Shaw Internet - Magical New Speeds and Lots-o-bandwidth, fickle geeks appeased

[Yamer]

Originally Posted by KTrain

Yeah, you need to turn off Pop-up blocker for the page.

I'm not sure how to do that with Chrome.

EDIT: Just used IE.

[photon]

When you view the page a tiny window with an x on it will appear in the address bar (beside the bookmark star), click that and you'll get the option. Took me a while to figure it out too.

[atb]

Originally Posted by Old Yeller

Graysdir, good post and all with a lot of good reading material... but really, has an internet petition ever worked?

[Yamer]

Originally Posted by photon

When you view the page a tiny window with an x on it will appear in the address bar (beside the bookmark star), click that and you'll get the option. Took me a while to figure it out too.

You gotta be freaking quick. Same with IE.

I hope they find a way to make a decent browser before my lifetime ends.

EDIT: Says 90.1 since January 20th, and I simply do not believe it.

[Yamer]

Also, if my bill date is January 28th, is that the point in which accumulation starts?

Shouldn't the meter detect that, and let me know from the beginning of my bill date?

EDIT: Doi, it says my billing cycle is the 20th. I would be a fool to believe I actually used 90 GB in 10-12 days.

[Mazrim]

Wow, I'm very consistent. 22GB in November, 22GB in December!

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by KTrain

The Shaw meter is now available for everyone. You can log in to check it out. Turn off the pop-up block as it opens in a new window.

https://secure.shaw.ca

I was 17 Gigs and 6 Gigs over in November and December. At 31 GBs of my 60gig limit right now and only half way through my billing. I wouldn't even consider myself a heavy user.

I get:

We're sorry, we are currently unavailable, please try again later.

Thank you for choosing Shaw.

[Azure]

I think the government should overturn the ruling, and force the big 3 to provide data that shows the consumer whether or not congestion really is a problem, and how it should be solved.

Have the study reviewed by an independent company too.

Shaw is just throwing out comments about congestion and people overloading the network but nobody really knows whether or not it is true. Time to add some solid facts to the case.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by photon

You have to have some kind of limit, bandwidth is a finite resource and every model of delivering it is dependent on overselling; on assuming that people will only use a small portion of the possible bandwidth they could use. There's no such thing as unlimited, and anyone who advertises that either has hard limits in their ToS, throttle you if you exceed some soft limit, kick off the high use users, or goes under after all their customers leave because of service degradation. Web hosting providers try to advertise this all the time but can never actually deliver it.

ISPs only need a limit on peak hour bandwidth. I'm guessing the difference between a heavy user and light user is off-peak. If you don't download/stream, you probably wouldn't buy a high bitrate connection. If you do, the difference in your monthly use is going to come from whether you only stream stuff when you get home from work, or if you leave downloads running overnight.

My "Netflix doesn't count" proposal was just one solution. Another would be leaving things as they are (Shaw/Telus/Rogers/Bell share prices tell me it does work). Another would be bandwidth limits for peak hour use only. Another would be splitting Shaw the ISP from Shaw the content provider.

And your comparisons to natural gas and cellphone plans don't work. For natural gas, it doesn't work because natural gas can be stored. Unused bandwidth cannot. For cellphone plans, it doesn't work because tons of plans offer unlimited off-peak usage, and others simply offer unlimited service, and it also doesn't work because cellphones aren't really a competitive market either.

And for me, having an Internet service that theoretically throttles when it's at max capacity makes a lot more sense having to throttle myself all the time (including when Shaw's network is under light loads), even if there's no such thing as "unlimited bandwidth".

[Hanni]

What really bugs me is how much we get bent over when it comes to internet, tv, telephone when it comes to other countries. I understand the whole population density vs infrastructure required, but when I talk to a buddy in Texas who pays the same as I do for a 28mbps down connection it bothers me.

[Jimmy Stang]

I'd be happy with a solution that saw the independent ISPs allowed to compete again (imagine that) with a reasonable wholesale rate. Someone earlier suggested cost + x, which would obviously have to be determined as fairly as possible. Forcing independent ISPs to pay 85% of retail rates is simply anti-competitive.

Let Teksavvy bill based on the actual cost to deliver the service (plus a reasonable wholesale markup), and you'll see these caps from Shaw, Bell, Rogers disappear overnight. Or at least the strict, widespread enforcement of them.

Shaw's reduction and enforcement of their caps is annoying, but the neutering of the independent competition is the bigger issue here. In fact, once the dust settles from this ruling, I'll consider taking my internet business elsewhere just out of principle. I also have more influence than I sometimes want in tech decisions at work, at my parents place, my in-laws, etc.

I realize that Shaw's primary goal, like any business, is to maximize the return for the shareholders. I also believe that they underestimated the response from internet users and have alienated a large number of them. In the long run, this tactic may have a negative impact on the bottom line. I'm not saying that Shaw is going to suffer much, but there are enough people that would have continued paying their Shaw bill every month that are now aware of (and probably sympathetic to) the independents.

I have been somewhat loyal to Shaw over the years. They were always straight up with the prices, the service was good (for me at least), and their products did the trick for me. I can honestly say that this has diminished my trust in the company. Press the regulator to pass something that is clearly anti-competitive / anti-consumer and waste no time in quietly taking advantage of the ruling to lower caps and start charging overages. All the while, knowing that the consumer's choice has been severely limited by the same ruling. Classy, Shaw. And some people will remember it when they are shopping around for internet services.

[photon]

Originally Posted by fotze

If it took you a while to figure that out, you do not deserve to know your bandwidth usage. use Google Chrome

Fixed!

Originally Posted by SebC

ISPs only need a limit on peak hour bandwidth. I'm guessing the difference between a heavy user and light user is off-peak.

Yup, and Shaw seems to do a pretty decent job of provisioning so that the peak bandwidth is sufficient to serve everyone at or close to the maximum, at least in every place I've lived in in Calgary and area. Personally I enjoy having full speed at all hours.

Originally Posted by SebC

My "Netflix doesn't count" proposal was just one solution. Another would be leaving things as they are (Shaw/Telus/Rogers/Bell share prices tell me it does work). Another would be bandwidth limits for peak hour use only. Another would be splitting Shaw the ISP from Shaw the content provider.

Bandwidth limits for peak hours makes good sense, as you mention later cell phone providers do something similar with free evenings and weekends.

Originally Posted by SebC

And your comparisons to natural gas and cellphone plans don't work. For natural gas, it doesn't work because natural gas can be stored. Unused bandwidth cannot. For cellphone plans, it doesn't work because tons of plans offer unlimited off-peak usage, and others simply offer unlimited service, and it also doesn't work because cellphones aren't really a competitive market either.

No comparison is perfect, but they can be helpful, as in the off-peak usage suggestion.

Originally Posted by SebC

And for me, having an Internet service that theoretically throttles when it's at max capacity makes a lot more sense having to throttle myself all the time (including when Shaw's network is under light loads), even if there's no such thing as "unlimited bandwidth".

I'm sure it's a balance, throttling when you hit a limit would require hardware and software throughout the network to work properly, they already do it to some extent when you buy a specific account level, but it'd have to be automated. Increase in customer service calls as well with people asking what happened.

I'm sure these kinds of solutions come up at whatever meetings there are at these places, it'd be interesting to know why they are rejected.

[Phaneuf3]

Originally Posted by KTrain

The Shaw meter is now available for everyone. You can log in to check it out. Turn off the pop-up block as it opens in a new window.

https://secure.shaw.ca

I was 17 Gigs and 6 Gigs over in November and December. At 31 GBs of my 60gig limit right now and only half way through my billing. I wouldn't even consider myself a heavy user.

Hah! You can see a pretty big spike in my usage coinciding with the steam holiday sale. Wayyyy over the cap.

[zamler]

maybe already posted....

[Kjesse]

On the shaw iextreme package I was 183 gb nov-dec and 205 gb dec-jan.

I knew I used lots of bandwidth, but I'm pretty surprised how much. I'll have to check where all that is coming from. I use Netflix regularly, and torrents a couple times a month. The numbers are not explainable as far as I can tell. I don't trust them.

Edit: And I'm at 5 gigs used Jan 24 - Jan 30th, and my computer was off (I was out of town) on the 25th, returned on the 27th. I did not use netflix or torrents during any of this time, even when home and the computer was on. Something is very fishy.

[HOOT]

By Shaw lowering the caps just as Netflix comes to Canada kinda shows me that they are doing this for competitive reasons and not congestion reasons like they say. Shaw should just raise the caps back to what they were a little while ago and lower their UBB rates and this basically all goes away.

[I_H8_Crawford]

Originally Posted by Delgar

On the shaw iextreme package I was 183 gb nov-dec and 205 gb dec-jan.

I knew I used lots of bandwidth, but I'm pretty surprised how much. I'll have to check where all that is coming from. I use Netflix regularly, and torrents a couple times a month. The numbers are not explainable as far as I can tell. I don't trust them.

Edit: And I'm at 5 gigs used Jan 24 - Jan 30th, and my computer was off (I was out of town) on the 25th, returned on the 27th. I did not use netflix or torrents during any of this time, even when home and the computer was on. Something is very fishy.

Is your WiFi network secure?

[Kjesse]

Originally Posted by I_H8_Crawford

Is your WiFi network secure?

That's the first thing I thought about... but didn't check it...and I'm mostly sure it is (it is passworded and firewalled) but I'm going to check some more.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by photon

I'm sure these kinds of solutions come up at whatever meetings there are at these places, it'd be interesting to know why they are rejected.

As you've said yourself many times, Shaw is only iterested in maximizing shareholder value.

It's the CRTC/govenernment who should be protecting consumer rights and competition.

[Fire]

If Shaw charged me for going over the 60 GB limit in my bill ending in December, I would have had to pay an additional $170!

If the government overturns this decision, am I right to assume that this doesn't affect the caps that Shaw can use but only affects the caps they have on the other ISPs like TekSavvy?