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

[woob]

I use dd-wrt on my Linksys router and it has built in usage table.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index

[Leon]

Just wanted to say there is some thoroughly good discussion in this thread. I enjoyed reading it all.

Ultimately it seems the cap changes are negligible and you still have a two month window of being able to go over? That's mainly what I withdrew from this thread. I recall last time this house went over the bandwidth limit, the internet got shut off and we had to call to get it reactivated - a slap on the wrist.

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing is the gray area and inconsistency of these companies, or more specifically in my case, Shaw.

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by zamler

Yes, FU to your service provider, using a high speed service as it's intended. How dare the consumer do this!

I think that the FU was in reference to the graph looking like it is flipping the bird.

[RW99]

Originally Posted by noel

Just wanted to say there is some thoroughly good discussion in this thread. I enjoyed reading it all.

Ultimately it seems the cap changes are negligible and you still have a two month window of being able to go over? That's mainly what I withdrew from this thread. I recall last time this house went over the bandwidth limit, the internet got shut off and we had to call to get it reactivated - a slap on the wrist.

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing is the gray area and inconsistency of these companies, or more specifically in my case, Shaw.

I've enjoyed reading it as well.

But what is negligible now will be something different a year from now. If they make small enough bad changes, over time we will learn to accept all of it. I know there has been a lot of talk of how how video and downloading is taking up much of the 'tubes. But just like how we went from 56k to broadband, they shouldn't use this as an excuse to limit our use.

The level of competition we have in this space is sad. I'd like to voice my opinion with my wallet, but it's pretty much on or off

[SebC]

My PHONE has "unlimited" internet. Sure, they'll throttle me if I go over the bandwidth cap, but they won't charge me extra.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by zamler

I reiterate, why offer blazing fast speeds if you can't use it? All it ends up being is pure marketing BS.

Data usage and data throughput are two totally unrelated concepts in this discussion, and should not be linked.

If I offered you a plan that provided 1 terabyte usage per month, and provisioned a line that could deliver that amount of data every month, you'd have 3 megabit DSL. 1 terabyte in 1 month works out to almost exactly 3 megabits per second.

A 3 megabit connection can't do HD streaming on demand, has relatively high latency that makes it unsuitable for gaming, video conferencing, or even VOIP.

You need the "blazing fast speeds" for the same reason you need more than the 40 HP it takes to maintain highway cruising speed in your car - there are times when you have multiple streams going at once, or have near-realtime demands like VOIP, live streaming, latency sensitive gaming, etc. You need that extra headroom to get acceptable performance during the peak times.

So it's not marketing BS.

In effect, with Shaw's move, what you are seeing is the pendulum swinging more towards throughput, and away from capacity. Shaw has consistently been raising their minimum performance levels for the price (look at what 15 megabits costs today, compared to 7 megabits a year ago), at the expense of raw monthly capacity, which obviously hasn't kept pace with the raw performance of the connection.

What they are trying to do is find the happy medium between three divergent points - how much people will pay, how much throughput they need on average for today's uses, and how much capacity they need on average per month.

Fast, lots, or cheap.

Pick any two. That's what Shaw is struggling to do as well. They can't deliver on all three, for all customers. There's not enough money or infrastructure in the country to do that.

People can spin it as a Shaw vs. Netflix thing all they want, but I think the truth behind what is happening is considerably more complex that that.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Data usage and data throughput are two totally unrelated concepts in this discussion, and should not be linked.

You made some excellent points, but how can you say the two should not be part of this discussion? The faster your connection, the more data you can transfer in a given time, obviously. What I'm saying is, the bandwidth that Shaw offers for an average connection is already at the point where you can very easily exceed their monthly usage. So let's say that 2 years from now, Shaw offers the same usage cap, but offers 3x the bandwidth. How is that really going to benefit me? Sure, I can watch streaming video or download something at three times the speed, but the faster your connection, the faster you are going to reach the usage cap. And the faster your connection, the more incentive you have to take advantage of the bandwidth. This is where marketing comes into play, advertise uber speeds, but then cripple the persons ability to use it.

I do understand that there needs to be a balance, but if you keep upping your bandwidth, and keep your allowable usage the same (or even lower it) then it becomes counter productive. And the car analogy doesn't work IMO, the situations are vastly different.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by zamler

...the faster your connection, the faster you are going to reach the usage cap...

No. That's only true if you need to download more stuff because you have a faster connection. The overwhelming majority of customers will download about the same amount of content whether they're on a 5mpbs line or a 50mbps line.

I probably watch (stream/download) 8 HD movies a month and a bunch of TV shows depending on the time of year. I recently doubled my bandwidth and that hasn't changed, I just get them quicker.

[The Yen Man]

So I am assuming these caps are going to go up as technology advances? I mean, it's only natural to assume as HD movies become more and more prevalent and streaming services get more common, bandwidth is going to increase. 75 gigs seems ok to me. I remember during my university days, the soft cap was 15 gigs. I got several warnings of going over the cap, and I think I got my services cut once or twice. Ah the good old days of anime downloading off MIRC.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

So I am assuming these caps are going to go up as technology advances?

Why are you assuming that? Technology is advancing and caps are dropping now.

[The Yen Man]

I dunno, it's just an assumption. I guess it's because 75 gigs sounds like a happy medium for normal usage per household. When normal household usage starts trending up, I'm sure they'll adjust accordingly.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by kunkstyle

Why are you assuming that? Technology is advancing and caps are dropping now.

To be totally fair, the caps were raised this past summer and then the raise was reversed later on when Shaw decided they couldn't maintain the cost/service level of those lines.

That said, it is fair to assume that as Shaw (and Telus eventually, I assume) deploys their Gigabit fiber across the entire city, there will be cheaper solutions available with an increased bandwidth cap. Personally, I don't think universally increasing the cap across all plans is would be the best business choice, nor would it be my personal preference. I would prefer to see different types of plans rather than just everything getting bigger and higher.

Maybe plans that have a lower speed but a higher cap. Possibly plans with more of a focus on upload speeds or a strict pay by usage plan. Options which give more value to what the customer needs, for example, rather than assuming that just because they want Nitro because of its 5MB upload speed that they need 100MB down or 500GB monthly transfer.

[Jimmy Stang]

^ It would be nice to have some more choices so you can tailor the service to your needs. For me personally, I would sacrifice download speed in exchange for more upload. I like to watch my Slingbox from work occasionally, plus I moonlight as a photographer and I'm often uploading full-sized images via FTP.

So for me, instead of 10-15 Mbps download speed and 1 Mbps upload, I'd be happy with 5 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload, for example.

[Hack&Lube]

The market is still not competitive enough. Consumers should have the choice to choose capacity versus throughput if that's what they desire. We still have the 3 big telecoms holding a stranglehold over the infrastructure and a CRTC that seemingly bows to their protectionist whims.

In Korea and Japan 50-100 Mbps with no limits is more and more common. Government owns the infrastructure and leases/licenses it out to providers.

Shaw tying high speeds to lower limits and not having more flexible options is they same as them forcing you to buy bundles of channels in order to get the 1-2 channels you actually want.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

The market is still not competitive enough. Consumers should have the choice to choose capacity versus throughput if that's what they desire. We still have the 3 big telecoms holding a stranglehold over the infrastructure and a CRTC that seemingly bows to their protectionist whims.

In Korea and Japan 50-100 Mbps with no limits is more and more common. Government owns the infrastructure and leases/licenses it out to providers.

Shaw tying high speeds to lower limits and not having more flexible options is they same as them forcing you to buy bundles of channels in order to get the 1-2 channels you actually want.

You also have to fill out a paper form, send it by mail and wait weeks before you get internet in Japan. Agree with everything else tho.

[mykalberta]

Originally Posted by SebC

My PHONE has "unlimited" internet. Sure, they'll throttle me if I go over the bandwidth cap, but they won't charge me extra.

I would check your contract to make sure. They have *unlimited* BW for mobile devices in the US but the cap is 5GB with charges for overages.

[theonlywhiteout]

Shaw and TELUS are swimming in money. I don't shed a tear for either of them when they say they can't afford to have the network maintained at current levels. Frankly it's a lie, when's the last time your internet just stopped or dropped to 10% of its usual levels cuz of high network traffic?

[Tinordi]

To be totally fair, the caps were raised this past summer and then the raise was reversed later on when Shaw decided they couldn't maintain the cost/service level of those lines.

Great quote. Shaw decides, not the market. That's the problem.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

In Korea and Japan 50-100 Mbps with no limits is more and more common. Government owns the infrastructure and leases/licenses it out to providers.

Do you, or does anyone you know, have first hand experience on those kind of networks? Does the performance come close to a real, consistent 50 megabits?

Either way, it's tantalizing to think that they have that level of performance to the premises, since even if the current infrastructure can't deliver or sustain that kind of throughput, the pipe is there, and the backend will follow in years to come.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

I would check your contract to make sure. They have *unlimited* BW for mobile devices in the US but the cap is 5GB with charges for overages.

Okay okay, it's just in the "Home Zone", but I can't exactly unplug my modem and take it with me either.

And the download caps have very little to do with capacity, because they treat off-peak bandwidth exactly the same a peak-hour bandwidth.