Shaw VOIP-any problems?

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 03, 2006 Posts: 1

I'm in Calgary and using Shaw for Vonage and it's horrible. Sometimes the call is fine, others it's total crap and useless. The person on the receiving end can't hear a thing you say or there is a 3 second delay. I'm getting rid of Vonage because I'm using shaw cable anyway (apt so no chance of satellite) and might as well just have it all on one bill.

That said, the day I move and have can get all my services from someplace other then shaw I will have them out of my life for good. Those bastards...

Posts: 92 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Aug 01, 2006 Posts: 92

It is unfortunate how companies like Shaw are simultaneously able to be the source of the problem and the solution. If there is anything more anti-competitive, I can't think of it.

Free market Era! The choice is yours.

- Kukk

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 07, 2005 Posts: 1

teddyg007 wrote:

I am running Shaw and Telus internet at my home at the same time. If you use shaw your called parties will have problems hearing you at random times. SHAWS $10 Qos and Extreme internet does not fix this at all. If you switch to telus your problems will completely vanish. Test your Voip with telus and all systems are go! Test with shaw and you will have issues with Qos and Jitter above 10ms [url=http://myspeed.visualware.com/voip] I am in Burnaby BC. Shaw will send a technician to "help" me all of a sudden now that they are losing me to telus. Go figure. Get Telus Dry DSL for $35 a month with a year or more contract or $40 month to month. Add $5 to each price if you dont have a Telus cell. Telus is slower on paper but it feels like Shaws faster stuff. DSL is dedicated bandwidth. SHaw cable is shared.

I called to add the QoS feature to my Extreme-I service and was told Shaw no longer offers this service. - go figure.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 22, 2007 Posts: 1

[qoute]I called to add the QoS feature to my Extreme-I service and was told Shaw no longer offers this service. - go figure.[/quote]
I called Shaw last week to order QOS because my call quality has been terrible for the last 2 weeks. The person had to talk to a manager before they could figure out what QOS was. It must still exist because they're now charging me for it.

I have have Extreme & QOS and my call quality is still poor. I was with Rogers for 2 years in Toronto and I never had a problem with my Vonage, so it's definately Shaw.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 13, 2007 Posts: 1

Mileage may vary I guess.

I'm in Calgary and never have problems with Shaw. It is always fast and I've only had 2 or 3 outages in 5 years. Vonage works fine. All calls are clean and clear without dropouts.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 17, 2007 Posts: 3

I'm in Abbotsford BC and use shaw
this thread made me pause in ordering Vonage for a couple months
I talked to the girl working at wireless wave, and she said she had Vonage on shaw with no problems, so I went for it
so far, so good. I've had no problems thus far

Posts: 16 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 03, 2007 Posts: 16

I have had Vonage for 3 months and never got a good service out of it. I don't think it is Internet provider related as I first tried Telus highest Speed and then switched to Shaw. Shaw was slightly better but my Vonage service still does not work properly. I did try the Shaw QoS service, which is not available everywhere but is in my neighborhood. There was no noticeable difference in my Vonage service with or without it.

I had tried everything to make the Vonage work but it never did, so I am cancelling mine. My son has used it without much problem in Toronto for 3 years but I can't get mine to work for me in Vancouver despite trying all the settings and tricks available on this forum. I guess it's just a matter of chance. It does work well for many people and it just does not work properly for others!

More details in this posting:
http://www.vonage-forum.com/sutra103023.html#103023

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 21, 2007 Posts: 5

We are moving our primary phone back to Telus and we MIGHT keep a Vonage line or two around to handle long distance calls. The biggest problems we have had are.

1. Phone was down for 5 days no in or outband calls in the middle of January.
2. People cannot hear us when we call.
3. Massive static on calls
4. Calls being dropped.
5. Massive echo.
6. Incompetance on the part of Vonage to follow through with providing documentation around the 5 day outage, as well as providing a new router with the phone ports.

Let's put it this way.. our business we be sued left right and centre if we performed our services in such a manner.

Note: We took the Voip system to the Data centre (Shaw BIG PIPE) and found the exact same thing happening with call quality...

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 15, 2007 Posts: 2

I have been extensively testing with various settings on Shaw (North Vancouver) and Vonage. I have a Linksys WRT54G router, and upgrading the firmware to DD-WRT with a QOS system was a great start. But I still had sporatic periods where I could hear fine but the other party got bad quality voice from me.

I asked Shaw to upgrade me to Extreme-I, and that seemed to start resolving my issues. The download speed (5Mb/s increased to 10Mb/s) doesn't seem to matter that much. It's the upload speed that mattered...(512Kb/s increased to 1Mb/s). You need a solid 200Kbps dedicated upload rate with low jitter for Vonage to be reliable. Couple the faster upload with putting the VTA (Moto 2142) into the DMZ of my Linksys router, shutting off SPI, and assigning 20% QoS in DD-WRT was the magic combo. Now, I show off by calling a buddy with Vonage, and kick off a couple of streaming video feeds, something that used to totally tank Vonage, and it works flawlessly without stutter in the video or Vonage.

Success with Vonage with people doing anything on broadband other than email is sketchy, unless you have so much bandwidth that it doesn't matter. A solid QoS system is crutial. Its no wonder that you see so many unhappy customers on Vonage. The technology curve is too steep for the avg customer...I'm a network engineer of 20+ years, so I'm right at home tinkering with this to make it all work....but it's not for everyone I suppose.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 20, 2007 Posts: 2

[quote=" Couple the faster upload with putting the VTA (Moto 2142) into the DMZ of my Linksys router, shutting off SPI, and assigning 20% QoS in DD-WRT was the magic combo. [/quote]

I just got a 2142 from Vonage. Using Shaw in Vancouver. Running Shaw modem to SMC 7400 Router and then to the 2142. Vonage speed-test indicates 2,465kps DOWN, 491,350bps UP QoS 54% RTT 93ms, MaxPause117ms. Vonage audio quality seems to be ok tx and rx. The 2142 is "virgin" as delivered from Vonage. Any suggestions on tweaking the 2142 would be appreciated.