Discussions

from Virden. call them to have them analyze the exact spot your house is at, and see if their towers can reach you.  

$600 installation fee...Yikes ! Is that the norm?

Is MTS DSL available at that location?

I worked out along Grand Valley Road and we used RFNow. Great speed.

Tall trees and piles of rocks (yes) will effect the signal.  
We had issues with NetSet for awhile and what seemed to help the most was grounding the modem... There is a terminal on the back that you can attach a wire from to a spot that you can ground to, such as the center screw on a plug receptical.

tethering from a cell phone would work for you

We had problems for a few months with them and l was told the square footage was to much for the modem so l puchased a dlink used router, helped a bit but looked at the date on the dlink was 15 years old. Went to best buy and got a dlink 389c it is like we have a new internet service what a difference for a little box like night and day. I waited for service as well, but l used you tube and talked to the guys at best buy and l am pleased with my service. And l was always told l have a lot of devices on at the same time but that doesn't seem to make a difference now either. Go and ask some questions to the geek squad or techies they sure helped me.

I've got net set and I don't mind it. Only thing I really don't like is the data limit (no unlimited).  
 
For those with slow speeds, is it possible it is your computer? My MacBook Air had speeds below 1 mbps and it was the computer and not the Internet

Living in the country is great but it comes with some "trade offs". We moved to the country almost 10 years ago and in the city we had both MTS DSL and Westman internet into our home at the same time.  
 
Our only option was Inetlink which is now NETSET. I have had RfNow out to take a shot but we are too far from any towers.  
 
The "trade offs" are unless you can get MTS DSL your internet speed in the country will be slower and maybe even limits each month on data usage. You will pay at least 2x to 4x what you have to pay for service that is faster in the city. That being said we have been a NETSET customer all this time and I can tell you I am on a first name basis with most of management and support teams.  
 
I am extremely happy with all the help they have given me and efforts in finding solutions to my problems. They have come out quickly to remedy any hardware issues i was having - just to name a few things they have done for me: raised my tower so I was able to connect to different source, change out hard ware.  
 
We are a typical household with kids gaming and streaming youtube or netflix with out problems most of the time. The biggest thing I hate is having to monitor our usage each month to make sure we do not go over our data limits. When you pay 4x the amount of normal internet it should have not limits IMO.  
 
All in all I can say Netset had done all they can to give me the service I pay for and are always working at getting faster speeds.  

and customers needing help with switching over, the tech support staff were overwhelmed with calls, unable to keep up, and therefore the customer service wasn't good for a while. I don't work there, but I have been told that NetSet has been addressing this problem. With a tech savvy person living in our household, the switchover was smooth for us, but I am sure that there were a lot of customers who had difficulty all at the same time.

Net set (and the old INet Link) is the only option where we currently live, going on 8 years. Have had the guys come out a couple of times, problems were fixed within a couple of days. Speed is fine for what we use it for (just web browsing, email, etc - no gaming or Netflix).

last night but since they are not there I will repeat.  
Netset made lots of inflated claims of their capabilities in the past but I think they have come around and are being more honest with their limitations. Line of sight is a huge problem, as is proximity to a tower. The further from a tower you are the weaker the signal you will have. The more customers between you and the tower makes a difference as well as they have admitted having some towers at capacity that then screws those further out unless they can be pointed out other towers. I don't think they are going to add more towers to deal with this. Dust in the air (such as at harvest time), forest fire smoke, rain, snow, etc, all cause issues with signal transfer and you get major packet loss and high latency, as well as an inflated data usage for the constant resending of information to and from your router. It is always your fault unless you can explain the problem reasonably and point out the obvious.  
On the flip side, computers are notorious for having background programs and other crap running that inhibits the ability to browse or do many tasks. You need to confirm it isn't your computer and sometimes it helps if you know someone who can pop over with their laptop and connect to your network to see if they have the same issues or not.  
NetSet isn't perfect but they are not that bad either. To understand their technology, just Google it and get the facts.

$600 is the price for fibre installation in town from RFNow. For rural internet you are probably looking at $300, which is pretty standard, but often there are deals where they waive the install fee, though you might need to go on a contract with them to get that.