10 years ago, Cogeco cable was the absolute go-to ISP for nerds. Even mid-tier service gave you 3 routable IP’s, crazy speeds (including upstream), and no blocked ports – providing freedom to manage your own DNS, mail and HTTP servers.
Well, times change, as they say, but Cogeco didn’t. They fell behind in the speed game with their DSL competitors and failed to increase data caps as the Internet moved to rich content and Video On Demand services. Even their renowned tech service degraded into automated systems and long queues. It reminded me of that famous vignette of the Bluenose being passed by a steamship… the once proud master of the fleet overtaken by newer technology.
Whether spurred by a mass exodus of customers, or maybe by some latent feeling of pride, spurred indeed they have been, and Cogeco have flown full sail to try and get back in the ISP race.
To try and regain their Internet crown (and probably a host of lost customers), Cogeco has finally notched their outbound speed up to 10Mbps, in line with DSL. Trying to use cloud services (Dropbox, SkyDrive, etc) on a 1.5 Mbps line was brutal, and even yours truly considered hopping back into bed with that psycho ex named Bell just for the access to 10Mpbs upload.
Real-life speeds on the $85/mo Ultimate 120 come very close to the advertised 120Mbps.
In addition to the upload bump, the languishing ISP also pushed download speeds substantially, offering up to 120Mbps downstream on the top-tier package. Transfer limits remained the same, and with no unlimited data plan, that was the bitter to the throughput’s sweet.
We’ve tested the real-world speeds of Cogeco’s new 120Mbps offering, and it pretty much delivers consistently on the promised speeds. Upgrading was a snap, with a quick modem swap at the retail store, then a call to the 24/7 tech support to register the modem (though I don’t know why that couldn’t have been handled at retail). Regardless, we were up and running on the new service literally minutes after swapping in the new device.
Let’s have a look at the playing filed from the T1 vendors today. All prices listed are for unbundled services, real-life cost as of June 1, 2014 before any short-term promotional discounts:
Counting the minutes here until a takedown notice from Bell comes in…
Bell’s Fibe 175 looks really interesting, especially for home business customers running services from the cloud, but as far as I can tell, it’s just not available anywhere in the real world. Maybe some new condos in Toronto are being wired for this service, but not one of my clients anywhere in the GTA could get access to this plan, even in new neighbourhoods/buidings. I did have one chap tell me he was on this plan, but was unable to verify on-site, and when punching in his phone number, it said “unavailable”. I call shenanigans.
So for now, it looks like ol’ Cogeco has pulled their creaky bones back to the head of the pack. Even resellers like Teksavvy and Start.ca aren’t keeping up with the new cable services available, probably because of some CRTC regulation hobbling competition. At any rate, we’re giving the Cogeco 120 plan a strong ‘recommend’ for speed and reliability, with the caveat that you will pay through the nose for going over the 425GB transfer hard limit.