Rogers Internet Craps Out

Having recently spent the better part of an hour talking to Rogers about the dismal internet speed I have been recently getting via my Rogers Hub and after much further testing on top of my own documented speed and throughput testing over the last week or so, I have decided to post the latest numbers here on my blog. I would love to send these numbers to their customer service and engineering dept but as is the norm with such services there is no email link or (so far as I can see) a way of sending them such info. I was told Sunday evening that the complaint would be 'escalated' to the engineering dept and recognize that perhaps on the long weekend that such staff were probably reduced but having gone from a measured 300k at times on Sunday to less than 100k at times on Monday I am now getting a little pissed off. To be fair I did briefly get above 1Mbs around 7am but it quickly went down the tubes as the morning went on. Its not like this is a one time problem, my connection speed goes from a high of around 1Mbs to no connection at a drop of the hat with an average connection speed of around 2-300Kbs. This naturally is heaven compared with my previous 33kbs dial up but at 3 or 4 times the cost AND a 3Mb limit before premiums kick in I expect it to WORK not crap out several times a week!


All that said here are the numbers from the Internet Speed Test at around noon Monday 4th August.

Below are a ping test and route trace to the Rogers site which seems to indicate that the problem is entirely within their network which is probably unable to deal with the weekend volume. That is not a valid excuse for these kind of numbers in my view

Click images to enlarge

And yes, I can here you city types snickering, internet connections are not the strong point for rural living, if you are lucky you can perhaps hook up to a wireless provider that does not rip you off with high prices and low speed and volume limits but many of us have two choices – Cell hookup via a hub or even more pricey satellite hookup also with speed and volume limits. When I see those ad's on TV talking of streaming video or re-watching a good documentary I can but say “I wish”, there is little doubt that internet is available to most Canadians and the network is expanding to more remote areas, but AFORDABLE high speed internet without crippling limits is another matter.


Meanwhile I'm stuck with Rogers, but at least now I can tell the 'customer service' guy to go to my blog and see the evidence of their crappy system!

UPDATE
Its now two weeks since my original complaint to Rogers and needless to say that 'escalated'  thing did NOTHING, no call back from 'engineering' as requested and once again this weekend we have connection speeds of less than 200k and ping values of  up to 3,000 ms at times. The satellite alternative is looking better all the time!