[katburglars]

would be curious to know if any tpia subs via roger's cable internet platform, ONTARIO wide, have experienced disruptions (due to maintenance - supposedly) on July 4th scheduled for 12AM - 6:00 AM slot? and whether this has been a recurring theme, lately?

 

[ExDilbert]

It's not unusual for Rogers to shut down parts of their system for maintenance. It's very common when they are upgrading or rebuilding networks and I've seen it happen daily for weeks or months.

 

[katburglars]

yeah i get that, was just curious why our TPIA guys stated rogers was doing an Ontario wide maintenance on the day in question, affecting TPIA customers, only? never contemplated that rogers would care doing that only for their competition?..weird, that

 

[JamesK]

Any maintenance affecting only 3rd party ISPs would have to be done in the head end, as there's nothing out on the cable that's unique to them. Perhaps they're getting ready for a change such as supporting IPv6 for those ISPs. AFAIK, companies like Teksavvy don't provide IPv6 via Rogers, though they do via ADSL. However, this is just speculation.

 

[katburglars]

well yeah thanks for replies- funny thing is our tpia (vmedia) didnt even know in advance and until a customer posted we started experiencing disruptions (5 total - anywhere between 2 minutes - 12 minutes) within an hour's time all the while and they reply saying this is maintenance and will affect all tpia's at little past midnight no less

as for ipv6 we inquired as of last 6 months and they replied they didnt foresee anything due to costs

its all weird and very easy to point to roger's whenever there are disruptions/outages (especially when there is no advance notice as there sometimes are from times when roger's announce them to tpia's) otherwise the customer is never the wiser

all becoming very frustrating and too frequent for our taste but if thats the world of tpia's ? so be it..

edit; difficult part is judging which of those tpia s offer more stable connections..its hard to jump ship if they are all in the same boat - we imagine we are not alone with these frustrations? you get what we pay for i guess...

 

[JamesK]

as for ipv6 we inquired as of last 6 months and they replied they didnt foresee anything due to costs

What costs? They'd have to configure their routers to handle it and that's about it. Any DOCSIS 3 modem should be capable of IPv6 and they've been around for years.

its all weird and very easy to point to roger's whenever there are disruptions/outages

That's often the case when 3rd parties are involved. One company points to the other, who then points back. Working in the telecom field, that's something I've certainly come across.

 

[ExDilbert]

It looks like Rogers is doing a TPIA related change or upgrade system wide. I found TPIA service on Rogers network to be very unreliable and frustrating. But then Rogers response times, even with its own customers, seems to be slow. Adding a TPIA just makes it worse. The issue I had with a TPIA provider lasted months and was never fixed. This type of situation is just one more reason why all ISPs and infrastructure owners should operate at arms length and data infrastructure should be treated as a utility. That way all ISPs would be TPIAs and infrastructure owners would have no conflict of interest.

IPv6 needs to be mandated for all ISPs and data infrastructure providers at the wholesale level. Limiting TPIAs to IPv4 placed an artificial cap on the number of IP addresses they own and limits the number of customers they can support and the services they can provide.

 

[katburglars]

yeah, problem is, no one knows what is really going on..customers are in the dark as to what these supposed upgrades are for yet they are happening way to frequent and they (tpia) dont communicate to their customer base what we can expect, in future..this to me is what is the frustrating part b/c we don't know if we can rely on stability from one tpia to another which makes it that much harder to decide to jump ship or not, not to mention the cost and the rising costs?

i mean it seams to get worse in time rather than better..like a vicious "competition" circle, if that makes any sense?

 

[ExDilbert]

From a business viewpoint, it makes sense that Rogers would maintain their own ISP customers' service better than that of TPIAs. I'm on Rogers and have seen no disruptions recently. (Fingers are crossed.) The reason I ended up on Rogers is because of the unreliable service from a TPIA and a customer win back promo. When I switched back to Rogers, all the reliability issues magically disappeared. Imagine that? :^/

 

[katburglars]

yeah thats good for you, indeed...the only reason im with a tpia is the decent cost and having a connection via cable and happens to be rogers (which i always detested) and jumping ship with an incumbent would be too cost prohibitive for us

streaming is how we get our tv fix - just hope these games of supposed upgrades gets sorted towards more stability, b/c there might be a day we consider jumping ship and try another tpia, NOT "start" (been there done that) but the hardware changes and overlap re; provisioning makes that much harder to decide on

 

[ExDilbert]

Have you checked Rogers pricing recently? The really low end packages are not available but for 75Mb plans and up they are comparable. Once modem costs are factored in, they are almost the same. Rogers sometimes offers win back and retention discounts as well. After switching to a 75Mb plan, I wouldn't want to go back to a slower plan. The improvement was quite noticeable.

 

[JamesK]

The improvement was quite noticeable.

And you get IPv6.

 

[bev fan]

well yeah thanks for replies- funny thing is our tpia (vmedia) didnt even know in advance and until a customer posted we started experiencing disruptions (5 total - anywhere between 2 minutes - 12 minutes) within an hour's time all the while and they reply saying this is maintenance and will affect all tpia's at little past midnight no less

I have been with few TPIA and in my opinion Vmedia is the worst of all of them. Not only their service is unreliable but they would lie, always blame Rogers or Bell and charge for every little thing even for missing or damaged boxes when returning the equipment.
Vmedia posts fake google reviews as well by posting dozens of 5 star reviews every couple of months or so, all in one day just to keep the rating above 4 star. Things like this would never make me consider Vmedia again.

I think that Vmedia is the only service provider that throttles their internet, especially in the evenings when customers use it the most.

 

[ExDilbert]

I think that Vmedia is the only service provider that throttles their internet, especially in the evenings when customers use it the most.

It's more likely that VMedia hasn't purchased enough bandwidth to handle peak loads. Even though data is not that expensive, high speed connections to Rogers network and the internet are fairly expensive to set up and must be paid for whether capacity is fully used or not. Not purchasing enough capacity shortchanges customers and hurts the reputation of the company. It's a shortsighted cost saving. I doubt VMedia will be around in the long term.

 

[katburglars]

Have you checked Rogers pricing recently? The really low end packages are not available but for 75Mb plans and up they are comparable. Once modem costs are factored in, they are almost the same. Rogers sometimes offers win back and retention discounts as well. After switching to a 75Mb plan, I wouldn't want to go back to a slower plan. The improvement was quite noticeable.

Not sure I would agree.. while vmedia might do stuff my plan inc tax totals little over 60$ on a 35/5 plan if i were to jump to their 75/10 unlimited plan are only a few bucks more -holding back on the upgrade to the 75 plan but soon

...havent seen anything like those prices with rogers on their site but did notice a 150 plan unlimited data for like 85.00 maybe that works for some but for me the price comes to close to 100$ taxes in

- I stream a whole bunch otherwise im a lightweight avg 100-150 gig of data /month and other than those outages/interruptions i can live with my speed - not an issue at my end on that score..we all have our beefs with these companies and I NEVER subbed with rogers directly so wouldnt qualify for any price breaks - besides, I can't stand cable companies as a whole for many other reasons, less so with rogers now I have read (in some small part) their online support...its atrocious, the little i have read

with vmedia they at least work with you when something goes awry , price cuts, extra tv time etc. without hesitation..well, i have seen worse let's just say..i dont like that vm dont have 24/7 support but i have learned to accept it...do they lie? sure but is rogers an honest bunch? well...

and dont get me started with contracts. hate them...

edit; i will say this ...vmedia's iptv platform sucks big time, hardware, tv line-up, pvr issues..they got ddos alot (not sure if they still get hit) NO way would i ever recommend that stuff and yeah much more interruptions and of course support sucks even more on that end of their business, imho

 

[ExDilbert]

For someone who never subscribed to Rogers you sure have a lot of opinions about them. As for VMedia, I've never heard anyone else say anything good about them.

I NEVER subbed with rogers directly so wouldnt qualify for any price breaks

Why not? Have you tried giving them a call and asking them to price match?