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Review by webomen 
Posted: 1.2 years ago
member for 1.6 years, 3 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
 North York,ON
 $18 per month (12 month contract)
 about 5 days
 Bell Canada
 "Efficient and reliable"
 "Nothin really..maybe improve on getting faster speeds..."
 "A lot better than Rogers"
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I was skeptical to move to Acanac, due to Bell hunting down torrent users. However, I now can say that it was the best decision I made, the value you receive for your buck is amazing. I can only recommend it to people who had enough of Rogers stealing every penny you got.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 1.2 years ago
(review was emailed from domain shaw.ca)
Toronto,ON
$32 per month (12 month contract)
about 15 days
"Good value for money"
"Minor down time"
"Great company"
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Price and relaibility was my concern. When the ISP does have some downtown once a month. It usually recovers very quickly.
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Review by moseph
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 1.2 years, 2 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
undisclosed location
Contract price not specified. (12 month contract)
"Cheap"
"unreliable, unreachable and useless technical support"
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I put up with this service's patchiness for the past 11 months - up down but was managable on the basis that I knew how to trouble shoot and hook the internet up myself.
11 months later, the dsl light on the modem died. Can't call the non existent tech support on the weekend, so emailed them form my BB, 1 day later I receive an answer from them asking me to retrieve "circuit ID" from my phone provider. given that I am with Vonage and now such thing exists, I informed tech support about this and they came back with "you need a dry loop and that will cost 8 extra dollars a month please give us your credit card info". and that my service is not compatible with an IP phone ---- just like that, all of a sudden my service became "incompatible"
on the contrary, their billing department replied with lightning speed to my request to cancel the account, and offered to help resolved my tech issues --- too little to late
Never again,
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Review by Pastuch
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 5.7 years, 54 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
Kanata,ON
$30 per month (12 month contract)
about 12 days
"Price, Modem delivery was quick"
"1.7 meg service... When you're paying for 5megs."
"Avoid any ISP that relies on Bell infrastructure"
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Summary: Pay for 5meg service. Get 1.7meg service.
Update August 15th: Paul (Acanac owner) frequents this site and after I IMed him he offered to refund my full year of service. I certainly wasn't expecting this and I have to say I'm impressed with the service Acanac provides.
Price:
The price of the service is excellent at 18.95 per month but requires you to sign on a one year contract. The downside to this obviously is the contract. In my case I am stuck with a 1.7meg internet connection for a year. Bell also charges a system access fee of nearly $9 per month for Dryline DSL. Dryline means that you don't have a home phone. So if you're like many Canadians who only have a cell phone then you will need to pay this extra charge.
Setup:
I was impressed with the speed of delivery of my modem. I was also impressed with the recruitment people at Acanac. I didn't feel like they were trying to swindle me and they informed me of all the surcharges I could expect.
Internet connection and customer support:
I am flabbergasted by the poor quality of my connection with Acanac(bell). My internet connection has been re-profiled 4 times that I know of since I signed up. On initial installation I was getting a 3meg profile. I submitted a support ticket via the Acanac website and was pleasantly surprised to have my connection re-profiled to a 4meg connection. That lasted 2 weeks then Bell re-profiled me to a 2.5 Meg connection. That was infuriating so I submitted another ticket to have my connection re-profiled. I put that ticket in 2 months ago and my connection has gone from bad to worse. Recently I was re-profiled again down to a 1.7meg internet connection. I have sent 3 emails about my connection and every time Acanac support tells me they will look into it or they say a tech will come out to fix it but nothing ever happens.
I'm tired of waiting so I figured I would write this review. I have had Acanac for 5 months and I have no intention of renewing the service.
Followup comments:  PCcertified
join:2008-08-04
canada
| It's not Acanac's fault. Bell is to blame. I feel your pain, I just joined Acanac this week and my speed dropped from 5Mbs with Bell to 1.6Mbs with Acanac.
I did some research and discovered that Bell controls the speed. I also discovered that Bell changed my profile to a 3 Meg profile even though Acanac requested a 5 meg profile. They also made sure it was a very poorly configured profile for my present modem, thus rendering my speed at 1.6Mbs.
It's not Acanac's fault. There are 2 possible reasons why you are getting slow speeds.
1. Your speed profile may be incorrectly set.
- You can check your present profile by going into your modems software. You can verify with an Acanac tech exactly how to check this. The Tech at Acanac can also tell you what numbers should appear in your Tx and Rx speeds.
2. You have a poor line quality to the CO.
You can verify this by calling sympatico and being polite to the first level tech as you request to ask a question about your line speed. First level will not be able to answer why your profile is set incorrectly despite numerous requests by your ISP. But, the tech can justify transferring you to 2nd level support. The 2nd level support should be able to check your line quality and tell you what speed you can handle.
In my case I can handle 16 Megs and have a near perfect line. I'm also located less than 0.7 km from my CO. So there is no reason to set my profile to 3Mbs unless Bell is intentionally trying to harm the reputation of their competitor.
If your line quality is BAD, that second level tech can order a Bell tech to fix it. If your line quality is GREAT like mine, you must call Acanac and request they tell Bell to modify your profile to improve your performance. You can also ask to be transfered directly to the line test center at Bell and then you can get the modifications immediately with a tech who can make the changes. Not all Acanac employees have the number but I'm sure if you insist they will transfer you.
I was informed by Bell level 2 Tech that the independent providers like Acanac should transfer me to the line test center at Bell in these kinds of major circumstances.
I hope this helps you resolve your issue. In the mean time if your profile is not set correctly after many attempts, get Acanac to email you a copy of the requests they made to Bell to modify your profile. Then contact the CRTC to complain that Bell is not treating you fairly. After all it's not Acanac's fault, unfortunately it's Bell who controls your line speed in Quebec or Ontario.
Emailing the CRTC will definately help prove Bell is being deliberate in their attempts to discredit their competition.
Here's the link
»www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/INFO_SHT/t1003.htm | |
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Review by salih.nabeel
Posted: 1.2 years ago
(review was emailed from domain gmail.com)
Mississauga,ON
$19 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
Bell Canada
"Fast, easy to setup, cheap and reliable"
"None"
"Very good service and woul recommend them"
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I ordered the service and in two day I received the modem. Installed and it was active the next day. tested for speed it was 4200Kbps foe dl. Good community forum, and a lot of help. I am happy with the service and would definetly recommend it for my friends.
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Review by lambergino
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 1.2 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
Richmond Hill,ON
$19 per month (12 month contract)
about 6 days
Bell Canada
"Unlimited Downloading, free SSH Tunnel 100GB FTP and Online PC"
"Got nothing to complain about..."
"Excellent ISP All Around, The cheapest, most reliable, and biggest bang for bucks that can be found!"
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I was with Bell Sympatico for the last 5 years and after suffering their throttling and traffic shaping for a few months it was time to call it quits... I called them and cancelled the service then looked all over the internet for the best DSL ISP that was available in my area.
I found Acanac and Tekssavy here on dslreports.com and although Tekssavy had better reviews I decided to go for Acanac because it was 10 bucks cheaper per month than the already cheap teksavvy!!! Now for less than $20 a month you can NOT get any better than this and THIS is pretty darn good!
The Million Dollar Question: Does Acanac Throttle? By default the connection gets throttled by bell (because every dsl provider is on bell lines) HOWEVER they offer you your very own SSH Tunnel proxy server which you can set up in about 5 minutes and enjoy FULL un-throttled torrent speeds and the work around is explained in their forums and is totally legal!!!
You must pay the whole contract term at the same time meaning I paid $227.70 (taxes and everything included $18.95 a month) for 12 months for the exact same service offered by Teksavvy (which would end up costing $400+) PLUS lots of extra free features such as 100GB FTP space... Free Online PC without root access... and most importantly SSH Tunneling which gives me FULL 600-700 KB/s torrent speeds when set up correctly with Tunnelier and uTorrent. Thats amazing! but it doesnt end there.
The whole setup took about 6 days and a bell technician came to my door one day to setup the connection however he said nothing needs to be done because I was previously with Sympatico so wires are connected already.
So yes Acanac uses bell lines of course but that's the ONLY thing of bell's they use. Everything else is on their own servers meaning you get un-throttled speeds using SSH Tunneling.
I called technical support and they gave me the user and pass and settings and I ended up using the same 2wire router/modem that Sympatico gives you ( 2701HG-G ) and it has worked great since day one. No down times yet and I dont think there will ever be.
Whats better is that they offer 30 days unconditional money back guarantee so even if it doesn't work out for you then you can always get a refund of your $278. You do not need the $50 to lease modem from them if you got a ADSL modem or gateway like me so that's a plus too.
So they say up to 5mbps Download and 800kbps upload? When I was all connected I went over to speedtest.net and did a test with result as follows:
5160kbps down and 678kbps up SO SPEEDS ARE AS ADVERTISED!!!
The only and I mean ONLY so called "problem" or "issue" that I have faced is that the SSH Tunnel client sometimes times out connection but then quickly reconnects and torrents begin to resume again. And that is a nature of any SSH Tunnel and its client so it can't really be blamed on the ISP...
It has almost been 30 days that I am with them and I can say I can't be happier with my ISP!
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Review by hbensmai
Posted: 1.2 years ago
(review was emailed from domain yahoo.com)
Montreal,QC
$18 per month (12 month contract)
about 45 days
Bell Canada
"Excellent connection, fast email response, Excellent value....."
"Cannot update credit card information online after expiration... Cannot change plan online"
"Drop Bell and Rogers and go for Acanac..."
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I am happy that I switched from Bell sympatico to Acanac. No throttling, no connections drops...
The only bad thing about Acanac is how the customer account is managed. There is no way to change your customer information online. For example, my credit card will expire in November and the renewal is in April of next year. I have to call them to change that information. Also you cannot change your plan online..If you are on a yearly, you have to call them to change to monthly before it expires if you don't wanna get charged for the full year. Besides that, Acanac is way better than Bell.
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Review by sabsant
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 1.9 years, 39 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
undisclosed location
$18 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Fast, Reliable, Unlimited, all for a Great price. Pre-paid billing a plus."
"Support a little light during nights. Bell mistakenly put me on a 3Mbps profile. Order Form doesn't make any note of 40$ deposit"
"Highly recommended. Especially over Rogers"
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I was a Rogers “lite” subscriber for 7 years, started at their 128kbps profile for $24/m but gradually they increased it to 1Mbps / $38/m.
Acanac's $18.95 (tax-included!) for the first year was tempting. When Rogers started to enforce their caps (lite was at 25 GB for a time!), I decided it was time to switch. I hate streaming video/music and wondering if I’m nearing my pittance of a cap.
I signed up for their 5Mbit/Unlimited profile online. They normally take a $40 deposit for their hardware, but if you make a note (in the comments section of the order form) for them not to send you one, they won't charge you the deposit. Make sure you are aware of this! It's quite a surprise for some when they are charged an extra 40$. Why they didn't make this a checkbox on their order form beats me! For the entire year, I was billed 227. I already had a modem. I also like prepaid billing... one less bill to worry about.
Of course, the only trouble I had was that I didn't receive the bill. 2 days later, I called technical support and they promptly emailed me my bill. I was also put on a 3Mbps profile, but my line stats were pretty good, so I called and asked to be put on a 5Mbps profile, which they did within minutes. Their technical support is very prompt (within a few hours) with responding to emails. The trouble is, on their website, they have this: "* If your service is down after hours please e-mail our emergency department. "
My question is, if your service is down, how exactly are you supposed to email their emergency department? Oh well... I usually sleep before their call support goes down (12am), so I don't desperately need the internet after midnight. So far (~4 months) I have not witnessed even a single DSL interruption. It's a good start.
By the way, some people say Acanac or DSL in general is slow... but it really depends on where you live. Where I live, I have great modem stats and can download at ~550kb/s (~4.5Mbps). Sure, doesn't beat Roger's speed, but I'm not paying 60$/m (after modem rental + taxes)! What is speed worth, if you only have a 60GB cap to play with anyway!?
Bell (who Acanac buys the bandwidth from) throttles torrents on weekdays, but on the weekends, it almost taps out my connection. Almost as good as NNTP. Of course, Acanac has been talking about offering NNTP. I will definitely stay with them after my promotional price increases to 34.95 if they offer it, no contest.
Overall, highly recommended. Especially over Rogers.
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Review by zang
Posted: 1.3 years ago
member for 2.6 years, 5 visits, last login: 2.2 years ago
Toronto,ON
$47 per month (month by month)
about 7 days
"An alternative to the big ISPs, and are willing to stand up for net neutrality"
"Phone support was somewhat lacking for a while, though it's improved."
"I'm still with them, aren't I?"
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I'm pretty happy with Acanac, and their introductory $19.95/month offer is pretty damn good for 5Mb service.
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Review by neurowired
UPDATED: 1.3 years ago
member for 1.3 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
undisclosed location
$20 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
"hmm"
"interrupting service, unfair treatment of customers"
"stay away from Acanac"
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After subscribing to Acanac DSL internet in Ottawa for a year, I can say that it's better to pay to Rogers than to have any deal with Acanac. Not only the service was patchy, but when I decided not to renew the service for another year they automatically charged me $400 and then refused to return $100.
According to their billing department I have no choice even though they have a 30-day full refund guarantee and my first-year contract is to expire in a week. My conclusion is NEVER-EVER use ACANAC if you have a choice. After you subscribe to their sub-standard service trying to save a few bucks they will scam you for all the supposed savings you get with them.
Followup comments: 
Acanac Inc
Premium
join:2007-03-05
Mississauga, ON
| Please provide ticket ID's. Please provide ticket ID's. Accounts automatically renew unless you tell us not to renew. This is clearly stated on our terms of service. If you failed to cancel on time you would only be charged from the time you used. What was the $100 for? Is it for the DSL modem Deposit and the months you used on your second year term?
If I am incorrect with any of these assumptions please provide me with your contact information. I will look into right away.
Best Regards,
Paul | |
| 
Bellundo
@teksavvy.com | Sign of the times This always happens when Canada falls into recession. I wonder why the Canadian government is withholding the second quarter negative growth figures? Canada has been in recession since the start of July. | |
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