I Hate Ma Bell

The only thing more annoying than dealing with Ontario Health Care is dealing with Ontario Internet Providers. It is unfathomably difficult to get uncapped, un-shaped Internet in Ontario. You cannot imagine.
In short, there are only two services (lower than T1) that offer it. Rogers Business High Speed, and Bell Business Ultra High Speed. No independent DSL ISPs are able to offer un-shaped Internet, even on a dry-loop — Bell only wholesales their Residential network (yes, that includes TekSavvy.)
Rogers offers un-crippled business-class Internet, but not if the location you’re installing it at is zoned as residential. Have a home office, or a small business run from your home? Sorry, you’re screwed.
Bell will sell you business-class, uncrippled Internet for your home office/small office, but they charge 1.5 times what Rogers charges, and 3 times their residential (shaped and capped) Internet.
And what they don’t tell you, in their righteous indignation about “protecting the world from file sharing pirates,” is that their shaping technology throttles any encrypted traffic. That includes online banking, and VPN access to a remote office. Your 6MBPS DSL becomes 30KBPS DSL as soon as you encrypt the traffic!
And what’s worse? No one at Bell even knows what “traffic shaping” is. Trying to get information from them on who you can pay and how much, to get real Internet, is like trying to get a newborn to stop pooping her pants. They just don’t know how.
Don’t even get me started on the cell phone companies — and don’t get Nicole started on OHIP. You may have heard me bash certain American policies and bureaucracies, but I’ll tell you what, moving to Canada is like moving backward in time 15 years.
It’s like we’ve spent 2.5 years living as the Jetsons, and now we have to figure out how to live as the Flintstones…

4 thoughts on “I Hate Ma Bell

  1. I would like to just confirm the underline idea that this post says…America is better. Canadians can compare and complain about the US, but the reality is, for the money, the US provides better services. That being said Canada does a good job offering inexpensive or free services, but they don’t compare to that of the US.

  2. Well if we’re willing to take the small piece of daily life that this post refers to and use it to declare America as better, then there’s some other information to consider…
    In Japan they have 100MBPS download AND upload speeds, with no caps, throttling or shaping, for half what we pay in the States.
    And with where we are in life right now, I’d love to have the Healthcare they have in France.
    So… if America is better than Canada, then Japan and France are better than America… right?
    Or maybe it’d be best to acknowledge that there’s lots of factors that go into making a country a good place to live. Health care and Internet might be big ones for us, but that’s only because in Canada we don’t have anything bigger to worry about — like an unending war, or a mortgage crisis…
    In our experience, both are great countries. Each have their pros and cons. Its OK to acknowledge the problems — and its important as citizens to do what we can to raise the issues and try to solve them — but whether we live south or north of the border, we’ve got it pretty good compared to some other parts of the world.

  3. A simple trick that can help get around all the internet rules put out by these companies. I spend a fair bit of time in hotels, so I just do my downloading there. 🙂

  4. Ha ha ha, clever idea. Most hotels I’ve stayed in have painfully flow Internet, though. Certainly not the speeds I need…
    I did finally find a connection that’ll work for me. It’ll be $100 a month…

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