Cable-based Internet competitor to Shaw

[jon]

As I've commented before, it has been about 15 years since the CRTC ordered cable companies to allow third parties to offer Internet services over cable company cable networks. For whatever reasons, very few have.

Distributel advertised just such a service in the unaddressed mail in my Canada Post mail box today. Unlimited downloads in all of their plans.

Unfortunately, Distributel is less than forthcoming about their home phone service. A look at their web site, distributel.ca, tells me that it is like Vonage, using the public Internet, rather than a private network, as you get with Shaw (or TELUS). Not a good thing, mainly in terms of reliability.

The tip off, by the way, was this statement: "Use it nearly anywhere in the world with a high-speed Internet connection".

[PMC]

Based on what I read, this company is ADSL rather than cable. The price of cable is better too.

[jon]

According to their web site, they only offer ADSL in Ontario and Quebec. They offer cable Internet in Alberta, B.C., Ontario and Quebec.

For example, here is their fastest cable Internet offering in B.C.:
http://www.distributel.ca/en/product.as ... nternet_25

[Mike Cleaver]

Teksavvy also offers cable based internet, at least in Vancouver.
Runs over Shaw's cable system but generally is cheaper.

[jon]

Very odd. Teksavvy only offers cable Internet in Greater Vancouver, not the rest of B.C. or Alberta. I haven't checked elsewhere.

[Mike Cleaver]

Teksavvy is testing the waters with the Vancouver cable introduction.
They have introduced cable internet to Ontario using Rogers infrastructure but according to subscribers, there are lots of problems with Rogers foot dragging on installations and service issues.
Teksavvy has a limited number of cable subscriptions here and if the trial period gives good results (and there have been some problems with Shaw,) then the service area will be expanded.
I have a feeling it's the same as their dealings with Telus for DSL.
I've had Teksavvy DSL since it first became available in Vancouver.
That's over three years now and there only have been two outages longer than six hours.
Both were Telus problems.
Teksavvy has it's own pipe to Telus in downtown Vancouver but uses Telus lines to home and business subscribers.
But it's still a better service, cheaper and higher download caps than Telus.
When I first signed up, I had 1meg download speeds from Telus with a 60gigabyte download monthly cap.
For less money, I receive 6meg speed from Teksavvy with a 200gigabyte monthly download allowance.

[jon]

I'm sure that Teksavvy is having a tough time of it competing in Edmonton. Most speed they offer on Internet is 6Mbps download and 1Mbps upload on DSL. At not too dissimilar prices, but only when bundled with TV service, TELUS Optik provides "up to" 25/2.5 and Shaw 100/5.

I need the upload speed (for BackBlaze on-line backup), so I have Shaw (Broadband 100). Admittedly, I've never seen anything close to 100Mbps, but I regularly see uploads approaching 5Mbps.

Coming back to what started this discussion, Distributel offers 25/2 as their top end Edmonton offering.