Moving your internet service without spending the first evening on hold

Transferring internet service is not a technical problem. It is a scheduling problem. The work at the new address rarely takes more than an hour; getting the appointment slot is what takes weeks.

The rule fits in one sentence: call as soon as you have the address and the date, not when the boxes are packed. A month ahead is a reasonable minimum. For a 1 July move in Québec, you are really talking about the spring.

Why 1 July changes everything

In Québec an enormous share of leases end on 30 June, and the whole province moves in the same week. Trucks, friends, service elevators and internet provider technicians are all in demand at the same time, in the same city, in the same hours.

In practice, for that period:

Slots go early. Appointments in the first days of July fill weeks in advance. Someone calling on 28 June is often offered a date in mid-July.

The windows are wide. You will be given half a day, not an hour. Plan for someone to be there the whole time.

A setback is hard to recover from. In November, a missed appointment is rebooked in three days. In early July it can be two weeks.

If you are moving on that date, treat the internet appointment the way you treat the truck: something you book early and do not move.

What to check before signing

A few minutes of checking during the viewing saves weeks of complications. These are questions for the landlord, the current occupant, or the provider.

Is service available at that address? Every provider has an address checker. Use it before signing, especially outside the major centres, and especially if you are counting on a particular provider or on fibre.

Are there outlets already? Look for round coaxial jacks, phone jacks, and sometimes rectangular network jacks. Note where they are. A single jack in a back bedroom dictates where the router has to sit, and therefore the coverage of the whole home.

Where does service enter the building? In a triplex the entry point is often in the basement or the front hall. If that room is locked and the landlord lives elsewhere, that needs sorting out before the appointment date.

What kind of building is it? A concrete condo, an older building with plaster over wire lath, a house on three levels: that determines coverage far more than your plan does. Our piece on Wi-Fi dead zones explains why.

Does the building have rules? Some buildings restrict drilling, running cable, or mounting anything outside. A condo board may require approval. Easy to arrange in advance, very awkward the night before.

Transfer, cancel, or use the move to switch

Three situations, three logics.

The transfer. Same provider, new address. The simplest route, usually with no cancellation fee, and your equipment follows you. Still check that the service offered at the new address is equivalent: the same company does not offer the same technology or the same speeds everywhere.

One thing is worth asking explicitly at the moment of transfer: what happens to your price. Promotional rates are often tied to a contract and to an address, and a move can trigger a renegotiation in either direction. Ask first, note the name of the person and the date of the call.

The cancellation. You are leaving the provider. Ask for the exact end-of-service date, what has to be returned, and where. Get all of it confirmed in writing, by email or in the online account.

The switch. A move is the best moment to change provider, because you have no service to interrupt: you are having a new one installed. If you go that way, get the new service installed before cancelling the old one when the dates allow. A few days of overlap costs less than a week with no connection.

What to bring and what to return

What is yours and follows you: your own router or mesh system, your Ethernet cables, coaxial extensions, adapters and the small parts that are annoying to find again.

What belongs to the provider: the modem, the combined box, TV receivers, remotes, power supplies. If you are staying with the same provider you will normally be told to bring it all. If you are leaving, it has to go back, accessories included, within the stated deadline.

Two precautions that prevent bills: keep the return receipt and write down the serial number of every device you hand back. “Unreturned equipment” is a classic dispute, and the proof is always on the side of whoever kept the paperwork.

And take three photographs before unplugging anything: the back of the modem, the back of the TV, and the whole arrangement. It beats any diagram, and it settles the question of which cable went where two weeks later, in a living room full of boxes.

The week before

1. Confirm the appointment and the time window. A three-minute call.
2. Write down your credentials: provider account, current Wi-Fi password, TV service codes. On paper, not only in a phone that will be at four percent on moving day.
3. Back up your computers. Moving is hard on hard drives, and this is the worst possible moment to discover you had no backup.
4. Change the account address with the provider. If you have home phone service, the address attached to 911 emergency service must be current: that is not an administrative detail.
5. Have a fallback ready: enough mobile data to share a connection for a few days.

Moving day and the first evening

The technician, or your own installation, gets the signal as far as the modem. The rest is yours, and that is where the first evening is decided.

Place the box as well as you can from the start, rather than leaving it wherever the cable enters. Up high, in the open, as close to the centre of the home as the cable length allows. A coaxial or Ethernet extension bought in advance, for about twenty dollars, buys you that freedom.

Then give your network the same name and the same password it had at the old address. This is the best advice on the list: every device you own, including the printer, the TV, the bulbs and the thermostat, will reconnect on its own without you configuring anything one by one.

Finally, check coverage that first evening, while the furniture is not yet in place. A speed test in each room takes ten minutes and tells you immediately whether a second unit will be needed.

If nothing works when you arrive

It happens, and panic does not help. In order:

1. Look at the modem lights. A modem searching for signal does not blink the way a modem with a fault does.
2. Try another wall jack, if there is more than one. Some are simply not connected to anything.
3. Call the provider and ask whether the line was actually activated at your address. It is often an activation that was never completed, and it is fixed remotely in minutes.
4. Share your phone’s connection in the meantime. That is enough for an evening.

What is not worth doing is buying new hardware in a panic on day two. Almost nothing that fails on arrival is a hardware fault; it is an activation, a jack, or a cable that got packed in the wrong box.

What people almost always forget

Connected devices. Thermostat, doorbell, bulbs, scale, cameras: they remember the old network. Keep the same name and password and they come back by themselves. Otherwise each one has to be set up by hand.

The printer. Same logic, and it is always the one discovered broken three weeks later, on an evening when a document has to be printed.

Addresses. Deliveries, bills, government services, the bank. Half an hour well spent.

The mail. Nothing to do with the internet, but it is the most common oversight, and forwarding is something you arrange beforehand, not after.

If you would rather have someone rebuild the network on arrival, reconnect the devices and check coverage room by room, that is what our Wi-Fi and home networking service covers. Part of the work, such as reconfiguring accounts and devices, is done just as well remotely, and we are open every day from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., which helps in the middle of a moving week.