waiting for shaw on the phone is horrible... was on hold for over an hour to get some service last week.

does anyone know where the telus switches are? i want to see if im close enough to them to get a decent speed

speedtest and novus speedtest, i get 16mbs download and 11mbs upload

wrong about that

Shaw gets internet to people using a "hub" format where Telus is dedicated line to each home.

A hub network is one where all customers within a neighbourhood share a common wire and all the splits, repeaters and wall jacks associated with that wire. The unused wall jacks act like small antennas transmitting noise INTO the cable network. This noise reduces the overall signal to noise (S/N) ratio for the entire network segment and reduces everybody's level of service.

Also Shaw uses DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) which in short is a way to monitor your actions online

People please stop saying stupid things like this company sucks and this company sucks cause really the service will only be as good as the person who installs it. I've had Shaw before and it was terrible due to the shitty coax that the Shaw guy made for me. Ive had Telus too and that sucked dude to the lazy installer (no filter) No matter what company you go with it will suck if not properly installed. lot of it depends on where you live and the condition of the lines in that area.

Please educate yourself on how the systems work and don't focus on the name of the company or what random people say, one persons exp will vary greatly to your own.

Way to cause paranoia with DPI. If any of you are really tin-foil hat paranoid about your online interactions, Echelon will pick it up. That's not Shaw, that's the CIA. :rolleyes:

Shaw used to use Ellacoya, a packet inspection technology. That was used to help thwart protocols like BT that were draining bandwidth. Whether or not they still use it, well, a good way of determining that is firing up a torrent and seeing what sort of speeds you get. Stuck at 10 kB/s download? Packet-shaped, probably. Getting 500 kB/s? You're fine.

Your explanation about a hub network is extremely crude. I don't see how it's really relevant to this discussion. Although Shaw may employ a hub and spoke topology, if there's enough bandwidth in an area (i.e. a surplus, enough to meet demand), then it doesn't really matter what sort of network topology they have.

dont mean to cause paranoia but its a comparable difference that a lot of ppl dont know

and how is it not relevant when trip was sayin Shaws connections are separate? its a correction to his comment.

I'm not favoring a side cause i think playin telus against shaw is the best way to get a deal

how would u describe the hub system if not 1 common cable with splitters and repeaters?

I think what trip was trying to say was in response to willystyle's post about how many HD/SD channels you're watching/recording with Telus, you'll get different speeds. Trip was saying on Shaw, it doesn't matter how many HD/SD channels you're watching, your internet speed is not affected by it. He said "connections". "Frequencies" is probably a better term.

As I said before, don't look too much into the physical topology of Shaw. So long as there's enough bandwidth to meet demand, network topology is irrelevant.

^ thx

also telus optik is not fibre optic, thats why they use a K instead of a C

ahhh makes more sense now

true enough tho once fiber comes around this will all be irrelevant

I would wager fiber to the home is a long, long away. Unless you're building an entirely new community, digging into existing neighbourhoods to lay fiber down is too expensive. Canada isn't like the US, where there's more fierce competition from multiple ISPs. The threat is different for Canadian ISPs.

If i'm not mistaken, what Shaw uses now is hybrid-fiber coax. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_fibre-coaxial

Even Novus, who uses fiber, only runs it to the switch of a building (possibly multiple switches). From the switch to the suite, it's CAT5.

Then what is this 1Gbps service that Shaw is trying to roll out to residential services? Will it be only available to new condos? Existing communities with detached homes and older apartments will be left in the dark?

Did I not say "Unless you're building an entirely new community"..? Shaw is under no obligation to provide X speeds straight across the board. I doubt Joe Schmo is going to care he can't get 1 Gbps just to surf the web.

For the record, I am not saying it's impossible to lay fiber to existing communities, I'm saying it's too expensive and the pay-off right now is not in Shaw's favor.

my shaw extreme has been pumping a consistant 2MB down 100kish up for the past 2 years.

More realistically, you can never exceed over 2mbps on downloads from website like fileplanet, $$$$$$$$$$, etc. Most of the sites cap their download speed at 2mbps. The only time you can ever get 15mbps is during a speedtest from your local server.

If you can find a site/torrent that lets you download more than 2mbps, you're lucky.

You're kinda right. It's been hit or miss for me.
I remember Telus having absolutely garbage tech support and customer service for cell phone and internet back in late 90s to early 2000s and that was why i switched to Shaw in the first place.

My last apmt we had Shaw and we had consistent issues with speed. We weren't able to watch more than 30s of Youtube. Even 30s of video took 30min to download...Because of that, I was constantly on the phone with Tech support with Shaw and they kept getting me to restart the modem, unplug everything and plug it back in, restart my PC, and nothing worked. It was the area I was living in I believe and they probably didn't deem it worthwhile to fix whatever needed to be fixed. Anyways, Im rambling now, nothing worked and there were many times (at least 4times that i can remmeber) when I called in they just simply said to me 'you're area is due for a update' or something 'and we will be addressing that issue very soon'... Not bad customer service but tech support did not resolve anything and were at times dismissive.

For Telus, at least in recent years, I've found they've been quite good in the customer service dept. I haven't had too many tech issues with them besides one time, the internet connection being quite slow and all I was instructed to do by those guys was to reset the modem, which did the trick. Customer Service-wise, they've actually been extraodinary. I pay about $50 for internet and basic cable plus a bunch of other channels (incl a few HD ones), plus free rental of 2 HD boxes. Don't ask me how we swung that deal, my wife (gf at the time), somehow got them to give us all these things...I think it was supposed to be $80 or $90 otherwise, but don't quote me on that I could be wrong.

LOL 2MB/s is AWESOME.... 2Megabyte x 8 = 16megabit

telus customer service still is garbage.

a friend with 2 phone lines telus mobility has 5months left on the contract wanted to renew for 3 years with iphone 3gs's (not 4s, 3GS!!) and telus wanted him to buy out the rest of the contract at $20 x 5months x 2lines ($400)... even tried calling as him (i consider myself above average when it comes to negotiation) and got shot down every way. rogers would have renewed in a second. not to mention the attitude problems over at telus..

anyways this thread is about internet not mobile phones... telus sucks, carry on.

with the new Optik TV system, your internet speed should not be affected that much, even if you are watching 2 HD streams. the old Telus TV service would do that, and Telus realized that it sucked. also, the fine print in the service agreement states that Telus will only guarantee 10Mbps to your home. they can't guarantee the full 15Mbps due to things like signal attenuation and shitty/old phone lines in your house.

like someone said earlier, shaw internet is not separate from cable TV service. also, Telus gives free dispatched service calls too so I don't know why you would imply that Telus does not give free on-site service.


PS. since Telus TV is running on an IPTV system, I don't think they can monitor your bandwidth since your TV is constantly using bandwidth as well. ;)

had telustv and telus internet for about 3 years

im with shaw now.

NEVER GOING BACK good god horrible customer service/experience

When I was with Telus at my old place I consistently get 1.7MB/s down and .125MB/s up, with no lengthy downtime (I can only remember maybe one or two days out of the whole year that it didn't work). I also had Telus TV at the time and the two were set up on two different lines (two numbers) so they would not interfere with each other. Not sure if Telus is willing to do this anymore but you can try calling and asking about it... this way you get your max internet speed AND your TV watching won't affect it.

I got Net 20 (20/10 with 110GB cap), my own HD box (not PVR, bought off CL for like $100), Basic TV package (includes something like 12 HD channels) for $25 / month no contract.

I added the sports HD package for another $3.

does anyone still use the 2wire gateway for their 15mpbs turbo? how reliable is it? I've recently switched from the Thompson Speedtouch to the Siemens gigaset-SE567 and they are both garbage...

^ D-Link sucks crap. Is the 2-wire new?

I've had my telus internet for about 3 years now and am on my 3rd modem so far. They're all garbage. And instead of them having a new modem they can drop off at your house or one you can pickup you have to wait at least a week for it to come in the mail from alberta. They fucking suck. Never had problems when I used to have shaw at my parents place.

That was initally used but its going to provide a reiable 15mb of adsl. The new standard is the VDSL modem we call the "cell pipe" but thats going to be phased out for a all in one N rated router/modem


Half of you prob live in shitty areas or have shitty old ass wires in your house or had lazy installers. How can you company about an entire company based upon your exp with a couple installers.

also about Telus charging you that will only happen if the issue has been deemed your fault or if you want new runs done for your house.


dsz24 what modem do you have? next time ask for one that isnt refurbed

Gigaset SE567. Still going strong so far, keeping my fingers crossed lol.