I’ve received a letter from my Internet Service Provider, Sympatico Bell Canada, today. Frank and Gordon, Bell’s mascot beavers, have dressed up in scientist / engineer white lab coats and were welcoming me to “the next generation of consistent speed”. It has been two weeks since I demanded to have a fibre optics network installed, and apparently Bell has done just that.

As you may know, Bell has installed a state-of-the-art fibre optic network in your neighbourhood. And we are thrilled to announce that we have moved your current Internet service onto this powerful, new network, at no additional charge.

Score! Lets hear this again – Bell has installed a state-of-the-art fibre optic network in your neighbourhood. Sounds good, doesn’t it? The problem is that my download speed still caps out at the same 4000something kilobits per second, just as it did before this network was installed. Must be limited in the modem itself, after all, there’s still room to pay more for a faster plan.

Oh well, at least all this excess bandwidth should ensure more consistency, stability, etc. And I was given a shiny, plastic, “Speed of Light Internet License”.

Bearer entitled to travel at speed of light on the new fibre optic network.

That might be technically true, but there’s got to be some artificial delays somewhere to make my bandwidth average out to be the same as before. Darn.

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