Shaw today announced a revamp of their home internet plans. For the first time, they are offering Gigabit (1000 Megabit) download speeds. Perviously, their highest internet plan offered 600 megabit download speeds. Shaw is also introducing more plans at the lower end of the spectrum, with a new “Baisc 10” plan that offers 10 megabit speeds.
On the surface, this is a good thing. Faster internet plans are always good, and less expensive options are also good. But there is a lot to unpack, and not all of it is good.
On pricing, there is some good news, and some bad news. I would have expected Shaw to raise the prices across the board to go with higher speeds, but they have not done that. Previously, Shaw’s pricing was as follows (prices do not include any 2 year value plan discounts):
Internet 300: $105/month – unlimited data
Internet 600: $125/month – unlimited data
I do not have pricing information on lower tier plans before today.
Today’s new plans are as follows (again, prices do not include any 2 year value plan discounts):
Basics 10: $60/month – 150GB/month of data
Internet 25: $90/month – 250GB/month of data
Internet 75: $95/month – 500GB/month of data
Internet 150: $105/month – unlimited data
Fibre+ 300: $110/month – unlimited data
Fibre+ 750: $120/month – unlimited data
Fibre+ Gig: $125/month – unlimited data
Without information on the plan pricing below 300 I can’t make any comparisons, but at 300 and above there are some interesting changes. 300 megabit is now $5/month more expensive than it was before, however above that the value increases. 750 megabit speeds are less expensive than 600 was, and gigabit speeds for the same price that 600 used to be.
This pricing structure appears to be geared towards upselling people to the higher plans, as the value propositions decrease greatly as the prices decrease. From 25 all the way to gigabit the speeds at least double for only $5 or $10 more. That is clearly meant to entice people into picking more expensive options. How much speed a household needs is another discussion entirely, but Shaw clearly wants to up-sell here.
Increasing download speeds is great, and something I will never complain about. But one area where Shaw continues to lag significantly is on upload speeds. Upload speeds on their plans are anwyere from 2.5% to 10% of the download speeds. Upload speeds range from 25 megabit on the Fibre+ Gig plan down to 1 megabit on the Basics 10 plan. As we do more and more at home, especially in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, upload speeds become more important. People are using video calls more than ever, cloud services are more popular. Photos and videos are being uploaded to cloud services in astronomical amounts. And yet, Shaw’s upload speeds continue to lag significantly. Their primary competition In western Canada, TELUS, offers what are called symmetrical internet packages. This means that the upload speed is the same as the download speed. So, Telus offers a fibre internet package of 940 megabit speeds, and users can enjoy 940 megabit download, as well as upload speeds. That is 37.6x the upload speed that Shaw offers on a similar download plan. Now, TELUS has a different cost matrix than Shaw. Their plans, without discounts applied, do cost more than Shaw, and Telus does charge users for unlimited data, where Shaw includes it in the majority of their plans. So, a better service does come with a higher cost from TELUS, but just how far Shaw lags behind is becoming a real issue.
Overall, the changes are positive. More, faster options for internet are good. Less expensive options are good. But making service better is only one part of the equation. With what Shaw’s plans look like now, I would rather see cost reductions for the same speeds, instead of offering higher speed for the same prices. We need to make higher speed internet nore affordable. This is not a criticism exclusive to Shaw, but a conversation that needs to happen at a larger scale.