Bell Sympatico is the consumer-side Internet service provider division of Bell Canada. Sympatico was launched in December 1995.

Sympatico offers five tiers of service: 56K dialup, 128K "DSL Basic Lite", 256K "DSL Basic", 3Mbps "High Speed" ADSL, and 4Mbps "High Speed Ultra" ADSL. Sympatico currently enjoys over 1.6 million subscribers in Ontario and Quebec and is the largest ADSL ISP in Canada.

As of summer 2003, Sympatico has tried to differentiate its service from its competitors by adding Zero Knowledge's suite of antivirus, firewall and anti-spyware services for extra charge. As of spring 2004, Sympatico has added a wireless modem-router hardware upgrade and Microsoft's MSN Premium software to its portfolio.

Etymology

The name Sympatico was chosen for its universal recognition by both English and French speakers. Visually and phonetically it resembles the English and French words "sympathetic" and "sympathique", respectively.

External links

• Sympatico/MSN MSN-based portal site
• DSLReports Sympatico forum and FAQs