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Bell Gigabit Fibe Discussion

56K views 123 replies 36 participants last post by  FunkyTown 
#1 · (Edited)
Here are the highlights from Bell's press release:

Bell Gigabit Fibe bringing the fastest Internet to Toronto residents with a billion-dollar+ network investment, creation of 2,400 direct jobs

Bell Canada today announced it will deliver gigabit-per-second Internet speeds to homes and businesses across the City of Toronto with the new Gigabit Fibe service. Coupled with Bell's single largest infrastructure expansion project, creating approximately 2,400 direct jobs and significant economic and innovation benefits, Gigabit Fibe will bring North America's fastest Internet speeds to more than a million Toronto premises – starting with approximately 50,000 homes and businesses that will have first access this summer.

Part of Bell's plan to invest $20 billion in its broadband fibre and wireless networks across Canada by the end of 2020, Gigabit Fibe will ultimately be available to 1.1 million homes and businesses across the city. Bell will launch Gigabit Fibe in other cities in Ontario, Québec and the Atlantic provinces as soon as this summer in some locations.

As with all other gigabit services, like the Google Fiber project in some US cities, service will initially be available at a maximum 940 Megabits per second and rise to a full 1000 Megabits per second or faster in 2016 as modem equipment suppliers catch up to gigabit speeds. To learn more about Gigabit Fibe, please visit Bell.ca/Fibe.

A public partnership without public funding
Fully funded by Bell, Gigabit Fibe in Toronto is supported by the company's single largest infrastructure buildout. Bell's long-term agreements with Toronto Hydro to share utility poles across the city are accelerating the Gigabit Fibe project's efficiency and speeding up deployment. When the project is complete, Bell teams will have upgraded 27 Bell Central Office facilities across the city and installed over 9,000 kilometres of new fibre, both underground via more than 10,000 manholes and on approximately 80,000 Bell and Toronto Hydro poles around the city. Approximately 70% of the network will be aerial and 30% underground.

Bell is building Gigabit Fibe on a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood basis and will advise residents in advance if Bell crews may need to access their property. Torontonians can visit Bell.ca/Toronto for updates and Gigabit Fibe availability. Bell will have a dedicated customer service process for Gigabit Fibe and work with Toronto's 3-1-1 information service to answer any questions about the infrastructure project.

Gigabit support for the United Way
As part of its ongoing support for the United Way Toronto Community Hub initiative, Bell will contribute Gigabit Fibe service to each the charity's city-wide Community Hubs initiative, including Access Point on the Danforth, Bathurst-Finch, Dorset Park, Jane Street, Mid-Scarborough, Rexdale Community Hub, Victoria Park Hub, and the planned Bridletowne Neighbourhood Centre serving the Steeles L'Amoreaux community.

Bell remains Canada's broadband leader
Canada's largest Internet service provider, Bell serves approximately 3.3 million total high-speed Internet customers. Bell will make Gigabit Fibe available in other cities across Ontario, Québec and the Atlantic provinces over the next year, some also as early as this summer. Cities primed for Gigabit Fibe include Québec City, locations in Montréal, Laval, Blainville, Gatineau, Joliette, Saint-Jérôme, Chicoutimi, Sherbrooke, Vaudreuil/Valleyfield, St. John's, Charlottetown, Halifax, Saint John, Fredericton, Moncton, Sudbury, North Bay, Peterborough and Kingston. Gigabit Fibe infrastructure rollouts are under way in even more cities and service availability will be announced over the next year.

Note: Please use the Bell Aliant thread to discuss Gigabit Fibe in Atlantic Canada.

EDIT March 27, 2017: Bell announced FTTH rollout for Montreal - see post 58
 
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#80 ·
Even with a good signal, most wifi devices will not exceed 180Mbps. Due to cheap hardware, lower end devices often max out between 50 and 100Mbps. It has to be wired to get anything close to 1,000Mbps. The number of devices must be taken into account since modern AC wifi routers can support several devices at maximum speed. However, most people are rarely, if ever, going to really need anything close to gigabit speeds.
 
#81 ·
I started computer programming courses at Dalhousie university in 1979. Through the years I’ve kept up-to-date with new technologies as this stuff is my forte. Next year I’ll be in the IT industry for 40 years. I know many non-technical people may be on the forum but I’m not one if them.

I tested it using my Mac which is connected directly to the router. It’s not wifi. Right now I have the 500 speed with Rogers and I’m usually getting anywhere from 650 to 680 mbps. Every time I called Bell I’d get some script. “Are the lights on at your Home Hub 3000?” “Can you pull the plug and leave it out for 10 seconds and then plug it in?” Nothing worked and each time I became more frustrated knowing I was doing the same thing I did last week and the week before with no better results. I complained enough and they replaced my HH3K. It made zero difference. They came again and ran a new fibre optic line from the demarcation into my house through the underground conduit. Still no improvement.

After 6 months of that I cancelled service. They were charging me over $100 per month for 1 gbps. I lived in Gatineau before moving to Ottawa and was with videotron. I don’t recall having issues whatsoever with speed until I went with Bell. I’ve got fibre to the home and was very disappointed by how lousy it was working and how non-technical the technical support people were. I am still on fibre. Rogers ran a fibre line into my house.

I’m surprised to read others are getting such great speeds with Bell. It seriously was not the case with me. It could be my neighbourhood here in Kanata south. My neighbours have complained about Bell speeds too. I don’t know how they were testing and I told them do not do tests through wifi as it’s always slower. I would never recommend the Bell 1 gbps service. It’s way to much money and there are no guarantees you’ll get that speed. In fact I only got 1/10th of the speed most of the time. I even tried using my Ubiquiti router which is super fast. I bought a gigabit media converter and completely removed the HH3K with my own equipment. The speed picked up a bit. I noticed an increase of 50 to 75 mbps. Still no 1 gbps speeds.
 
#82 ·
^^^^
I started working in telecom in 1972 and first worked with computer networks in 1978. Yep, that's before Ethernet and IP. Since you got better with Rogers (no surprise) with the same equipment, then it is a Bell problem. I agree Bell's support is terrible. When you call them, you get a script money in India, who really doesn't understand. With Rogers, you talk to someone in Canada.
 
#83 ·
There have been a couple of exposés on Bell internet speeds. It was surprising how many people didn't get anything close to the advertised speeds, how little Bell did about it and how blatantly Bell kept advertising and selling plans with speeds they could not deliver. What's even worse is that people who reported slow internet speeds were sometimes sold more expensive plans that didn't make any difference.

Around here, the DSL is limited to 5Mbps due to distance from the CO, at least it was when I cancelled, but it's sold as up to 10Mbps. There is no fibre but I had one sales person tell me I would get 100Mbps Fibe. Meanwhile, Rogers consistently delivers 10% over their advertised speeds and has gigabit internet available.
 
#84 ·
^^^^
You may recall a test CBC Marketplace did a few years back, comparing bandwidth from the different companies. Bell came in a distant last and was unable to complete part of the test. Rogers and Telus, IIRC, were best.

Here are results from some tests I ran yesterday. I have a 75/10 package from Rogers.
Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
Xfinity Speed Test
The first one is IPv4 and the 2nd is IPv6.
 
#85 ·
Those are decent speeds JamesK - both tests seem consistent and similar. I ran an Xfinity Speed Test just now:Xfinity Speed Test

I've been pleased with Rogers. Often I get speeds greater than that. I never had them as a carrier before but so far they are good.

What I do not understand is how Bell can get away with advertising speeds that they just do not deliver? How is that legal? Sure they put a disclaimer of "UP TO", but when the speed you are supposed to get is 1 Gbps and you are only getting 130 Mbps, isn't that fraudulent? I don't think anyone would complain if they were paying for 1 Gbps and were getting 900 Mbps. When the gap between what you are supposed to be getting and what you are actually getting is that dramatic this seems more like a ploy to lure people in and then rip them off. Bait and switch. Bell has been in several segments of CBC's Marketplace over the years. Whenever I see them on Marketplace I always assume they are going to pull up their socks and stop deceiving their customers, but no they just continue. Perhaps they have so many loyal customers that will stay with them come hell or high waters that they just don't care if 10 million people don't like them. That's the only thing that makes sense.

In regards to technical support, I asked the lady where she was located and she said the Philippines. I asked her if they have Bell in their homes and she said no. The people working in technical support actually do not have Bell equipment in their homes so they are completely blind when it comes to how it all really works. They are thousands of miles away overseas. It's terrible service. The lady was nice - very nice, but she was not helpful. I'd rather have someone cranky on the phone who was helpful and got results. It's shocking that there are not tons of class action lawsuits against Bell with this sort of thing going on.
 
#87 ·
I asked her if they have Bell in their homes and she said no. The people working in technical support actually do not have Bell equipment in their homes so they are completely blind when it comes to how it all really works.
I was recently talking to someone who works for Bell, but gets her Internet from Rogers. She prefers them to Bell.

In my work, I have customers on both Bell & Rogers. I've never even had to call Rogers about a problem. There was one occasion on Bell, when I was trying to set up a router on an ADSL line, but couldn't get it going. I called support and they refused to do anything if I didn't click on the start button. Well, routers don't have one. I then asked for 2nd level support. They refused and hung up. I was able to get support by calling the French line. Those people are located in Canada and can usually speak English.
 
#89 ·
I’ve got my router defined for both IPv4 and IPv6. I have 2 IP addresses as a result. The speed test chose to use the v4 address. It may only use v6 if that’s all you’ve got defined. I’m not sure about this one. I cannot turn v4 off because I have some remote VoIP phones that connect to my house and the network on the far end is older and only supports v4.
 
#90 ·
^^^^
You select which test you want to run. Also, you should have a lot more than just one IPv6 address. You should have one consistent one that doesn't change and up to 7 "privacy" addresses and get a new one every day.
 
#91 ·
My network has both V6 and V4. Automatically, my router defaults to both and Rogers offers V6 and V4 to everyone now I think.
Locally, My NAS and my DVD player use V4 only. My older iPad does both but really is only happy with V4 but the new one does V6.
Both iPhones do V6. All the computers default to V6 if the website offers both.

I use Xfinity speed test on my Rogers 100 access and generally see around 135-140 down and 11 up.

On my street Bell has old twisted pair and we are two streets away from their fibre box. They offer 'up to' 50 Mbps internet plus tv. I don't believe it. My neighbours claim the tv is good but they rarely use the internet and certainly don't play fast online games!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
#92 ·
The average city block is about 0.1km but individual blocks could longer. Even at double the average, the distance would be 0.4km, at which ADSL2 and VDSL still maintain their full speed. Speeds for both start to roll off at about 1km.

At 0.2km, even with slightly deteriorated lines, full ADSL speed should be possible. Don't know what you mean by "old twisted pair" but direct burial cables are designed to last 50 years. Any cable buried in the last 20 years should still be in good condition. The main issue would be physical damage.
 
#94 ·
Bell boosts Fibe Internet top speed to an industry-leading 1.5 Gigabits per second

Canada's fastest Internet just got better with Bell's announcement today of an increase in Fibe Internet access speeds to 1.5 Gigabits per second (Gbps), the fastest access speed to the home available in Canada.

Unlimited Fibe 1.5 Gbps service is now available in Ontario with rollouts to Québec, the Atlantic provinces and Manitoba to follow. Delivered over Bell's fibre to the premises (FTTP) network and leveraging the powerful Home Hub 3000 modem/router already used by most Bell FTTP customers, the enhanced Internet service offers download speeds of up to 1.5 Gbps and uploads of up to 940 Megabits per second (Mbps).

For full pricing and service details, please visit Bell.ca.

Full press release
 
#95 ·
90% of people are still using Cat5 E cables witch bells themselves installs.
80% of people are using Switch boxes witch only supports up to 1gbit ( unless you spend 400$ on 10gbit switch)

so without changing all cables to cat 6 and finding a cheap switch box that supports 10gbit it's not going to work.

upload is still at 940 mb/sec if your lucky with multiple threads you might get half that speeds.

still way behind reality, bell claims people wants download speed , well today it's all about streaming and streaming remotely needs upload, at this point you have a hard time to stream 4k out of your home because there upload speeds is pure fake.
 
#96 ·
Now that I rethink this, it may be possible to use the full 1.5Gbps download. If the router is capable of more than 1Gbps internally, the wifi and ethernet ports may be able to handle up to 1Gbps each (or more for the wifi) for a total of well over 1.5Gbps. We would have to see an internal diagram to know if this is possible. Individual devices are unlikely to achieve more than 1Gbps but the total for all devices could add up to more.
 
#97 ·
Info for Gigabit Fibe 1.5 www.bell.ca/Bell_Internet/Products/Fibe-Internet-Gigabit15-FTTH

New customers pay only $84.95/mo. Guaranteed savings of $25/mo. off the regular price for 6 months.
Current regular price of $109.95/mo.

Both prices are $10/month more than 1 Gigabit.
Today, the average maximum speed most wireless devices can enjoy is between 150 and 300 Mbps. With Gigabit Fibe 1.5, you’ll ensure more of your devices can perform at their best, at the same time.
  • Assuming optimal network conditions. The combination of a wired connection and at least one wireless connection, or multiple wireless connections, is required to obtain total speeds of up to 1.5 Gbps with Gigabit Fibe 1.5.
  • Assuming optimal network conditions. Maximum speeds can only be obtained on a wired connection.
 
#98 ·
That's quite competitive on price. Rogers is charging $152.99/mo for 1Gbps Download / 30Mbps Upload (including modem rental.) Bell's Home Hub 3000 appears to be better than Rogers modem as well. The only catch is that, despite rebuilding parts of the GTA twice in recent years, Bell doesn't have fiber here so we're still stuck at 5Mbps DSL. I guess only the chosen few get 1.5Gb Fibe.
 
#99 ·
Can Bell Really Deliver 1Gbbps +? Rogers Did.

I'm a home network junkie. I work in IT. I live in Ottawa. And when the Bell technicians came through my hedges hanging a spool of fibre optic cable last May, I felt like the new Internet Xs was here and signed up immediately.

I've had the service since August - and was optimistic about seeing an improvement over my 1Gbps service from Rogers. Bell is literally beaming photons directly into my router. Talk about future proof. 1.5Gbps downloads, and 940mbps uploads? Let's go!

Here's the thing , Bell delivers - but in the wrong direction! After weeks of testing, I conclude that Bell hits 90% of upload speed - but download speeds? Wildly inconsistent and poor. With Rogers, I would routinely get great download speed - usually 800mbps and 30mbps upload. With Bell? Average 400mbps, but a whopping 900mbps upload.

After literally five hours on the phone with Bell support, two modem swaps, two firmware flashes, five escalations, and no difference - I thought to seek advice: IS ANYONE GETTING WHAT BELL ADVERTISES? They MUST have upstream or peering network congestion. If that's the case, I want to know if it is normal? Because if that's the case, I'll go back to Rogers.

Check my proof: https://imgur.com/a/F0at7iF

I'm frustrated. Is this normal for Bell?
 
#100 ·
It could also be congestion at the speed test server as well as congestion anywhere between, including the LAN.

If I were a real speed junky I would be using a dual WAN load balancing router and subscribe to both Rogers and Bell gigabit internet. That's a potential 2.5Gbps down and 970Mbps up. It also protects against outages on either, but not both, services.
 
#103 ·
I'll get 900+mbps UPLOAD but only 200Mbpsu DOWNLOAD,
Congestion can happen in just one direction and, with most consumer usage patterns, is more likely on upload with servers and download with clients. I'm not saying this is the case but it's possible. In my opinion, the most likely cause is with Bell's infrastructure but they probably won't admit that or be able to provide a quick fix. It would require a major network upgrade on their part.
 
#104 · (Edited by Moderator)
Bell Gigabit Internet

Hey Everyone,

I recently got Bell's gigabit internet installed and am happy with the service however I was baffled when I did a speedtest through ethernet to find out I was getting 120 mbps down and 350 mbps up. I know that I won't get the full speed but shouldnt I get better speeds through ethernet? With wifi, I get anywhere between 30 - 60 mbps down.... I'm planning on getting a mesh network, do you think this will improve wifi speeds? When I do Bell's speed test its telling me Im getting 1.12 gb to the modem and 944 mbps up to the modem so where is the bottleneck happening? Thanks for any help.
 
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