High Speed Internet is available through a Bell Mobility wireless modem in Carling Township anywhere you get a good Bell Mobility wireless signal. With 4G LTE service the upload and download speeds should be sufficient for any residential need, including streaming video and audio files.
When considering how much data you will use, think about what you will use it for, email with small attachments or streaming video in ultra high definition. Here are a few examples of what data may be required for some common uses.
According to Netflix, using their “High” data usage setting runs through 3 GB per hour when streaming High Definition (HD) videos and 7 GB per hour for Ultra HD.
TIP – switch to the “Medium” setting which only uses 0.7 GB per hour for a Standard Definition (SD) video or about 1.5 GB for your average movie.
Spotify has three quality settings for their music streaming service, Normal quality: 96 kbps, High quality: 160kbps, and Extreme quality: 320kbps. So what does that mean in terms of data use? 320kbps rate translates to 2.40 MB per minute of audio or 115.2 MB per hour. So if you were to stream music for an entire eight hour day, you’d use nearly 1 GB.
What about emails and web pages? Well that largely depends on what you send and receive in an email and what you view on web pages, images are larger then just text, music and video larger even still. But let’s assume you receive 100 emails a day and visit 100 web sites a week, in a month you would use about 128 MB of data, so assuming you are not a photographer sending high resolution images, email and web pages wont likely factor in to your data consumption when on a 50 gig or more plan.
Summing up your data needs, Stream 2 hours of medium quality Standard Definition Netflix, and listen to 8 hours of streaming music each day, send and receive 100 email and browse a few web pages and you’ll use about 80 GB of data each month.
Canadian Wireless Communications Inc. – Bell Mobility
(this is cellular based system, Steve will come out to test your reception if you are unsure, but if you have good cell reception on Bell, TELUS, Virgin, or Koodo you should be good to go).
Call Steve in Parry Sound – 705-746-0721
There are two plans available:
Flex Plan
which starts at $53.95/month for 50 gigs of data then scales automatically up and down as you need it to:
$58.95/month for 75 gigs of data, and
$63.95/month for up to 100 gigs of data, over that you pay $4.00 per gig.
Fixed Plan
is $80.00/month for 200 gigs of data.
Both plans come with a Modem that will be shipped to you within a few days.
They are two year contracts which do not come with the ability to suspend them in the off season.
I have compared my costs from April to November and the overages during that period certainly justify paying the lower fee but year round, so I have signed up for a flex plan.
Once you place your order with Steve he will give you a number to call to pass on some ID to validate your credit and set-up the delivery of the modem by Purolator.
If you have any questions about the process, Steve will be happy to answer them, plus I am happy to comment on how it has gone for me, I’m expecting my modem today or Tuesday so I cant comment on the service just yet, but ordering has been easy and i will post any issues should they arise.
And a special thanks to Councillor Susan Murphy for passing on the information.
Marc Cooper