 installation fee but it does require that you call Cogeco and schedule a pending disconnection date for at least 10 business days from the day you call them. So if you were to call them today you would schedule the pending disconnection date for January 31st.

they didn't mention anything about modem rental or purchase so far...

here's the page i was on for address search:
https://www.start.ca/services/highspeed


  also looking into this offer by Carrytel: not sure yet if it's available in Ptbo.

https://www.carrytel.ca/index.aspx

this I believe is their regular service offers:

CABLE INTERNET(ONTARIO)
Service Area: Windsor, Sarnia, Essex, Hamilton, Milton, Burlington, Oakville, Belleville, Brockville, Chatham, Cornwall, Kingston, Kingsville, Leamington ,Lindsay, Niarara Falls, Northy Bay, PETERBOROUGH, St. Catherines.

Cable Internet 40
40 Mbps+ download
10 Mbps upload speed
Unlimited data
·Risk free 7-day trial

·No contract

·Installation fee: $0.00

·Modem Purchase: $99

$29 .99/30 days
ORDER NOW

Cable Internet 60
60 Mbps+ download
10 Mbps upload speed
Unlimited data
·Risk free 7-day trial

·No contract

·Installation fee: $0.00

·Modem Purchase: $99

$39 .99/30 days
ORDER NOW

Cable Internet 120
120 Mbps+ download
10 Mbps upload speed
Unlimited data
·Risk free 7-day trial

·No contract

·Installation fee: $0.00

·Modem Purchase: $99

$59 .99/30 days

i'm on the 40/10 unlimited,for $85+tax with cogeco at this point.

does anyone have any stories about CarryTel to share?

Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: Jason on January 18, 2018, 04:56:16 PM
You will definitely require a modem, either through rental or buying. Make sure you arrange this before you disconnect as they have to ship you a modem either way. The technician doesn't bring one. Unless they just keep the same modem as Cogeco, but I'd make doubly sure of this if/when you schedule an appointment.

Cogeco charges $85 for 40 Mbps service? That's insane. Or is that some kind of bundle?
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: dougal on January 18, 2018, 06:51:24 PM
   no bundle,insane compared to their 'associate' or resellers offering $50 with start.ca  or $ 29.99 with Carrytel even with the modem cost. I hadn't heard of anyone using these third party ISPs in town until this thread.  I usually only go with that package in the winter to get the unlimited, in the summer i go with 95gb for  $65. so these prices look quite inviting. I've read of people running the new modem  off a splitter to see how they like the service before cancelling cogeco. Still haven't found anything review-wise on Carrytel that's local. I'm guessing none of the Linux group decided to try it... i'm also assuming if I wanted to go back to cogeco after disconnecting they'll want a fee. so a few things yet to gather up before deciding, but i hear that you are happy with your decision. I read how some who are 'piggybacked' with rogers say the techs are really not servicing them well but haven't read that of cogeco. at first i thot that these companies were using their own servers just riding on the infrastructure of the big 3 but it sounds like they are wholesale resellers of the same service, is that what you understand, want to be clear i've got this right.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: Jason on January 18, 2018, 08:00:22 PM
The resellers still use their own servers for dns, email, etc. but its over the same lines is how I understand it. And they have their own support services. But they (or at least Start) use Cogeco technicians for the installations and I assume anything requiring a technician to come by. I don't think you'll go wrong with Start, but I just don't know anybody that has tried Carry yet. I'm very tempted, I'll tell you that. I asked Start and they wouldn't give me a break when I showed Carry's prices.

You can also tell Cogeco you're considering jumping ship and they will likely cut you a deal, maybe not price match but I'm sure they can give you better than $85 a month. So that's also worth trying, too.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: William Park on January 21, 2018, 08:59:42 PM
Today at high noon, I switched to Carrytel Cable75 (75M/10M, unlimited, $35/month).  That's $25 cheaper than Teksavvy's equivalent.  So far, it performs as promised.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: fox on January 21, 2018, 10:11:49 PM
Wow, that's impressive.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: dougal on January 22, 2018, 12:59:32 AM
william ,  i'm also looking at their offerings...though that one isn't listed as available in ptboro.(40,60,100) $99 to buy their modem or are you renting the modem? how much lead time before tech came to make the connection?
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: William Park on January 22, 2018, 12:35:26 PM
I bought the modem (Technicolor TC4350).  I gave notice 1 month ahead of time, so no problem with switch over.  Well, internet wise.

I still have VoIP phone with Teksavvy, and the ATA is pretty much locked to Teksavvy.  I don't mind, because I don't know what all those parameters are, anyways.  But, my phone didn't work with the new modem.  It was DNS problem.  The ATA was manually using Teksavvy DNS servers which don't respond to non-Teksavvy IPs.  So, ATA couldn't resolve Teksavvy VoIP server.  Remove the manual DNS entries, and use default DNS that modem gives out, and my phone worked.  It took me 6 hours to figure that out!
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: Jason on January 22, 2018, 08:17:44 PM
Thanks for telling us about your experience. Please let us know again in a month or two how it is going, William.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: dougal on January 24, 2018, 09:53:26 AM
william
i'm wondering if your ISP address is showing up as USA based instead of Canada...this was written about it a couple of threads....it was supposed to switch after a couple of weeks..i don't understand the reasoning for this but seemed to be the experience of the writers generally and some were stating that it wasn't consistent....perhaps carrytel is utilizing a 'stable' of routing hosts (if that makes sense)...my interest is that some websites i daily use for webstreaming (tsn,sportsnet,tvo) will not support ISP addressess outside Canada(geoblock)....thus i would have to use a vpn service...opera browser was good for this but has made recent changes which reduced the ability to choose single countries (north america).... anyone have suggestions on this situation?
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: ssfc72 on January 24, 2018, 11:59:06 AM
Dougal

Thanks for the heads up about the Opera browser reducing it's VPN functionality by now, not allowing a specific country to be chosen.

Bill
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: dougal on March 10, 2018, 01:15:10 AM
WILLIAM.......wondering how the Carrytel experience has been?
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: dougal on May 29, 2018, 11:09:05 AM
i decided to go with start.ca instead of carrytell after reading some comments online and williams experience of consistently dropped service while on voip calls + jason's comments of how reliable start.ca has been for him.....I know that bill is switching over to start.ca so i thought i'd post this here as a continuation of the general conversation...i transferred over from cogeco to start.ca last night....things went 'as advertised' such that i was still on cogeco this morning at 1am but gone when i started this morning...plugged directly into the technocolor modem and there was start.ca signal....plugged router into the mix and it didn't seem to like things though and after friggin' with it (power starts and factory resets) for a while i discovered a faulty ethernet cable from modem to router ..switched cables and voila, back to internet connection....speed test showed as advertised , so far-so good.... saving $20/month($40+5/65) renting modem for now@5$/mth  and larger bandwidth cap(200/95)....didn't get voip as i already have an acct with magicjack@ 45$/yr.for unlimited usa+canada...

ps, they said you should see the referral reward on your next bill jason, let me know if that doesn't happen.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: Jason on May 29, 2018, 12:47:25 PM
Thanks, for giving me the referral award, Dougal! Really appreciate that.

Btw, we use Magicjack for our home phone, too. Calls are always crystal clear according to my wife.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: Jason on June 01, 2018, 03:09:47 PM
I received my $25 referral credit on the bill today. Thanks, dougal!
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: dougal on June 03, 2018, 09:48:09 PM
good to hear that , and things are working here as advertised so far, so thanks for the referral....
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: William Park on June 04, 2018, 09:13:39 AM
Update on CarryTel...  I'm in Rogers area, whereas you guys are in Cogeco area.  My connection seems to have stabilized.  Frequent outage could've been due to "CMTSs operating systems maintenance" that Rogers were doing.
Title: Re: Carry Telecom -- too good to be true?
Post by: dougal on June 04, 2018, 11:22:54 PM
thanks for the update william as your reported voip interuptions was a main deterent and thus my choosing to go with start.ca...I didn't read of anyone using them locally to see if that was a general experience.