September 17, 2008
I’ve written twice before about the Toronto (and southern Ontario) ISP Wireless Nomad. Both of these postings were in 2006 when we first switched from Bell Sympatico to Wireless Nomad. In the two following years, we found that Wireless Nomad was totally fine as an internet service provider until the summer of this year, where we recieved such poor technical support and customer service that we had to switch ISPs.
We switched telcos from Rogers to Bell and in the process of doing this, lost internet connectivity. Because Wireless Nomad is a DSL provider, this wasn’t suprising. So, I tried calling the number that I had for technical support. No answer, so I left a message. Over the course of a week, I called daily and left messages. All with no response. I tried emailing. I emailed over the course of the same week. No response. Finally, I decided to visit the address I got in the 2006 documentation. When I went to the address located on King Street, I found that Wireless Nomad was no longer located there. I quickly jumped on the Internet and found out that their contact information has changed to be c/o the Linux Cafe.
At this point, after a week of no returned calls or contact on the part of Wireless Nomad, we decided that we needed to cancel our service. But how do you cancel the service of a co-op you can’t get in touch with? I emailed, left a phone message and mailed a letter to the Linux Cafe that stated that we wanted to cancel our service. We erased our credit card information from their on-line database. That has seemed to work. Interestingly, we still have their router and modem in our posession. I stated in my letter that I would be happy to return these items once they got in touch with me. I’m still waiting to hear from them.
November 11, 2006
I got a bottle of Coke Blak as a thank-you from Sony for hoaring some personal data at the Eaton Centre earlier this week. For those of you who aren’t in the know, Blak (c’s are so un-cool…oops…I mean un-ool) is Coke and Coffee. I mean, it’s a “carbonated fusion beverage.” And it sucks.
Listen to this marketing drivel:
“Coca-Cola Blak is a sophisticated, premium blend of Coca-Cola, natural flavors and coffee essence. The effervescence and rich flavor of Coca-Cola Blak provide the perfect pick-me-up for people looking for new ways to stay refreshed any time of the day or night.”
Here’s my take: a smaller bottle than regular coke, sweetened with aspartame (which, according to some, isn’t good for you), a crappy coffee-ish aftertaste and a premium price. If I want a coffee, I’ll have a coffee. If I want a carbonated cola beverage, I’ll get a cola.
January 11, 2006
Made the switch today from Sympatico to a local (Toronto) co-op called Wireless Nomad. All that I can say is (fifteen minutes later) so far, so good.
The story so far:
With Katie moving out and Heather moving in, it seemed like a perfect time to (at least) look into switching ISP. Katie and I had Sympatico for the past two years, and while I’ve never had a problem with Sympatico, there appears to be a move with all the “big” ISP towards what has been called the two-tiered internet: in a nut-shell, large ISPs (including Rogers and Shaw) have “throttled” bandwidth so that certain programs have little or no connectivity. I find that problematic, and I don’t want to be a Sympatico customer when they decide to follow suit. In my experience, the large Canadian ISPs have folllowed each others’ lead when it has come to capping bandwidth and increasing speeds (of course, with the exception of Sympatico-part of the reason why I was happy with ‘em) so I figure it’s a matter of time.
However, what I was really disappointed with was the cost per month to access Sympatico. We had signed up for “High Speed” and were paying ~$48.00 month, including tax. That works out to ~$576 a year: a chunk of change for a student. So, I decided that I wanted to at least look for an alternative ISP that would offer a similar connection speed, no bandwidth cap, no “throttling” of certain programs and, all for less money than I was currently paying.
Earlier in October, while surfing boingboing I read about a Toronto ISP that “encourages connection sharing“, which is a big no-no with Sympatico (and other ISPs too) since it effectivly means a reduction in subscribers. This ISP was (and still is) Wireless Nomad. So I checked out what they offered and their price, and I decided that this seemed like an excellent idea. Long story short: they installed the hardware today and Wireless Nomad is my new ISP.
I’m going to make a few more postings on this service as I know that friends are looking for alternatives to large ISPs and I’m the guinea pig.
