For a while when people asked my who they should use for High Speed Internet, my answer was either was ok and that their best bet was to find out from neighbors what service they had and how good it was. I have sinc e changed my tune n the Calgary area and am currently recommending Shaw to all cof my Small Business and Residential clients for a few reasons.
Both services are fairly fast and both have their share of problems (network outages etc). In my area I find Shaw very fast and extremely reliable. I have seen very slow and flakely Shaw service in some areas but this leads me to one of the reasons for my decisions – Customer Service.
Shaw will send techs out at no charge to check everything in your house if you have a problem. I have even heard of instances where they have torn up an alleyway, installed new cable and repaved to fix problems. Telus does charge for service calls.
I also find the Telus service very restrictive. Both companies seem to have differnt philosophy’s when it comes to their high speed offerings. Telus seems to be, We know what’s best for you , while Shaw’s is here is your connection, have fun but if you need tools here they are.
Case in point. For email I don’t use Shaw. This and all of my websites are hosted elsewhere, and I use the email accounts for my domain. When on a Shaw connection I have no problems sending my email to my email server in the US. Telus blocks outbound port 25 (used for SMTP) so I can’t send using my own domain. In order to send from them I have to change Outlook to send via Telus’ SMTP server. You may be thinking well at least the mail goes out, but there is a cost. Telus claims they do this port blocking to control Spam, well what they are doing can make my email look like Spam. Mail servers see the email coming from my domain yet the server that is sending the mail is Telus.net they don’t match so this is a spoofed Id and can drop the mail. I have taken steps such as adding a sender policy framework record to my name servers indicating that telus.net is authorized to send mail for my domai, but that is a hassle.
Another port they block is port 80 inbound. Port 80 is the standard port for webservers. So if you want to run a webserver at your you can’t do it.
Also Telus forces and IP address change every 24 hours so if you so want to use remote desktop to access your home PC you have to use a dynamic DNS service or a program called log me in. I can’t remember the last time my SHaw IP address changed but it was more than 2 years ago.
I have seen more instances of Telus being down than Shaw being down in Calgary over the long run.
For Business Clients Telus’ so called static IP addresses are not static at all. They advise you to leave your router set at DHCP but they continue to assign the same address. The problem with this is if you change routers or even if you shut a router down for some time you can lose that IP address.
Last spring I had to move all of my clients that were using Shaw’s dynamic IP addresses on business accounts to static IP’s because Telus mail servers started rejecting mail from these Shaw accounts because they were on dynamic IP address blocks that their real time blacklist providor flagged. Again the we know what’s best argument.
I had one instance where on a business DSL connection Telus took 3 days to discover and fix a problem on their side. I did not receive a call till 3 days after the problem was fixed to tell me it was done. What ticks me off is that this was a business account at a Major Canadian Bank! Shaw gives priority to their business accounts with their own desk and realizes the value of these clients. I have recently had mext morning service calls after I suspected that the problem at one site was their, and sure enough they were there early the next day and fixed the problem.
I could go on and on with examples and problems I have run into with Telus, and like I said I have seen issues with Shaw as well. However Shaw has been and are willing to assist and solve the problem. I don’t get that from Telus.
So now you know. In the Calgary area I highly recommend Shaw’s service over Telus High Speed service anyday. Disagree? I look forward to your feedback.
PS, Telus is not yet offering a service called Naked DSL (at least I can’t find it on their site) which unbundles the phone line from your DSL connection. So if you want to use or switch to an IP phone providor (Vonage) it makes no sense as you have to keep your phoine in order to keep your DSL service in addition to paying for Vonage. Makes no sense really!
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