Review of Cogeco CableAll reviews of |  about |
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ORIGINAL REVIEW: I have been a Cogeco High Speed Pro user for 2 1/2 years now. I live in a student house near McMaster University and the pro package has been great for sharing the connection among up to 9 people at times. When I first moved in we had Sympatico DSL but our line was only capable of handling the 1.5 Mbit profile so Cogeco was really the only choice we had. But Cogeco has been great so I would not choose DSL even if our line could support full 5 Mbit. The install went smoothly from what I remember. I think it was under two weeks from the time the order was placed by phone. The install was done in my bedroom because that is where all the LAN wiring comes together in the house. But the account was in another housemate's name at the time, so I had to stop the tech from setting up the email account and such on my computer. I asked the tech to just leave the modem and all the relevant information and I would handle everything myself. The tech was happy to do this and did not insist on finishing the install. The setup is an RCA DCM325 modem (never had to replace to modem, knock on wood) --> WRT54Gv4 router running 3-party firmware --> 8-port SMC switch. When there were 9 in the house 6 were wired and 3 were wireless. When we first signed up pro was 10 Mbit down / 1 Mbit up. Since then it has been upgraded to 16 Mbit down. I think the price has only gone up a few bucks since then, not enough to complain about. Despite being close to McMaster University my speeds have always been good and relatively consistent. Of course like all cable internet it slows down some during peak time after dinner until midnight, but the speed has always remained good enough to be shared by 9 people at all times of the day. Of course the speed never reaches the "up to" speed that is advertised, but it comes close and I am not complaining. Latency has always been great. I use the connection for online gaming daily and latency has always been low with Cogeco. From what I can remember the connection has only gone down twice from what I can remember. Both times it was for less than 24 hours. The second time occurred recently and was because of some problem that affected the whole neighborhood including tv signal too. A call into tech support that night resulted in an automated message indicating they were aware of the problem that was affecting the neighborhood. It was resolved in a few hours. The lack of any real issues means I cannot comment on Cogeco's tech support. The only problems I have had with the service concern using bittorrent with Cogeco. Simply put, bittorrent has never worked for me on Cogeco from day one. I have tried changing all my settings but nothing works. Using a VPN however does overcome the problem. It is important to note that other Cogeco customers report they have no problems with bittorrent. So it is unknown why some are affected but other are not. This has been debated ad nauseum in the Cogeco forums here at Broadband Reports so check there if you are concerned about bittorrent on Cogeco. Overall, I have not allowed it to affect my rating because I use bittorrent so infrequently that it is a non issue for me. Followup comments:
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Now: Cogeco has decided to start gouging their clients by telling them that their only protection from congestion in the future is to pay overages at $1.25/GiB, up to 30 GiB, then they are cut off... unless they upgrade to a faster plan with higher caps. No, it doesn't make sense to me, either. Why am I still with Cogeco? Two reasons. Their customer service is second to none. When a company tells a perspective client not to get their service because it's throwing money away, you know they're really interested in their client base. My DSL maximum is 2MiB/s, if that. Cogeco has me over a barrel, and I'll bet they're enjoying it immensely. Followup comments:
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NOTE: Cogeco is at a 3 year low overall rating on DSLR for a reason. Followup comments:
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Cogeco is a decent ISP as long as you don't want to use your internet connection to its full potential. But even then you would be just as well off with a Bell Reseller. In that case you would get better tech support then Cogeco for a much lower price. Followup comments:
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Only get Cogeco if your other choices are dial-up and Bell. Even 1mbit DSL is better, because that's the speed you'll probably get on Cogeco. Followup comments:
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»Usage Billing Also I don't appreciate cogeco employees, even the hidden ones, trying to spread propaganda and mislead people to thinking cogeco is not trying to manipulate peoples internet connection in the forums, they can save that crap for the people who call in and don't know any better. Remember cogeco does not provide Internet access, they provide a web experience, which means a version of what they think the internet should be. Which is anything video related is discouraged so you pay for VOD, and their overpriced TV monopoly. The hidden cogeco employees on the forums here are here to just defend cogeco at all costs, it will be apparent who they are if you read the forum from time to time. Followup comments:
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After blocking the kids from P2P programs years ago, we turned to blocking their YouTube, later stopping them from using webcam, internet radio, limitations on even the slightest download, etc. As parents we reduced our YouTube use, limiting YouTube quality when HQ is available, limiting the number of CNN videos watching, limiting the number of online soccer matches from Europe watched, limiting things like downloading a new OS beta or Linux distro, limiting downloading backups from web server, etc,etc. Enough is enough, we have reached our limits, 60GB is not of this time anymore for serious internet users and we are tired of constantly watching the bandwidth monitor (btw, which is often not available or inaccurate). It also annoys us that we see tons of Cogeco customers claiming at DSLreports that they went tens of GB over the limit without Cogeco ever taking action. We might have seen a more reasonable price for every GB over the limit if they would have taken action more consistently. My family on the other hand has quite consistently (except for two times some +2GB extra) stayed within the limits and what do we get in return? We will CANCEL our contract with Cogeco next week. Followup comments:
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Cogeco Cable
(23)
(49)
(12)
Kingston,ON
$66 per month
about 10 days
"Great speed, low latency"
"Low bandwidth caps, unreasonable overage charges"
"Not worth it for anyone who wants to make full use of their Internet connection"
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