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Pulling Teeth With Telus
Since I was already at Telus' web-site, I decided to try their online Customer Service chat. The 'Internet 50' service that I was interested in upgrading to advertised upload speeds of "up to 10Mbps". I explained to Donald, the Customer Service rep, that I was concerned about that "up to" and wanted to know whether there was a guaranteed minimum. He quickly copy-pasted the same information that was on the web-site, telling me that I would get download speeds between 20Mbps and 50Mbps. I repeated that it was the upload speed which concerned me, particularly since my existing service with them only ever achieved at best half the advertised maximum. He responded to that by copy-pasting the "up to 10Mbps" information from the web-site. I explained yet again that it was the minimum speed that I was concerned about. Was it possible that I would upgrade my service and still end up with the same shitty 0.5Mbps that I already had? After a long pause he told me that he'd have to transfer me to Technical Support.
After about a five minute wait I got Rina from Technical Support who told me that she'd be happy to help me investigate why my internet connection was slow. I explained to her that I was more interested in finding out what the guaranteed minimum upload speed was for the 'Internet 50' service. Rina was much more efficient than Donald: she copy-pasted all of the speed information from the web-site at once, rather than doling it out a piece at a time. I pointed out to her that nowhere did it say what the minimum upload speed was. She reassured me that it would be "much faster" than my existing speed. When I asked how much faster she went away for a while then finally came back with the information that average upload speeds on the service varied between 5.12Mbps and 10Mbps. Not exactly what I was looking for, but closer. I asked if I could get 5.12Mbps guaranteed in writing as the minimum upload speed I'd get on the service, but of course she said no.
Ah well, what are ya gonna do? I decided to take the dive and get the upgrade anyway but it turned out that the 'Internet 50' service wasn't even available in my area. I had to settle instead for the 'Internet 25' service with upload speeds "up to 2.5Mbps".
I wonder how fast it will really be.
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"Many factors determine your download speed at any given time including how many of your neighbors are using the internet at that time."
"If I upgrade to the more expensive service, will I get higher speeds for a given set of circumstances?"
"We cannot guarantee that your service will improve because there are many factors that determine the actual speeds."
"You aren't going to give me any real information are you?"
"No."
I had this same conversation with AT&T for their internet services. Except that they weren't going to blame my neighbors for their shitty service. And in all cases, upload speed is crappy.
Several years (15?) ago, I had DSL business class ($65) that included 5 IP addresses. It was symmetrical but a bit slow for business -- it would not have handled SIP in a small office. That isn't even offered anymore by our local provider.
You are in the sticks. I would expect service to you would be less than thrilling. I'm in the 7th or 8th biggest city in the US. 'Tis crap, I say. :)
BTW, did you hear Robin Williams take on Canada? A large country with really nice poeple, "it's like Canada is the nice apartment over a meth lab."
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