Will my Broadband Internet with Bell still work after switching Home Phone to Rogers?

[bs9999]

I have Highspeed Broadband with Bell Sympatico. Recently i called Rogers to have my local Home Phone service hooked up with them instead of Bell. By doing so can someone tell me will my broadband internet remain intact or must i let Bell know that my Rogers is handling my home phone so my internet service can resume uninterrupted?

[Gee]

Not likely, especially if you are going with Rogers VoIP which runs over cable. If you get the older Sprint service, then it is possible, but they will probably try to sell you their DSL service too.

[Dave98]

Chances are your Rogers home phone service will be digital which means your phone service will use the cable line instead of the phone lines. This will essentially cut your Bell service off, including Sympatico.

You will have to inform Bell that you're getting Rogers Home Phone installed and if you wish to keep your Sympatico service, you'll have to request that you get your service moved to a Dry Loop connection. Dry Loop is basically DSL service without landline phone service. *DO THIS ASAP - to minimize any possible downtime*

Then, when the Rogers technician comes to install Home Phone, you must let him know you use DSL. What he will do is he will have to isolate the phone jack that you have your DSL modem connected to from the rest of the house's phone jacks. Basically, he'll tinker around and make sure the phone jack is capable of DSL service. This means the rest of the phone jacks in the house won't work with DSL so be sure of the jack you wish to connect your modem is an ideal location because no other jack will work afterwords.

[cutiehoney]

You should still be able to have DSL with Bell without an active phone line. They will just set up a "virtual" phone line in that case and do a dry DSL installation. Since you can have Teksavvy and Rogers digital phone, it should be the same since Teksavvy lines are from Bell and Teksavvy offers dry DSL package.

[Gee]

You should still be able to have DSL with Bell without an active phone line. They will just set up a "virtual" phone line in that case and do a dry DSL installation. Since you can have Teksavvy and Rogers digital phone, it should be the same since Teksavvy lines are from Bell and Teksavvy offers dry DSL package.

Who mentioned Teksavvy? He has Bell Sympatico.

Either way. You will need a dry loop. That is an additional $10 per month. If you are saving more than $10 with Rogers, then go for it. But from my experience. No body does phones service better than Bell. It is not worth the hassles. Especially if you will be switching back in the future. Rogers is only good for Cell Phones. GSM is the only way to go.

[Dave98]

Who mentioned Teksavvy? He has Bell Sympatico.

Either way. You will need a dry loop. That is an additional $10 per month. If you are saving more than $10 with Rogers, then go for it. But from my experience. No body does phones service better than Bell. It is not worth the hassles. Especially if you will be switching back in the future. Rogers is only good for Cell Phones. GSM is the only way to go.

Dry Loop service from Bell is only an extra $10 if you use Lite or Basic. The High Speed and Ultra packages do not carry the extra $10 fee.

[Gee]

Dry Loop service from Bell is only an extra $10 if you use Lite or Basic. The High Speed and Ultra packages do not carry the extra $10 fee.

I guess that is a bonus. But at that rate. You are better off paying Teksavvy $29 + $10 and you are at the same price as Bell.

Plus you have no caps and referrals will deduct $1 off your monthly bill. Just have to find 40 friends and you have free internet.

[cutiehoney]

Who mentioned Teksavvy? He has Bell Sympatico.

Either way. You will need a dry loop. That is an additional $10 per month. If you are saving more than $10 with Rogers, then go for it. But from my experience. No body does phones service better than Bell. It is not worth the hassles. Especially if you will be switching back in the future. Rogers is only good for Cell Phones. GSM is the only way to go.

I said as an example Teksavvy uses Bell line so it should also be possible to have Bell Dry Loop service for DSL since it is possible with a service such as Teksavvy. Again it was an example and not to say that OP has Teksavvy.

[WLJ101]

My sympatico speed was 1.5Mbps. After I joined the Rogers Home phone, My sympatico speed jumped to 3Mbps. It is because my phoneline in my house has alot of noise.

[Gee]

I said as an example Teksavvy uses Bell line so it should also be possible to have Bell Dry Loop service for DSL since it is possible with a service such as Teksavvy. Again it was an example and not to say that OP has Teksavvy.

All phone lines in Ontario and Quebec at some point have to cross into the Bell Network. That is just common sense. Which is why I say, stick with Bell. Why get a middle man?

[Emancipated]

The clash of the titans. I hope for your sake the transition is smooth. Usually they mess things considerably with service overlapping.

On side note, I didn't realize Rogers offered phone service over those television cable wires. Neato!

My sympatico speed was 1.5Mbps. After I joined the Rogers Home phone, My sympatico speed jumped to 3Mbps. It is because my phoneline in my house has alot of noise.

Could have coincided with the time they were doing upgrades on the lines. The 1.5Mb went to 3Mb and the 3Mb went to 4Mb. Everyone, including yourself should be enjoying 5Mb now as I believe that's their "standard" tier package. On occasion, I have to remind myself I'm no longer with Bell and realize I'm getting 7-8Mbit for the same price I was paying for 3Mbit just a few months ago. It's a strange sensation having been with DSL for the last 5 years, but Cable service has been tops, no complaints.

[bs9999]

Thanks a bunch guys! Very useful information!! I decided to switch to Rogers Home because they were willing to give it to me for $19.28 (tax already included) compared to bell's standard $25.22...so that would save me almost $6/month to switch. That is $72/year saved by just a quick phone call switch...My current Bell Sympatico service is the High-Speed 5Mbs and got it for $24.95/month fixed for 1 full year (wont go up). This is the reason i wanted to keep them for internet because they were just too cheap...and no Bandwidth limits of any kind.

Thanks again!

[Gee]

On side note, I didn't realize Rogers offered phone service over those television cable wires. Neato!

It is not neat. The service is crap.

Pros

Cheaper than Bell
More options given for free

Cons

More frequent outage
Does not work during a power outage (Bell does)
If cable is down, so is phone.
Call Display spotty, sometimes it does not work (Service needs improvment)
Cable modem / VoIP required

[trader08]

It is not neat. The service is crap.

Pros

Cheaper than Bell
More options given for free

Cons

More frequent outage
Does not work during a power outage (Bell does)
If cable is down, so is phone.
Call Display spotty, sometimes it does not work (Service needs improvment)
Cable modem / VoIP required


I recently installed Rogers Home Phone to a new house with "No TV or Internet" and was surprised to find out they were installing a VOIP!
I always thought you need internet to do VOIP, but apparently you don't actually have to have internet to get VOIP from rogers...

[Gee]

I recently installed Rogers Home Phone to a new house with "No TV or Internet" and was surprised to find out they were installing a VOIP!
I always thought you need internet to do VOIP, but apparently you don't actually have to have internet to get VOIP from rogers...

Actually you do need internet to use VoIP. Take a close look at the box that Rogers left behind. It is a cable modem. They just block all traffic execpt for VoIP so you cannot use it as an internet connection.

[AudiDude]

It is not neat. The service is crap.

Pros

Cheaper than Bell
More options given for free

Cons

More frequent outage
Does not work during a power outage (Bell does)
If cable is down, so is phone.
Call Display spotty, sometimes it does not work (Service needs improvment)
Cable modem / VoIP required

Your cons are heavily skewed in favour of Bell, and they paint a picture which doesn't give all the details. More frequent outage? Where do you get your stats? Most people don't realize that cable USED to go out with the power because there were no backups, plus if there was no power, there were no TVs or computers working, so why power the network? So to clarify, when the power does go out, the entire network is on battery backup and if the electricity is off for a while the cable company will deploy vans with inverters to power the batteries to keep ther network up, or deploy generators to power the battery banks.

Bell in the older parts of Toronto use batteries on the CO to keep the equipment going, as you get further away from the city the battery banks are smaller and are bolstered by diesel generators in the CO. If you go further than that you have remotes that have small battery banks and no generator and when the electricity goes off these are the first to go.

If cable is down, so is phone? Explain this please. Define "down". Do you mean if the cable is cut? Because if you do, a cut wire is a cut wire, cable or phone. If you mean when you lose your picture on TV, you lose the phone, you couldn't be more wrong as they don't operate on the same frequencies. An example of this is when a particular channel goes out, you can change to another and continue to watch TV. If a cable modem service goes out, you can still watch TV.

I have never heard of any problems with call display from any of my friends that have the cable service, so I am not sure what you are talking about.
In regards to the ATA adapter required to convert the digital to analog, so what? Bell uses IP on the backbone more and more frequently as it makes more efficient use of facilities. So Bell has the equivalent of the ATA at the CO, whereas Rogers has it at the house. The difference is that Bell's system is intelligent at the core and Rogers' network is intelligent at the edge of the network. Note how FiOS is the network of the future and it uses the intelligence at the edge as opposed the the intelligence at the core. Note how you need an ATA and a optoelectric tranceiver at your home to get the system to work which is akin to the cableco equipment.

As things migrate to full IP, Bell's network is more in the way than ever. The network needs remote DLSAMs because the dumb, intelligence at the core network can't support data. Can more than 40% of Bell customers even get data? If so how many of them can even get close to 70% of advertised maximum speed?

For the record cablecos service is VoC (Voice over Cable). It uses the same protocols as VoIP, but the packets do not traverse a contention based enviroment and therefore do not have the same difficulties.

I have seen VoC plugged into Nortel CICS and MICS, Panasonic 8X16, Napco, Gemini, DSC, Teledoorbell equipment, with no problems whatsoever. People that have problems with the service either have a bad drop, or have crappy wiring in their home, and that differs not from Bell as the very same things affect them. Most people that have problems with cable in general have split the signal soo many times with the "golden" dollar store splitters or have added a 50 cent garage sale amplifier that block digital signal and creates noise.

[AudiDude]

Actually you do need internet to use VoIP. Take a close look at the box that Rogers left behind. It is a cable modem. They just block all traffic execpt for VoIP so you cannot use it as an internet connection.

Again, just for clarity's sake. The modem from the cable company is and Analog Telephone Adapter AND a cable modem. The phone rides its own frequency which differs from the frequency the internet is using. So there are two modems in one box. Cogeco from what I hear uses only the single solution and one box (with two modems in it ) does the whole job. Rogers uses two separate boxes allowing more flexibility in the placement of the ATA, but still wastes money by including the internet access cable modem in the ATA and not using it. So the modem isn't capable of determining that traffic is VoC as opposed to regular internet traffic, the internet modem portion of the "box" isn't turned on.

[ipxxx]

:arrowu:

Hey, I'm most likely going to be in the same situation but the only reason for me switching to Rogers Home Phone is that my parents have it and apparently it's free long distance between Home Phone subscribers (???).

Can OP let us know how it turns out when everything has been setup and what was said to each respective company to get things going smoothly?

Thanks!!

[mlerner]

All phone lines in Ontario and Quebec at some point have to cross into the Bell Network. That is just common sense. Which is why I say, stick with Bell. Why get a middle man?

That is partly correct but Sympatico is the actual provider for residential service and they are actually just a wholesale customer like Teksavvy, they still have to pay all the same fees to Bell.

[mlerner]

If cable is down, so is phone.
Call Display spotty, sometimes it does not work (Service needs improvment)
Cable modem / VoIP required

Power outage is not a problem for Home Phone, they give you an ATA with an 8 hour battery backup and their systems also have backup power. Cable outage also depends on point of origin, if your cable TV goes out your home phone may not.

P.S. Well said AudiDude.