Apparently 2015 will be the year when Canadians will start paying higher bills just to stay connected. As announced back in December, Shaw has been the first to make the move: it has increased the prices of its home internet plans by up to 17% (via TechVibes).
As highlighted by Shaw in a forum entry, starting January 1, 2015 the service provider has adjusted its prices for “existing customers from $4 – $10/month, depending on service, with most customers seeing a $4 – $7 increase/month on their existing plans.” Customers were notified about the price raise in November, the provider says.
The immediate result was outrage among Shaw customers, who gave a one star rating to the company’s post that explained the price hike. Starting this year, the service provider’s entry-level plan secures the user a download speed of 5 Mpbs and a data cap of 60GB for a price of $50.
OpenMedia’s Josh Tabish sees this as a major problem that goes beyond a local price raise: “Make no mistake: if Shaw gets away with this, others like Bell, Rogers, and Telus will soon follow,” he claimed.
Starting January 6, 2015 Shaw launched new Internet plans for new customers: these plans obviously don’t affect existing Internet customers, but they do invite them to upgrade at any time. The new entry-level plan of 5 Mbps is part of the new offer which also includes an 120 Mbps plan (available soon).
If you want to voice your opinion to Shaw, you can do so at this Shaw Forum thread.
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Well that sucks, already pay to much as it is
True
Hmmmm…. Switching from Telus (Optik 25. I also have 9 business cards from techs in the past 16 months to try and fix my service) to Shaw (Broadband 50) on Saturday. Shaw was offering a Boxing week special. 6 months reduced pricing. Wonder how this will affect me?
Fortunately I got in on the Broadband 100 package while it was still available. I’ve been a Shaw customer for years and have generally been happy with their service. Though, they’re not in my good books today. My Internet went down (Vancouver) a few hours ago…and to make matters worst the first person I spoke with after a 45 minute wait insisted that the issue was with my Time Capsule. I later found out that it is indeed a service issue that is affecting other customers in the area. Not impressed.
have u ran any speed tests? most users with BB 100 receive significantly less than 100 Mbps.
sadly, the crtc isn’t interested in price gouging. thank you mr. harper, again,
I just called them a few minutes ago to give a 30 days notice to cancel my internet plan. I’m switching to Novus, their upload speed is higher and it’s almost half price.
Novus looks promising. Their top package offers 300 Mbps down and 15 Mbps up with a 1,000 GB/month data cap (according to their website). Unfortunately it looks like availability is still pretty limited: http://www.novusnow.ca/check-availability