Shaw fibre

[rickatk]

Shaw recent announcement about doubling the speed refers to a fibre optic network.

What is happening with Shaw Fibre?

Is the Shaw network fibre based?

What are the ramifications of the last mile being coaxial?

How does Shaw fibre compare to TELUS fibre.

Is the a document that addresses these questions?

[shaw-tony · Accepted solution]

Hey rickatk,

Thank you for reaching out. The announcement refers to our 100% fibre backbone, you can find some details here. I believe you are referring to fibre to the home where the final connection is by fibre rather than coaxial cable. We continue to expand our footprint for fibre fed locations, these are generally in new buildings where we can install the fibre network during the construction stage. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Cheers,

Tony | Community Mod.

[#3]

Shaw's network is a fiber and coax hybrid.  Fiber to the local node and then coax into your address.

Ramifications of the last mile being coax..  Same as always, nothing changes.

Difference between Shaw's fiber to the premises (FTTP) vs coax, lower latency (ping times), but actual speeds provided, no idea, information on Shaw's FTTP service is really hard to find..

Comparing Shaw's FTTP to Telus FTTP (Telus PureFibre), again, I have no information on this either, nothing is published and I don't know anybody with it.

From memory, Shaw's FTTP service has identical service speeds as the cable service.

[rickatk]

Tony:

Thanks for the reply, I found the documents you referred... very helpful. 

[rickatk]

kevinds wrote:

Shaw's network is a fiber and coax hybrid.  Fiber to the local node and then coax into your address.

Ramifications of the last mile being coax..  Same as always, nothing changes.

Difference between Shaw's fiber to the premises (FTTP) vs coax, lower latency (ping times), but actual speeds provided, no idea, information on Shaw's FTTP service is really hard to find..

Comparing Shaw's FTTP to Telus FTTP (Telus PureFibre), again, I have no information on this either, nothing is published and I don't know anybody with it.

From memory, Shaw's FTTP service has identical service speeds as the cable service.

I raised the question to see if I could get more information on Fibre. Sometimes it is hard to sift through the facts v marketing. I certainly have no complaints about the performance of the hybrid setup Shaw is using. Last year I almost droppped the Shaw service in favour of a full Fibre / IPTV, seemed cleaner(per the marketing). However service availability was an issue so I never had the opportunity to jump over to the TELUS fibre. As well friends advised the fibre service was “OK”. I have never thought the Optik picture to be sharp either. The Shaw offerings have been very good. BlueSky works very well and I have merged Netflix, Crave TV and YouTube off my Apple TV to BlueSky and the internet continues to be very stable. Crave has now merged with Movie Central and HBO and is well aggregated in BlueSky whew!

At my my new place I have all new shiny cable service running to and through the house. Getting very good performance on the BlueSky hybrid system.

Thanks for the detailed response.

[#6]

Yeah..  I have the Telus TV from their pure fibre service operating through a VPN..  In my opinion Shaw's TV service does have a much better picture.  Telus' Pure Fibre internet service is really good though, except for the many ports that are blocked.

[rickatk]

This is an interesting video about DOCSIS 3.1. It kind of puts the whole cable v fibre discussion into perspective.

DOCSIS 3.1 Technology Explained | NETGEAR Gigabit Cable Internet - YouTube