I have a 3MB/s bridged ethernet DSL service from http://www.travel-net.com/. They are mostly a good company, with some minor connectivity issues. Specifically traffic to/from Rogers Cable can be slow, and they have not reconnected to http://www.ottix.net/ yet.

One of the partners of http://www.xelerance.com/ lives on the edge of town, and is lucky to have Rogers Cable. We have VPN tunnels, etc. and it would be nice if we could get more bandwidth between us. Our Oakville office now has a Cogeco cable as well as DSL, with the tunnels running over that connection, and it seems to work well. Trust the cable cable company to be connected to itself, right?

I abhore Rogers. I hate them. As soon as GSM phones get portable numbers (come ON CRTC. Get a clue on this. There is no competition in mobile phones until there is number portability.), then I leave Fido/Rogers. So, I’m not signing up for Rogers Cable. (We use Starchoice satellite TV).

I contacted cybersurf/3web, the Calgary company that purchased igs.net, cyberus.ca, and the customer list of istop.com. They have a way to offer cable internet service. This is partly because, I’m told, they have an investment from Sprint, who also invested in Rogers. Rogers has been in trouble with the CRTC for not permitting third parties to offer service over their wires. They have given lots of stupid pseudo-technical excuses, which the CRTC, in their ineptitude have accepted. Still, permitting 3web to sell service over their wires makes them appear more compliant.

I had an initial install date of May 9. A guy from Spectrum Cable arrived to install things at around 5:15pm. He soon realized that there was no cable to the house, no demark, and that Rogers had disconnected the cable back in 2001, up at the pole. He didn’t feel like putting his ladder up on my side of the fence, and didn’t feel like getting on the roof of my neighbour’s shed without their permission (they weren’t home), so he packed up and went.

I contacted 3web, arranged for another install date, got a letter from my neighbour giving permission to access the pole by climbing on the shed. The new install date was May 16. Nobody showed.

I contacted 3web again. Days passed. I tried phoning — their phone system was in a major loop. Can’t call them.

I noticed that my credit card had been billed already. A bit of a problem, given that I have no service yet.

I am now in email contact with “Shannon”, HD agent 1200, and she can’t seem to understand that I want to give them my money.