# Cogeco vs. Sympatico



## loughan (Dec 22, 2003)

Does anyone currently use Cogeco? If so so, how is your experience? I'm thinking of casting off "Ma Bell', but before I do I want to make sure I can get decent service elsewhere. Any info would be greatly appreciated.


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## chy (Feb 3, 2002)

Standard speed for Cogeco is 5M/640k ... ultra is 10M/1M -- no contest at all against DSL. I've had a few minor outages over the past few years but overall, Cogeco has been awesome.


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## m_gear (Jul 12, 2004)

Same here, I've been with Cogeco for about 6 months now, and the service has been outstanding. I have to say tho, the worst thing that's ever happened to me is when I received a bill for almost 200$, but by mistake they had charged me for "not returning a modem" that was obviously still in use. (EDIT: I must make a note, this charge was erroneous, and not incurred by my actions either)

Compared with sympatico, I had huge speed problems on their network (even the mighty bittorrent never saw more than ~100 k/s), they use PPPoE (do you really want to slap some wrapper around each and every packet your send? neither do i.) and the most horrible experience ever was when my service would click off, for no reason, repeatedly at 11:00 PM, every night, with no local way to restore it. The solution to this required many, MANY phone calls, blame-games, and waiting on hold, only to find out "bell had changed something on my line". Luckily for me the fix degraded my speed even more...

So, take your pick. =)


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## loughan (Dec 22, 2003)

Thanks greatly for the input. This will make the decision that much easier. I really hate paying Bell twicel! Once for the phone line and then again for internet. That's close to $90.00 just to be online.


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## WSpano (Jul 7, 2004)

Hey there, just to add a voice of dissention to the ranks. My Cogeco service in Dundas was ****e. Sometimes not even any faster than dial up. After complianing to them and them doing... (something) at their end it did get back up to a decent speed, (compareable to Rogers in the GTA). Your best bet if you know your neighbours is to ask them what they use. If they use cogeco and like it they'll tell you. 

Also a good idea to know how many people are on your pipe.


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## m_gear (Jul 12, 2004)

You know, It's entirely possible that you only get "good" internet access when you're close enough for them to crank out a strong signal to you.

Living at my old house, and having a downright pitiful Sympatico connection could be a factor of the house being in an old neighborhood. Now, we're not talking old as in fuses and those weird four-pronged phone connectors, but still old. The wiring in that house was ****e, and we overloaded it with 8 to 10 phones at a time, in addition to DSL, fax machines and an answering machine. You literally had to have a filter on every phone to enable DSL, if even one was missing, it killed the connection instantly. This was compounded by strange problems that I could never really point the source to, such as equipment suddenly overheating and shutting off, or people disappearing off the network, when they're still wired and the lights are all green. The only thing I can think of is noise over the power lines, or other electrical problems?

By contrast, I hooked up a DSL-lite service in a comparatively old apartment building (with, say, 2 phones and 1 answering machine), and we didn't even need filters. Granted you could hear a hiss on the voice section of the line, but it didn't impact performance. And it was the same with a friend of mine out in the country. They must have been on the very edge of DSL service, and I don't know all the details, but they had to buy a "more expensive modem" because the cheaper ones wouldn't pull a signal thru. However, they still had rock-solid service and a good speed. 

Cogeco, on the other hand, has moved with me from a ridiculously old apartment building (BUT with brand-spanking-new cable wiring. Getting WiFi thru the concrete walls of my old apartment was the biggest hurdle in that case...) in the downtown area to a small townhouse right on the fringe of Burlington, and it's still maintained the same amazing service. Only one of my friends has had troubles with Cogeco, and that was a long time ago, back when cable internet was still relatively new.

I say take WSpano's advice. I don't know where you live, or what sort of neighborhood, or the characteristics of your phone or cable lines. I'd beware of DSL in any large building (such as the huge house I used to live in), but I'm certain that cable suffers as well when many devices are hooked up to the lines, it's all subjective.


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## minnes (Aug 15, 2001)

My cogeco service in Hamilton was so bad for months , and after about a dozen complaints, I just gave up and switched to sympatico. Since then, I have never had a problem.
It really depends on where you live, I really wanted to have cable work, but it was just not happening for me.
So check it out for yourself.


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## ernestworthing (Jun 10, 2004)

Yep, with DSL, distance from the provider plays a big part in determining what sort of connection you get.

Distance limitations
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dsl3.htm


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