In a very low profile update to their website, Shaw communications announced that they would be reducing, and fully enforcing their bandwidth caps. High-speed Internet customers previously enjoyed a monthly transfer cap of 75GB, which has now been reduced to just 60GB. What’s worse is that Shaw will now be enforcing this restriction with more than just nasty emails – A penalty of $2 per GB of overage is going to be charged. Hop on over to Shaw’s Internet page to learn how you will be affected.
A Lack of Information
Personally I don’t have a problem with ISPs enforcing bandwidth caps, what I do have a problem with is how Shaw has gone about handling this situation. Long-Time customers of Shaw were not notified of this billing change by email, telephone or even a banner on the front page of their website – an outrage and an insult to consumers. Even worse than the lack of notification, however, is the inability for consumers to easily monitor their bandwidth usage. If a company is going to charge and arm and a leg for overages then they better be damn that I will know when I’m going over.
Monitoring your Bandwidth
All that being said, Shaw does not currently have a utility which allows consumers to easily monitor their monthly bandwidth, and as is usually the case the responsibility falls to the customer to solve this issue for themselves.
The most elegant solution for monitoring bandwidth is to purchase a router that can be flashed with 3rd party firmware. Flashing a router is not difficult and if you need help feel free to email me. The two major firmware releases are DD WRT and Tomato. Both of these firmware releases allow the user to easily monitor their total bandwidth right from a web browser. The catch is that these firmware’s only support a limited number of router models and if you don’t have a supported one, and are unwilling to purchase a supported model then you’re essentially hooped.
Fortunately there is another method of tracking your bandwidth without flashing firmware to your router. There are applications For both Windows and OSX which run in the background and automatically track your bandwidth usage for you. One such program that I have used in the past is NetStat. You can have a look at this program by hopping over to this website. Keep in mind that if you are using NetStat then you will have to have it installed on all of your Internet-connected computers to get a good idea of your total usage.
Conclusion
It is unfortunate that Canadian ISP’s have decided to enforce bandwidth restrictions without giving the consumers the tools they need to effectively manage their usage, but until Shaw shapes up we, their customers, have to pick up the slack.
