ISP Recommendations for Edmonton, Alberta?

[WasabiSquirrel]

I'm preparing to move to Edmonton at the end of the month, and am looking for recommendations for an ISP. While living in Ottawa I've been with TekSavvy, and while I tried to set up TekSavvy in Edmonton, after several hours on the phone, my order was rejected because apparently there are no available ports in my future building. Very irritating!

Since I'm back to square one, I thought I'd check in with you fine folks in case you have any recommendations for a good ISP serving Edmonton. I looked at the rates for Bell, Telus, and Shaw, and frankly all of them look awful - guess I've been spoiled with TekSavvy. I'm a gamer and I'm looking for a high (200+gb/mo) or unlimited bandwidth ideally.

Any thoughts or recommendations are appreciated!

PS Apologies if this is in the wrong forum, or if this question has already been answered - I searched the forum, but didn't come up with anything recent and relevant.

[bionicbadger]

shaw is usually better than telus, but see what they offer you sometimes there is a good deal from one or the other.

[zod]

I used to live in downtown Edmonton. I did quite well on Telus.

At the time they posted overage fees on their website but didn't actually charge them. I was able to get on telus' 25mbps turbo plan. It was pretty good. In essence its unlimited because they don't enforce the overage.

I moved out to the west coast and currently use shaw. I'm bundled now so I think my bb50 its about 59/month. with 400gb (+50gb for the triple play bundle which qualified me for shaw friends). Shaw is suppose to introduce some kind of system that would bump me up to the next package (maybe costing $10-$20 more a month if I exceed my limit). So far they haven't been able to implement it. Thus shaw has also been cap free for me for the year I've been on it.

I did use teksavvy in Edmonton once. As they just resell telus, I didn't see any point continuing to use them because telus was cheaper, didn't enforce overage, and offered higher speeds.

[stardustcross]

Grrrr, same issue with my apartment... no TekSavvy. I was really set on going thru them and getting their home phone as well too. :( Looks like that's the only option I have though unless you guys know of any other leads.

[WasabiSquirrel]

Grrrr, same issue with my apartment... no TekSavvy. I was really set on going thru them and getting their home phone as well too. :( Looks like that's the only option I have though unless you guys know of any other leads.

I ended up going with Telus and so far I have been very happy with the speed and quality of service. Hope it works out for you too!

[DavidY]

Check around to see what is available. I just moved to within 1.5 hours of Edmonton....my apartment has both Telus and Shaw. At my location, Telus is limited to 7.5 Mbps or less....no Optik TV either. Shaw is much higher...my $55 plan is good to 20 Mbps.

Dave

[Octavius]

I'm on Distributel (resells Shaw cable internet). No complaints so far.

[Wingding]

Thing to remember about Telus Optik, which is their best internet service, is you can only get it if you take their cable TV. If you're only doing internet you'll probably get stuck with Shaw.

[HandsomeRob]

My experience with Telus, 2004-2007.
$55/month.
Advertise 25 mbps, actually get around 15. Brief periods of epic slow downs.
Approx one service interruption every three months.

My experience with Shaw, 2008-Today.
$60/month. (Since gone up)
Advertise broadband 50, consistently around 43 mbps. No slowdowns.
Had one service interruption in 4 1/2 years.

I lived in a crappy Telus area where they were still laying fibre lines and Shaw wasn't allowed in by local government. But still, I could never recommend Telus to anybody. Shaw is expensive, but you get what you pay for and the service is great.

[rf134a]

Shaw has revamped their pricing to match distributel. Shaw is the most consistent for the price. The "highspeed 25" for $60/month with 20mb/s download and 2.5mb/s upload is probably the best value. This package seems to be new. The 512kb/s upload really sucks when uploading files to the cloud or even to Costco photo for printing.

The great thing about shaw is that all their techs are sub-contracted and are very professional and friendly. I've never dealt with a bad tech.

[HandsomeRob]

Shaw has revamped their pricing to match distributel. Shaw is the most consistent for the price. The "highspeed 25" for $60/month with 20mb/s download and 2.5mb/s upload is probably the best value. This package seems to be new. The 512kb/s upload really sucks when uploading files to the cloud or even to Costco photo for printing.

The great thing about shaw is that all their techs are sub-contracted and are very professional and friendly. I've never dealt with a bad tech.

Call customer service, wait time is usually 10 minutes or so. This was a problem last year, 30 minutes+ but they appear to have solved it.

Call centre is in Canada, people speak english, know more about what they're doing than most supervisors in Microsoft's India call centres.

Call Telus and call Manilla, no experience with it but Shaw already wins with a domestic product.