The acreage I live on has limited options for high speed internet: satellite, and Platinum Communications. No DSL or cable is available. I've read a lot of bad reviews for the satellite services out there, typically due to them being massively oversold, and way slower than advertised. And while I go with Bell Satellite TV, and they DO offer satellite internet, they DON'T in all parts of the country (including mine). So that being said, I've gone with Platinum for several years now. In my area, Platinum is a wireless network that relies on line of sight between your house mounted dish, and one of their towers. I maybe was sceptical of this setup at first, but it's been surprisingly solid and reliable almost all the time. However.... as good as Platinum once was (and it was great), it too now seems to be massively oversold. I guess they can't say no to a sale, and because of that, the download speeds I'm getting are absolutely horrible. You can see the Speed test photo I uploaded for evidence of how bad it can be (.09 mbs). But rest assured, .25 mbs during prime time is about it. Sometimes I think I'm on dial up. And forget about streaming a movie! I download movies overnight for viewing the next day... Anyhow... Platinum was once good, and they may be good again if they can find a balance between sales, and network performance. In the mean time, I'm waiting for other options. Platinum: it's only a matter of time before better options take over, so figure it out, before you are obsolete. read more

Platinum Communications Corporation - Eveni - Internet Service Providers Near Me - Calgary, Alberta

As per the other reviews, since Platinum has taken over EFirehose they have forgotten that they have customers. 27 hours of downtime over the past 5 days, 5 separate calls to technical support with a phone message and not one reply. Sales and all other numbers do not pick up either so I think that they may be close to closing if there are no employees that can answer a call. Corporate support (we are a corporate client) actually just rings, no VM no hold no nothing. read more

Dave I am about half a km and clear view of their tower and my Internet service is far worse than dialup used to be. I agree with another reviewer that there reason for my Internet problems is my router. Same story every time, thats if you actually got through to costume service which will prove useless. So far I have replaced many routers with same horrible results. I have been with Platinum for over 12 years and they are only getting worse. Therefore, I am desperately looking for another Internet provider. read more

Was a decent ISP for the first couple of years then the speeds and customer service just tanked. Apparently they have oversold the service and now there isn't enough speed to do anything on the internet, especially in the evening hours. I have complained about the service to no avail, it's always the same answer for the last year. Upgrades in progress. Yeah right! read more

Very inconsistent and when it is working it is very slow. Many times the internet goes down for a few days and whenever you have to call for a technician you usually have to wait a week and then they will come in the middle of the week when you're supposed to be at work. I would not recommend this company to anybody. read more

I have been a long time subscriber to what was E-Firehose, then after the acquisition Platinum Communications. Since the acquisition Platinum's speed is often slower than dial up and one can go for days at a time with no internet connectivity. I've made the calls, waited and called back and in general been very patient - it's obvious this will not change. Their tech has told me that they have oversold their capacity, and have no plans to add towers to their infrastructure. He also tells me that their staffing is much too low for all the issues they have, sothe state of the company is hurting at best. Of note, they also have no interest in reducing their price now that the offering is no where near what it was when I or many others signed up. Run away. read more

Internet is super slow, never anyone available to take calls, this is a communication company and the online chat link says tech services - offline, accounting - offline, sales - offline...account terminated in June still getting billed in October no-one to communicate with.... read more

I reside SW of Okotoks and unfortunately, do NOT have many internet provider options in this area. After being a customer of Platinum's for years now, I've had an install appointment cancelled for the 2ND time this WEEK (Monday now today, Wednesday). First I was told the installer called in sick, now today, the same installer has a kid in the hospital?!? Really - come on guys, you're going to lose valuable customers like this - hire more installers would be a first suggestion. I'm now booked for next Tuesday and do not feel comfortable or confident that this will happen. read more

I have never had a good connection and have gone weeks without Internet at all. At Christmas we were without Internet for days. We did not get a credit for these days without service, although my bill is paid in full a year in advance. I want to disconnect and phoned to move onto another provider and was told I would need 30 day notice and pay a $50 disconnect fee. The connection is poor and goes out all the time. They do maintenance for hours without telling you in advance. The customer care does not sympathize with customers frustrations and does not give credit to accounts when connection is down. read more

Stay away from Platinum. Poor service and worse support. I would start dowloading my e-mail and go shopping. Upon return my mail would be almost done, Anything with a video was deleted as I couldn't watch it due to constant buffering. A 5 minute video of some importance to me took over 40 minutes to download and was so disjointed as to be useless to watch. Calls about slow downloads had no response other than they knew it was slow but they had no intention of improving their old equipment in the forseeable future. Quote "what I had was as good as it was going to get" stop quote. After an additional request that I be put on another tower showed it would improve their performance but would need to wait until the snow went. This is northern Alberta. The snow will be here until May. I guess they hold off on new installations for the same reason, but if not, their loyalty is to a new customer and not one who has paid top dollar for six years. They did offer a disount but service would stay as is. They are a poor internet provider, They have old equipment giving poor service. They have wierd ideas of loyalty to their customers. There is nothing good about Platinum Communications. Stay away from them. read more

Not recommended, waste of money, I can hardly wait for another ISP to come to Carseland. Efirehose used to be pretty good. They had excellent customer service and provided close to the advertised speed. Since Platinum took over....forget it. They want your money, but provide no customer service. The service goes down on a regular basis with no explanation....they usually say it is our fault when and if we can get through to customer service. Now we have lost access to our personel email service through firehose. I can't even get onto the Platinum or Efirehose website to send an email to ask why? No notice no nothing! I spent 40 minutes yesterday listening to a ring tone before finally hanging up in disgust. As far as I'm concerned they can shove their service and rip their shoddy install off my roof! I'm done. read more

I have been a Platinum customer for years. I am a customer because this is the only service available in my area. The actual download speeds are a fraction of what they advertise & what you pay for. It works for e mail & webb browsing but forget about video, etc. The worst thing about these guys is they won't admit their product offerings are poor. They always have an excuse. read more

Platinum does provide ISP (notice i did not say high speed) services that are very shakey and flakey. I have been involved with a lot of distance learning over the years and if i need a solid and reliable connection that does operate reasonably fast I have to do into town and get connected to a friends service or even the Starbucks WiFi works much better than this system. Tonight i was trying to download a file and the best speek I could get was 0.09 Mbs. If you contact them the stand comment is "get rid of your router", the service desk is actually the helpless desk, over the years the hours have been reduced as has the service. No if only Telus could be bribed to come out.... read more

Was OK a few years ago but really gone downhill.How about download speeds of .75 mbps and then when you email customer support they dont even write back ? read more

I am in the same situation as Nick S. (acreage outside of Okotoks) and have seen my internet speed and performance plummet, but I'm still paying for what they call 'high speed'. I've now found we have an alternative through Shaw Direct and will be switching asap read more

I live east of Calgary and signed up for their 8 up and 1 down service. I have never seen such awful customer service from a for profit company. They operate with the mindset that customers are an inconvenience that must be dealt with sporadically on the phone.... that is if you get anyone to call you back, forget about speaking to someone when you call, rather you wait on hold for 10 mins before you have the option of leaving a message. I should have known that there was something going on when the installer was rushing to finish my install and didn't give me a chance to plug in my laptop to the new line for a test before he was literally running out the door to his truck. He told me that I had a perfect db match to the tower and would have a great connection. But this is only the beginning. You can look forward to never seeing a response from their technical support via email. They will try to explain that they are understaffed and to many customers for their network.... SO UPGRADE IT or stop taking peoples money and not delivering the service they are paying for. Now you don't ever actually get to speak to a tec rather a receptionist. But after she is finished avoiding trying to fix your technical problem she will tell you that your service is slow because of your location. I know this not to be a fact because for a single day I had acceptable service. 7Mbps... Now I enjoy about 1 Mbps or less with a ping of about 300 and higher I guess actually having a tech fix the problem is to much like work for a single customer. Now I have been more than understanding with this company and tried to work with them but their total lack of customer support is appalling. I have never written a negative comment about any outfit online before but my total disappointment with them has driven me to this. I should have just gone with my gut instinct on this one and with what I read online about this outfit. read more

I was with Platinum for 6 years and while the started out all right, they got slower and slower, while at the same time the service got worse(just try to get them on the phone) Finally when I needed them and my internet was down I was informed of thier "best effort rural internet service" translation give us a good 10 days to get to your house. If you can live with these terms go ahead and roll the dice read more

I live just west of Edmonton and have no options for internet except Platinum. I think no internet would be better than the service I get from this poorly ran company. Lots of outages and unsatisfactory support. There is always an excuse and speeds are slower than dial up. I would never recommend this company to anyone I knew. It is very obvious they oversubscribe their service then collect the money after they rope you into a contract. read more

Stay away from this horrible company! They will try and charge you bullshit rates for oversold internet. Slow all the time, get dropped all the time. Alberta Government should be revoking there business license as they are selfishly taking peoples money and not providing the service they say they will when you sign up. If you have a problem...they don't call back or email, if you want something fixed... same thing happens. When you want to pay.... they call back... They still haven't came to get there equipment off my roof!!! Unreal company, S@#T service. You can be set up on auto billing for payments for years then they want to charge you 49.00$ disconnection fee but this isn't auto billed...they just let it go and then charge you interest on that as you must call to pay....if they ever answer!!! The worst company ever, Stay away and spread the word! this company needs to be run into the ground! read more

I agree with the other poster from Okotoks.....line of site internet is getting slower by the week. We have been with them for almost a decade and their death-nail is about to fall. What was once a fairly decent company is absolutely abysmal now. If you are contemplating using their service, think again....we are. The only thing holding us back is the consideration of having to change our e-mail address. If you think Telus service and response is terrible, you haven't seen anything yet until you try this company. If you don't believe me, just give their phone number a call and try talking to someone! Platinum is now so isolated from the customer that it is virtually impossible to talk to a customer service rep or anyone for that matter, to get any information whatsoever. We have been sooo frustrated with them that I have left messages (can't talk to anyone when we phone) requesting a Vice-President call me...all to no avail. Nada, niet, nuthin. In the decade we have used them, there has been no upgrades to equipment that improve our speed, no communications when their systems go down (which is very frequently, lately), no improved speed. All we get from them is a monthly invoice...they are sure good at that! Do yourself a favour....stay away from Platinum. There are much better choices out there now, with far better service and speed. Just check Explornet....that is where everyone in our community has gone and I'm not far behind. G read more

DON'T DO IT! DON'T DO IT! I promise you. You do not want to sign up by choice. UNFORTUNATELY, this is the ONLY provider we can get on our rural acreage or we would be long gone. Any bit of weather (snow, wind, rain) and the towers are down. Even on a 26 degree day with no wind, and it still takes YouTube 10+ minutes too load. Didn't use to be horrible, but in the past 6 months the Internet has been down at least 10 days. We got 4 inches of snow 2 days ago and the internet still isn't working again. To make matters worse, they don't let you talk to a person. There is an automated recording saying where the affected areas are, and if you push your numbers right you actually get to leave a voicemail. Sometimes they even get back to you before a week is over!!! SO SO SO SO Bad. Ugh. read more

We were with eFirehose for 3 years then it was sold to Platinum 3 years ago, we live on a acreage and it is hard to find a service provider for our area so we just put up with the slow / delayed / down service of Platinum for the last 3 years, then a knock on the door one day and there was a new provider in our area and so we jumped in and signed up, I have documentation showing that I cancelled all Platinum internet services in writing on Dec. 1st, 2015 effective immediately and on Jan. 1st, 2016 I received a invoice from them stating that I owe them internet service for the month of Dec. 2015. $58.08 plus equipment cost of $200.73 for a grand total of $258.81. I would highly advise all to stay away from this company as they will bleed you dry and lie. As I stated to them that we are the type of people to have the same dentist for 15 years and so on that we do not change or services randomly and I promised them that I will let social media know of them ripping off people and warn that their services are really bad, we are very very happy and my two teens are not fighting anymore with the slow internet service in our house, we are fast and connected. read more

I'd give a negative 5 star if that was possible. I was with E-Firehose for about 25 years - they were the only option out here on my acreage, then they became Platinum Communications and things became completely impossible. There was a complete shutdown of their system a few years ago and it took 8 days (I think, it may have been 7, but I think it was 8) to get my connection back up. They told me I was one of the last. Then again in 2014? my internet went down again. I tried calling technical support but all I could get was voice mail. I left message after message for the entire day and never got a call back. The next morning I started trying to get through again and still could not get anyone to answer - just kept getting put through to their voice mail with no return call. Finally it occurred to me to press the number for "billing" instead of technical assistance and sure enough a real person answered on the first ring. When I explained my problem and said I was going to cancel my account if I couldn't get some help she said she would have tech. support call me. Still it took about 4 hours before some very bored and annoyed fellow called back. He was completely uninterested in helping find the problem. he just said it looked like something was disconnected. I told him nothing was disconnected that I could see and he pretty much said too bad and that was it. Nothing he could do for me. I cancelled my account and called Xplorenet. The fellow who came out to install that found out in about 30 seconds that my wireless router was burnt out. There had been a thunder storm the night before my internet went down and apparently the only thing affected was the router. If Platinum had cared at all they could have helped figure that out and I would still be a customer. Instead they have an ex-customer who tells everyone I know what a horrible company Platinum is. I was recently told by a Telus employee that Platinum has been bought out by CCI. I will look into that and try to find out if they have the same customer "non-support" team that Platinum had. read more