Canadian TV, Computing and Home Theatre Forums banner

Telus wifi hot spots, anything to match Shaw?

20K views 18 replies 14 participants last post by  gzink 
#1 ·
so just found out about this today so may be old news but Shaw internet customers are able to connect to many wifi hotspots

"The Shaw Go WiFi Trial extends your Shaw Internet experience beyond your
home at no extra cost. Now you can connect your mobile devices at
shopping districts, restaurants, gyms and more!"

its on the shaw website if you want to look closer. very interesting. was using it today on my new Nexus 7.

anything like this coming from Telus? tho i doubt we will as it will cut into their mobility data plans.

my 3yrs is up in July 2013. looks like i be taking a hard look at switching back to Shaw.
 
#8 ·
The business definitely does not pay for the free wifi hotspot.
They just need to be a Telus customer for their business phone and internet. Then Telus will install the hot spot on a separate dedicated line for free for their customers to use. It is open to all, unlike shaw that requires you to be a shaw home internet customer.
So even shaw customers can register and log in. You just need an email address.
It is being done as a service to enforce brand awareness, and even though they are a little behind shaw at this point, the entire technician work force is currently being trained to install hot spots in businesses.
Another thing it does is drive loyalty with the business customer. They now no longer have to pay for an additional line for their customers, or give up their bandwidth allowing customers to use their business connection, which has it's own security concerns if they allow customers to use it. By having a dedicated account just for their customer, supplied free by Telus, it gives them a reason to stay loyal to Telus as a valued business customer. If you ask me it is a brilliant strategy, that is paying off big time from the number of local business I have seen in my area that the #TELUS and #TELUSDIRECT wifi names showing up.
 
#7 ·
I talked to telus mobility when I renewed my cell phone contract, they upped my plan from 1 GB to 6GB for no charge,

6G of LTE > shaw wifi hotspot, unless you do a ton of streaming,
I'm sure if you talked to them you could get even more data
 
#11 ·
Interesting post Hackinsat. I still think Telus is doing this because they are losing out to Shaw big time. It's great to say Telus is doing this a brand awareness thing. Too little too late in my opinion. Shaw Go Wifi is just everywhere now.

If Telus was smart, wait. They are. I will connect with my contact and share my marketing ideas with them.
 
#13 ·
I still think Telus is doing this because they are losing out to Shaw big time.
I found that comment surprising, so I looked up the latest quarterly reports from Shaw & Telus. Telus increased their internet subs by 5.75% in the previous 12 months and Shaw only increased by 2.70%. Wi-Fi hotspots are a nice extra, but they aren't a game-changer for most people.
 
#18 ·
Hackinsat said:
... Another thing it does is drive loyalty with the business customer. They now no longer have to pay for an additional line for their customers, or give up their bandwidth allowing customers to use their business connection, which has it's own security concerns if they allow customers to use it. By having a dedicated account just for their customer, supplied free by Telus, it gives them a reason to stay loyal to Telus as a valued business customer. If you ask me it is a brilliant strategy, that is paying off big time from the number of local business I have seen in my area that the #TELUS and #TELUSDIRECT wifi names showing up.
So I thought as well...

We had the TELUS public wifi hotspot installed in our business premises in the late spring of 2014 and had it removed after about 6-8 weeks. Did it work as promised - yes. Was there minimal cost to our business - yes, just electricity. Did our customers really care if we had it - difficult to say.

So one must wonder why did we have it removed in such a short time - well, let's just say it was over a little legal matter that TELUS would not back down from. After having the TELUS public wifi in our shop, we received a letter from TELUS the specifically named our company as well as myself personally - a letter regarding illegally downloading some copyrighted material. My initial reaction was to investigate and find out which of our staff was using our business internet (separate from TELUS public wifi) to do such activities but very quickly I realized that the time at which TELUS stated the copyrighted material had been downloaded was at a time when our shop was closed and no one would have been in our shop.

Further investigation revealed that the IP address TELUS said the download was made at didn't match up to the IP address of our business DSL internet service. I then connected to the TELUS public wifi in our shop and discovered that the IP address TELUS had provided matched up to tehir public wifi hotspot. Very interesting indeed that our company and myself personally would be named in a letter from TELUS regarding downloading copyrighted materials even though the downloading had occurred on equipment that we didn't own or rent.

So now I was off on numerous phone calls to TELUS which in itself proved ponderous as the TELUS public wifi was a TELUS Mobility offering that was installed and supported by the TELUS landline people. Never the less, it took quite a while to prove to them that the download occurred on their public wifi equipment and not our own business DSL equipment, it took even longer to prove to them that we didn't actually own or pay anything for the TELUS public wifi equipment.

Then through all of this, we found out that TELUS had created another business internet account billed against our company that provided the telephone line and DSL service that the TELUS public wifi operated on - we never got to see this bill as it was behind the scenes stuff to allow TELUS to get a second DSL service into our location which the TELUS public wifi operated on. At no point in time did TELUS inform us that a second business acoount would be created and billed in a zero dollar amount against our company (with my personal name on it) to allow TELUS to get a second DSL line into our shop for their public wifi hot spot but further digging with TELSU revelaed that TELUS needed to do this in order to have a service address to which they could get the second DSL service installed tyo. I called bullshit on this with TELUS while on the phone with them as I had worked with TELUS for 25+ years and was well aware that TELUS could get their own service into a customer's site for their own equipment/service without having to include a company or individual's name on any sort of records/billing - this I know because I used to be involved in doing such a thing internally at TELUS.

Never the less, we ended up having TELUS removed their public wifi hotspot from our business premises necause of a numebr of reasons...

1 - TELUS would not rescind the letter regarding the downloading of illegal materials even though they eventually acknowledged that the downloading occurred on equipment owned and maintained by them.

2 - TELUS would not rework the circuit/billing so as to remove our company/my name off of any billing/account information even though I made them aware that they could indeed to this even though it would come at a slight increased cost to TELUS because of some licensing they would have to acquire which they currently do in many other cases (this I know because I dealt with this internally while I was under the employ of TELUS).

3 - TELUS would not send an apology letter or letter of acknowledgement regarding the misrepresentation of the service they were actually installing and how zero dollar accounts would be created that were billed and had the name of the company and someone personally associated with that company.

Anyhow, I must apologize for the TLDR read from a newbie but I felt it was important that people be aware of what they may be signing up for when agreeing to host a TELUS public wifi hotspot - was in it the small writing, most likely but it is a very shady way for TELUS to do business and even more so in that no one at TELUS seemed to be even half aware of how their public wifi hotspots actually worked.
 
#19 ·
I had a similar note from Telus and then Microsoft(guess who provided Microsoft with my address) and I proved I did no such downloading or illegal sharing. All they had to do was look at the usage numbers which they had. No apology or rescinding either.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top