So, after much kvetching and grumping about how it was all going to work, and how was any of this possible, Arwen happily let herself be convinced by a telemarketer to move our phone service to the same company that handles our television. Unlike my recent excursion into the deep waters of RRSP transfer and 19.75% Visa cards that *I* went though, Arwen simply was nudged that last 1% into making the move. We were sorta happy, and a little nervous about how VoiceOverIP was going to work, but we were jumping in.
As an added bonus, we also got highspeed for the same price we were already paying at Telus. Here’s the kicker though. It really WAS three times faster than we’d had before. Being the “just stick a cable in it and see what happens” type, I hopped off our Telus network and onto the new ugly Shaw modem to see what would happen, and here’s my result.
Hauling Packets Through the Kestle Run
See those numbers there? Yes, that’s about 5 megabit. That means around 500 kilobytes per second. That means AROUND 10 minutes to download a CD image (and I do a fair amount of that, in my travels as a Linux-boot-CD loony). The only thing that’d been keeping me with Telus was the whole “They guarantee the speed you pay for” argument, which is all fine and good, unless the speed I PAY for keeps being lowered, with more and more restrictions about what I can and can’t do.
For comparison, here’s our Telus numbers.
Two or so years ago, without warning, and allegedly for my own protection, Telus flipped a bit in their firewall that meant I could no longer run a mail or web server on their services without “going pro,” which meant suddenly paying double ($108/mo) for highspeed at 2.5mbit per second. So that meant Telus was now literally TWICE as expensive for HALF the speed. That, and the whole Telus blocking the union that serves them. Seriously people, th’hell? Won’t block kiddie porn or hate speech, but when a site shows photos and videos of people breaking the picket lines? Oh, suddenly Telus is The Deciderer about what I can and can’t get to on the internet.
After I moved the server up to the fabulous and freakishly service-oriented Fused Network folks, we backed off the Pro package and went back to “standard,” which was only $45/mo again. Fair enough, we’re back where we started. Whatever, I’m not running a server any more. Fine. Except that now, instead of the 200K/sec I was used to, we seemed to be getting somewhere around 150K/sec. Actually, it was consistently 159K/s. Works out to about 1600 in the numbers show in the graphic up there.
Yeah, 1.6MBit. It was consistent, but consistently crappy.
After a few visits at homes in the area, and doing some testing of THEIR speeds, I found that people on Shaw were getting somewhere between 4500kbit and 7000kbit without paying any more than I was. And those numbers are all after the “honeymoon” phase with things like free first months, and free super-uber-duper speeds before they put you back to normal.
They lost me as a cel customer after six years because I got a “bare minimum” deal for Arwen and I to have two cel phones, and ended up having a $20/mo deal that actually cost $45, once I added the “extra features” that I suspect most users would consider standard. (Caller ID, Voicemail, and forwarding TO VOICEMAIL). I’m sorry, do you know ANYONE who has a cel phone, but only plans on calling OUT? If I had missed a call during that time (I was unemployed, and needed a cel so I could get out of the house instead of sit at home trying to come up with new ways to NOT just sleep all day), I probably wouldn’t be working where I am now.
And DAMN do I love working where I am now.
and now, for our friends with highspeed and speakers, some music that makes me smile when I’m fighting the proverbial man.
