Focussed On The Future

I've started another series of YouTube videos which once again highlights just how slow my internet upload speeds are. With 1Mbps theoretical max and 0.5Mbps actual max (when the wind is blowing in the right direction) it took seven hours to upload the latest episode. So I decided to upgrade to something faster.

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.