About four years ago, I gave up the phone line that was tied to my house, and have been happy with my cell phone as my main telephonic device. This has proven to be a bit restrictive in ways that I didn’t really consider at the time; the most immediately obvious being my selection of Internet providers.

I’ve been reasonably happy with Shaw Cable for my Internet, even though the paltry 40GB of traffic per month is not really enough for my needs; I transfer a ton of audio and video files around for Nardwuar, for my contracts, and for the odd television show I download off of BitTorrent. I routinely hit 40GB about halfway through the month, and once every couple months I get a call from Shaw’s Acceptable Use department; sometimes before, and sometimes after they shut off my modem. Other than that, the service has been fine, and I’ve even had access to “normal” TCP ports that I like having open such as port 80.

About once every 3-4 months I would do a price comparison between Telus and Shaw, and routinely find that Telus would be higher in price by about $40 per month all-in. That difference mostly came from the cost of the (useless) telephone line that was nothing but tax on the Internet connection as far as I’m concerned; one phone number is one too many as far as I’m concerned.

I looked at the pricing again after hearing that Telus has started silently offering Dark ADSL to those who request it. This is ADSL service with no phone service, and therefore, wiping out a whole lot of the price difference. I called in and fought with the “Automated Assistant” that Telus employs to prevent people from speaking to humans; it couldn’t understand that I wanted to talk to the internet people but didn’t have a phone number to enter. “I’m sorry, but that number isn’t in my database. Let me get an agent to help you; we have a number of different types of agents….”

Eventually, Automated Annie gave up and somehow managed to dump me on an ADSL agent; I know I was surprised. Spoke with him and verified the cost of the service, and he says he signed me up; I’m not entirely sure, and will believe it when I see the modem arrive next week. He sounded like he’d just been out on a THC Break…

Breaks down to $39.95 per month over 3 years, with 3 months in there that are free… $439.45 per year (11 months paid per year) for more bandwidth and a speed boost to 2.5Mbps downstream when compared to my Shaw service. There’s a free 2GB iPod Nano in the mix too considering that I’m signing up for a three year term. There’s no service move fees should we move, as that fee is for LINE MOVING, and since I don’t have a line….

My Shaw package was their “SoHo Package” business service, which is slower, has a line-move fee, and runs $64.95 per month for 50 GB or traffic, and MAYBE 1Mbps download bandwidth. That price includes basic cable service (maybe $10?), but since Shaw’s web servers have had any helpful information removed, I have no idea how much my bill there will change, but my monthly total used to be $100 and change, so I would expect that to be cut in half.