Shaw Issues QoS enhancement surcharge

Posts: 2135

If you are a Shaw ISP customer, you might want to read this:

The deal is: you pay Shaw an extra $10 a month, and you get what the company calls "a qualityof service feature that will enhance (Internet telephony) services when used over the Shaw High Speed Internet network".

Cable broadband ISP's QoS enhancement surcharge draws Vonage's ire

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: May 08, 2005 Posts: 4

Some of the skeptics will assume that this means that VOIP packets will be placed at a lower priority thru the Shaw traffic shapers just like the bittorent packets . . .

Posts: 2135 · Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 8:04 pm Post subject:

theGUYman wrote:

Some of the skeptics will assume that this means that VOIP packets will be placed at a lower priority thru the Shaw traffic shapers just like the bittorent packets . . .

ah, yeah, that is exactly how I read it:

The deal is: you pay Shaw an extra $10 a month, and you get what the company calls "a qualityof service feature that will enhance (Internet telephony) services when used over the Shaw High Speed Internet network." ...

... Third-party VoIP services are singled out for special treatment....

...But if you stick with Shaw Digital Phone, well, then, you don't have to pay the surcharge....

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Oct 14, 2005 Posts: 12

This is not new - Shaw has had this option available for some time but it is not "advertised"

Though there is no way to know for sure if the service actually does anything, I see no reason to believe Shaw de-prioritizes third-party voip traffic.

I have run Vonage succesfully on both the Extreme package and the regular high-speed package - it almost always works flawlessly.

Though I like my Vonage setup a lot, I do realize that it is not as reliable as Shaw VOIP, as the Shaw system does not go on the public Internet at all.

I'd be interested in hearing from someone who has subscribed to the Qos enhancement...

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 15, 2006 Posts: 1

Here's my take on the dispute between Shaw and Vonage Canada.

http://www.fleetingmedia.com/content/view/19/9/

In short , I come to two conclusions why Shaw introduced this new $10 add-on "enhancement:"

1. The first is an opportunistic response to unplanned congestion.

2. The second ... is to cast some fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) on internet telephony services such as Vonage, and in doing so, promote its own competing digital voice call offering.

============
Marlon
www.fleetingmedia.com

Posts: 293 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 22, 2006 Posts: 293

m4rl0n wrote:

Here's my take on the dispute between Shaw and Vonage Canada.

http://www.fleetingmedia.com/content/view/19/9/

In short , I come to two conclusions why Shaw introduced this new $10 add-on "enhancement:"

1. The first is an opportunistic response to unplanned congestion.

2. The second ... is to cast some fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) on internet telephony services such as Vonage, and in doing so, promote its own competing digital voice call offering.

============
Marlon
www.fleetingmedia.com

I'd have to agree. I don't remember exactly what price point their digital phones are supposed to fall in. I thought it was in that 50-60 dollar range. This QOS charge actually lets them keep it that high if they can bait customers into believing they need it. At that point the customer may just switch to their offering.

Posts: 19 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Dec 20, 2005 Posts: 19

I have taken the bait from Shaw and the Shaw Digital Phone works WAY better on their network than the vonage phone. They are sabotaging Vonage in my opinion but it isn't my war to wage. So I would like to keep my Vonage service for the 4 numbers I have in other cities but if I downgrade my plan with Vonage I will not have enough minutes for all those forwarded calls... anyone have ideas?

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 29, 2005 Posts: 6

I have been having a lag issue with outbound long distance calls only. I have talked to tech's at Shaw about lost packets and we did a tracert with them to the Vonage server. The packets through the shaw networks went through great, the problem is when it leaves the shaw network and gets somewhere in New York. I asked the tech about the QoS package, and he said don't bother getting it since I'm not loosing any packet loss throught their network.

Posts: 22 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jul 12, 2005 Posts: 22

Just as a test, I'm curious of what would happen if they hooked up the QoS for you to test that theory.

Where did the Shaw tech say that packet loss was occuring?

Also test your connection on www.testyour voip.com to see if the loss occurs there too....

You may start seeing the connection...

JT

Posts: 19 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Dec 20, 2005 Posts: 19

Since I have switched to Shaw digital phone, I want to keep my service with Vonage for incoming calls only from my virtual phone numbers. The $19.99 package has 500 minutes which would be used up by call forwarding so I would like to set up my new shaw phone as the network availability number. I would still like to use the wireless router though. I could set up another router that I have to block the Vonage ports but I don't know which ones to block. Any ideas?