Got home today to find a call from an automated voice asking me to call Shaw as soon as possible to “avoid service interruptions”. Yay. Last time this happened it was to tell me that I was about to be cut off and only begging and pleading kept me online. So I checked my bandwidth charts and saw I was only a bit (6G) over their suggested 20G per month limit. Nowhere near the 150G that I was six months ago.
So I called, talked to $random_tech_dude, who passed me off to $bandwidth_dude, who informed me that I was a bit over and to be careful. whew, nothing about cutting me off. To be an ass I started asking questions, and when I was given the standard boiler plate answers that appears the mere mortals, I asked for more information, and even presented the argument that the guy was bullshitting me.
IE: my large bandwidth usage means other people in the area get bad service and could cancel their accounts.
Ok, interesting idea anyway, but what if I’m downloading very sloooooowly but for a long time. I can’t be bothered to do the math, but I’m pretty sure that if I download at 10kb/s, constantly, for an entire month, I’ll have just as much bandwidth used as if I download at 300kb/s for short bursts. But the latter won’t (shouldn’t) cause other people to slow down like the bursts do. And if 300kb/s interrupts others’ speed, why allow it and not cap it at 200kb/s?
Oh well, whatever, just a “friendly reminder” anyway, so I’m not worried. He did point out the new XTREME-I service where you get 50G traffic per month, 5mb down and 1mb up (vs regular plan of 3 down and .5 up) for only $10 per month more. I said I’d think on it a bit, and while it would be nice, I’m not sure if it’s worth it (when I’m only barely maxing out now 🙂