Sharing my experience. I hope this may help others who are considering the Freedom Home Internet.
On Sunday, I enrolled for the Freedom Mobile Home Internet service at one of their retail stores in Coquitlam, BC. I asked if I am getting a new gateway to which they replied ~ Yes, see the box is sealed.
Back at home, I unpacked the box and then visited my profile on the Freedom website to change the credit card. Findings:
1) The gateway (Fibre+ Gateway XB6 CGM4140COM) is definitely not new - multiple scratches and even stains of unknown origin. Putting aside aesthetics and hygiene, given the state of the Internet, reusing a gateway is of a concern to me. If any of the previous users have been tagged (device fingerprinting) by any agency for any activity now it could be me who is going to be monitored or worse. Or maybe I am being too paranoid.
2) My Freedom Mobile profile @ myaccount.freedommobile.ca/dashboard has a new tab for Home Internet which points to homeinternet.freedommobile.ca/dashboard?serviceId=0 for which I got
NET::ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID | Subject: homeinternet.freedommobile.ca | Issuer: DigiCert SHA2 Secure Server CA | Expires on: Sep 16, 2021 | Current date: Sep 19, 2021. Not nice, but nothing to do because customer support is only provided until 1am ET.
I followed the instructions to configure the gateway. All worked fine except that the Port Forwarding and DMZ configuration pages contain no settings and instead ask to "Visit internet.shaw.ca to set up port forwards, among many other features and settings". That site asks for Shaw credentials which as a Freedom customer I do not have. I noticed this in some old reviews but was hoping it may have been resolved. There is also the issue with the hidden SSIDs blasting across the spectrum - already discussed in other posts.
On Monday the issue with the certificate persisted and I contacted the Freedom support chat. The chat ended up being 2.5h long (due to forwards and wait time), amusing and, unfortunately, unhelpful. I cannot post it here due to the DSLReports rules, but would like to summarize the forwards. And, yes, I had to explain the issue and provide account details several times.
09:45: Chat connected to Agent 1 who is with Shaw Internet and will have to forward to Freedom Internet.
10:05: Connected to Agent 2 who is with Mobile Services and will have to forward to Home Internet.
10:20: Connected to Agent 3 who is with Billing and will have to forward to Internet Tech.
10:53: Connected to Agent 4 who is with an unknown company / department and will forward to Freedom.
11:02: Connected to Agent 5 who is with Billing and will have to forward to Tech Support.
11:09: Connected to Agent 6. A Tech, finally! But then I was told:
- I may want to try accessing My Profile with an app, not a browser.
- The profile site is working fine and I have to ignore the security warning and proceed until the certificate updates on my end.
- Everything works fine and I am wasting my time.
- I should call Freedom support to update my credit card over the phone but should not mention technical issues because I will be forwarded again.
- I should “not bother” with Port Forwards and DMZ at 10.0.0.1 because I will be asked to download an app which only works for Shaw customers.
12:16: Chat closed by Agent 6 because "all my concerns have been answered".
Right.
On a positive note, the service works, the speeds are as advertised, but I cannot comment yet on service or gateway reliability. I noticed some Wi-Fi disconnects on 2.4GHz-only devices. The NetSpot graph below seems to support this.
Compared to a Telus Arcadyan Wi-Fi Hub, on the Freedom gateway the Wi-Fi signal strength around the house (basement, 2 levels, yard) is on average 11% worse for 2.4GHz and 9% better for 5GHz. Measured with NetSpot.
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I posted here because Shaw now owns the Freedom brand and provides the backend and equipment for the Freedom Mobile Home Internet service. Please let me know if I need to move this to another group.
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