Shaw Cable to start billing extra for high Internet data usage
EDMONTON — Shaw customers will soon be billed extra when their Internet use exceeds their monthly usage limits, the entertainment and communications company says.
The company tested new data-transfer limits last year. This year it will bill residential customers who exceed those limits, Terry Medd, vice-president of operations for Shaw Communications, said Friday from Calgary.
“We think we’ve got the right usage amounts, so they have now been put in place and we are starting the billing process now,” Medd said. “We’re doing it in a customer-friendly way compared to anyone else who has rolled this out. No customer will be billed without being advised that, for two months previously, they have run over top of the usage limits.”
Shaw’s five residential Internet plans vary from $25 a month to $150 a month. At the bottom end is Shaw’s “high-speed lite” plan with a 15-gigabyte monthly limit that allows customers to send 105,000 e-mails, upload 4,000 photos and “lightly browse the Internet” by visiting 13,000 web pages. Shaw’s fastest “high-speed Nitro” plan has a 350 GB limit and caters to households with multiple computers online at once. Under that plan, users could download 35 high-definition movies and 10,250 songs, play 3,000 hours of online gaming and listen to 280 hours of streaming radio in a month. Shaw’s mid-range plans offer 60 GB, 100 GB and 175 GB monthly data-transfer limits.
Customers who exceed their plan’s limit will get two warnings and have the potential fees explained before they are billed. Then Shaw will charge between $1 and $2 per gigabyte over the limit, depending on the plan.
“The soonest somebody could actually see this on their bill would be April,” Medd said.
Customers who exceed their limits will be contacted by Shaw to see if they want an Internet plan with a higher data transfer limit or a “data pack.” Shaw sells data packs that give customers extra usage for a month — $5 for an extra 10 GB, $20 for an extra 60 GB or $50 for an extra 250 GB.
Customers who use more will pay more, Medd said. “It’s video over the Internet that’s driving a lot of this cost,” he said.
However, most Shaw Internet customers won’t hit their caps, Medd said, adding it should affect fewer than 10 per cent of customers.
“The average user consumed about one-third of what the cap is. In other words, we’ve set the caps at three times the average usage. For the average user, there’s no concern here.” |
發表於 2011-1-15 07:32
| 
