part of the turn

It took a while but we’re all set up. Cogeco told me that they would be there to hook up the cable on friday sometime between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM. If you’ve ever been told to expect a technician somewhere in a eight hour period you would know that what they really mean is that we are going to come five minutes before the last possible minutes and make you sit on your -insert your word here- all day.

And that’s exactly what happened. At 4:55 PM, two trucks showed up at my house to do a total of five minutes of work. By work, I mean that the one guy dropped off the cable modem and put coaxial connectors on the ends of a peice of cable. Oh, and I paid $30 for the privledge of waiting all day. It’s not those guys fault, but I can’t help but wonder if one truck might have done the job and been here a little earlier.

Later that night, I actually had a chance to try the internet. After a call to tech support to get them to clarify the sloppy password that the technician left we were good to go. At least Cogeco has 24 hour tech support. Once up and running, I had my wireless router and my Primus VoIP router plugged in and running in no time.

Four days into both Primus TalkBroadband (VoIP) and Cogeco Internet Lite and I am very impressed with the service. Internet is basically internet so there’s not much to say about that, but Primus is really cool.

I keep telling Michelle how much I like our new phone. I don’t think she thinks that is very normal but she’s tolerating it.

If you don’t know about Primus TalkBroadband (VoIP) here’s the quick rundown:

• $19.95 a month or $15.95 a month if you buy the $60 router (that’s what I did)
• Call display with names
• Voicemail
• 5-Way Calling
• Call forward
• A personal website that:
  • Has your call history
  • Stores your voicemail
  • Stores your phone book
  • Let’s you adjust your settings
  • Let’s you forward your voicemail to an email account
• Call follow (if you don’t answer at home, it will transfer the call to your cellphone)

So the catch is that rather then connecting to your normal phone line, you connect a VoIP box to the internet and your phone calls travel through the net. You then connect the VoIP box to a regular phone. In our case, we plugged in a 5.8 GHz cordless phone that has two base stations and two handsets.

Presto! Sweet phone system for $12 less a month then Bell charges!

technorati tags: primus, cogeco