 Review by Styvas 
UPDATED: 21 days ago
member for 5.2 years, 2737 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Edmonton,AB
 $40 per month
 about 5 days
 "decent speeds, reliable connection, free service calls"
 "relatively expensive, data shaping may restricts certain network usage, bandwidth caps"
 "because of limited competition Shaw is the only truly high-speed, decent quality game in town"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
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Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I use Shaw's High Speed package, which provides speeds up to 5Mbps down and 512Kbps up. The price without any bundles or special offers is $39.95 plus taxes. This can be reduced significantly if made a part of a bundle including Shaw's other services (regular and digital television). However, it is still significantly more expensive than either 3Web, Telus or Primus who also offer high speed service for $24.95 on average (however, Telus and Primus, being DSL, require a local telephone line which increases the price accordingly) and at least Telus requires a contract to guarantee their competitive pricing.
Over the last few years I have used Shaw's service on and off (we've moved around a bit and have taken advantage of Telus deals from time to time). I have found my speeds recently to be fairly consistent without much fluctuation for time of day. I have not experienced a service outage since Shaw took over from Rogers a few years ago. This may just be luck.
Install requires a service call (although it was free) and this took several days to book. However, the installation was smooth and service worked immediately without problems.
The High Speed package inlcudes 2 dynamic IPs. I use another company's VoIP product with my Shaw service and it works more or less flawlessly (although I've recently noticed a bit of fluxuation in the quality--I'm still troubleshooting). I am not a heavy downloader via P2P software, so I have not suffered the kind of performance problems evident in the many posts on the Shaw forum (see threads on Ellacoya, BT Throttling, etc.). For those using these programs (particularly BitTorrent), Shaw's practice of data shaping would be a significant detractor to the service.
Basically I am satified; however, I wish there were more competition to bring price pressure to bear on Shaw.
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