Truth in Advertising
“What does having the fastest Internet in Canada mean to you?”
That’s the question asked in Shaw’s latest advertising campaign to lure customers to purchase (or upgrade) their Internet services from Shaw. The image that goes with this question is of someone downloading their ‘favourite program’ while they rush out to talk the cabdriver, rush back to collect the laptop and rush out and into the cab.
The question posed and the images create an impression of impressive speed for Shaw Internet services.
What Truth lies in the Question?
The fact that you are paying for the fastest Internet in Canada does not mean you are getting the speed you are paying for. That is why contracts for internet services have within their wording the proviso ‘up to’ however megabytes per second you are paying for. Should you test the actual speed of your internet services you will almost assuredly find that, as speed tests of the actual speeds versus ‘up to’ speeds have demonstrated, you are not getting the speed you are paying for. Hence the need for the ‘up to” proviso to protect the service provider from refunds or price adjustments.
The images of the show being downloaded in the time it takes to rush out to the cab and back falls under both ‘up to’ and more importantly the excuse “it is them not us”. For most of us it doesn’t really matter what our download speed is, the limiting factor is what the download speed of the site you are downloading from (uploading to) is.
Except for a very few sites, the download and upload speeds are such that paying for higher or highest speeds is a waste of money.
Does paying for the highest internet speed mean you can download a show in the time shown in Shaw’s internet commercial? No, but should you contact Shaw to complain “it is the downloader, not Shaw” that prevents you achieving downloading a program in the time promised (an implied promise) in the Shaw commercial.
“What does having the fastest Internet in Canada mean to you?”
For all but a select few it means you have bought a ‘mirage’ and are paying too much for your internet.
For me “What does having the fastest Internet in Canada mean to you?” means that the Federal Government needs to stop paying lip service to competition and bring meaningful competition into the markets where monopolies, or effective monopolies, exist (Cable, newspapers, wireless, banking, internet services, TV and radio ownership, news and information programming, etc) .
It is well past time the Federal Conservatives remembered that they are in Ottawa to serve the best interests of ALL Canadians and not just the interests of the wealthy and big business.
Unfortunately for the future of Canada and Canadians. putting the best interests of Canada and Canadians as a whole above the interests of the wealthy, business and those special interest groups they favour, is not part of the Conservative’s Ideology. And as we all are well aware, if it is not part of the Conservative’s Ideology it cannot be Reality and therefore does not exist in the Conservative Universe.
