Ok, so I just finished my service call with Shaw and I learned a few interesting things.
1. The nodes in Calgary area mostly aren't over saturated. The service guy said he doesn't know too much about it as it's more related to maintenance group than service group but he's unaware of over saturated nodes in the city. He said maybe burbs and small town might be nearing, but he's not sure.
2. You can purchase a Hitron for a $50 one time fee ONLY IF you acquire it from the service guy on a service call. Shaw customer support is only able to offer it at $120 under special circumstances. Regular price for the modem is about $250. I am unsure if it's an actual purchase or upgrade buy the service rep said I shouldn't be billed monthly rental fees... I'll have to check later invoices.
2B. You have to prove heavily that you're not screwing yourself in terms of wifi (not central location, placing modem behind walls and doors, using bad channel etc) to get the $50 deal. He says some customers go through 3-4 service calls before the service rep can offer the deal.
3. 2.4 GHz wifi is over saturated. Not only Shaw, but Telus and many other providers are needing to put out 5 GHz modems. Rep fears 5Ghz will be saturated in a few years, but expects a new band to increase the wireless traffic lanes so to speak.
3B testing node saturation is a crapshoot. They really only know if a whole group of shaw customers in an area get poor speeds. Then they'll upgrade the node to relieve the bottleneck
4. Not all devices compatible with 5 GHz. Crappy electric, power and cable lines affect speed. Reasonable assumption for decent (not amazing) speeds is 5Mbit per device using consistent bandwidth (ie streaming). So Shaw 15 is good for 3 such devices, Shaw 30 = 6 etc.
That's all I remember off the top of my head. Heading out now.
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