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Mac Write · May 26, 2011, 04:56 AM

Well the UBB (Usage Based Billing) is dead with Shaw up here Canada. Check out these new packages 50/5 for $60+Cable TV (required) and $119 for 250/15 with Cable TV. They are achieving this buy converting all but basic cable to Digital (Tiers 1, 2, 3,). This will free up triple the bandwidth for Internet and more HDTV as well as On Demand Services. Of course I don't watch TV (haven't in years) and am almost over even watching it on the computer.

This is truly a shock and will change things for people who have Shaw in there towns/cities for the better. Just a summary add to cable TV this is the packages. $59/50/5, $69/100/10, $119/250/15. That is with the phase two upgrades. They just upgraded 2 months ago Xtreme-I from 15/1 to 25/2.5 (the upload hadn't been changed since Xtreme-I was introduced 8 years ago).

Railroader · May 26, 2011, 11:40 AM

Looks like the 100/10 is the best deal.

freudling · May 26, 2011, 11:50 AM

Originally Posted by Mac Write

Well the UBB (Usage Based Billing) is dead with Shaw up here Canada. Check out these new packages 50/5 for $60+Cable TV (required) and $119 for 250/15 with Cable TV. They are achieving this buy converting all but basic cable to Digital (Tiers 1, 2, 3,). This will free up triple the bandwidth for Internet and more HDTV as well as On Demand Services. Of course I don't watch TV (haven't in years) and am almost over even watching it on the computer.

This is truly a shock and will change things for people who have Shaw in there towns/cities for the better. Just a summary add to cable TV this is the packages. $59/50/5, $69/100/10, $119/250/15. That is with the phase two upgrades. They just upgraded 2 months ago Xtreme-I from 15/1 to 25/2.5 (the upload hadn't been changed since Xtreme-I was introduced 8 years ago).

Say what?

olePigeon · May 26, 2011, 12:09 PM

What's the point of getting a 250 Mbps line if you have a 150 GB cap? So you can run out of things to do earlier in the month?

Eug · 01:10 PM

Wow. This is impressive. I'm currently on 25 down 7 up, but Bell's regular pricing for 25/7 is ludicrous considering their double-digit bandwidth caps.

However, I suspect with such ginormous bandwidth caps and blistering fast speeds, there is going to be some serious peak time congestion or else throttling of BT, or maybe both.

[EDIT]

According to posts elsewhere, Shaw already has significant congestion and throttling in many areas. Yeah, freeing up those frequencies will help greatly, but I'm not optimistic this rollout is going to go well. One of the 3rd party ISPs in Toronto that doesn't throttle themselves, rolled out too fast on cable, and during peak times those on 15/1 lines were getting 1 Mbps download speeds. They upgraded their backend, and the speeds came back... for 3 months. Then they upgraded again and the speeds came back... for 3 months again. They're on their 3rd upgrade within the same year.

[/EDIT]

Originally Posted by Railroader

Looks like the 100/10 is the best deal.

Personally, I'd go for the 50 down / 5 up deal, since it costs $120 per year less and already includes 400 GB bandwidth.

Originally Posted by olePigeon

What's the point of getting a 250 Mbps line if you have a 150 GB cap? So you can run out of things to do earlier in the month?

? The 250 Mbps package has a 1 TB cap. That's enormous. Plus, they have an unlimited option too.

I personally don't need this. Even on 25/7 I've never gone above 110 GB in my life. In fact, I think I hit 105 when I was on 4/0.8, but have never broken 100 GB in a month on 25/7. It's just much more pleasant doing things, such as uploading videos or downloading OS X combo updates.

mduell · May 26, 2011, 12:59 PM

What's the oversubscription rate? 1000:1?

Phileas · May 26, 2011, 01:18 PM

Not sure about oversubscription. I've got the same Rogers service Eug talks about, 25, and whenever I check speed it is actually much higher, usually hovering around 48.

So all is well at home, now if only I could get the same speed at work, that would be good.

Eug · May 26, 2011, 01:48 PM

Originally Posted by Phileas

Not sure about oversubscription. I've got the same Rogers service Eug talks about, 25, and whenever I check speed it is actually much higher, usually hovering around 48.

That's probably SpeedBoost, and is temporary. With sustained large downloads, it will be 25 Mbps or slower.

Rogers has had some congestion issues in some areas, and their bandwidth caps aren't the greatest. Your 25/1 plan is 125 GB which is OK, but not great. The other disadvantage is that account just has 1 Mbps upload, and the relatively high cost at $70 per month. If you go with something like a 10 Mbps down plan, the upload speed gets cut to 512 Kbps up, and the bandwidth is a measly 60 GB.

I'm not on cable by the way. I have a 25 down 7 up plan, which is VDSL2. I was on a $10/mo Bell Fibe 25 promotion for a few months, and then switched to a cheaper 3rd party ISP's standard DSL - up to 5 Mbps up, 0.8 Mbps down. However, the ISP uses Bell's infrastructure and Bell just transferred the account over to them... but forgot to reset the line card's parameters and the account profile to regular DSL. (The VDSL2 line cards also do ADSL2 and regular DSL, so there's no physical swapping necessary once a VDSL2 card is installed. They just do everything remotely.) So, I just picked up an old Bell VDSL2 modem on eBhey and tried it and it works just fine. The funny thing is that my ISP doesn't even offer VDSL2.

Phileas · May 26, 2011, 02:15 PM

Nice. I am desperate to get higher upload speeds into the office and am contemplating the Vibe service - a bunch of friends are using it and have good things to report.

Eug · 02:37 PM

Originally Posted by Phileas

Nice. I am desperate to get higher upload speeds into the office and am contemplating the Vibe service - a bunch of friends are using it and have good things to report.

Fibe.

I guess they're trying to fool people into thinking it's FTTH, which it isn't. It's FTTN. Their bandwidth caps suck too. Their plans max out at 75 GB, unless you buy "bandwidth insurance" packages at 40 GB each per month for $5 each. I think you can buy up to 120 GB extra GB per month, for $15.

BTW, my connection is not rock solid. It's tough to go 2 weeks without a short outage for say 15 mins. Unfortunately, I can't complain about it, because if I do, they'll realize I'm on the wrong profile and drop me down.

Then again, even on regular DSL in the past it'd go out once in a while.

The good news is that those areas with Fibe TV seem to have more stable Fibe internet access. To get Fibe TV (which is IPTV), you have to have VDSL2. I guess those areas with Fibe TV have a higher penetration of VDSL2 and thus more troubleshooting gets done. My area is Fibe internet only. No Fibe TV until later this year.

Note also that the slower Fibe speeds are ADLS2, or even just regular DSL. It's possible ADSL2 is more stable at this time than VDSL2, because they use different modems. There is a new modem being tested at the moment though that supports FTTH, VDSL2, ADLS2, and ADSL, so maybe once that happens, everything will work more consistently.

olePigeon · May 26, 2011, 02:52 PM

Originally Posted by Eug

The 250 Mbps package has a 1 TB cap. That's enormous. Plus, they have an unlimited option too.

Oh, that's better. I'm just used to Comcast and AT&T.

mduell · May 26, 2011, 07:26 PM

Originally Posted by Eug

Rogers has had some congestion issues in some areas, and their bandwidth caps aren't the greatest. Your 25/1 plan is 125 GB which is OK, but not great.

OK? If you actually use your connection, you could hit your cap in less than half a day. That's awful.

freudling · May 26, 2011, 08:50 PM

Stop the fear mongering. I've got mega fast Fiber Optic Internet in my apartment. You won't exceed your download limit (bandwidth) unless you download lots of movies, etc. It's no different than a slower connection. It's all what you download.

Phileas · May 26, 2011, 09:34 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

OK? If you actually use your connection, you could hit your cap in less than half a day. That's awful.

We stream all of our entertainment, video and audio, through that line. Never hit that cap.

Eug · May 27, 2011, 11:55 AM

Yeah, I'm on 25/7 and I have never ever broken 110 GB. The only times I've ever broken 100 GB I was on (real-world) 3.5/0.7.

However, I have a couple of IP cameras at the house now (one is HD and watching for deer in the backyard and one SD camera watching the cats in their play area) and I am being very careful about giving out accounts, etc. because I could see someone like my sis or whatever loading up a stream, and then leaving it running for a week in the background.

Even at 1 Mbps, that would be 75 GB for just one week. For a month, I'd max out my 300 GB bandwidth. (My HD cam runs at somewhere around 0.9 - 3 Mbps at 1280x800 with my settings, usually toward the lower end of that range.)

exca1ibur · May 27, 2011, 01:10 PM

I'm on 20/4 I break 135 GB on average. Last month I was at 198 GB. On a 250/xx, I'm for sure going over 125 GB. If you really do use your connection and gain more speed, you probably will consumer more data.

Eug · May 27, 2011, 01:23 PM

I will just say that we have different preferences than others. I like having the fast speed, but I don't need it to consume more media, because I don't really want to consume more media at this point. It's just that when I do want it, I hate waiting around for it.

It's sort of like my Core i7 iMac. When I'm using it, I'd guess that 98% of the time it's running at less than 10% of its compute power. However, every so often I'll encode an H.264 HD video. Now, instead of waiting an eternity for it to finish, now it's just eons.

Truthfully for me though, the main bottleneck is no longer download speeds. It's upload. It sure is nice having 10X the upload speeds I used to have, but 10X the upload is still only 7 Mbps.

Mac Write · May 28, 2011, 04:22 AM

Agreed it's the upload that's the problem. Example I shoot AVCHD and max out the 32GB internal memory on my moms/family Canon HF-S10. Now It's on my "RAW Footage" drive as a image+Drobo FS Time Machine, but I also want it off-site. So the easiest way to get it to my moms Time Capsule is via Back to my Mac. 32GB @5mbps (phase 1) will take 16hrs to backup maxing out the connection. Yes a small portable 2.5" drive (aka spare HD from one of the MacBook future upgrades) would be allot faster, but I want that 1 copy off site ASAP. Now 100/25 would be the sweet spot, but don't know how many years that is away. @25mbps 32GB would take 3hrs. One can dram can't they. Though for that speed and uploads I would need the 750GB package.

Salty · May 28, 2011, 09:23 PM

I didn't even know that anyone could dram.

exca1ibur · May 29, 2011, 04:23 AM

Originally Posted by Eug

I will just say that we have different preferences than others. I like having the fast speed, but I don't need it to consume more media, because I don't really want to consume more media at this point. It's just that when I do want it, I hate waiting around for it.

Fair enough, my approach is the opposite. I can get things 2-3 times faster, so I am able to get more at once. I didn't get faster connection to use it like you did my slower one. For me, my computer usage is the exact same approach.

For me, now that I can encode video faster with my i7, I will do more videos because it doesn't take all day for each one. Therefore I actually use the power more often.

Eug · May 29, 2011, 09:48 AM

Originally Posted by Salty

I didn't even know that anyone could dram.