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

[photon]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Stang

An oligopoly.

That's the word, thanks!

Originally Posted by Jimmy Stang

The barriers of entry for a new ISP are simply too large for a start-up to manage.

vs.

Originally Posted by Jimmy Stang

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.

But if the barriers of entry are too large, then it's not really the CRTC propping it up, it's the market that's propping it up, the CRTC is just formalizing a defacto situation, allowing the companies to charge extra for extra bandwidth. It's not like that that is a new thing, I pay for extra buckets of bandwidth on almost every non-consumer hosting or bandwidth package I've ever dealt with, and the ones that were unmetered were a LOT slower.

[Graysdir]

Originally Posted by 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?

When? Now.

Limit? Depends on your package. Whatever you had, they reduced it by 30%, and didn't tell customers. If you had Extreme, it was 125GB/mo, now it's 100GB/mo. If you had Nitro, it was 500GB/mo, and is now 350GB/mo. Etc.

How much? $1-$2 per GB. (It costs Shaw 1-3 CENTS per GB, as per the CEO of Teksavvy)

Warnings? Yes. After you go over, they will warn you, and try to get you to a higher package, or to buy back the usage they just took away, for a fee.

Communicated to customers? No way! They wanted to keep this quiet, so they can slip it into place without anyone noticing.

http://openmedia.ca/meter
Sign the petition, send it to everyone you know!

[Cscutch]

Originally Posted by Envitro

do they combine upload and download?

Yes.. There data usage is combined data.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Graysdir

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.

I never used it, in fact I don't even have the option to see it.

Most people aren't in for a big surprise, most people probably have never even looked at or considered their bandwidth limits, and they're not the ones concerned about it. The ones that ARE concerned about it are the ones that know what their bandwidth would be like anyway, so shouldn't be that surprised.

Originally Posted by ZedMan

That's what I thought, too. My usage is very similar to yours. You may want to check your modem usage with shaw again.

I don't even have the option to, so I can only go by what I measure.

Originally Posted by ZedMan

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

That's very true, as I said before I'm not saying that the current bandwidth allotments reflect the changing nature of the digital age or that Canada isn't behind many other places in the world, I'm just saying the fear mongering arguments are poor arguments.

If you know you are a high user, purchase a bandwidth bucket. That's already how most of my bandwidth purchases go already.

If you buy a bucket, the first bucket reduces the bandwidth to 50 cents a GB. The second is 33 cents per GB. The third is 20 cents per GB.

Amazon Web Services S3 charges 15 cents per GB of transfer and you don't get any for free (or 1GB for free, depending)

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by photon

But if the barriers of entry are too large, then it's not really the CRTC propping it up, it's the market that's propping it up, the CRTC is just formalizing a defacto situation, allowing the companies to charge extra for extra bandwidth. It's not like that that is a new thing, I pay for extra buckets of bandwidth on almost every non-consumer hosting or bandwidth package I've ever dealt with, and the ones that were unmetered were a LOT slower.

It just seems like a backwards decision by the CRTC. They already realize that there isn't much competition in the industry, they allow independents to lease infrastructure to give consumers choice, and then gives the established companies the tools to effectively squeeze them out. The bigger get bigger at the consumer's expense. If this was to happen in an open market, live and let die - that's business. I just have a problem when it is taking place in a regulated bubble like here in Canada. Let foreign companies come in and offer some real choice and suddenly these caps will disappear out of pure necessity for survival.

[photon]

Sure, I'm all for more competition.

[Old Yeller]

I've been in contact with one shaw CSR who really knows what's going on.

I always communicated to her that I had no problem with a quota as long as the bandwidth monitoring tool was accurate.

The old tool was horribly inaccurate and was labelled "useless" by the CSR I've emailed back and forth.

The new bandwidth monitoring tool that's now on secure.shaw.ca is the same one the CSR's use and I'm getting pretty much identical numbers on it to what I'm tracking on my router.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Envitro

do they combine upload and download?

Yes.

[Incogneto]

a whole lot of fear being spread in this thread.

Fact is that less than 1% of shaw high speed and extreme users go over their limit, yet that 1% of users accounts for nearly 25% of bandwidth used. Those are the people that are going to be hurt by this ruling.

It was mentioned above that these overage fees (pushed back to mid-Feb, btw) will not be charged on the first overage, or the second overage. it will only be charged if you go over THREE STRAIGHT MONTHS. if you go over 2 months, and not the 3rd, you're back to having zero strikes.

if you want to know how much you are using right now, call in 310-shaw. It's open 24 hrs, and here's a hint...if you call after about 8 or 9, you will talk to someone almost immediately.

I am def. not a fan of the new UBB, but users like Greysdir are just spreading fear about a new form of billing that most likely will never effect most of you.

btw, if you can't tell, I am kinda in the know, so please feel free to ask me any questions you may have.

[Incogneto]

one more thing...I consider myself a heavy user (non-gamer, but lots of torrents), I am on extreme, and I have never gone over my 100g limit. The closest I got was 65G in Nov.

[theonlywhiteout]

wow a shaw employee defending UBB, a shock. no offense incog but this policy is a nightmare for users. maybe not now but as content continues to be data heavy and new services arrive it will be a migraine for the public

[Incogneto]

Originally Posted by theonlywhiteout

wow a shaw employee defending UBB, a shock. no offense incog but this policy is a nightmare for users. maybe not now but as content continues to be data heavy and new services arrive it will be a migraine for the public

not defending....educating. HUGE difference. I don't like the changes either, but I think people should know ALL of the information before making a decision.

the argument is that with 1% of the users using 25% of the bandwidth, its not fair for the other users on the same node to have their service saturated. And yes, saturation is a real problem, especially in large centers like Vancouver and Calgary. If you don't believe me, call any TSR and ask how many calls they get a day on 'slow speeds'. Shaw is splitting nodes on average of 1 every 3 days in Vancouver to relieve saturation issues.

Should people who earn more than $1M a year be taxed more than people who earn $40K a year? It's a relevant debate.....

Also, as content continues to be data heavy, limits will change to reflect them (ie/ they will go up). It's not meant to stop people from using the internet, its meant to stop abusers from abusing it.

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by InCoGnEtO

one more thing...I consider myself a heavy user (non-gamer, but lots of torrents), I am on extreme, and I have never gone over my 100g limit. The closest I got was 65G in Nov.

Are you using Shaw's online bandwidth monitor? Because, as already mentioned, it's horribly broken. I guarantee if it says you've used 65GB then you're definitely over the 100GB cap. Wait until their new monitor comes online and you'll see that I'm right.

Also, as content continues to be data heavy, limits will change to reflect them (ie/ they will go up). It's not meant to stop people from using the internet, its meant to stop abusers from abusing it.

B.S. Why didn't the caps go up when Netflix arrived? Instead they went down. It's meant to stop people from abandoning Shaw's expensive video on demand by making streaming video from other services cost too much.

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by InCoGnEtO

a whole lot of fear being spread in this thread.

Fact is that less than 1% of shaw high speed and extreme users go over their limit, yet that 1% of users accounts for nearly 25% of bandwidth used. Those are the people that are going to be hurt by this ruling.

Yeah but what's the trend? Why is a static picture of internet use relevant? And do those users affect bandwidth for other people? My understanding is no they don't actually affect throughput at all. Furthermore, who is Shaw to just unilaterally decide what the caps and overages are? In a competitive market the market decides. In this case, the profit seeking monopolist decides by setting their own prices.

I agree that yes with large networks they trend toward natural monopolies (cheaper to have one monopoly/oligopoly than have 20 different networks) but all of the other cases they are regulated having to prove their costs and a reasonable rate of return.

In this case we have a corporation just dictating the terms of what appropriate internet usage should be with no basis in what the market is demanding.

It was mentioned above that these overage fees (pushed back to mid-Feb, btw) will not be charged on the first overage, or the second overage. it will only be charged if you go over THREE STRAIGHT MONTHS. if you go over 2 months, and not the 3rd, you're back to having zero strikes.

So what this is all likely to change. As was Shaw just unilaterally changing their caps. Without any type of regulatory oversight Shaw could change this policy tomorrow.

I am def. not a fan of the new UBB, but users like Greysdir are just spreading fear about a new form of billing that most likely will never effect most of you.

btw, if you can't tell, I am kinda in the know, so please feel free to ask me any questions you may have.

it actually affects all of us because it pre-emptively disposes users to usage that complies with Shaw's terms. As has been outlined countless times, some models of internet use don't work, the models that also compete with Shaw's other core business. This is actually not fear mongering. This is about the shape of the most important telecommunications medium of our time and the future.

We should be fearful to invest the power of usage and control onto a medium that was designed to be inherently decentralized to the whim of huge media corporations.

Telephones are a great example. If you are foolish enough to be paying $30 a month for a home phone line then you're suffering from the legacy of lax regulation and concentrating market powers into few service deliverers. That $30 a month is practically pure profit. The marginal cost of that service is essentially pennies averaged out over the number of users. So why are you paying $30 a month? Because there is no competition in the market to drive that price down.

Only now with voip is there an inkling of what the real costs of telephone services cost. My monthly voip service is 100% free with freephoneline.ca after I paid for the initial box. But now that these phone companies are charging UBB they're rolling back the incredible cost reductions made by technology.

If you allow this continue we risk the internet becoming TV or phone. Paying for a subscription to access select sites or channels, paying for services that we have no idea what the real cost is, and filtering the information and media we receive through a middle man with interests in selling us their products.

This is a serious issue.

[Tinordi]

Yeah caps going down in an era of incredibly rapid technological change and cost reductions is just laughable. It has never been cheaper to provide bandwidth but for some reason caps are going down!?

[photon]

If it's so cheap, start an ISP.

[Tinordi]

Nice quip.

Lots of ISPs have, there's tons out there demonstrating that it's cheap. Teksavvy, distributel, Cogeco, etc. They all operate their own routers and POIs, seems to be a robust enough market for them to get financing to do so, and they're all making money offering unlimited internet.

It isn't cheap to build the main network which works to my point above about natural monopolies. Sadly for you I guess, that main network wasn't built by the giant incumbent telcos either though. They were public entities when that backbone was built, ie you and I paid for it not Bell.

Nice try though.

[TheyCallMeBruce]

The truth of the matter is I cannot accept that 1% of the user base is responsible for 25% of the usage. Is this an independent study or is this something Shaw would like us to believe?

I have spoken to many people in the industry and all from different carriers and sources, and what Shaw is telling us just doesn't line up. And yes, I do work in the industry closely related to canada's carriers/isp.

I mean, even just speaking to friends, how many of your friends are regular movie/tv show streamers, torrenters, gamers, etc. My case, I think only a dozen or so of my friends are not heavy users. The point is, I have a harder time finding lean users than heavy users.

[Tinordi]

And if you say that capacity isn't cheap then sure I agree but bandwidth caps aren't the tool to address that. Bandwidth caps do very little to reduce peaks. Time of use pricing or throttling are the only tools capacity constraints.

[Coys1882]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Time of use pricing or throttling are the only tools capacity constraints.

Time of use pricing would be much more reasonable. 99% of the time - my torrents start when I'm going to bed. I don't want my bandwidth being leeched while I'm playing games online or watching a movie on Netflix. At 11pm - I can't be contributing to that saturation can I Incogneto??

Btw Incog - I really appreciate your posts giving a view from the other side.