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

[TheyCallMeBruce]

Originally Posted by HOOT

Ya I guess there is a bunch of factors.

Are there any websites that show average data usage per hour or whatever on all the different services like Skype, Netflix, Hulu, etc.?

I'm just trying to understand how much internetz someone has to actually use to get up to 60-100GB a month even with those high data using sites.

I haven't really used Netflix, but I was told each movie is around 2.5gigs. Realistically if you're the only person using the internet, as long as you don't rely on the internet for movies, tv shows, and games everyday, then you're fine.

Unfortunately, I don't fall into that category.

[Travis Munroe]

^^ its a lot of usage. If your not gaming/downloading torrents that often I think it would be tough to exceed one of the middle shaw packages.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Realtor 1

^^ its a lot of usage. If your not gaming/downloading torrents that often I think it would be tough to exceed one of the middle shaw packages.

Filesharing, Netflix and online backup are the only 3 ways I can think of that any residental customer should ever go over anything Shaw has to offer, except maybe Light Speed.

[photon]

Exactly, it's not the world ending thing that the hyperbole wielders would make it out to be.

Shaw had caps previously. They raised them. Then they lowered them to what they used to be and added a surcharge.

I don't blame Shaw or Telus or anyone for doing whatever they can do to maximize shareholder profits. The fact that it costs Shaw x cents is a red herring. The cost of a consumer product is what the market will bear, not what it costs to get that good to the consumer.

There is a question of is the CRTC allowing a monopoly (or whatever you call a monopoly of a few companies), but what's stopping a new ISP coming into Calgary and offering a new product (not one using infrastructure leased from an existing ISP)?

[Graysdir]

A few points I'd like to make:

The amount of usage that Shaw provides is VERY low. It is *easily* used up for common tasks.

If you use Skype video or Facetime, or any other form of video chat, it uses approximately 1/2 GB per hour. I guess Canadians aren't supposed to move towards the future for video communications, with the rest of the world?

If you play console games, it's much worse than PC games. Why? PC games typically offer dedicated servers. On a Xbox or PS3, you will often randomly be chosen as the server. Instead of 50mb/hour, it can consume 250mb per hour, or more. If you use Vent/Teamspeak, it can consume an extra 50mb per hour as well. If you play WoW in a raid situation with lots of people, it can consume a surprising amount of data.

If you use online backups, it consumes extreme amounts of data.

If you contribute your CPU cycles to help fight diseases by helping folding@home, you can expect to pay extra for your kindness.

If you watch Netflix - Each SD movie is 2GB, and each HD movie is 4GB. If it has a Dolby Digital track and is HD, it consumes 4.5GB on average. Watching one movie per day would be VERY costly. After you're over your cap, a typical HD movie would cost you an additional $8 PER MOVIE paid fully to Shaw.

Windows updates / iPod, iPad, iPhone updates / Virus updates / Xbox updates, etc. all consume large amounts of bandwidth if you have multiple devices in your home.

What if you want to watch Globaltv.ca? Did you know it's owned by Shaw? So every few minutes when a commercial break pops up, you are paying for the bandwidth to send you that commercial!

If you work from home, or if you have your own website, prepare to cut out any extra graphics/audio/video. People won't be willing to view your content otherwise, because they'll have to pay per MB.

If you were to go away on vacation, your internet usage would still accumulate. There is communication on Shaw's side even if your PC's are all turned off, and this ALL counts towards your usage, and you pay for it.

If someone pings your IP for 12 hours straight, you could be in for a massive overage bill - because that counts towards your usage too!

http://openmedia.ca/meter

The petition has received 40,000 signatures in total, and SEVEN THOUSAND signatures today alone. News is spreading, because the CRTC finalized their decision today.

Metered Billing is a way for our ISP to prevent us from accessing their TV competitors, ie: Netflix/Hulu. People are "cutting the cable", but the ISPs will have the last laugh! This is clearly anti-competitive, and the CRTC has approved it. (Their appeals process ended today) The Conservatives are quiet about it, and they refuse to answer any questions regarding metered billing. The NDP, however, are furious about this decision.
http://www.straight.com/article-3695...ternet-service

By the way, the term "UBB" is what the ISPs want you to call it. It makes the scam almost sound "fair". In fact, it should always be called "Metered Billing". It costs Shaw 1-3 PENNIES per GB, but they charge us 1-2 DOLLARS.

Make no mistake about it, companies like Netflix and Hulu will either leave Canada, or never come here to begin with. Innovative products that you see available in the US, will not come to Canada. By the time enough consumers find out what's going on, it will be too late.

[Regular_John]

Ok so Shaw/Bell/CRTC don't give a crap about consumer and are trying to kill competition, blah blah blah.

Is there a realistic alternative? Teksavy purchases from Bell, so they can't really offer any real competition to this. Is there any indy ISP's worth the money?

I'm a heavy netflix user so I'm just waiting for Shaw to sting me, looking for my exit plan after that.

[Graysdir]

Unfortunately, there really aren't many alternatives. You can check DSL reports, as they have ISP review/ratings, and plenty of info on each one. Most are now forced to use UBB, if they rent lines from Bell. The few remaining ISPs will probably still go with UBB "because they can" - It's worth hundreds of millions of extra revenue per year.

Now if you move to any other country in the world, you'll have plenty of choices for unlimited access. Canada has some of the worst broadband in the world, and easily some of the most expensive. Even without UBB. Now it will be the clear leader in high prices for certain.

Sorry, wish I had a better option for you. I wish I had a better option for me too. I use Netflix a lot, but will likely have to cancel. Not willing to pay $8 to Shaw everytime I watch a HD movie from Netflix.

[Regular_John]

Screw it, maybe I'll just cancel netflix, cancel shaw, pocket the savings and tether through my phone for email/web surfing.

[photon]

And yet, I work from home, I have my own websites, I use Skype, I have torrents running a lot of the time, I do online backups, I watch video online constantly, I use Netflix, I have multiple computers at home doing updates to virus/OS/etc, I game online, I buy my games off Steam online and have to download them etc.

I am a power user in the extreme, and I have never, not once, exceeded my monthly bandwidth allotment. In the very few cases where I came close, it was because I knew I was doing things that were significantly out of the norm and simply delayed the out of norm thing until the next month.

If the bandwidth cap is exceedingly onerous, why was this petition not in place before the bandwidth cap was raised earlier?

Don't get me wrong, I agree that Canada is behind in terms of what is offered elsewhere in the world, but the argument style being employed is simply flawed, pure appeal to emotion and fear mongering.

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by photon

There is a question of is the CRTC allowing a monopoly (or whatever you call a monopoly of a few companies), but what's stopping a new ISP coming into Calgary and offering a new product (not one using infrastructure leased from an existing ISP)?

An oligopoly. The thing is, an oligopoly already existed and the CRTC's decision simply reinforced it. The reason that the large ISPs are forced to allow independent ISPs to use their infrastructure is to encourage competition, now the only viable competition has been limited by the same decision.

The barriers of entry for a new ISP are simply too large for a start-up to manage. The investment in infrastructure is prohibitive and the only companies that could take such a thing on are either in bed with each other (for example, Rogers and Shaw have a pact not to offer cable and internet in each others territories), or they are from outside of Canada. Foreign ownership regulations mean that we won't be seeing any competition from south of the border anytime soon.

So the CRTC leaves a small slice to independents and then bows to pressure from the big guys to restrict it further. The CRTC props up an oligopoly while preventing new, real competition from entering the market. And as a consumer, your choice is already made for you - bend over and like it.

[cSpooge]

Originally Posted by Graysdir

A few points I'd like to make:

The amount of usage that Shaw provides is VERY low. It is *easily* used up for common tasks.

If you use Skype video or Facetime, or any other form of video chat, it uses approximately 1/2 GB per hour. I guess Canadians aren't supposed to move towards the future for video communications, with the rest of the world?

If you play console games, it's much worse than PC games. Why? PC games typically offer dedicated servers. On a Xbox or PS3, you will often randomly be chosen as the server. Instead of 50mb/hour, it can consume 250mb per hour, or more. If you use Vent/Teamspeak, it can consume an extra 50mb per hour as well. If you play WoW in a raid situation with lots of people, it can consume a surprising amount of data.

If you use online backups, it consumes extreme amounts of data.

If you contribute your CPU cycles to help fight diseases by helping folding@home, you can expect to pay extra for your kindness.

If you watch Netflix - Each SD movie is 2GB, and each HD movie is 4GB. If it has a Dolby Digital track and is HD, it consumes 4.5GB on average. Watching one movie per day would be VERY costly. After you're over your cap, a typical HD movie would cost you an additional $8 PER MOVIE paid fully to Shaw.

Windows updates / iPod, iPad, iPhone updates / Virus updates / Xbox updates, etc. all consume large amounts of bandwidth if you have multiple devices in your home.

What if you want to watch Globaltv.ca? Did you know it's owned by Shaw? So every few minutes when a commercial break pops up, you are paying for the bandwidth to send you that commercial!

If you work from home, or if you have your own website, prepare to cut out any extra graphics/audio/video. People won't be willing to view your content otherwise, because they'll have to pay per MB.

If you were to go away on vacation, your internet usage would still accumulate. There is communication on Shaw's side even if your PC's are all turned off, and this ALL counts towards your usage, and you pay for it.

If someone pings your IP for 12 hours straight, you could be in for a massive overage bill - because that counts towards your usage too!

http://openmedia.ca/meter

The petition has received 40,000 signatures in total, and SEVEN THOUSAND signatures today alone. News is spreading, because the CRTC finalized their decision today.

Metered Billing is a way for our ISP to prevent us from accessing their TV competitors, ie: Netflix/Hulu. People are "cutting the cable", but the ISPs will have the last laugh! This is clearly anti-competitive, and the CRTC has approved it. (Their appeals process ended today) The Conservatives are quiet about it, and they refuse to answer any questions regarding metered billing. The NDP, however, are furious about this decision.
http://www.straight.com/article-3695...ternet-service

By the way, the term "UBB" is what the ISPs want you to call it. It makes the scam almost sound "fair". In fact, it should always be called "Metered Billing". It costs Shaw 1-3 PENNIES per GB, but they charge us 1-2 DOLLARS.

Make no mistake about it, companies like Netflix and Hulu will either leave Canada, or never come here to begin with. Innovative products that you see available in the US, will not come to Canada. By the time enough consumers find out what's going on, it will be too late.

I was a pretty hard core raider in wow and had vent/skype + other PC games all the time and I never once used more than 30GB in a month.

[Jimmy Stang]

I think that the most troubling aspect of the new billing practices are that they don't have anything to do with managing their own networks, but are a direct shot at alternatives to traditional broadcast television. I don't think that it is a coincidence that Shaw has changed their tune somewhat and have started acting a little more like Bell since the acquisition of Global TV. Netflix, iTunes, and other entertainment options (legal ones too), are a serious threat to their traditional television/cable business.

Although customers shifting from cable to internet entertainment was a concern before, it is heightened when the cable and internet company also has a stake in things like advertising revenue on a station like Global (or CTV in Bell's case, etc).

This is exactly why we'll never see a Canadian version of Hulu. The old school television/cable/ISPs are propping up their traditional business model through regulatory intervention instead of adapting to how people are consuming media. The internet pipe is tightened to preserve the television business.

[Graysdir]

Originally Posted by photon

I am a power user in the extreme, and I have never, not once, exceeded my monthly bandwidth allotment. In the very few cases where I came close, it was because I knew I was doing things that were significantly out of the norm and simply delayed the out of norm thing until the next month.

The Shaw bandwidth monitor has NEVER worked correctly, and always reported MUCH lower bandwidth consumption than it should have.

Mine used to report I used 10GB/mo when I was using 100GB/mo.

Take whatever it reported previously, and throw it out the window. It was irrelevant and incorrect. The new Shaw monitor will be much more accurate. And it will be FAR higher than anything it has reported previously. Users are now reporting on DSL Reports, that their monitor always showed 25GB-50GB/mo, and now it's reporting 100-200GB/mo. People are in for a big surprise.

[ZedMan]

Originally Posted by photon

I am a power user in the extreme, and I have never, not once, exceeded my monthly bandwidth allotment. In the very few cases where I came close, it was because I knew I was doing things that were significantly out of the norm and simply delayed the out of norm thing until the next month.

That's what I thought, too. My usage is very similar to yours. You may want to check your modem usage with shaw again. They changed their measurement method recently. With the old system, I was reasonably within the limit. Now in December I apparently used 500% of the limit.

Consider the Steam holiday sale for example. Those games are pretty big, some 20+GB. That is 1/5th of the limit right there.

[VladtheImpaler]

Hahaha - apparently, I used 485GB last month. Of course when I checked this 2 weeks ago, it was around 30GB. Apparently, they not only lowered the cap, but they've tweaked their meter to make sure your usage charges are substantial.

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler

Hahaha - apparently, I used 485GB last month. Of course when I checked this 2 weeks ago, it was around 30GB. Apparently, they not only lowered the cap, but they've tweaked their meter to make sure your usage charges are substantial.

Really? I was using 50-60 gigs of my 100 GB cap... I shudder to think what their new calculation brings this to. I'm not even a heavy user compared to many.

[TheyCallMeBruce]

Originally Posted by photon

And yet, I work from home, I have my own websites, I use Skype, I have torrents running a lot of the time, I do online backups, I watch video online constantly, I use Netflix, I have multiple computers at home doing updates to virus/OS/etc, I game online, I buy my games off Steam online and have to download them etc.

I am a power user in the extreme, and I have never, not once, exceeded my monthly bandwidth allotment. In the very few cases where I came close, it was because I knew I was doing things that were significantly out of the norm and simply delayed the out of norm thing until the next month.

If the bandwidth cap is exceedingly onerous, why was this petition not in place before the bandwidth cap was raised earlier?

Don't get me wrong, I agree that Canada is behind in terms of what is offered elsewhere in the world, but the argument style being employed is simply flawed, pure appeal to emotion and fear mongering.

Our usages are pretty similar. If I recall, we pretty much work in the same sort of industry and watch the same type of shows. I also have my own monitoring in place and every month I am around 75-80gigs. This is not using Shaw monitoring btw. Shaw says I'm at 90gigs LOL.

[Envitro]

do they combine upload and download?

[Coys1882]

So to summarize and save me from re-reading all the posts:

When is this fee going through?
What is the limit?
How much am I billed for going over?
Do I get an warnings first?
Was this communicated to the customers on any bills?

[Regular_John]

Originally Posted by Envitro

do they combine upload and download?

Yes, your total cap is for both uploads & downloads.