Comwave Review by WhichVoIP

Comwave is a well-known provider for phone and Internet service throughout Canada. Serving over 1600 cities across the country, the company provides residential service and further serves the business community with high quality broadband services. Established in 1999, this privately owned company is among the largest national providers in the country and further boasts a decent track record for service and support. Although Comwave now has a portion of its website allocated to providing services in the USA, most of the offering are placeholders and are not currently available. As such, this review will focus completely on the Canadian products and services.

The Good

When it comes to Internet and phone service in Canada, you are bound to select providers based on the province where you reside. Fortunately, Comwave provides service to various cities throughout the entire nation. For those that are in somewhat more remote locations, this is one of many benefits the company has to offer.

Comwave serves the residential market with affordable VoIP based home phone systems. Starting at $9.95 a month, you can purchase a basic home phone service with unlimited calling to your area code. You will receive 6 months of free service, should you sign up for a 3 year contract. If you opt out of the contract, $5 a month (i.e. $14.95) will provide the same features on a month-to-month basis.

For $19.95 a month, a user can not only unburden themselves from a 3 year contract but also enjoy additional benefits. This rate includes such features as visual caller ID and call waiting, web access to contacts and voicemail, call forwarding as well as other beneficial features. They will even port your number to their service for free. At another $10 a month, the Global Plan is available under a 3 year contract that includes unlimited international calling to 60 countries.

Two different mobile options are available. The first of these is a stand-alone app called ephone that is effectively a mobile calling card and can be loaded as needed to make calls from anywhere in the world. The second app is called Comwave mobile and is a typical VoIP app for existing customers to use as an extension of their service. Both apps are available from the Google, Apple and Blackberry app stores.

Internet from Comwave starts at $40 a month for 6 Mbps of bandwidth. To upgrade to higher bandwidth tiers, prices are incredibly low. For example, 15 Mbps will cost $45 a month and 50 Mbps (the highest available for residential bandwidth) is only $60 a month. Bundles are available for home phone with each Internet pricing tier.

Comwave's business services are powered by a hosted PBX that grants access to a multitude of features. Starting at $14.95 a month per user, 25 features are available for your business. To get the most of a business phone plan, the next level of service at $24.95 a month per line opens up features that most would expect from a business phone system such as an auto attendant, conference calling and unlimited calling. In addition to hosted voice services, the company also offers SIP trunking and Comwave claims to be the largest SIP trunking provider in Canada. Local, North American and Global trunks are available are available for purchase at various price points.

The Bad

The Canadian market is well known for high prices with respect to Internet and phone services. At best, Comwave has competitive pricing and the only real deal to be found is the 6 months of free service for certain Internet and phone offers with a 3 year contract.

Fortunately, the company is very consistent with service uptime and maintaining promised bandwidth regions served.

You will pay a $50 deposit to rent the gateway used for Internet service or home phone. Without committing to a plan, your rates will increase approximately $5 per month which is not unreasonable. Although there is a small fee of $12 for VoIP adapters, these ATA devices are required to allow you to connect a regular telephone to your network.

The basic and enhanced plans do not include any allocation of minutes for nationwide long distance calling in Canada. The Canada plan must be selected to obtain the unlimited calling feature that is common among Comwave competitors, but at a much cheaper monthly price.

The Bottom Line

• Residential services starts at $9.95 a month for the Basic Plan with a 3 year term or only $14.95 a month with no commitment.
• Advanced plans cost anywhere from $10 to $15 a month more than Basic Plan and include many additional features from visual caller ID to call forwarding.
• A $50 deposit is required for the Comwave home gateway and a $12 fee applies for phone ATAs that connect regular phones to a network.
• Internet service starts at $40 a month for 6 Mbps download speeds.
• The highest grade of Internet service is $60 a month for 50 Mbps download speeds.
• Business services start at $14.95 a month per user for a metered plan that includes very basic calling options.
• SIP trunks starting at $19.95 per month
• The most popular calling option for business is $24.95 a month per user that grants access to a few premium features and unlimited calling in USA/CA
• Free mobile application allows users to utilize calling plans over 3G/4G or WiFi.

Overall Thoughts

For a nationwide provider of both Internet and phone services, Comwave is among the best in Canada. The affordable options offered by the company are ideal for most consumers or businesses in the nation.

The residential plans can be good choices for those that do not make a lot of phone calls and are simply looking for a cheap replacement to a land-line. For higher volume callers though, there are cheaper options available that include more features. Comwave does not offer any extreme discounts on pricing with the exception of 6 months for free service with a 3 year contract. Like every other service and product, make sure you read the fine print and you will enjoy their service.

There are comprehensive service offerings for businesses that will enable most companies to look at bundling both data and voice services. Comwave should be able satisfy the needs of most businesses as it offers voice services available as either basic business lines, long distance, hosted PBX or SIP trunking solutions.

All User Reviews (Page 1 of 4)

Comwave reviews are listed in chronological order.

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Disclaimer: The opinions, views and ratings expressed in these VoIP Reviews are those solely of the reviewer who submitted the review. Whichvoip.com does not necessarily agree with any of the expressed opinions, view or ratings.

WhichVoIP Visitor Comments

#2 : Posted by Chris Hebert

Whatever you do don't sign up for comwave! My retired mother signed up and had little to no service for over a month, ever after comwaves tech support deleted all her security features on her router. Then she had enough of their NULL SERVICE and signed up with a good service she received a bill for early termination of a contract - to which she signed nothing and wasn't informed at point of purchase. The nerve of a crap company!

 

#1 : Posted by Charles B

Is the quality of any of the broadbands offered by Comwave satisfactory for TV viewing (streaming)?. And can my large screen TV be hooked up somehow to my computer or whatever to show TV downloads/streaming in HD or at least ordinary standard format using a suitable choice of broadband from Comwave?

-> Response: Netflix, as an example, requires a broadband speed of approximately 5Mb/s to stream HD videos. Comwave starts at 6Mb/s so theoretically it is capable of streaming HD. However, often it depends on consistency of service and how much memory is in the device you are using. In other words can it buffer enough data so you do not see quality issues if the consistency of the broadband drops. I have not personally tried Comwave broadband so cannot comment on the quality. Regarding connecting your TV there are many options here. For example there are many smart TVs these days that can connect directly to Hulu, Netflix and the likes. Alternatively most blu-ray DVD players are capable of streaming to these video sources or look at Roku or Apple TV - there are also many other inexpensive devices that can do this. If you have a decent laptop you could stream and connect HDMI out to your TV and display it on the bigger screen. To test the quality of the Internet connection try our speed/voip test.

 

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