We finally ditched Shaw and moved to Novus for our internet provider – it’s faster and cheaper, and the customer service is better. What’s not to like?

Novus is a fibre optic internet provider and the only real alternative to the big telecoms (Shaw and Telus). They’ve been expanding out of downtown Vancouver, hooking up buildings to their fibre optic network. Our building was the last one in the Olympic Village to gain access, but it was worth the wait.

Now that we’ve made the switch, our internet bill has been cut in half. I ran a speed test on both Shaw and Novus while I still had access to both. The download speeds are comparable (our download speed with Shaw was double what we were paying for) but the upload speeds are 20 times faster on Novus. Uploads on Shaw are noticeable slow, especially when syncing files with Dropbox or uploading pictures to Flickr. With Novus uploads fly.

A quick comparison of our Shaw and Novus plans.
Shaw – High Speed 10
Cost: $55 + taxes
Download Speeds: Up to 10 Mbps
Upload Speeds: Up to 0.5 Mbps

Novus – Internet 25
Cost: $32.50 + taxes
Download Speeds: Up to 25Mbps
Upload Speeds: Up to 10 Mbps