Blessed by the Potato

I first reviewed Astraweb back in 2006, shortly after Rogers cut off newsgroup access. Things have really only gotten better since my last review: speeds have picked up considerably (I can just about max out my connection now at certain times of the day, and the average is well above 300 kB/s, and well above 100 kB/s even in peak times), retention is longer, and the deal is now 120 GB for $25 US, which covers about 8 months of my downloading habit, and is still the best value-for-money I’ve found. What made me think of revisiting my already positive review was that I ran through the end of my last block of credits tonight, and they actually let me go over so that my download finished up. I only went a few MB over, and I have no idea how long they would have let me keep going (I doubt I could have set up a 30 GB download to run with just enough credits to start and they would have let that finish — maybe it only checks every few minutes or so), but it was nice that they didn’t stop it immediately when the digits rolled over to zero. I naturally signed up right away for another 120 GB, which should take me through to late summer (though if I don’t start using the VCR/TV to watch TV I might run out before this TV season ends in the spring).