Telus Hub Experiences

[bjstare]

As I've mentioned elsewhere, we're looking at moving outside the city limits. One of the places we're looking at, despite being a stones throw from Calgary, doesn't have Telus or Shaw services (and not sure when they'll get it - it's an established acreage community).

With WFH persisting, as well as my family's preference for streaming services over regular TV, I'm curious if anyone's got experiences (good or bad) with Telus hub. I know the service is available where I'm looking, and signal strength is fine given that it's close to the city.. just wondering about bandwidth mostly. I'm on meetings (always a presentation, video usually optional) most of the day. Wife will have netflix on periodically throughout the day. Usually netflix in the evenings after kids are in bed.

Is one hub sufficient for occasional streaming + teams calls? Can 4k be streamed reliably if that's the only demand on bandwidth? I can figure out based on claimed bandwidth delivery, but interested to hear about actual experience... and anything else that would be good to know. Also any other alternatives to the hub; I'm not married to using Telus, but it seems like it's the best solution at this point in time.

[rage2]

I've used it in BC. It's sporadic, at best. There are days where it's great, but man when a bunch of neighbors are streaming some netflix (my guess) it's basically unusable.

I would not be able to rely on it for work with the amount of calls I'm on these days. Back then I was on a lot less calls and still struggled.

[bjstare]

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I've used it in BC. It's sporadic, at best. There are days where it's great, but man when a bunch of neighbors are streaming some netflix (my guess) it's basically unusable.

I would not be able to rely on it for work with the amount of calls I'm on these days. Back then I was on a lot less calls and still struggled.

Where in BC? Close to good cell/LTE infrastructure? Do you anticipate it poor performance was a result of demand/throttling/signal strength (or combination)?

[rage2]

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Where in BC? Close to good cell/LTE infrastructure? Do you anticipate it poor performance was a result of demand/throttling/signal strength (or combination)?

Caribou. About 1km away from the tower. Literally 1 tower to serve a decent sized area. Not dense at all, want to say there's maybe 15 homes on the entire lake.

[bjstare]

hm. That's not incredibly confidence inspiring.

Hopefully someone who uses this within, or in close proximity to Calgary can chime in.

[revelations]

If this is a serious WFH situation in a non-urban area, you really need dual ISP in 2021, with auto failover\augmentation.

[SkiBum5.0]

Same experience with it south of the city. We were able to use a smaller, still-LTE based service. ABNet (used to be called RigStar). They pinged a tower near Okotoks, and it was much better. 10mbps, unlimited so no 6 screen Xnxx streaming but I make do with 3.

[tirebob]

I am only a couple KM from the tower where I live but no direct line of sight and I couldn't get even 1mb download when it worked, and that was even only about a 1/4 of the time. Ended up going Xplornet satellite which works decent enough but not cheap for a low capped bandwidth limit ($150/month for 150GB). I just got Starlink but have to set it up still. I am hoping it is a big leap forward for me!

[bjstare]

Interesting. My experience with xplornet elsewhere was pitiful, can't imagine telus being worse. Anecdotal evidence I suppose.
@Ekliptix in another thread you mentioned that your telus hub was good for teams calls, etc. Is this still the case?

[Buster]

This is why the baby jesus created cities.

[spikerS]

.

[Buster]

better get used to this sound



ACtually, did you ever use dial up?

[tirebob]

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better get used to this sound



ACtually, did you ever use dial up?

Haha! When I first moved here I thought that was going to be my only option and when I called telus they said the phone lines in out area are even to antiquated for 56k dialup!

[bjstare]

Interesting. This is the first I've heard of Starlink haha. I assume my chances of getting on a beta for it are slim, given that the address I'm looking at is ~2km from Calgary city limits.
@Buster yes I used dial up. I even remember the day we got 56k.

[Ekliptix]

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Interesting. My experience with xplornet elsewhere was pitiful, can't imagine telus being worse. Anecdotal evidence I suppose.
@Ekliptix in another thread you mentioned that your telus hub was good for teams calls, etc. Is this still the case?

@cjblair , yes, I use my telus hub for Teams video conferences and screen sharing, daily. It's good 99% of the time. Same with streaming netflix.
Just did a speed test now. 19Mbps DL. 11Mbps upload.

[SkiBum5.0]

May be worth noting Telus just called offering a better modem. I never used the provided one. We had some giant spider looking modem my wife bought.

[Anomaly]

I moved to an acreage (south) a year ago, and I've been using a Telus Smart hub since I moved out here. I work from home and rely on Teams\Skype and it's generally sufficient for that and 1080 streaming at the same time. That said, It's REALLY depending on your signal strength. I'm pretty far from a tower and signal strength was -98dBm...which I was able to bring down to the -89dBm with a Wilson Yagi antenna pointed directly at the direction of the tower. My signal strength also goes to shit in the summer, because of trees haha. Honestly the worse part of the Telus smart hub is the hardware offerings from Telus are shit. The devices they offer are really limited and both devices I've used huawei b612 and ZTE (forget the model) need to be rebooted regularly and are prone to crashing in my experience. But on the plus side, the latency is low enough to game on most of the time

- - - Updated - - -

Also, for all the south acreage folks, Telus is putting up a new tower in Aldersyde this year...

[bjstare]

I've looked and it appears that it's <2km away, with clear line of sight, to the closest TELUS tower. So signal strength shouldn't be a huge issue, my main concern would be throttling probably...

[killramos]

Don’t most cell plans have a buyers remorse clause these days?

My theory. Go get a hub, drive to property. Give it a test.

Return it.

[rage2]

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I've looked and it appears that it's <2km away, with clear line of sight, to the closest TELUS tower. So signal strength shouldn't be a huge issue, my main concern would be throttling probably...

I don’t think they throttle. It’s just luck of the draw, if your tower is saturated or not because of other users.