The Bandwidth Call

So yesterday I got “The Call” from Shaw cable. Apparently they were a bit concerned over my bandwidth use lately. I peaked in December with 117G combined upload and download, 90 in January, and 68 last month. Seems hey have a limit of 20 Gigabytes of combined (combined!) upload and download traffic before you get “on the radar” and you start getting calls telling you to cut it out or they’ll cut you off.


I managed to convince them that I was trying to keep myself down, but due to server swap overs and whatnot the traffic was up (which is true BTW, or at least mostly true), and avoided getting my service cut off for 7 days (which is what they were calling to inform me that they were doing. I’m already at 4G for this month already (only 5 days in!) so I’m re-evaluating my automated backups and other (software, music, movie) aquisition software. The FTP has been limited to a slower speed, but I really doubt that that did anything huge to it. They noted that the “under the radar” limit for the business package is 50 gigabytes. That seems pretty low. Wonder what the limits are for the Telus high speed service?

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Category: Personal

8 Comments on “The Bandwidth Call”

  1. They should give the option (for a price) of being able to download more. And it would be nice to optionally have faster uploads of course.
    On the other hand, if you compare prices of Shaw vs. hosting a server or website somewhere, it’s cheaper to have the Shaw connection.

  2. Telus High Speed
    6 GB/month Internet connection traffic (5 GB/month down, 1 GB/month up)
    Downstream speed up to 1.5 Mbps
    Upstream speed up to 512 Kbps
    Telus Enhanced High Speed
    10 GB/month Internet connection traffic (7 GB/month down, 3 GB/month up)
    Downstream speed up to 2.5 Mbps
    Upstream speed up to 640 Kbps
    TELUS high speed Office 2.5
    15 GB/month upload and download usage
    Downstream speed up to 2.5 Mbps
    Upstream speed up to 640 Kbps
    TELUS high speed Server 2.5
    20 GB/month upload and download usage
    Downstream speed up to 2.5 Mbps
    Upstream speed up to 640 Kbps
    TELUS high speed Server 4.0
    30 GB/month download and upload usage
    Downstream speed up to 4.0 Mbps
    Upstream speed up to 640 Kbps

  3. Classic upsell. “…but our Business package is (a whopping!) 50 Gigabytes a month!” Pah! 20 GB a month is, like, downloading a CDROM a day. That sucks. Too bad they don’t let you bank your amounts, for those rainy days.

  4. 117GB in December… that’s great!!! 🙂
    I’ve always wondered if I’d get “the call”,… but as long as there’s people pulling 117GB, I don’t think they’ll ever bother me.
    it still bugs me that they have this hidden usage cap but won’t give you a option to know how much has been used so far. You just get a nice phone call…

  6. Ok i had 4 computers on my telus account, two with direct ip’s and two leeching off of the other two and we must have done at least 100 gigs a month for almost 6 months and no one ever called. Shaw phones cause everyone is shared and so it boggs down everyone around you. telus isn’t shared so they don’t really care.
    Just a thought

  7. fella’s
    Telus does not “really” care. Used to average 120-160 gigs a month for 4 yrs; now its down to about 40-80 a month. They have never called once.

  8. Shaw High-Speed Xtreme1

    This looks exciting: Xtreme1 Highspeed Internet 1mb upload and 5mb download for $10/month more. Very tempting. I’ll have to find out if Richmond is part of Vancouver.;) I also wonder if with this increased speed if the amount you can…