Internet in Rossland

Looking for some input or opinions on best internet service providers in Rossland. Would love to be with a small provider but at the end of the day what we need is reliable internet. We are moving up this week! Any information helps. 

Thanks :)

HI Litia,

We are with TekSavvy. Not well known up here, but they run their DSL over Telus lines. From my research the best price, and meets my needs perfectly. We are on the 6Mbps plan, we usually only stream movies to one device at a time. If your family will be watching on many devices at once, you might want to consider a higher Mbps plan.

https://teksavvy.com/en/residential/internet/dsl

Hope that helps.

Ben

The two main players are Shaw and Telus. You can research their rates quite easily. Big up front discounts when you sign up for a longer term. I used Teksavvy, a Telus reseller, for years and they were great but I could not get a speed faster than 5 mbps at my location (Telus limitation). About 16 months ago I switched to Lightspeed who are reselling Shaw and bumped my speed up to 75/7. They have been good as well but not quite up to the same level of tech support that Teksavvy provides. I wanted to take my phone to VOIP ($10.50 per month, free long distance in North America) and the cost of a dry loop for DSL was prohibitive. A few pros and cons:

For both Teksavvy and Lightspeed (Lightspeed.ca) you will have to buy your own modem with the cost depending on the speed especially for cable (Lightspeed). Not a big investment over the long term but a moderate up front cost.

For both Teksavvy and Lightspeed you will be second class customers to their respective networks. This means that if you have internet problems related to the lines or "last mile" equipment then you will be at the mercy of Telus or Shaw who will not give you priority. No matter how good the tech support is at the respective providers they can't actually do anything on the Telus or Shaw equipment. I have not found this to be a big issue but it has come up over the years. If it turns out that it is your problem and not theirs then Telus or Shaw won't hesitate to charge you for their time and you will not receive any goodwill. 

Teksavvy has an unlimited bandwidth option and all of Lightspeed's plans are unlimited. I believe this is a usually an extra charge for both Telus and Shaw although I have heard of both companies giving it to their "loyal customers" if you complain. Telus is notorious for giving you a better deal if you threaten to leave. I find it rather galling that they stick it to you as long as you don't complain. Telus offered to match Teksavvy pricing (for 6 months only) when I first left them.

Be careful when signing up for Lightspeed. Make sure that Shaw will actually provide you service BEFORE you buy the modem. I have heard of situations where Shaw would not provide service because new cabling would have to be run and they were not willing to do that. You can get around it by subscribing to Shaw for a couple of months (long enough to get free connection) and then switching to Lightspeed.

There are other niche options (such as through cell towers or satellite) and there are always rumours about fibre but for now, as far as I know, these are your main options. Note that the CTRC requires both Shaw and Telus to resell their "last mile" services to independent IP's so they likely are not doing this willingly.

Hope this helps.

Check out secure by design- owned and operated out of Nelson, they have a fibre trunk to downtown Rossland or otherwise piggyback on Shaw. No data caps, reasonable prices.

www.secure-by-design.com

The best part of their service by far is that every time i’ve phoned customer service i’ve talked to the same guy. No hour long waits to get transferred to a different department, the boss met me personally in castlegar to drop off the modem because i couldn’t make it to Nelson and they wanted to save me shipping costs haha

first class operation, these guys deserve more business.