Beyond the brand names and pricing, perhaps the biggest difference between the Shaw and Telus comes down to the method of delivery.
Shaw's services come through coaxial cable and Telus delivers its services primarily through asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL).
Shaw's system provides greater capacity, maintained Greg Pultz, that company's vice president of operations for northern B.C.
"Telus is delivering over a very small bandwidth pipe so there are limitations in their service in that you can't have multiple high definition TVs without having an impact to your internet service whereas with Shaw, that's not the case," he said. "You can have a 100 megabit internet service with virtually unlimited HD TVs playing at the same time as well as your phone going."
Telus spokesman Shawn Hall countered that thanks to its effort to expand its fibre optic network in Prince George, Telus has greatly increased its capacity to neighbourhood nodes, from which each home continues to be fed by six copper wires.
"Theoretically, they (Shaw) have a higher bandwidth on that wire but you share that bandwidith with your neighbourhood," he said. "With Telus, it doesn't slow down because your neighbour is downloading a movie.
"Also, they broadcast and we send one channel down. So broadcasting means that they push all of the channels down the pipe at the same time and block out everything except the one channel that you're watching where we just send the one channel that you're on down the pipe.
"That effectively means we can offer an unlimited number of high definition channels."
