Shaw TV & internet since moving to Vernon 2004. Daughter & Son in law are on Telus. Not sure how Telus bills customers, but Shaw is the only 'utility' bill I have that charges you for service a month in advance. Make you pay before they actually deliver the goods. Not sure how they qualify for that, but clearly we as customers allow them to do that by continuing to be customers. Can't really complain about the service delivery, it's been consistent with no real glitches. Daughter seems pretty happy with service from Telus.
Ok, so delivery of the product has been fine, but I too have had a problem with the TV content for a number of years & what they charge for the trash currently provided. The CRTC is finally moving to force cable providers to give customers a better deal with respect to programming choices rather than have packages shoved down their throats & charging even more for the "premium" channels. I'm old enough to remember that the reason you paid for cable TV was to enjoy commercial free programming, generally a couple of movie channels. Cable TV providers have in effect been double dipping by charging cable customers for programming saturated with commercials.
Cable providers now own the broadcasters, the TV stations, not a very healthy environment for a competitive market. That & the fact that the CRTC is moving too slow, prompted me to cancel the TV portion of my Shaw service just over a year ago. Since then I've been watching OTA TV, which in Vernon gives me 4 channels, all with the same programming. 2 SD channels & 2 HD channels, Global CHBC, owned by Shaw & CHAN CHKL, whatever that is. Quite limited, but I get local news & the signal quality is excellent. Uncompressed HDTV for free. I'm close enough to the transmitter that a rabbit ear antenna with amplifier in the living room has no problem capturing signal. I recently installed a larger antenna in the attic & pull the signal fine with no amp or boost required.
Current bill for "High Speed 10" internet service + tax comes in at just over $66. There are certainly beefier & more costly internet plans from Shaw, but on checking my use, I've never been anywhere near the 125 GB limit. I purchased a new TV with ATSC/QAM tuner recently & signed up for Netflix free trial. This will likely boost my internet usage closer to the limit, we'll see how that goes. Once the free trial is over, it'll be about $10 a month. So far I've watched some movies I really liked. If I were to use Shaw video on demand, it would cost considerably more, they really gouge you for that service. No way I'm willing to fork over $200 a month or more for TV & Internet.
Slowly but surely, the cable providers are feeling the heat of competition from on-demand/streaming providers like Netflix. Offering Shomi now to compete. Downside is that they provide the internet service & will continue to crank up the price of that as more customers bail from their TV packages. If you live in a larger metropolitan area anywhere near the US border I would highly recommend looking into OTA HDTV asap. For the price of an antenna & a bit of fiddling, you could save a bundle instead of paying for those "bundles" the providers like to lock you into. Check out the following site, type in your postal code or address & you should get all the info you need to see what's available free OTA in your neighbourhood.
http://www.tvfool.com/index.php?opti...pper&Itemid=29