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Tag: montreal

  • Considering Bell Canada’s Fibe TV/Phone/Internet in Montreal? Read this first!

    So, last week we had a Bell Canada sales rep going from door to door in our neighborhood, selling their now available Fibe TV/Internet (fiber to the home, or the phone post, at least). Service sounded like a solid deal, which we had looked into before it was available in our neighborhood, so we decided to switch phone/TV/Internet to that, from our long time cable provider, with whom we have all three services.

    Today was install day, and it started pretty poorly straight away: I was originally told they’d simply highjack our coax box outside. Not so: in fact, what they do is run better RJ45 cable to their own phone box, then also run new RJ45 cables inside to a central location where the modem is to be, if your phone cabling is older (note: that’s two nastily installed cables running through your walls, not inside them, if you’re keeping count and let their tech at it). Once that’s done, they then run yet another cable (now coax) from the modem, which they split and then run more cables to where you plan on having TVs, ignoring/bypassing the existing coax TV plugs in your house (likely more poorly installed cables running through and along your walls, if you’re not paying attention to what they’re doing).

    Yeah… I don’t think so. I put a stop to that, thought how to minimize cable runs and especially holes in my indoors/outdoors walls, and had a clean solution implying having only one new cable going through my basement, then having the rest connect cleanly to my existing phone/TV/ethernet infrastructures.

    So we did that, including me running cables while crawling in my semi-basement so it would be done properly.

    Then, right before the tech was on his way to start undoing my coax cable connections to highjack them for the new TV service, I asked him to first plug their new modem in and test. Fail: the modem would not connect nor sync with the central (no TV/net/phone). Time at which the tech decides to finally mention “well, I hesitated with the install because I think you’re a bit far from the central”. What?!?

    The tech got on the phone for quite a while, and came back saying that the connection distance limit from the neighborhood relay (latter to the phone pole for my house) is 800 meters. They had just calculated the distance from our house and we are 900+ meters away, which basically had a zero chance of succeeding…

    Now they tell us… There goes two and a half hours of my life wasted. Thanks Bell…

    Needless to say, I sent him on his way by the time he started trying to downsell me on their lower offerings. Seriously? How dumb do you think I am?

    So if you were thinking about switching to Bell’s supposed fiber-to-the-home in Montreal (Plateau Mont-Royal, in my case), my advice is… don’t. Or at least have them make sure they can provide the service they sold you on in the first place…

    I’ll choose to see the upside: we have not been a Bell Canada customer for now over half a decade. What we just got was a fresh reminder of why that is the case, and proof it’s unlikely to change any time soon.

    Simply ridiculous…

  • In bloom

  • Montreal’s 2012 Saint-Jean-Baptiste Parade

  • Color splash

    “Someone” is enjoying the heat wave we’re having in Montreal. 🙂

  • Christine St-Pierre a bien raison!

    Je suis d’accord avec notre merveilleuse ministre de la Culture et des Communications quand elle dit « mais nous, on sait ce que ça veut dire le carré rouge, ça veut dire l’intimidation, la violence ».

    Elle a juste oublié de préciser qui intimide et a recourt à la violence à cause du carré rouge: le gouvernement et la police…

  • Honey Bee Petunias

    To be transplanted. I build, my wife plants. 🙂

  • What I wish people of all political affiliations understood about Jean Charest

    What I’d really like people to see is that Jean Charest is doing nothing short of what I’ll label as pulling a Dubya. He is not a Liberal any more. He is only acting toward his own benefit.

    This is a man who knows he will not get re-elected (there’s no way), and whose political career is likely over when you add up the corruption enquiries to which he’ll undoubtedly be linked, the tuition increase in a province where we’re the most taxed in North America and more than paying for our educational system already, Bill 78, and so much more. So what he is currently doing are his last moves before he switches to becoming a lobbyist: basically handing out free money, at our expense, to his corporate friends.

    Doubting me?

    • He’s selling out our natural resources at the highest bidder with his Plan Nord, to no one’s advantage but the (often foreign) corporations who are buying it up (and who will for sure hire him once out of office).
    • He’s putting in place unconstitutional laws, knowing that by the time they are ruled as such, he’ll have gotten what he wanted out of it in the first place anyway.
    • He is (or will soon be) on the chopping block in a massive corruption inquiry.

    Just to illustrate how absurd this situation really is: the tuition increase is supposed to raise $130-160 millions from students’ pockets out of the fresh $800 million going to universities (whose funds are so mismanaged, it’s doubtful they need it at all). But on the other hand, he’s happy to fork off $300 millions to build one road that will benefit one private mining operation. How does this make sense in any way?

  • Casseroles – Montréal, 24 Mai 2012

    Video by Jeremie Battaglia

  • Lettre ouverte aux policiers, de la part d’un ancien confrère à la retraite

    Vous êtes la police, vous devez être calme quand on s’énerve, fort quand on tombe, souple quand on se raidit, vous devez nous écouter, nous rassurer, nous guider. Vous devez nous protéger, parfois même contre nous-mêmes.

    Vous avez juré de nous protéger et nous servir, le climat de tension sociale ne nous sert pas, la perte de nos droits et libertés ne nous sert pas et nous en sommes rendus au point où nous avons besoin que vous nous protégiez de notre gouvernement qui se comporte de façon cupide, perfide, mesquine, confrontationnelle et abusive envers nous.

    Soyez les héros dont nous avons besoin, prenez exemple sur vos confrères de Francfort.

    Vous êtes notre dernier espoir pour une sortie de crise pacifique.

    Source: Lettre ouverte aux policiers, de la part d’un ancien confrère à la retraite.

  • Dear [American] tourists…

    Americans traveling to Quebec this summer should know they are entering a province that rides roughshod over its citizens’ fundamental freedoms.

    From Our Not-So-Friendly Northern Neighbor – NYTimes.com.