Xplornet High Speed Satellite Service

[madsurfer]

hi there--my system has now been down for 6 days, and after service restored, am getting approx 10-25% of subscribed service. called explorenet, and was told they no longer refund or compensate for poor service. I mentioned that if it were within my power, i would contact every canadian and issue a warning of poor company policies and warn that under no circumstances should any contract be signed with this company. I was told i was abusive and no further calls from me would be accepted--lol. You gotta laugh, as i had been with Linda and Nora on the phone. I just feel we as consumers really MUST do something, no matter how small, to stop this type of business practice. Any ideas would be read with great interest, and without fear. Thank you for your response to my earlier post. Bill

[macspectrum]

I hear ya brother !
I think the only thing that will work is to bring the issue of the lack of high speed internet (and I mean effective high speed, not just in name only) access to our local politicians and make it an election issue.

I think Bell received millions in tax credits to provide internet access to a large majority of the country and instead BCE (former owner of both Bell and Telesat) created this poor solution called Anikast, now operated by Xplornet, and somehow convinced Ottawa that this fulfilled their mandate.

We need proper DSL high speed service in the form of cable or ADSL via phone lines.

These other solutions just don't work correctly and in today's day and age the internet, and high speed access to it, is becoming increasingly necessary to function in today's economy.

[tvman]

i agree completely, unless the governments want every single person living in a city something needs to change, this satellite internet is a joke.

[Hurricane]

Personally, I don't want my tax dollars being used as grant money to private companies in order to provide high-speed internet.

I'm not condoning Barrett's business practices but I don;t consider internet access an essential service.

Heat, power, clean water, telephone...yes. Internet...no.

I really do feel bad especially for people who have seen their service degrade over the last couple years/months. Anyone jumping on board now though should have a pretty good idea what they are getting into if they do their research up front.

[Onyx45]

If this country wants to be an economic force in the world, and if we want to give our kids a decent education, in this day and age, internet access is key. It is infrastructure, just as is our telephone service. Is it essential to sustain human life? No, of course not. Nor is telephone service. But would we be without telephone service? I think not.

Schools now have students doing research online. Health care facilities require internet access for patient information and services. Government provides services and information online now.

Many people conduct business online, so internet access is their economic life blood, their source of income, their bread and butter so to speak.

Personally, for my family, internet access affects our income by thousands of dollars because up to date market information is essential to our farm business when we make buying and selling decisions.

I don't expect our government to subsidize private companies in order to provide internet access. What I DO expect is some standardization and regulation in order to ensure fair and reliable access and fair and honest business practices. I think Xplornet is skating on pretty thin ice in that arena, and perhaps other ISP's may be as well, although I don't know that with any degree of certainty. I do think that people who feel they are being ripped off should file a complaint with the CRTC and with some sort of consumer advocacy agency...I'm not familiar with any of the names of specific organizations, but if I were going to act on this I would certainly be finding out and writing letters.

Here is a link to an interesting CTV news article:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...21?hub=SciTech

[tvman]

well, being a hard working canadian i don't really like seeing my tax dollars flying out the window to welfare bums but i have no choice, making real highspeed internet available to tax paying canadians seems only fair to me.

[macspectrum]

from the article link posted above;

"We're living in an age now where increasingly we are getting a lot of our internet service through wireless solutions, and in wireless solutions, you don't have the same problems."

If satellite qualifies as "wireless," then the above statement is laughable.

[Anteater]

Originally Posted by madsurfer

hi there--my system has now been down for 6 days, and after service restored, am getting approx 10-25% of subscribed service. called explorenet, and was told they no longer refund or compensate for poor service. I mentioned that if it were within my power, i would contact every canadian and issue a warning of poor company policies and warn that under no circumstances should any contract be signed with this company. I was told i was abusive and no further calls from me would be accepted--lol. You gotta laugh, as i had been with Linda and Nora on the phone. I just feel we as consumers really MUST do something, no matter how small, to stop this type of business practice. Any ideas would be read with great interest, and without fear. Thank you for your response to my earlier post. Bill

Congratulations, you've destroyed every thought in my head of switching to Xplornet.

[macspectrum]

I don't expect our government to subsidize private companies in order to provide internet access.

but the gov't already did subsidize private companies, in the form of millions of dollars in tax credits to Bell to provide DSL service, in non-serviced areas

the problem was lack of oversight by the gov't in how these tax credits were spent

i suspect they went towards bell's bottom line instead of providing DSL service to as many people as possible

seems that Bell has my local politicians in their pocket as both my MP and my MPP recite the mantra of ; "market forces" when I ask their office about high speed service in my riding

[madsurfer]

Thinking of signing with Explorenet??? Check this out first-PLEASE!!!http://www.dslreports.com/comments/2584?filter=neg Better yet, just punch in Explorenet reviews in your search engine, you'll be glad you did!

[Sirius Guy]

I keep installing and keep telling people not to tolerate any outages and still get no phone calls. Anytime I ask current customer's how they like it they , I get nothing but a positive response...I guess I am the only guy who knows how to install this stuff properly...

[TKG26]

Here is my story, been with xplornet wireless(not sat) for almost 2 years, I went with the free isntall 3 year contract....they mounted the antena on a dish mount and said i had a good signal. For the first year my 1.5meg service was sweet, i randomly tested my service and was always getting 1 to even 2meg of service. Life was good.................................

This fall they hit my area kemptville hard with advertisements ,free install,free comera ect ect, i called 3 times about my speed issues, the call center was friendly but useless and sent out service calls 2 times to the original installing company who never called to come out and check things out..... The 3rd time they sent out an order to someone new... 45minutes away even though they had a dealer 10minutes from my house.. yadayda...what ever... Ok finally someone shows up, he looks up and says i need an 25ft tower... "Ok fine throw it up and bill xplornet its there problem not mine".... "Sorry we cant do that." So i get on the phone and rip through level one then two and then finally to a manager, even though the service was flawless for a full year or more with there "profesionally" installed rental gear and now it has been determined that it is or was installed to low they want me to foot the $600 bill to correct the problem, i refused, they offered to deam my service unservisalbe and let me out of my contract(great retention team!! ???) Or change to satalite. Well im getting 300k up and down now for 29$ im not sure why i would pay more to get the same, regardless they wanted to charge to install that too....

So if i want my speed back im out $600 so i dropped my 40$ plan to 29$ and im living with my 200-300kbs service till i get fed up, but since i gotta pay out of pocket ill be shopping ripnet and storm first before giving xplornet a dime..

What really pisses me off is that when i asked "what happens in a year if again i need to raise the tower due to "noise" who pays for that?" They said well they woudl deal with that on a case by case basis, not saying they would or would not cover the costs... and considering how they delt with my issue this time i would not expect any help in the future...

BELL!! ROGERS!!! COGECO!! PLEASE come to my house and run a HARD WIRE to the interet please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hudson3709]

So you want a company to install a $600 tower for a $30 a month service and are surprised they won't do it? There is not one company that would do that for you. Like SirusGuy I want to keep everyone informed on the truth. I have 250 customers on KA. There are certainly issues - I will not argue that point. The speeds need to be increased dramatically. On the $55 pack you cannot do things such as YouTube or facebook etc because it cannot handle video. The Fair Access policy is quite bad as you never know when it kicks in.

That said the technology is great, they just need some more satellite space (should have early this year according to some sources).

One tip to potential customers - this is not in competition with DSL, Cable, or even wireless. It in unfair to compare it to such. If you can get any of those than please do, you will be much happier with the higher speeds. This is for unserved areas with only dial-up available.

So please get your facts before listening to a bunch of angry people misusing the service. This service is not for video, or downloading music, it is for surfing and emailing, period.

Now let the flame wars begin against me, I won't be reading the replies anyway.

[Hurricane]

More capacity should be available this year once the service gets up and running on the Ka payload on Anik F3. But that will likely be for new subs only, and only in areas wheres the beams are currently full.

Obviously the guys who are doing the wireless installs/site surveys only have general guidelines as to what the required height it and have no understanding of fresnel zones for LOS links. They wanted $300 to put a 20 ft extension on the top of my existing TV tower (~30ft). To me it isn't worth it just for internet.

[TKG26]

why bother posting then?


when yoi are sold a service on a 3 year contract, and professionals do the work and don't charge extra becuase its not needed then they are responsible to keep it working. if a 600$ tower was Needed from day one i would have then considered ripnet or storm, but since they where moving into the area and offering free install i choose them not the others... if everyone was quoting 600$ then sure at the time i signed up i would have paid the bill.... but it seems to me thst if things worked at 100% for over a year on there install, and the only changes are that they have 300 new customers on the 2 central towers that just perhaps they are responsible for there origiinal customers service..

of i install a product incorectly or bordEr line correct, i go back and fix the issue for free...

when they installed the geat they never said it works ok,they said great they did not suggest a tower to get it better or to ensure quality service down t r road.... and so i took there word on it.... and for a year pkus it was great