I am on NCF. They are good peeps. They are helpful, but they do not have the staff to do lots of intensive tech support; you would do well if you can do much of this yourself, perhaps. I feel like I've had more issues than, say, I've seen my parents have with Bell internet, in terms of outages, although they have a pretty good system for letting people know what is going on etc, if you check out their site and stuff. I feel pretty sure I'm being throttled, with the issues I'm having with certain sites, and I don't feel that NCF is very likely to do this, so I wonder if somewhere else along the line I am having issues - network card or OS or whatever are possibilities, but Bell owns the infrastructure, and some sites might be routed through other bottlenecks/ control points, so I was wondering if others might be throttling my connection sometimes, and my guess was that it would be Bell. They have been doing stuff to try and... force the small providers to charge the same prices they do, to kill their competitiveness, etc. So I've been frustrated with ncf a few times, and some technical issues I have not resolves still more than 6 months later, but I trust their integrity much more than say Bell or Rogers, although I'm sure there are many great employees who are helpful and personable on an individual level. NCF also has forums so end users can help other end users, and its seems like there is a slightly higher than average amount of more technical abled users using ncf, but that is just a basic impression I get... and I feel like perhaps some amount of those users might be aware of social justice issues, net neutrality, privacy concerns etc, and value trying to get internet to people in a reasonable way. I think ncf is also a non-profit; I think this skews the motive in a good way, ie less intrinsic drive to get more money for less service - if they can find a way to make the service better and save money for everyone, they will; and when they are doing well economically, they seem to reinvest in the system, etc (as opposed to giving corporate ceos huge bonuses or vacations or something, I mean). If you have a strong technical support network, for instance your own knowledge, oclug, etc, I would think ncf may have advantages that outweight the challenges. On the other hand, with changes in privacy laws, crtc and big com's pushing for changes that may give them the advantage over the little guys, it may be hard to say if the ncf will be able to stay competitive. on the other hand, with the talk of censorship of the internet with things like sopa and acta, the possibility of two-tiered internet and warrantless spying by the government, and essentially the attempted criminalization of political dissent by the Herpes err Harper Government, ie if you go to certain websites you will be on a watch list and monitored, maybe certain places like freenets will become more important, as hackers attempt to create a secondary internet not so easily shut down/ re-routing capacities, including putting up their own satellites and daisy-chaining routers, using social networks like diaspora to access facebook to regain some control of their own content... this may be the place to be. Can't really say for sure how things will go. But apparently in places like Egypt and elsewhere, the internet has been a playing field leveller... which might be something which foreshadowed the clamping down on control of these things, I donno. Sorry, rambling. If you want to host your own server, or use your own open source VOIP over phone instead of have a phone line, NCF has some options too... I think they call it 'dry' copper ($10 extra or so but you don't need to pay a differnt company for a hardwired phoneline to get the internet, you can do it through ncf basically) so yeah... more technical stuff you need to wade through though... I had a room mate who explained some stuff before I tried to wade into this, but I just use it to surf mostly. MIchael Goguen On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 10:54 PM, Charles MacDonald <cmacd [ at ] zeusprune [ dot ] ca>wrote: > On 12-01-29 09:25 PM, The Linux Doctor wrote: > > Hi Guys, > > > > I'm considering NCF as a possibility for my ISP in the next several > > months. I know some of you are members. Can any of you tell me about > > their service in terms of reliability, service, et cetera? > > DSL? or Dialup? > > > > -- > Charles MacDonald Stittsville Ontario > cmacd [ at ] zeusprune [ dot ] ca Just Beyond the Fringe > http://users.trytel.com/~cmacd/tubes.html > No Microsoft Products were used in sending this e-mail. > _______________________________________________ > Linux mailing list > Linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca > http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux >