Comments on: Lightspeed review: ADSL Internet service provider in Metro Vancouver

By: T.Jones

T.Jones — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 02:34:47 +0000

Lightspeed Dolphin is our small business provider for 2 years. Best thing is they’re cheap for sure. Our phones work well most of time. As long as you don’t need really clear sound and you don’t need to call tech line, its ok. if you have problem, they don’t know.

By: Philip_Surry

Philip_Surry — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:45:55 +0000

Just CANCELLED my subscription. Bad network reliability and the WORST support. You call and it’s like there are no professionals working there.

By: Jay

Jay — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 07:26:19 +0000

I am a Dolphintel customer. I wanted a better, cheaper, more customer-friendly service for internet and phone. These guys seemed to offer it, so I signed up. I regret it now.

100% agree with Ann’s comment about Laurel in billing and some of the other comments I’ve read about her. She really, really shoudn’t be in a job where she speaks with customers. Just not good at all. Infuriating, actually.

Tech support is very hit-and-miss. Lot’s of "can you call back later/tomorrow/another time?" and "I’ll leave a note for someone to look into that…". It’s not a place where many people seem to care at all. Too bad — it would be so easy to be better than the big guys.

If you’re with Telus or Shaw right now and thinking that you might switch, I suggest that you DO NOT, at least until these guys get their customer service act together. It’s a mess.

By: Viridian

Viridian — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:33:52 +0000

Found your blog while Googling Vancouver ISP speed issues.

I’m having issues with Shaw over d’load speeds after signing up with them for their 30mb/s service. I use a UK based VPN for downloading local content unavailable outside the UK but I’m experiencing severe buffering issues due to poor connection speeds. Using speedtest.net identified that, although my local internet d’load speed is in around 30 Mb/s, connection to most UK servers is EXTREMELY POOR at between 1,5 and 2.3 Mb/s resulting in the buffering. My VPN supplier was unable to identify what was causing the problem and suggested contacting Shaw for help.

Technical Help from them is incredibly bad! Apart from having to wait nearly 6 hours before I actually spoke to a human being, I eventually explained the situation to the techie in great detail. She was helpful but totally ignorant of the problem as she was only able to check my local d’load speed which, of course, showed an acceptably high figure. I then persuaded her to use speedtest.net, not only for my local connection but also from her desk (in Calgary) to some of the London servers. She identified similar speeds to mine. I then suggested that as global internet speeds from Canada to the UK are generally in an acceptable range of 5-10 Mb/s there must be something wrong with their server connections. She couldn’t offer any help but I asked that she refer the problem to those higher up and get back to me. She said that she would and that another person (name given) would get back to me.

I have yet to hear back from them and I probably won’t. From this, I’m left with the clear impression that, because Shaw makes it’s major revenues from providing TV services, they maybe ‘throttling’ d’load speeds from oversees servers to prevent easy viewing of foreign programs and prejudicing their profits.

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 06:54:10 +0000

DISASTER. The service is a nightmare. Really. I wasn’t that happy with Telus, but these guys are worse. Maybe they used to be good, but not now.

By: pedram

pedram — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:56:49 +0000

i have found another company which support BC. has anyone signed up with them ?
Naked ADSL http://www.nakedadsl.ca

Reply from Peter: They are actually Lightspeed Internet

By: fnord

fnord — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:21:53 +0000

They are just connected to the telus backbone, they are just reseller. You can check it easily out, configure you dsl modem
as a bridge and just send a dhcp request you end up in a /22 network of telus.
The whole network is a security nightmare, which applies to most of the telus pop’s.
So avoiding telus and using lightspeed is more a fairy tail. But lightspeeds tech support is the best, they knowledge is between Laurell and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin, it’s just useless to discuss a technical issue with their so called technicans.
Technical guys with a backup connection will have a lot of fun with these funny people, not quite sure what they smoke.
If you just wanna have a reliable connection avoid them.

By: Rod Hebner

Rod Hebner — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:44:18 +0000

Well, it’s time to update my post on Lightspeed. Again, their support is really great but don’t expect any replies to emails or phone messages as that could take a week or not at all. When I signed up for the 15mbs service, I assumed there wouldn’t be any problems but it turns out the best I’ve gotten after a week is 4.77mbs down and 0.79 up which is far from the 15mbs service I subscribed to. After talking to two different technicians there who had me do various speed tests with different websites, they told me that I was connected to a 15mbs service but they would "look into it".
When I checked all the other dry adsl providers, they all listed a 6 mbs service or less. Only Lightspeed lists a 15mbs or 25mbs service to which I am very skeptical as it doesn’t take a week to find a technical problem. My guess is, they are trying to sell something they can’t provide at this time but may be able to provide at some point in the future. Kind of like Microsoft selling Vista before it was a viable product without issues. I have given them another week to get the 15mbs service or I’ll be moving on to another provider. When it comes to Telus, they lie but I’m not sure if false advertising is a lie or just a misleading way of getting more customers to sign up for a service they don’t have ?

By: R Hebner

R Hebner — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:08:09 +0000

Well, I’ve about had enough with Shaw and Telus although Shaw is better than Telus, I wouldn’t recommend supporting either. I won’t sign any contract with anyone especially Telus as their contract allows them to do whatever they like with your personal information but then they know most don’t bother to read contracts.
I’ve decided to go with Lightspeed simply because I’m fed up with these two and Rogers is completely off the charts when it comes to price gouging and Bell isn’t any better.
Ironically, I pay more with Lightspeed for the same speed but that’s where it ends as support is not offshore and you can understand who you’re speaking to which brings me to say Shaw has good, local support while Telus is the WORST anywhere.
I tested out Lightspeed support by calling them before I signed up for their service which involved no contracts, just first and last month, a credit card works best for setting up ongoing payments. They allowed me to buy and use my own modem although they told me it would take 5 to 7 days to set up the service as they would be using Telus land line and it takes time to get that all sorted out.
My biggest concern was support, using my own modem and not waiting on the phone for an hour or more to speak to somebody. I prefer to pay more, for better support and no contract and in Victoria, BC, there are not a lot of viable options to Telus or Shaw. The only other high speed internet service that I was able to find was Uniserve and their service was limited to 6mb at that time. I do know that Lightspeed offers speeds up to 25mbs although I went with 15mbs. I don’t expect there will be a lot of problems but when it comes to service providers, my level of skepticism grows faster than the rates.

By: David Philips.

David Philips. — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:00:49 +0000

This is the most useless "service" ever.
I haven’t used their internet service I’m happy to say. I had their phone service beginning in the Spring of 2010, attracted by the unlimited long distance to UK since I do a lot of business there. For a year it wasn’t bad and did save some money but since May of this year it has been awful and cost me a small fortune.
I have been unable to make calls to London, UK on five separate occasions, these (attempted) calls have been between 03:00 and 06:30 but when I dialled there was no signal at all. Since those occasions and before I cancelled my service it was deteriorating further, even local calls were often unintelligible but after I gave them notice it got even worse and it became impossible to use. I’m a Civil Engineer and have several capital projects in London on which I’m consulting; naturally I don’t get paid when I can’t do the job I’m hired for and Internet Lightspeed/Dolphintel have cost me over a thousand dollars in just the past few months. Needless to say I’ve cancelled my "service" from them and advise anyone who might be considering getting the phone connection, don’t, avoid it like the plague. They will be hearing from my lawyer about loss of income since they have not even bothered to discuss reimbursement for this.
I am now with Shaw for everything and VERY satisfied. Lightspeed! Shove it!.