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Canada May Name High-Speed Access "Essential"
BurpingWeezer writes: "Whoa. Here's something that caught my eye. The CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) is considering designating high-speed Internet services provided in Canada an essential service. Now before you blow your top that CRTC designation would only set "minimum standards for " ... "service because it is deemed essential to the quality of life in Canada." On the other hand look at what the designation has done for phone service. (Now you can blow your top.) The focus is on the needs of business customers but with residential users in mind. I guess there are enough complaints against Rogers@Home and Bell Sympatico that the CRTC is thinking of flexing its regulatory muscles. Before our American cousins to the south start on government intervention remember that it's because of the CRTC that no high-speed Internet company in Canada is able to charge residential customer more than CAD$50 per month. (I'm told that dirt cheap compared to the U.S.) Many Canadians will welcome this."
that's $50 Canadian. (about $32.5 US). Also, note that this is (apparently) the maximum cable & DSL companies can charge for residencial access. I am paying $40 per month (that's $26 US).
___
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
That's a fine point. I pay $34.95/mo for my cable access (about US$24) with static IP, no port restrictions, unlimited usage and about 400Kb/s. That's all fine and good, but the service absolutely sucks. In the last couple of months the DHCP server has gone down countless times, meaning no IP address for me and so no access. Calling tech suport is no good since you'll stay on hold for an hour or more. So, yes, our access is cheap, and generally really fast, but there are fairly frequent service interruptions for one reason or another. Then again, I suppose that if I had to pay it sounds like people pay down south, I wouldn't have high speed access at all, so maybe this isn't so bad.
The original post is a little misleading in that home consumer usage is always under C$50, and is generally only widely available from a handfull of customers. Business access is more expensive, but has more competition - there are many more companies willing to offer a small company ADSL access for C$150/month and up, only a handful of ISP's have tried to compete with the phone company to offer home ADSL for C$40 or less.
If you want more and are willing to pay for it, there's someone willing to sell it to you. But in the mean time my home ADSL works pretty well and is C$30/month on a promo for 3 months, then it goes up to C$40. That's about US$20 and US$27 respectively.
This scares the life out of me. The CRTC has no clue whatsoever about the real world, its a facist organization from hell. My opinion... but my tax dollars help fund their idiocy. The biggest problem I see with CRTC action being motivated by complaints from customers is just that. Customers. Customers who view a failure in routing within some other backbone providers' network as the fault of their ISP. Customers who blow failures out of proportion for their own benefit. Don't get me wrong, I know there are some MASSIVE problems with Rogers@Home (the GlobeandMail.com site is a great research tool for this.. just search for Excite or Rogers or Shaw)... but many people making complaints to the CRTC about "poor service" don't care whose fault it is. They simply want to blame the ISP as a catch-all, and that's wrong.
It also scares me that the CRTC will listen. They don't care about fault either, they simply want to mandate and legislate. Government intervention will be the death of freedom on the Internet, and it will be the death of many Internet businesses.
That being said, I have it relatively easy. Rogers customers are apparently getting assraped. I live in a Shaw@Home city, and my service is pretty damn good. Too good for $39.95/month. That's very little money for the kind of bandwidth I get. Its annoying hearing people complaint about how expensive that is. They don't know how good they have it... the impression that comes to mind is "spoiled brats".
... my 2 cents.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
I am:
1. An Ottawa resident.
2. An ADSL (3Mb down, 1Mb up) residential customer.
3. Paying $64.95 CAD / month + tax (that's including the $5 rebate for subscribing on a yearly basis).
The only reason i can get this service at the speed i do in my area is because i signed up for it very early (when ADSL was brand new). Sympatico won't offer the service to anyone anymore, because they are "loosing money on it" (their words). If i ever cancel it, i can't get it back. I can't even change my phone number (since Sympatico and Bell are so tightly coupled).
Anybody out there think i should complain, and by so doing, risk loosing what i have?
P.S. Rumors i have dug up (and am 99% sure are accurate) say that Sympatico will be rolling out a new DSL service in Dec or Jan that will be 3Mb down, 1 Mb up, will cost the same as HSE, and be available to a 3x wider area. They'll be utilizing Alcatel "modems" (hate calling them that).
Anybody out there want to confirm this?
That's why most of the other Western countries have had an ADSL service available for sometime now, and the BT one has only just arrived.
For the record, we don't have regulated broadband in Canada. What we have is on near-monopoly that controls the phone line into my house and one near-monopoly that controls the cable co-ax into my house and they both seem to be more interested in competing for signing up new users than competing on the basis of quality of service.
I haven't had much trouble with my ADSL connection, but when I do (can't connect to the server, etc) I find that they don't even answer the customer support phone #. Likely because they know they have a problem and they're getting too many calls, so they just ignore them. Great, the wonder free-market theory says I should take my business elsewhere...except the only option is the cable company whose reliability is worse and service is equally as bad.
Perhaps this is because the residential broadband market is newer in Canada but other companies have not rushed into the market, perferring to compete for the business market which has better margins. In the mean time the home market is a pooly served duopoly and while it probably won't be regulated in this way, the threat of regulation may be a motivator for the phone/cable guys to get off their duffs and invest in their infrastructure.
As a side note, one of the reaons this has come to a head is because both the phone & cable companies are spending huge amounts of money on TV/radio/print adds to recruit new customers, most of which attack the other guy and state how their speed/service is better...but neither of them seems interested in reliability. The CRTC is just giving them a little tap on the shoulder so they'll mind their knitting a little better.
PS:We're supposedly getting a wireles broadband service in Toronto in 2001 as well, but info. is sketchy right now.
Ask this question in ott.online for more answers.
Kind Regards,
Kind Regards,
Bruce
I pay about $50 US for 600 Kbps DSL service with a full service ISP including shell access and web space. That $50 covers both the line and the ISP charge. From what I understand, if I were using the local Cable broadband solutions it would be $10-$20 cheaper...which sounds approximately like $50 Canadian.
There is no competition as the only phone company is also the only broadband company. I tend to think that were BT setup today from scratch, rather than being ex Govenment, the guy would be lucky to get a phone.
Of course, nobody is willing to do that, they get too many perceived benefits (for example, your broadband service) by having socialists in office. Sort of like them cutting your hair for you as long as they're raping you from behind anyway.
Unlike unfettered competition, where you have to pay to get your hair cut while being raped from behind.
"In rural areas such as Canada"
You should know better than that. =)
Give up Aurthur, the Facist Alliance Party of Canada is not going to win. Most Canadians don't hold your Ultra-libertarian, Ayn Rand-esque views. I guess most of us ARE "socialists" (which explains why the NDP has formed sooo many national governments!!). I also sumise this is whu Canada has been voted "the best country in the world to live in" for about 7 of the last 10 years.
If you don't like it, don't live here. Stay in the States. We don't want you anyway!!
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Sure but remember if you are in a high tax braket in Canada (over 60K canadian) which is peanuts in american dollars... you will pay 52% income tax. If the social system worked (I.E. you did not have to wait 6 months for a CAT scan and uneplyment insurance was fair...) it would be less of a problem. The fact is they have to keep it bellow 50$ because no one could afford it... I am an IT wroker in Canada and I am getting the hell out of here...
Our government body for telecommunications, OFTEL, has done little regarding roll-out of DSL. The South (suprise, suprise) gets priority in DSL rollouts so far, and OFTEL have been lax in getting British Telecom in unbundling the local loop.
Our government has promised something, but our current government are a bunch of charalatans, and almost everything they promised in their elecetion manifesto has failed to be delivered.
I could always move.
Without high speed access, much of the internet is limited, and limitations are what turn people off. Someone with a high speed connection raves about a site and someone with a low speed connection visits it, and is turned off by the fact that 6 pages take 35 minutes to load and read. If we could get high speed access to be the norm, we can move forward even faster. Whenever I get presented with a "what can I do with a website" my answer is always the same -- Anything, the only limitations are time, money, and bandwidth. My god, how would I like to remove the bandwidth problem. What a world that would open up.
---------- You are not the contents of your sig.:-p
You can't blame someone for using windows, what with the monopoly and all. Heck, I'm using windows right now. At least I'm using Netscape, though. Long live browser wars! (Maybe we'll get a good one out of the competition.)
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
... Or does this only apply in certain areas? Does someone have a link to the appropriate CRTC position/ruling?
First lets clear some things up: The $50 price that was quoted isn't really enforced because you can pay more for business plans. For consumers we pay about $35-40 Cdn per month for service.
As far as QoS goes my friend got a cable modem recently and for his first month of service he didn't have a connection for half of it... well it worked the first week though. I also know people who have DSL and are very happy with it and rarely have connection problems.
The biggest difference between the two services is that DSL has competition while cable is run by one company in the area(there used to be two companies but they killed one off to make our lives easier). Sure cable competes against DSL now but they are in no hurry to improve the service since the demand is increasing and I don't know of too many people who switch high speed connections once they get one.
I'm currently looking for high speed service and I would have gone cable if they were reliable... instead I get to choose between wireless or DSL.
What I would like to see is the usuage statistics for these services. If they force them to reveal how much bandwidth you get along with things like ping rates, uptime, subscribers sharing the connection(for cable at least), etc. then it would be a nice step towards better QoS.
Maybe they will finally force videotron to take off the stupid quotas that they force on all teir cable users (6gb down, 1gb up)
Foreseeing the flod of Americans wanting to move to Canada we've created a form that you can fill in before you arrive.
It can be downloaded here.
kc.
kc.
"You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a towel." - Homer J. Simpson
At least we will be able to GET mail (or medical service). We won't be turned away from the ISP because we haven't been able to afford $400 US per month for "insurance" for my family (an accurate quote from my sister living in Arkansas for HMO coverage or what every you call your for profit medical system).
Sometimes pure capitalism and pure socialism(communism) is NOT the answer...there is a "third way" and we practice it. As does Norway, Sweden and a great many other countries in the world....just because it's not the "make as much profit as you can and people be damned" American way doesn't mean it's wrong.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
:)
Furthermore, if the government is going to do this let's make it an opportunity for consumers to form action groups and put pressure on the government to organize it right. Citizen monitoring groups for quality of service, etc.
Goat sex free since 2001
I don't know if there is some big difference in the value of CAD$50 vs. USD$50, but I do know that I pay $50USD a month for ADSL, but I could get it for $40 a month were I to go with the local telco (I wouldn't get a static IP though.) Also, I think cable access is pretty cheap too. Probably around $40 a month.
What I want to know is who, and why, in the U.S. is anyone paying more than $50. The article appeared to be talking about DSL and cable, not a T3 line coming into your house.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
And remember, the one big thing that our taxes pay for that Americans don't have is universal health care. While cracks are forming, you won't be refused treatment at a hospital because you can't pay. Our health-care isn't up to the standards of the finest private American clinics, but anyone in our country can go to a doctor for any reason at any time. While private clinics are being illeagally opened, the government claims to be fighting that. EVERYONE in our coutry gets the same great, FREE healthcare. We aren't as good as Britain, but what can ya do?
-MR
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
And what if you wanted a service that they couldn't provide at $50/month? "Sorry, nothing we can do..."
Government intervention can provide a benefit in one area ( e.g. some subsidized service ), but it is never without a cost at least as great as the benefit ( e.g. higher tax rates ).
In the abscence of regulation, people do business wherever it is mutually beneficial. Regulation means that people are prohibited from engaging in some mutually beneficial action, therefore it's bad overall.
Monopolies are in some respects a different story, but keep in mind that the majority of monopolies are a product of government regulation, not of the free market.
...the Candian gov't (or at least this org) isn't a wholly-owned subsidiary of any particular industry...
Well that's part of the problem, see once a company gets big, it gets slow. The leasing world is a beautiful example of this. So much falls through the cracks just because companies like GE Capital can't move fast enough, giving the smaller comanies plenty to profit off of. Setting aside the railroads (which obviously were never true monopolies anyway, hence the plural, but are probably industries that would become natural monopolies), two large monopolies hardly seems to be a stunning argument in favor of regulation.
I know, you said "a multitude of other examples," and I'm thinking, but all I can come up with to add to that is AT&T, which did have an awful lot of regulation helping it along. Microsoft is obviously not a true monopoly (mono meaning one, Linux, Mac, BeOS, etc. being more than one).
So sure, every once in a while you'll see a monopoly arise through the free market, but a heck of a lot more often you see it in regulation (see the poster below you for a few examples of government sponsored monopolies, and add to that anyone who's selling anything they've got a patent on).
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Reliable, carrier grade high speed internet connections are a must before voice over IP can be considered a real alternative to conventional phone lines. Regulators by making high speed internet an essential service would by the same token remove one of the major hurdles that has prevented voice over IP to replace conventional analog phone lines so far. I can't wait to ditch my local telco :)
Only business segments that have a high barrier to entry gravitate towards monopolies. A free market (in its most abstract concept) assums a low to no barrier to entry, and thus is able to maintain an equilibrium between price and providor.
It's been pointed out before, but that's really not fair. Taiwan is DENSE. When you see 388 people/km^2, you're not seeing that 2/3 of the island's land mass is completely unpopulated. Taipei city and environs is 6,000,000 people in (roughly) a 20km circle. Kaohsiung is smaller but similar. Hit those two cities plus Taoyuan and Hsinchu and you've provided infrastructure for 90% of the population.
As a Canuck with a Rogers@Home connection for the last 3 years (wow has it been that long?), my take on this is that the CRTC would like to ensure that when I pay my $50 a month, that I am paying for and receiving a quality service. Rogers@Home has serious network and traffic problems. It's not uncommon to not receive any e-mail for a week...The CRTC wants these providers to be as responsible and responsive as the phone companies are. If my phone is down/unavailable/has a crappy signal for any amount of time, and I call Telus (my phone company) about it, Telus automatically credits my account to compensate me (for example, I shouldn't have to pay for three days of unusable phone service). However, the same is not always true with Rogers@Home. When I can't surf or send/receive emails for an extended period of time, I can't call them up and say "adjust my monthly bill please".
"Content's a bitch."
This isn't so much about pricing as it is forcing high speed providers to expand their service areas. Given the Canadian vision that you shouldn't have to move for a job, etc. but services should be provided as much as possible whereever you are, this is really about bringing high speed to smaller communities instead of just the profitable urban areas.
Now if I can just get high speed access from the cottage I'm outta here! Telecommuting is for me! Damn that would be sweet.
Israel, for example, is actually smaller than New Hampshire.
Isn't Israel smaller than Lake Ontario?
I proposed to a friend of mine (after she complained about the water shortage there) that we float Israel in one of the Great Lakes, but I don't recall which.
~Sentry21~
[Rant]
Check this out.
Maybe the CRTC idea has something to do with the fact that Bell covered about 30%-50% (maybe less) of Ontario with ADSL and has now, for all intents and purposes, given up? See the bottom of that page for proof. There were about 10 - 20 cities listed there, now Bell only plans to upgrade 3 in the upcoming _months_. A major slowdown that the Bell HSE people don't want to explain to me.
Yeah I'm sore. Hell yeah I want that legislation. I live within near walking distance of a Canadian METROPOLIS (Kitchener-Waterloo) and have no high speed internet. I know people living inside that metropolis that have no access to high speed internet. And, for the final count, the 519 exchange covering that area is supposedly on Bell's "low service" list.
I hate Bell with a passion. Thankfully the CRTC has allowed CLECs. Maybe when Bell gets real competition from other companies laying copper lines we'll see people living in the country no longer being treated like second-class citizens. Maybe I'll get a modem connection that lasts a couple of hours.
After speaking with neighbours, I have yet to recall a single comment that doesn't vilify Bell. A local exchange area you can walk outside of, but can drive for over half an hour through (don't ask me why... I just know how far away the furthest point is). When you live in the city in Canada you get treated like royalty. Make the mistake of moving to the country and you become the sticky crud underneath Bell's shoes.
I for one am tired of being scraped off. When this legislation passes I'll be the first whiny person on the phone TELLING Bell to do what I want OR ELSE. It'll feel so good. Even better than when I got my first BBS account.
[/Rant.]
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
> 3. Until the CRTC took their grimy mitts off
> long distance, we were still paying a fortune to
> use the phone. In some areas, the CRTC WILL
> STILL NOT ALLOW COMPETITION. I'm living in such
> an area.
Actually, ever since the CRTC took their "grimy mitts" off long distance, I AM paying a fortune to use the phone.
here in Quebec, Bell had a monopoly on long distance service which they defended by saying the higher prices on long distance was used to cover the expenses for local calls (i get unlimited local calls for a flat rate).
now since Bell has competition for long distance, my local calls rate has been going up steadily and I now pay DOUBLE the amount I was paying when Bell had a monopoly (more or less).
I don't do a lot of long distance. So for me, the monopoly was a Good Thing. i may be wrong, but I believe that competition in long distance is more beneficial to business. quite frankly, I'd rather see people pay less and business pay more. maybe that's just me. or maybe not: even the Consumer Protection Association here in Quebec was FOR the Bell monopoly, and OBJECTED to the CRTC's decision to allow competition.
sometimes you have to check behind the principles and look at what's happening in the field.
Just curious... what are the other third parties offering DSL besides Bell Sympatico? So far, I've only found Magma, which is based in Ottawa. Are there any others?
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mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
Wow. A milibit. How do you divide a bit?
Hmmm...I think what was meant was 1 milibit PER SECOND. So, over 1000 seconds (every 16min 40seconds) you get one bit.
Dont know that I'd call that broadband, but I think it's faster than my dialup access used to be.
I just realized that this throughput would require 2 hours, 13 minutes and 20 seconds to send ONE BYTE! You'd be better off driving your buddy's place and TELLING them your 'email' message and driving home. Then you can wait a few hours while they drive to your place with a response. It's hell on gas, but it might do wonders for some of us to get out sometimes.
I've grown sick of the world and its people's mindless games
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.-Franklin
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
God, both sides can sometimes go to obscene extremes. Government regulation can provide a minimum base service for the Important Things In Life. That's why you can get basic analog phone service anywhere in the US, because the phone company MUST provide it. That's why the mail man will drive out to your hog farm in the middle of Iowa and deliver your NRA membership renewal, because the Post Office MUST render that service. In many of these mandatory service cases, the companies in question might wince and squirm and provide the shittiest service they can dream up, but they do provide it.
On the other hand, when they smell money, they need no regulation. Multiple companies enter lucrative markets and compete to the blood. That's why in large population centers it's easy to get cable modems and ADSL. That's also why you will never see high speed internet access in many areas of the country. In many rural parts of the US you can't even get cable TV, and you probably never will. Same holds for cell phone service and other non-essential services.
Saying that regulation is ALWAYS bad is nonsense. Lifeline services such as phone, mail and electricity MUST be regulated, otherwise only the convenient-to-service people will have them. As time passes, new services might be deemed essential and start being regulated. Maybe one day internet service will be essential to life in modern society (we seem to be moving that way already), and it will become mandatory to render that service. That's what happened to phone service, which used to be a luxury only one hundred years ago.
The original post mentioned business as the focus, although it did say that consumers were in mind. I work for a company that would consider its broadband connection essential (it's an e-fulfillment company).
Now tell me, as an e-fullfillment company do you get your bandwidth via a cable modem or consumer grade DSL(the type that has the price cap in Canada)? Or do you pay a little more for your connection to get some sort of contractual garuntee on speed and uptime?
What I do see as a useful quasi-regulatory function for the CRTC or FCC is as a type of telecomm complaint department for home users and small businesses to go to when the cable company/telco is dragging their feet or otherwise being a dick. I think someone in another post said he'd had good luck using the CRTC as such a stick to beat providers with when not delivering.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
Please, your taxes are paying for the CRTC. Your taxes will now pay for the ongoing monitoring of rates from Bridgwater, NS to La Pas, MAN. And knowing the efficiencies of gov.ca I am sure they will fly thier reps coast to coast on your tax dollar, first class. But hey their worth it, right? The best thing the CRTC and the rest of the Provincial and Federal government bodies could do for Canadian business is get the hell out of it. A free market economy (ecomonics 101) benefits everyone.
The current problems with the Canadian health care system stems from extremely large federal transfer payment cuts. Essentially, the federal government decided to stop paying huge amounts of money to the provinces. Health care and education are the top money sinks in the provinces, so it was hack and slash. Not that the health care system was a model of efficiency before, but with bugdet cuts it has definitely become worse. It has nothing to do with the socialist aspects of it. I don't have a problem with 2-tier health care (where you can pay for service) but I thikn everyone is entitiled to adequate health care, regardless of how much they make.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
You can have it.
In most locations you have only 2 possibile choices. The regulated cable co or Bell.
In both cases these monopolies have had their lines installed about 50 years ago. They are bought and paid for. And today the sell services out the wazoo in addition to the basic services. He who thinks that this is a deal must be nuts.
These CO should be devided in three covering the same area and let the competiton begin
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Free markets *want* to destroy themselves with monopolies. All businesses gravitate towards monopolies. It is simply a law of survival. So you *must* put in place some sort of restrictions so that "harmful" monopolies cannot form. And when I say harmful, I mean doing more harm to the consumer than the same amount of product and services provided by separate companies. I think if you have a "benificent" monopoly, where consumers are only benefitted, then it is a matter of philosophy whether that is allowed. But I think the nature of monopolies is that they generally do *not* benefit the consumer. Now enter in government-run/regulated monopolies. You immediately (or so it goes) make a harmful monopoly "benificent", by policy, by law. Of course this is only as true as how much you trust the government. Given a fully trusted government, theoretically, socialized monopolies may be just fine. Things are complicated if you allow companies to influence or dictate politics. Then it becomes a chicken and egg problem: you cannot fully trust government because it is being influenced by corporate power, yet you need government to legislate against corporate influence of politics.
And that, I believe, is the current state of the US political system. Which should explain my sig.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Personally, while I prefer some of the benefits (static IP, faster upload speed) of cable in this area, I am on DSL. SaskTel is one of the global leaders in this area. They were one of the first to offer DSL services, not too mention that SaskTel is one of the only phone companies in the world that could support every customer making a call at the same time. Here's a huge land mass with 1 million people, yet we have fiber to every city in the province, every switch in the province is digital. With minor upgrades, that are being done, soon everyone in this province will be able to get ISDN lines, which while they are an aging technology, its pretty impressive that a rural area could get 128K/128K speeds (2 BRI channels).
I read an article recently that stated that the Sask. government is looking at ways to provide high speed service to as many as 250 rural communities by 2005 and I suspect one of the ways they may try to provide this is high-speed wireless, such as is being provided by Image Wireless Communications (check out http://www.imagecable.com). I'm not sure if it's just them offering it, but Double T Computer Services tried unsuccessfully to get enough people signed up to provide a wireless service in Swift Current, and a tower went up just north of Chaplin (where I live) but I think that one isn't operational yet since I haven't heard a word about any kind of service here (TV or wireless). So maybe there's hope for us rural people yet...
We have several companies providing it under regulation. Rogers, shaw, bell and telus all provide broadband. However it is overly regulated, and keeps out other companies.
Since degregulation of the telephone industry the cost of telephone service has decreased dramaticly, mostly because I use long distance a lot. The dregulation of broadband might bother some people for a bit, but would eventually be far better.
I'm not really sure. I'm at UofT, living in Toronto. I know that around here, and around Waterloo, there are a number of options available. I did a Google search and came up with NorthPoint DSL and DSL Inc.. NorthPoint claims to have "national" service, but I don't know if that means the whole country or just "Toronto, and Scarborough also."
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
$50 CDN is $30 US.
$39.95 > $30
$49.95 > $30
Sure, there is the "free" option, but looking at ads at 180K/sec is not my idea of fun, and barely classifies as service, IMHO.
Gee, maybe you think you can buy bread in Italy for 1 lira, because a loaf is only one USD back home?
Try leaving the borders of your country sometime. I'll bet you'll learn something...maybe even the names of some of those other countries.
(You did know there are other countries, didn't you? Or was your failure to know that $30 $39.95 a merely a by-product of your American't education?)
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
:)
Nothing prevents the broadband vendors from providing enhanced services for MORE than $50.
It's a question of a basic level of access at a fair price. Actually, the article has more to do with dial-up service being essential.
And although regulation does mess up supply and demand, the tradeoff may be worth it. At least, as far as health care is concerned. I'd rather guarantee everyone adequate health care than to have people refused because they can't pay.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
ROTFLMAO! You'd expect more from someone on /. You might as well claim Linux is a communist plot too, bud!
For a succinct and well written debunking of the usual American anti-health-care propoganda, please refer to this excellent article in the Washington Monthly. A quick quote to get you interested:
Like Pearlstein and Brooke, Amos forgot to place American and Canadian performance in a comparative context. She failed to tell her audience (or did not know) that Canada insured 100 percent of its citizens for $2,250 per person in l998 while the United States expended $4,270 per person insuring only 84 percent of our citizens. This oversight was convenient. One would look rather foolish asserting that Canada's medical care costs half what ours does and insures everyone, but is, nonetheless, "inefficient."
STFU about slashdot bias.
So regulated, deregulated, I don't care - whatever gives me more choice is what I want!
;->
All I can say is this, about 3 years ago the telco market in Anchorage was completely deregged, the local monopoly was revoked and within a month we had two new local providers. GCI (a LD provider, recently turned LEC) bought the cable company soon after and began rolling out broadband on the cable network within six months, for businesses and people out of cable range they began offering DSL. The established LEC, ATU (now ACS) started offering DSL real quick after GCI rolled out the first cable modems. Before deregulation it was an exercise in pain to try to get even so much as a ISDN connection for your home/business, way overpriced T1's were a cash cow for ATU and they saw no reason to compete with themselves. Of course your deregulation milage may very.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
What I'd like to see is internet connectivity taken more seriously when it comes to downtime. When your phone goes out, your power goes out, or even your cable TV goes out, someone is usually at your house to fix it within 24 hours. When your cable modem goes out (I have @Home) they tell you that they can have someone there in two weeks. TWO WEEKS?!?! Fortunately, a call to the local cable office can get you someone sooner, but most people don't know that, and the local office will always try to send anyone with a problem to the national number. If you make a pain in the ass of yourself, they'll get out there in a day or two.
With the growing number of people using the 'net for communications, shopping, auctions, paying bills, etc., when will it become a "critical" service, to the point that companies will fix it ASAP when there is a problem?
Am I just overreacting because I'm a high-end user, and most people don't care if their net access is down for half a month? I don't think so, but it's hard to say...
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
My brother-in-law doesn't have cable. He doesn't even have a normal phone line. He doesn't have running water or electricity other than from his generator. He runs his logging business without a phone. He can get a phone line run to his house for about 6 months pay. He's out of cell phone range.
The politicians still seem to think that essential services are only essential to those that live in a densely populated area.
Ahem. We do have a few cities, you know. Admittedly, they're on average about six hours apart by automobile, but they do exist. :-)
Teach your kids: "C++ made baby Jesus cry."
Standard Oil, US Steel and a multitude of other exampes of a 'free market'
Yes, what examples of the 'free market' do you have? The ones you mention were granted subsidies or negotiated special licenses with the U.S. government. They had special protective laws passed. The government has a nasty history of subsidizing businesses until they get to monopoly size, then looking at their Frankenstein market and saying "the free market doesn't work! Look at that evil thing it created! Clearly, we have to intervene."
If government wouldn't interfere in the first place, few of the oft-cited monopolies (ALCOA - created by government fiat during WWII, the rail barons - again created by subsidy and licensing, etc.) would have arisen. In fact, the only monopoly that I can think of that doesn't have government help is Microsoft.
The reason wireless is so prominent in Europe is that the government-provided telephone service is unreliable, expensive, hard-to-get, and inflexible. Yet these telcos were created with the same reasoning that Canada is using for broadband.
Let's face it, if you didn't have the US on your border driving down prices through ruthless competition, you'd still be going ga-ga over the pushbutton phone.
>Besides every home is already wired with internet access points, they are called phone lines... ...people that want to drop the $200 bucks or so and pay the monthly fee are doing this
:-) ]
Ahahaha! You are one hell of a City Slicker. [I'm trying to be nice
Living in the country, I can tell you, the phone lines go out monthly, I can't get a connection above 26.4k to last more than an hour, and I have begged and pleaded with bell _monthly_ to get off their asses and do something. Can't even get leased 56k centrex packet service. I'm lucky -- there's people in my situation that STILL have to live with party lines and no touch tone. If it weren't for laws, they wouldn't even have a telephone.
Getting a line repaired here takes no less than FIVE phone calls to Bell Repair (the last one I threatened their supervisor with the minimum TOS laws) and two weeks. I think I'd have a better shot at getting my phone repaired in some third world countries.
No cable TV. Cable co doesn't even know the city exists (it's not even on their maps, although it does make it onto all the regular city maps). A church in the way blocks all radio connections.
What's left? An entire 60 hours (maximum) medium speed (on a good day) internet with Bell Expressvu / DirecPC. Whoopty...
We need laws like these so that children living in rural areas are given a fighting chance to compete with children living in urban centers. While it might be OK to deny adults (like myself) the right to a decent life (since we can always move), it simply isn't right to deny children a fighting chance in a new hi-tech society.
Just my 2 cents.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
er, dinner reservations then. hate editing topics and not double checking :)
These witless pseudo-libertarian rants must be quashed along with the moderators who love them. You are making knee-jerk liberals look thoughtful.
Let's examine this missive point by point:
Government intervention...( e.g. some subsidized service )...never without a cost at least as great as the benefit ( e.g. higher tax rates ). There is an interesting feature of modern life called collectivisation of risk/reward. It is an essential aspect of private insurance coverage and is at play in all economies of scale. I don't want to buy and maintain a snowplow to clear the road for the firetrucks. I don't want to build a cell-block in my backyard to deter potential burglars. You will find that privatisation in many service areas only occurs after governments have established a need and instituted a service at the behest of the people for whom it represents the collective voice.
The gist: not all markets are obvious; market development can be prohibitively expensive.
In the abscence [sic] of regulation, people do business wherever it is mutually beneficial. Regulation means that people are prohibited from engaging in some mutually beneficial action, therefore it's bad overall. Let's pass over, for a moment, the absurd assertion that only beneficial activities are subject to regulation. The real problem with this "all cretans are liars" argument is enclosed in the happy illusion of mutual beneficiality and its relationship to the place of business.
A quick overview of the legal basis of capitalism will reveal an essential foundation of adversarialism. Markets stand in adversarial relation to government, consumers to merchants, each pursuing their own benefit. The competitive pursuit of market advantage is the cornerstone of the capitalist edifice. I do business where it is in *my* benefit to do so. Caveat emptor and the invisible hand work against me to ensure that I offer my wares at a reasonable price. A glance at the map of Canada will reveal the importance of government regulation of certain services. It will be a long time before it is in anyone's commercial interest to lay phone lines to large sections of the Laurentian shield, capice?
Others have poked at the ridiculous statement regarding monopolies, so I will demure from belaboring the point. I trust, nevertheless, that any note of sarcasm or malice in this critique is taken in the spirit of belittling, mean-spirited contempt in which it is intended.
illegitimii non ingravare
Some how I doubt that you are buying a product that doesn't have a "hidden" federal tax already included in the price. When he says "Flat Tax", he means all taxes included.
Just a SkiBum stuck in the east...
right now i pay 39.95 (cable) a month in hamilton and back in toronto i pay 49.95 (DSL) so 50 bucks is not that expensive.
Three great reasons for a USer to go north:
1a.) Bush won.
1b.) Gore won.
2.) Dirt cheap net access.
Now to go practice saying 'eh!'...
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Uh, my mom gets cable modem access for USD50 per month here, in the third poorest state in the US. The entire county surrouding has maybe 12,000 people, and most of it is farmland.
I would point out that there is no national license for broadband in the US.
Whoa, Canada ends at the Manitoba border now. Guess I better start shopping for a ne passport :)
Comapre sapples with apples my American friend...that's $50 Canadian. That's about $33 US.
Well, I pay $30 US/mo for Cablevision's Optimum Online. It's real nice, too at 5 Mbs down and 1 Mbs up.
What you don't say in this $50/mo fee is what the taxes will be, whether it includes equipment rental, etc.
People that are just making stupid comments like "the CRTC are fucking idiots," make me sick.
:) My Canadian cent.. Not worth much down there..
I mean, I would like to see you come up with some better communication regulations that satisfies an ENTIRE COUNTRY. Look at the big picture here people, when you have hundreds of interest groups sitting around a table--it's impossible to come up with something that is going to please everyone.
We are Canadian and not US because of things like content laws that protect our indentity, which also stop the U.S. from using Canada as a dumping ground for all their wares.. otherwise we may as well just join the States.
As far as High Speed Internet access goes. Personally I have COGECO@Home, I have 3 IPs that have not changed in two months, always get half decent speeds--and only pay 39.95 CAD a month!!
Plus I Have 60 channels of televison for an extra $20.00 a month (helps when you sweet talk the cable guy, and give him pirated software).
I think that the CRTC is entering into the right kind of Internet regulation here. Rather than controlling content, they are trying to assure our ability to access it--which is what they should be doing. Canada isn't a totally free market capatalist society, like the States. I am assuming we all enjoy the differences--in my opinion far better health care. Hell our health system will PAY for us to be shipped to the States if we need medical attention bad enough! All the people calling Canada's health care system inadequate... where the hell are you getting your information?
If you want to bash the CRTC, at least provide some constructive critisim -- don't just say "oh fuck the CRTC sucks."
Dude.. I pay like 20.00 american for 3 IPs of High speed access.. that has not been down for more than an hour in 3 months.. beat that.
Flame away americans!
how does the Canadian goverment expect to govern something that is not moderated?
There are no rules regarding being a ISP. You get some money and some routers and whatnot and you start handing out the bandwidth. I'm sure each transit carrier or peering link has their own little ruleset and whatnot, but in my experience they are not enforced (not even slightly).
There is no rule saying I can't be a retarded ISP and leave on something silly such as ip directed broadcasts and make my entire network a smurf amplifier, or other such moronic things. Its not considered a good thing to do, but there is no rules on how one should run their network. There are a tonne of suggestions and guides and recomendations, but no rules; as people run different networks for all kinds of reasons.
Furthermore if there were rules the rules would have to be immense. To what degree would the government step in? How to configure devices so they use bandwidth efficiently? access lists that prioritize traffic perhaps? what traffic would qualify I wonder? How about forced implementation of network intrusion devices? or even what routing protocols one uses. there is way to much to lay a ruleset for. unless the rule is absurd and is something like, customers must have XX kb/s each. Well, its entirely possible to provision XX kb/s per customer and still have a lousy network because the network isn't designed and implemented properly. Yes I have XX kb/s per customer, but because my network is wide open 70% of my traffic is ICMP echo replies destined to other networks, so my customers are slow. Technically I follow the goverment guidlines, but it doesn't matter. That rule wouldn't make the slightest difference in a modern network. Is the goverment going to step in and tell companies how to build their own networks? or how to run them thereafter? I don't think so. or even if they do, no big isp is going to listen.
You can't govern the internet.
ideal; model tiny; codeseg; org 100h; start: cli; hlt; ret; ENDS; END start
How long till Jon Katz has an artical that says this? One day or one week?
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Where I am, $60 for 2.5 Mbit is super cheap. I'd expect to pay ~$350-400 for the same service.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Saying that regulation is ALWAYS bad is nonsense. Lifeline services such as phone, mail and electricity MUST be regulated, otherwise only the convenient-to-service people will have them.
I beg to differ. I consider living in a rural area a luxury, and like all luxuries, it has a cost. That cost is a longer commute, less flexibility in where you work and shop, more money spent on gas, etc. I have no problem with part of that cost being higher utility rates.
Why should I, who live in a city, subsidize the telephone service of someone who lives on a farm? You can say, "because otherwise they won't have it", but that begs the question of whether they are in some way entitled to live where they want without bearing the costs of their actions. I don't think they are. My position is that people should bear the costs of their actions. It costs more money to get food, mail, electricity, and so on to someone in Harmony, CA, pop. 17, than it does to get those same things to someone in San Francisco. Why should the consumer pay the same amount?
It's misguided egalitarianism. We naturally assume, "people should be treated equally", but no one doubts that it's fair for someone who drives a Porsche to pay higher insurance premiums than someone who drives a Taurus, or someone who lives in a big house pay higher rent than someone who lives in a small house, so why does everyone get their panties in a bunch when the possibility that those who live out in the middle of nowhere will have to pay the actual cost of their choices comes up?
Let's face it, if you didn't have the US on your border driving down prices through ruthless competition, you'd still be going ga-ga over the pushbutton phone.
Let's face it, if you didn't have Canadians around, you wouldn't have telephones, period. Ever heard of Alexander Graham Bell (Bell as in Bell Telephone), the guy who invented the phone? He was Canadian.
That said, I'm against government regulation in most cases. Currently, to get ADSL in BC (a province in Canada) takes months. If Telus was allowed to charge whatever they wanted, it would be more expensive, but there would be much less waiting... Those who were willing to pay more would get the service first. Later, the cost would come down and everyone would be onboard.
Left Alberta in 1999. My rebuttal: "if you live in Alberta you won't pay more than 38% in taxes no matter how much you earn." Dollar for dollar I earn the same in US as I did in Edm. Even at 38% I'd still be paying more than double. "And look at what you get - space, a clean environment, safety, cheap living expenses, etc." Spcae and clean environment I'll give you. The rest including safety you lose. I am raising a family of 6 and the cost of living is much cheaper here. Groceries cut by 33%, clothing cut by 50%+, health insurance up by 7% but far superior service, auto costs down by 15% and nobody is going to start taxing my RRSP contributions. Don't misunderstand me, I am a Canadian through and through but the Canadian myths on American living are frustrating. Both countries have issues but if you can figure out how to earn a living, raise a family and actually plan to retire independant of goverenment assistance in any province then all the power to ya.
Seriously! Here's why I think they do:
- Rogers@home (provided by the big cable monopoly Rogers Communications) and Sympatico High Speed Edition (1 megabit Spitterless ADSL provided by the big Telco monopoly known as Bell Canada)have had numerous problems since their introduction. Sympatico has had outages sometimes lasting for days and Rogers@home has had mail, news, proxy, and DHCP problems for sometime now. Seeing as a lot of humans in Canada use the net as a communication medium, it makes sense to have it as an essential service.
- Both companies have resisted opening up their networks to other ISP's (just like the US open access nightmare). Rogers in particular has been stonewalling the CRTC in this regard.
If neither one of those items requires Gov't intervention, I don't know what will trigger it. The fact is that ISP's have to be held accountable to somebody for their actions and if the Gov't chooses to do that as long as it is in a fair and logical manner (a stretch I know, but you never know), then I'm all for it. I rely on my @home connection for work purposes and I'd love to have Rogers to be held accountable for their level of service. I'm sure others feel the same.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Its all very well to smugly talk in broad abstractions about the free market but the fact is broadband service is quite good here especially compared with the horror stories I hear from the States.
(how long does it take to get an MRI in Canada?)
A lot sooner than if I was one of 40 million Americans without health insurance!! The U.S spends 14% of GNP on health care, the highest rate in the world, and 40 MILLION of its citizens are without reliable access to it!
Nice free market moron.
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I'm not sure if your aware of it but if you are using a Samsung cable modem with Videotron, you don't have to abide by any quotas. They seem to be unable to calculate the amount of data sent and received, except if you have a Motorola cable modem (about 80 % of users). So they are basically screwing none Samsung users. BTW, I'm a happy Samsung user, with a healthy 50 Gig per month consumption...
I have had the local cable modem service here (Shaw@home) for 3 years, and i would expect that most of your problems in Toronto are from an immature network. For the first 6 months to a year after we got our service, it was terrible. Outages at LEAST twice a week, and we got to know the service number by heart. That changed about 1 1/2 years ago. Nowadays, 1 outage in 2 months during the day is about the norm. And that is for like 10 minutes. They announce the midnight outages, and nobody complains. The price is good ($40 a month, plus 5 for an extra IP. Cdn dollars remember) and the service lately has been excellent. Be patient Toronto and other places. Cable networks are harder to manage than POTS. Rogers and anybody else will eventually get the hang of it like Shaw has.
Discrimination:
- Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit
- The act of discriminating, distinguishing, or noting and marking differences.
Rural is a category. That fits the definition quite nicely.
>when a company chooses not to provide service where it's not cost effective, that isn't discrimination
It is when the phone company won't even bother to offer you a price for the service (this has happened to me in Canada way too many times).
>I just think people who act like they have some natural right to those subsidies are pricks.
I'm going to say that to the next prick in the city that bitches the government should do something about the nasty air in the city. They should simply move out into the country.
So what if the air smells like sulphur? If it won't kill you, it doesn't count!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
My bad, I wrote it at 2 am. yes 50 canadian. 32 us. Got it. It was 2 am when I posted. Was very tired. I do think that with the current cost of living in each country that the two figures (though technically 50 and 32) are really a bit closer, but that is another story.
You just have live in the west with a goverenment spawned in the east to figure out were Canada ends and La Pas is probably to far.
Great.. now i'll have to go through the gov't to file a complaint against Videotron's crappy cable service. More paperwork, more bullshit, more downtime.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Wow. A milibit. How do you divide a bit?
There was an article in the Toronto Stars @biz section of Monday November 20th paper on the high cost of service from Rogers and Bell Sympatico, and their more than crappy service. Now having DSL myself and having to deal with Sympatico's dial up manager is better than using a dial up modem, except for the fact that I am dialing customer sevice more often than I am logging on to find out why their service sucks... Oh well perhaps others have had better luck. Is anyone else out there on Sympatico getting a inordinately high number of bios port probes by sympatico users? It is almost like sympatico is playing with distributed networking through the access manager or something. Anyone with info on this one would be a light at the end of the pipeline.
flinging poop since 1969
(NOTE: i am canadian. i live with it. come to think of it, i even like it)
.com companies in Canada and maybe even anywhere else, since broadband access could become a basic commodity, like the phone.
Canada has a duopoly (on a national scale) as far as cable television is concerned; Videotron and Rogers Cable (sure, you've got your local distributors for remote areas, but they all take their feed from one of the two monsters or are affiliates of them). And as far as phone is concerned, there's only one local service company, and that's Bell Canada. Furthermore, Videotron is currently a monopoly in Quebec (and absent from the rest of Canada) while Rogers is a monopoly in the rest of Canada (and absent in Quebec).
So, if you want residential cable modem service in Canada, you've got one option: Rogers or Videotron, depending on where you live. And ADSL? One option, nationwide: Bell Canada.
That's why the CRTC's potential definition of high-speed access as an essential service is good. It means prices won't flare up all of a sudden just because they can. (Mind you, such a situation already exists; Bell can't increase rates without CRTC approval, and same goes for Cable companies)
But on top of that, if they define a set of minimum standards for that essential service, it will make quality of service uniform across the nation, at least at the minimal level. (for yes, even though they are monopolies, their service quality really differs from region to region)
It will be a great push to broadband
All in all, at the simplest level, it will benefit the canadian customer.
"Before our American cousins to the south start on government intervention remember that it's because of the CRTC that no high-speed Internet company in Canada is able to charge residential customer more than CAD$50 per month."
/willing/ to pay more than $50/m, whether for better service or for service that's difficult to provide (due to geography, etc), but can't because it's illegal to provide it over that price? It's simply the inverse minimum wage paradox. By setting either a maximum (or minimum)price, so long as it is over (or under) the price established by the market, you WILL be pricing some sellers (or buyers) out of the market!
Yeah, and it's also because of gov't intervention that Canadians can't get health care. It's an established fact of economic science that price ceilings cause shortages. What about all the people that are
MoNsTeR
...But I bet that the CRTC has some ulterior motive. Why? Because the CRTC is evil, and I'm pretty sure they're run by Hitler. They're the same people who prevent Canadians from getting all the cool American channels, because they're "preserving Canadian culture." Which is, of course, a big load of bull, because really, Canadians are just Americans (when it comes to TV, movies, and music).
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
I agree with you... Day is a cultist nutball - damn scary. ;)
Im not sure Id disagree with you about the liberals, thats why Im voting NDP or Green. But Im 'mostly' okay with them for another term, besides at the rate they're calling elections it might just be a few months
CDN$50 ~= US$32
Ok, here it goes.
I make $30,00 a year in the US, right?
I pay $39.99 for DSL. Still with me?
You make $30,000 a year in Canada.
You pay $39.99 for DSL.
It's the same thing!
We are both paying the SAME amount for our DSL service.
The only thing the $50 = $32 CDN tell us is that the American dollar is worth more than the Canadian dollar.
Perhaps if the cost of living in Canada was like %40 less than here in the US (which we know it is not) then you could say that you paying $39.99 is like paying $32 in our money, but it isn't.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Free market monopoly: I can compete but may lose all of my money. I may have an incredibly small market share. It may seem that the days of the monopolist will never end, but at least it isn't a crime to try.
The last thing on earth that I want is further government involvement in telecomm. They have already made quite a mess. With virtually no regulation of ISPs I have several ways to get on the Internet(dialup, dsl, cable, satellite, cellular, that weird Palm VII network, wireless broadband(sprint's new service), and others I am forgetting). We don't need a grand unified network. That is not the purpose of the Internet.The internet is meant to "inter connect" various hetergeneous networks. One size does not fit all. Besides with the free market my business can subscribe to multiple access methods and thus reduce my chances of losing all access to the net.
Stuart Eichert
Stuart Eichert
As far as I'm concerned (and I don't think I'm too far off of what Smith intended), large companies aren't that much different than government intervention. In either case, you have bureaucrats deciding what's going to happen in some remote location depending on semi-random criteria (often including what makes the most money for someone far remote from the actual work being done).
BTW: monopolies don't require that there be absolutely no other competition. Perfect monopolies rarely exist. The closer you get to them the more likely that they're the result of some sort of government regulation. An effective monopoly (a la M$) simply requires an overwhelming control of the bulk of the market such that you can act as if you wer pretty much the only player in the market.
For a monopoly's actions to be declared illegal like MS was, it requires both an overwhelming control of the market, and actions to maintain that overwhelming control over the market at cost to both customers and current or impending competition.
In other words: for a monopoly to take illegal actions pretty much requires some sort of competition to take action against (either actual or latent competition is fine).
--
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I too have never had a problem making a phone call. I pay about $0.10 for LD. While you pay about $0.12 (if you say you pay $0.08 US)... and so do the other 30 Million members of my community (there are multiple suppliers - so some may pay differently) Can you say the same for every Yankee?
The CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) is considering designating high-speed internet services provided in Canada an essential service
And they call us Americans spoiled...
--
"I just made the regular mistake of most americans. Socialism doenst suck!!! It has tradeoffs like everything else, but many socialist countries are richer than the US, like Denmark where I live, or Sweden, Germany or for that matter Canada.."
By whos standards ?
Well, as a true capitalist, why do you live in such as socialist state as the USA. It has socialized education, socialized highways, socialized agriculture etc. A true capitalist would want only toll roads, only private schools, only private agricultural research.
Government run educationb has made the U.S. the leader in world technology. Government subsidized Interstate highways (the Defense Highway System) are essential to American industry.
Government regulated monopolies are often the keys to productivity in a country. Regulating an already existing high speed Internet access industry seems only a continuation of a tradition.
I see a lot of replies along the lines of "the evil free market wouldn't provide the same service to everyone". My reply is, "So what?"
If I live out in the middle of no where, I'm not going to be able to get pizza delivery. It's just not worth it. Oh, but that's not an essential service.
Why is high speed internet? Sure, for me it's essential, so I live in a city. If I wanted to live in a rural area, I would have to consider whether it's worth the extra cost (probably very high right now) to get high speed, or whether I could do without. But it should be a cost that I face, because I should take it into account when I decide where I live.
This is the problem with the bleeding hearts: they can't stand the idea that actions have consequences. They distrust corporations, but trust the largest monopoly of all: the government.
Don't you see what will happen if we don't have it even for a few minutes? People will die! Everyone will starve to death. The universe will end!
With Sympatico you can have as many as you want (In theory). Since Sympatico uses PPPoE - I wish they didn't, but anyway - all you have to do is run a PPPoE client on every computer and they all obtain thier own IP. There is four computers at my place and they all have thier own IP. I would assume by adding more machines it would behave the same way.
I don't know if this is how it is suppost to work, I somehow doubt it. But I'm not complaining as long as it does. Service is $40/month by the way. Now if they'd only get rid of the 128k upstream cap, I'd be even more happy!
Taiwan:
Canada:
Canada has a landmass roughly 300 times larger than Taiwan. However, our population is a meagre 8 million larger. Just look at the population density. Of course it's easier to provide services to your residents if they're spaced so close together. We could fit ALL of Taiwan into just Nova Scotia (our second smallest province) and still have room for all of New Hampshire.
Providing and servicing links across vast, empty corridors of this country is prohibitively expensive.
The comparison just isn't valid.
--
And if you can't afford it, you're SOL.
I'm sure we agree on both sides of the border that education is an essential service and justified use of public funds, so that even the poor kids can get their education. Well, in this day and age, technology is a more powerful educating tool that keeps us in touch with the happenings in the real world and informed on matters more relevant than what can be taught in a classroom. So for this reason, public funding is justified to keep the poor on the same level (or as close to it as possible) as the rich, and not doom them to a vicious circle of ignorance and lower social status.
Hey, hello. If you don't live here, don't go characterizing our political system. And just a few other things.
1) Our Internet/DSL/high-speed service is very good, and it should be cheap. There's no excuse for charging more than needs to be charged. The equation "higher prices=better quality" doesn't necessarily apply to services (it's too bad you have such a 19th Century "manufacturing era" state of mind)--mostly because it's usually "higher prices=same service + more profit for company" (look at cable for a good example).
2) It takes as long as it takes to get an MRI in Canada. It takes almost infinitely longer in the US if you're one of the millions of people who has no medical insurance and/or can't pay the $700+ to get one.
3) "The quality of life of workers suffers"... Eh? Last I heard, Canada had the best quality of life overall on the planet, and has had for the last 7 years.
4) For godssakes, I'm getting tired of this. Canada isn't a socialist country--it's a constitutional parliamentary monarchy. Repeat after me: Socialized medicine does not equal socialism. A social safety net does not equal socialism.
5) In the best possible Canada, telecommunications would be firmly under the control of the government, as are roads, schools, hospitals and other necessary infrastructure. Remember, we have more land area and 10x fewer people than the US. We need all the help keeping in touch that we can get.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
i think it would be in everybody's interest if governments would take this even one step further:
high-speed internet access points should become part of building stadards, pretty much the same way power points and plumbing is.
if the industry is forced to comply, everyone will scramble [after outcries and court challenges of course] to get a piece of the action.
once it's normal that everyone only needs to plug-in a sufrving device to connect to the net, the digital divide will vanish - pretty much the same way as every houshold has tv and most have phone connections, if the net 'jack' is there and people only plug in to surf, they will give it a shot. especially if the monthly fees can not exceed a government enforced amount.
but then, this is good for the people and the countrry - ie. the U.S. would rather start a war with someone than implementing something that makes sense - and wasn't their idea to begin with...
It happens to be election season in Canada and the bureaucrats are obeying their political masters. These, fearing that geeks will vote for lower taxes or more health care instead of the status quo have struck where it hurts.
Maybe there ARE some benefits living in an over-taxed, over-regulated country after all...
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
(Jefferson or Franklin).
I guess you just need to make sure that your cell is plush and comfortable, and then you don't mind living in slavery.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Really? Standard Oil? Everyone's favorite target, Microsoft? Pre-breakup AT&T's monopoly was in some sense preserved by the government, but it was created by the "free" market. Too much economics class and not enough observing the world can color your perspective.
// mlc, user 16290
And how long does it take in the US if your one of the 16% of Americans who has no health care? Forever? In Canada it can take a little as an afternoon. I merely hop on a plane to anywhere in America and fork over the cash. People with money in Canada (contrary to popular belief) rarely wait for Health Care.
On the subject of high speed interent- I pay 34.95/month (US) for ADSL with 1.3Mbps down/384Kbps up --not to shabby, in fact that is damn good for the price. (in case you're wondering I get my ADSL from Telergy--I live in Ithaca, NY).
If I breake my arm in Canada, I go to the hospital and head home with a cast.
If I do that in the States, I go home with a cast and a bill for $1,200. At that point it's worthwhile to hire a lawyer to figure out who's fault the broken arm is. By the time the dust settles, the cost of the broken arm can be up in the $15K range.
A notable example of the difference between Canadian and US health care came up with the baby abandoned in Calgary this summer. The note said that the child had never been to a doctor because the mother didn't expect him to live very long.
Fear of "wasting" money on a sick child is not a dilema that a Canadian mother would have to face. It would be unthinkable to do anything other than go to the doctor and at least find out what it took to make sure that you child had as comfortable life as possible.
Being sick, and not being able to visit a doctor is not a seirous worry for Canadians (as long as we manage to maintain our health system).
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Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
health is an essential service in canada, transportation to and look how crappy the both are because of government intervention.
You're dying you want to pay for healthcare instead of waiting 3 months for them but they won't let you, you can't pay for healthcare, it's illegal.
You won't. For $99 cdn (about 60 US) you'd get a 4 bit subnet. (16 IP, 13 usable)
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
I live in Zimbabwe. I have OC3 connection fro $12.49 amonth.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Obviously not, nutbutt. You become a 'business customer.'
Government intervention can provide a benefit in one area ( e.g. some subsidized service ), but it is never without a cost at least as great as the benefit ( e.g. higher tax rates ).
Wrong there, sorry. The cdn government is not subsidizing anything. In this case the government is saying: "look, you punk companies have a defacto monopoly in most cases. don't gouge the customers and we'll leave you alone for the most part. give them a really good deal and that'll be even better." No one is losing here except for, possibly, the shareholders.
In the abscence of regulation, people do business wherever it is mutually beneficial. Regulation means that people are prohibited from engaging in some mutually beneficial action, therefore it's bad overall.
The whole point of what the crtc said was that, if left unchecked, this 'vital' service could become beneficial only to the company. When you have monopolies like the cable and adsl co's, there is no such thing as mutually beneficial.
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Maybe if you were a little more clever, you'd realize that there are entire countries smaller than New Hampshire and that I was just trying to drive home a point with something closer to home. Israel, for example, is actually smaller than New Hampshire.
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In Quebec, Videotron, the cable company charhes $CAN 30 /month©©© that's $US 20/month for full cable access© I havent seen anywhere with cheaper service yet© There would be NO tv in Canada, if it was not for the CRTC and other governmental investments© Pure market for telecoms only works if you have a very large market© In Europe, most countries have only one private TV network or maybe two©
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the topic, but it's important to note that Canada's government is a lot different in the US. Where here in the US, we (GENERALLY) favor large companys (not too large. See Janet Reno), and the rich. Canada treats everyone the same (GENERALLY), and looks for what's best for the people, not for a couple of suits' profits.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
softsign wrote:
We could fit ALL of Taiwan into just Nova Scotia
(our second smallest province) and still have
room for all of New Hampshire.
No Fu@king Way!!! ALL of New Hampshire?!?
You must be kidding. Seriously. All of it?
You mean some of it, right? You can't possibly mean All of New Hampshire?!
I mean, that's just mind boggling. ALL OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.
That's huge. That's like at least 12 people.
My experiences over the past two years (in New Brunswick)
1. X-ray of right ankle (slash with Hockey stick)
2. X-ray of Ribs (run over by Sea-Doo)
3. Stitches in lip (hockey puck)
4. X-ray on left ankle (stepped on baseball bat)
The initial assessments were done by the triage nurse within 15 minutes of arrival. Average total time, about 3-4 hours, probably because I was on the low priority list.
A little slow, but I wouldn't expect to save any more than about 4 hours per year in the US.
Here's a link for you: www.speed-uwaterloo.sympatico.ca That being said, i miss the @Home access i have at home, more reliable and it had a decent upstream (uploading at 18k/s gets annoying) although HSE is way better for playing FIFA2001. Customer service seems decent for both of them as well, but thats partly because my @Home access was in a good neighbourhood.
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
what's the info on your ISP, i'm looking to switch and you sound like you've got the best deal so far.
send to:
t-bor AT usa DOT net
My local rates have gone up, but but it is small compared to the savings on long distance. The reason that local rates have gone up however is that local calling is still a regulated monopoly. The local phone companies use reduced long distance revenues as an excuse to raise the local rates.
You're arguing with reality, and that's an argument you'll always loose, you should know that by now.
The fact is that people living in remote places, such as the farmers that you mention, are also often economically depressed (and I don't mean psychologically), and couldn't necessarily afford the real cost of obtaining that service. While the necessity of phone service might potentially be debatable (the government considers it essential), the same isn't true about other services: electricity, water, mail service, health care etc.
Of course the expense of subsidizing these services is carried by someone else, amongst others you. While some people (such as yourself) take offense at paying a penny for someone else, thankfully there is a sufficient majority of us who think it the duty of a civilized society, and we will do our best to keep it that way.
The free market views a monopoly as newtwork error and attempts to route around it. This will usually happen absent government stepping in and fouling up the process.
When you put it like that it sounds great, unfortuanatly that is the paranoid extream left view and does not reflect reality. The truth is that there is not such thing as healthy competition with regulated industries. The overall cost is the same, if not higher, and the quality of service tends to be far lower. When a company has no control over what it can charge, it will reduce its quality of service. Have you ever waited in line to renew your licence plate, or waited three hours on hold to a phone monopoly? The idea of industry consolidation is just a scare tactic that has not happened.
And if you live in BC have you ever dealt with ICBC? That is an another excellent example of low quality of service.
Gee, considering the Liberal or the PC's form(ed) the majority of the governments, both federal and provincial, in Canada for the past 133 years and the Alliance/Reform/Libertarians/Comunists/Marxists-Le ninists/Marijuana/Christian Reform et al HAVE/DO NOT, I think I can safely say I speak for most Canadians. I dare say you would have trouble finding Canadians outside Ralph Klien's cabinet (hey wasn't Stockwell Day one of his ministers?) who support a US style health care system - check www.cbc.ca for the latest poll results if you don't beleive me (not just about who people want to vote for but what they consider the most important issue - SAVING our healthcare system).
As for "Facists, Fundementalists, Extremists" comments I have made, well, I just have to say that any party that Doug Christie (the neo-Nazi lawyer - Facist)supports, whose leader is got into politics because he started up his own fundementalist Christian school and loves to tell people how he's against abortion (read -fundementalist) and has candidates the likes of Brian Fitzpatrick and Betty Granger (both spewing ignorant, racist comments during an election - not only extremists but stupid extremists) running for it qualifies as all of the above and deserves any derision heaped on it by Canadians.
I don't need to be 'spoon fed' anything to know that this is wrong. And I will stand by my ideals when I state that sometimes free, universal healthcare, safe streets and fighting poverty is more important to me than an extra $200 on my paycheck because of some idiot 'tax cut' (which I will end up spending 3 fold on user fees and service charges).
If you talk like a duck, walk like a duck and look like a duck, chances are, your a duck.
READ MY SIG:
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Since deregulation, the cost has dropped *for you.*
For me, it's about doubled. I don't do a lot of long-distance, and my local rates are way the heck up.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
To a large extent things work exactly like you're describing them. In rural areas a lot of commodities ARE more expensive; are you suggesting that in Harmony the gas, milk, bread, video tapes etc are subsidized as well? Get real!
We're talking about lifeline services, necessities of life: phone service, electricity, mail service, etc. It's not a matter of whether they would be more expensive than in urban areas, but rather whether they would be available at all. If a community such as Harmony had to fully bear the cost of these services, they wouldn't have phone service or electricity AT ALL. It's not a matter of $100 versus $30 for a service, but of millions of dollars versus $30. Calculate the cost of running a line from the nearest larger conurbation out to a CO in Harmony, and of running a line out to each house, and of paying the staff at the CO. Then divide it all by 17.
There's no question that for some people it's a perk to live out in the sticks, a lifestyle choice. But for many others it's a heritage, or a function of society that they fulfill by being farmers or what have you. As long as rural areas produce some sort of goods, they require local people to produce them. And as long as people congregate in a community by necessity, others will follow just because there's a community there. It's called the pioneer spirit, and it's funny to hear it knocked by Americans themselves.
Type in www.yahoo.com, get www.yahoo.ca site instead. Type in cnn.com, get cbc.ca instead.
AC comments get piped to
Broadband is going to be big in Canada. Big. The federal government announced last month (via the Ministry of Industry) that all communities would have access to broadband Internet by the year 2004. The initiative is called Connecting Canadians.
A good press release, issued last month, can be found at here
. Definitely something I want to see progress, although if the CRTC gets into it too deeply, things will probably go awry.
J
I think it's only fair to point out that something on the order of 90% of the population lives within a couple hundred kilometers of the 49th parallel. When you ignore all the massively unpopulated landmass, the *typical* density is quite a bit higher than 3 residents/sq.km.
:)
Though it's still very, very low.
(And still those poor bastards out in NoWhereNoHow, Manitoba, get phone service. Amazing!)
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Telco are being deregulated; you can force minimum service level in a monopoly, but how do you do that with a free market ? I understand that in practice, telco are still monopoly, but they have a rock-solid excuse why not to deserve unprofitable area : "Why can't the competition take care of it ... ? Why shall we absorb the cost ? "
Don't get me wrong : coming from rural Quebec, where broadband mean 64 kb/s single-channel ISDN at 200 CDN$/month, I am all for this resolution. I just think that even the almighty CRTC can't enforce such a policie.
:wq
This is way cool. I wish that was done in .au as well - but then again, it is still better from what is here... Damn #@$!@ RomTelecom. :)
Hey - Canada, may I borrow your Govt.? Please?!
I need to kill Kenny! you bastards!
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I pay $45/mo, tax-in, rental-in. British Columbia, small town.
.6, so it's about $27US.
Exchange rate is about
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Holy fsck'n crap..... $75 U.S.D for 640K only!? Are you kidding me??
Here in Canada, Rogers@Home has a maximum download of 300KBytes (yes! kiloBYTES) per second... and it's not like it's impossible to reach... I've maintained that download rate on many many occasions.
Maximum upload is 40KB/s... but that's the same as your 640kb/s.... static ip included as well.
All this can be had for a measly $40cdn (no cable modem rental fee either). $40cdn = $27 U.S.
but geez... i'd never even consider paying over $100 cdn for any time of home highspeed connection.
Home of sacred Band(width)
I pay US$75 for 640k DSL on top of my $40 phone bill through QWest. And I'd have to pay extra to get a static IP.
Moving to Canada sounds sweeter and sweeter every day.
"But if the market itself is pricing it that low, then why would you need a government regulation stipulating that it's below $50? It would seem to be creating an unnecessary bureaucracy"
Ugh. It's not like we create a beuro of price-fixing at the CRTC. They just say you can't charge more than 50$ Cdn. It doesn't mean they can't charge less as competition works, it just means they can't go and put a gun to your head and charge you a lot. Think of how much better off a lot of people in the US would be if they had a similar price control on drugs.
Anyways, in Saskatchewan, there are two broadband providers: Sasktel, and Shaw cable service. Shaw started and stayed as 40$/month. Sasktel started as 90$/month. They also forced you into service contracts. Essentially, everyone jumped ship to Shaw. Their prices remained at 90$/month. Then about 6-10 months ago, their prices dropped to 44.95$/month.
So in a way it made them more competitive. Otherwise, Sasktel would've had a chicken/egg problem with obtaining subscribers. They can and do still charge > 50$ for some of their access packages, but now there's a "ground floor" for the great unwashed to get in on. I think too often you Americans are blinded to "changes which mean to grow the Social environment" and consider it pure "unnecessary bureaucracy." It's not, it's just how we live.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The $50 mentioned in the original article was in Canadian funds. CDN$50 ~= US$32 which is quite a bit cheaper than the prices you list (FreeDSL excluded).
And it's often cheaper than that. The cheapest service in Saskatchewan (that I know of) is 1Mbps both ways, 2 static IPs, 5 e-mail addresses, and unlimited bandwidth for around US$25.
FYI: Here in Vancouver, we pay $34.95 for 1.2Mbit/650Kbit ADSL. At current exchange rates, that's $22.46 USD. The kicker is that we're 2 hops off of Telus's Gigapop, with access to 5 major backbones.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
...this has been said long ago. In Sweden, government is pouring money into it, actually building (at least planning) a high-speed network in the country. Norway is just hoping that the marketplace will do it. I don't think they will come up with satisfactory solutions, and apparently the big firms building infrastructure will also lock people in, force them to use their portals, watch their banner ads, and so on. I would personally prefer Sweden's model, where it is more likely that small companies can compete with the large one, securing freedom of choice.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I pay a lot more than $50 for my home network, and I'm not mad about a single dime I spend on it. Even though I pay several times that, I have had rock-solid 1.5Mb service for the past couple years, a maximum of 2 hours to resolution on all support cases I've opened (excluding things they couldn't fix, like a telco fiber cut), a routed /24 network, and tech support that takes me seriously when I tell them that there really is a problem, and has *never* tried to tell me that it's because I'm running Unix.
Is that worth the $350 a month we pay for it? For us, absolutely. Would I want to trade to have $50 384k asymetrical dynamic IP dumbass customer service DSL? NEVER. That's why I don't have a Pac Bell DSL line. $50 service may be fine for your average Joe Schmoe Windows-box user who just wants to web surf on a halfway decent connection and play some net games, but there are some of us who want more.
OK, I'm done going off. :-)
I *am* in favor of pushing the telco's around to upgrade their infrastructure so that good service is available everywhere. But I'm not going to say that they have to do it under a certain price cap - It's going to cost them money. You get what you pay for, and I'm willing to pay for what I get.
--Kai
--slashsuckATvegaDOTfurDOTcom
That's ridiculous.
DSL, for example, only works up to about 15,000 feet from the central office (more for IDSL). Do you mean to say that urban users shouldn't benefit from DSL because people 10 miles from the nearest central office wouldn't be able to get it? That is what you are advocating, I think, and the result would be no service for anyone, or very expensive service for those willing to pay those high rates.
Rural areas are necessarily costly to serve. Unless you think it's good social policy for urban users to subsidize those people who live there, in which case something more like the US Universal Service Fund makes sense, I think you'll be stuck paying at least some of those added costs. I for one think this is fair; as a city dweller, I pay many other higher costs (food, parking, rent, etc.) - why should I additionally subsidize someone who lives in an area where these costs are lower, even though certain services (telecom) are more expensive?
sulli
RTFJ.
Why isn't the phone company on the list? Because my area is now deregulated. I have AT&T local digital service. What do all those have in common? You haven't got a prayer of entering the market because of the red tape. I think Cable is officially open, the other three are offically monopolies. The post office is the only company legally permitted to carry non time critical letters in the United States.
I don't list Microsoft because I don't do business with them. I have a Microsoft mouse, but Microsoft does not have a monopoly on mice. Given that I have a computer and don't do business with Microsoft, it sort of implies that they aren't a monopoly, no doesn't it?
So I've got 3 sort of natural monopolies that are definitely helped along by the government, and one that is in no way a natural monopoly but exists anyway because of the government. Then I have one supposed monopoly that isn't. I don't feel any need to retract my claim.
I wouldn't exactly call $60 Canadian "dirt cheap" compared to the US prices. Everyone saw how quickly dial up access dropped in price with minimal government intrervention (the 53.3k/sec cap on speed comes to mind), and who knows, Canada might actually be able to pull off their goal of cheap, reliable, fast internet access for all, but why spend tax payer money on building something when companies can do it?
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Ben Garvey
Ben Garvey
"Life is too short to get on the good rides"
Anyway, I can think of dozens of monopolies. The local computer shop has a monopoly on RAM, at least among people unwilling or able to drive 5 miles. Remember that all that is necessary for market failure is lack of price-competition. Since people are NOT price-competing on RAM (but rather competing on the basis of location) in my area, the market fails -- at least to some extent.
And, indeed, the prices at the local computer shop are outrageous compared to more populous out-of-the-way places, and those are outrageous compared to prices available at pricewatch. The price-competition on pricewatch is incredible; at the local shop it is hardly existent.
In fact, externalities and lack of price-competition in a free market are more rules than exceptions. Local monopoly (two gas stations on opposite sides of the street: one with $X gas and $Y candy, the other with $X+1 gas and $Y-1 candy. Are you really going to cross the street to get the candy from one and gas from the other??), quality-competition (this may not seem like a bad thing, but realize that one vendor can have a monopoly on a certain product of a certain quality, even if it does not have a monopoly on that product at lower qualities. This is lack of price-competition like any other), imperfect buyer information (do you even know what candy costs at both gas stations mentioned previously? Are you ever going to go check?) -- all of these things are common to any consumer's interface with free markets.
The only reason free markets actually do "work" in the sense of providing ample production (and we must still keep in mind both that other systems that don't "work", such as Soviet communism, still provided a lot of production and with much scarcer resources than most capitalist countries -- the problem at least with the USSR was that they wasted all of their productive energy on nuclear weapons and space ships while they let the peasants starve, quite contrary to their proclaimed socialist and democratic principles. These distributive failures are what cause people to decry capitalism, though IMO they are quite solvable within capitalism. But I digress)... The reason markets do indeed work is that in commodities markets price-competition is fierce: buyers know what they're doing -- they hire experts in whatever fields they buy in -- they research *all* the producers, and there is no general mechanism for local monopoly. Competition in other markets is, I guess you could say "lax" -- but since they obviously can't leverage their monopoly *too* much or people will buy so little that revenue will decrease in spite of higher prices, the lower commodity prices will in the end result in lower prices in non-commodities.
Anyway, you point out that government regulation typically benefits businesses. Well, obviously. Laws are ALWAYS enacted to benefit those with the power to enact laws, and in our country that often means business. That does not mean regulation as a rule cannot be detrimental to business and beneficial to people. You cannot say that this or that proposed business regulation will help business and hurt people because most previous legislation has, because the business legislations that have been enacted have already been filtered through as not-too-detrimental to the powerful. Enacted legislation is not a random sample of proposed legislation, so patterns applying to it cannot be assumed to apply to proposed legislation. You discount the real possibility that that legislation was able to pass *because* it was going to help business in spite of the interests of the general public.
The local service is also degregulated. Bell, telus and other ILECs(Incumbent local E?? carrier?) are forced to allow competitors to rent space in their facilities to install their equipment and connect to your phone lines. Problem is that residential margins are low, so the CLECs (Competive ...) focus only on businesses.
You may be right, as I do know that my local phone company, telus has to rent space for dsl service, and has had disputes with local providers.
They are still somewhat regulated. They have to apply with the government to increase rates, and rental costs are also regulated.
Infrastructure is the largest problem with deregulation, the best experience that I have had is with the motor vehicle brances being deregulated in Alberta. I remember standing in line for at least and hour to renew my licence plate, and now I can go on a sunday afternoon.
My worst experience was getting a minor clain with ICBC (the BC public insurance) when I was living there.
I honestly have faith in deregulation, although I am not happy with my future Alberta power bill, but this is the best time for it to happen, when the government can affored to give each resident a kickback... er, rebate.
Just where in the States do you live?
The only places I'd like to move to in the States are the ones with the problems I mentioned. The Bay area, LA, Houston and various cities along the East Coast...
If you're not paying out of your arse for rent, you're in the ghetto. Unfortunately that's where many of my career opportunities lie =\
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
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And what party do nazi's and the like in the states vote for? Yup, the Republicans(or reform with pat). I guess the republicans are a bunch of nazi's then right. Oh wait, most of them risked their lives trying to kill nazi's in WWII. As for Betty Granger. Exactly what part of her comments were racist? She was mearly stating facts about how our government regulated post-secondary institutions are being abused by foreign students. I don't pay tax to subsidize universitys so that some kid from china or germany or zimbabwe can take a spot from a Canadian kid. Where i live the University of Waterloo has a requirement of around 98% for applicants to computer science. Do you know why? It's not because you need to be capable of those kind of grades to pass the course. It's because they have so many applicants, and so few seats that it needs to be set that high to weed out as many people as possible. And a large part of the reason why there are so few seats available is because they are taken up by FOREIGN students. Go to the computer science or math building, everyone is either oriental or a abnormaly fat/skinny white kid. Now i would love to have as many foreign students come here for their education as possible, but not at the expense of even ONE Canadian being turned down. Regarding the comment of immigrants being rich. Well, they are. It's practically a requirement for immigration, look it up.
Before our American cousins to the south start on government intervention remember that it's because of the CRTC that no high-speed internet company in Canada is able to charge residential customer more than CAD$50 per month.
This is not a good thing. The price of access here in the US is set at what the market will allow. People are willing to pay for it, so they do. If people feel it is too expensive they take their business elsewhere. Perhaps the quality of service in Canada would be better if the company could make more profit from each subscription, hmm? What do you think American broadband companies do with all that extra money they make, put it in a mattress? Of course not, they use the money to improve their systems so they can attract more subscribers from their competition. I'm certain that if you cut the subscription price of my service provider in half the quality would be at least halved as well.
This is one of the tenets of socialism: preventing exploitation of the workers by big business. Consequently, and quite stupidly, the quality of life of the workers suffers (how long does it take to get an MRI in Canada?) because the services that "big business" provides to the workers are necessarily low in quality and highly regulated by the government. I live in the US, I can go get medical care tomorrow if I wanted it, I can pay whatever price I think is fair for Internet access, and I don't particularly feel exploited by any business, thank you very much.
I live in Waterloo.. :)
No more latin! I had to find and download a translator to figure out what was going on!!! :-)
Captain Ober
It depends. Your bandwidth could *be* your telephone line by the time they're finished. If IP telephony became commonplace enough, I might cancel my phone services.
.. still looking forward to being able to plug my phone directly into my hub...
However, nothing in my hood. I checked the Bell HSE site, and Waterloo (at last check) was nowhere on the upgrade list, neither immediate nor future.
I don't get it... UW, WLU, RIM, MKS, Mitra, Waterloo Maple.. how is it we have the cream of the crop, yet I'm still using 56Kflex technology in our newest subdivision?? Bottom line: sucks to be me.
"There's a party," she said,
"We'll sing and we'll dance,
It's come as you are."
Have you tried dyndns.org, or another dynamic host name service? You install a client program on your computer and it will automatically update your IP in their database when it changes. Then you can use something like <hostname>.dyndns.org to reach your computer, where <hostname> is any word you want that's available.
I had the opportunity to call the CRTC when my ISP was having trouble allocating a DSL port for my new company. While the CRTC has (at this time) no regulatory control over High speed Internet Access, the CRTC offered to make an 'informal' call to Telus on my behalf. Like magic, 27 ports appeared in my CO the VERY next day.
Corporations who have had any experience with the CRTC know that they wield a big stick, and know how to use it. This would be a welcome relief, as I am currently fed up with my crappy @Home cable connect (excellent pack loss), and the emails I receive from them saying that 'It is a known issue, and technicians are busy working on correcting the problem'.
I hope that the CRTC *does* take control, and *does* force the larger Internet providers (like Telus/DSL and Rogers/Cable) to start treating customers with the respect they deserve.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
When I was in Europe, I found that "America" was used to refer to North America, Central America, and South America as one big continent.
The point, though dull, is that the denizens of the US of A don't hold a monopoly on the name "America".
When did we stop calling them "Yanks"?
You can never put too much water in a nuclear reactor.
In Switzerland I pay $100 for 256/64 DSL. Static IP but no inbound connections (so only useful for identifying me). Inbound connections (only portmap for 25,80, the rest is always impossible for reasons beyond me) costs $40 extra.
Maybe I should move to Canada too.
I had the opportunity to call the CRTC when my ISP was having trouble allocating a DSL port for my new company. While the CRTC has (at this time) no regulatory control over High speed Internet Access, the CRTC offered to make an 'informal' call to Telus on my behalf. Like magic, 27 ports appeared in my CO the VERY next day.
Corporations who have had any experience with the CRTC know that they wield a big stick, and know how to use it. This would be a welcome relief, as I am currently fed up with my crappy @Home cable connect (excellent pack loss), and the emails I receive from them saying that 'It is a known issue, and technicians are busy working on correcting the problem'.
I hope that the CRTC *does* take control, and *does* force the larger Internet providers (like Telus/DSL and Rogers/Cable) to start treating customers with the respect they deserve.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Okay, I know I've been trolled, but: This is a really terrible way to reduce pollution. By "moving out to the country" (the suburbs), millions of Americans contribute to pollution and environmental damage, mainly by driving longer distances. It's actually much better for the environment to live in the city because you don't drive as much if there's a subway, and higher-density living keeps open space open.
sulli
RTFJ.
lets see how free you think it is when you get out of university and start paying taxes. I could pay for a private health care plan, and get better medical service in the US for a LOT less than I pay in taxes here.
I'm a frequent visitor to London, and lived there for many years. Levels of service on both the trains and buses have declined substantially since privatization. This just goes to show that private monopolies can be as lousy as public ones. Depends on how they're run.
Something I haven't seen in these highly polarized posts is the fairly obvious observation that monopolistic firms collude with the government to regulate the market. Regulation creates barriers to entry that protect their monopolies. This isn't something that the mean old government does to poor little mega-corporations. Quite the opposite.
Then there is price-fixing and collusion by oligopolies. Again, this anticompetitive practice is initiated by the companies themselves, with no help from the government. So I don't buy your argument that it's all the government's fault.
One of the most compelling arguments for regulation is the fact that firms, left to themselves, will do everything in their power to avoid competition and abuse market power. In the economic areas where the US has done best, the markets are well-regulated, not unregulated. For example, only a moron would trade on a stockmarket without uniform and well-enforced disclosure standards. Consider the desirability of trading on the Moscow exchange versus NYSE or Nasdaq. Rule of law helps economies, and improves quality of life too.
"Regulation: BAD, Business: GOOD" is an overly simplistic slogan left over from the Reagan/Thatcher years. I find it especially comical to see it advocated by people who were still in diapers when those disasters occurred, and who uncritically accept that what Ronnie and Maggie said had any connection with what they actually did. Reagan's fiscal policies, for instance, were closer to FDR's than to Friedman's.
In the US, the interests of business and government sometimes coincide and sometimes conflict. There are many opportunities for mutual backscratching, and it's naive to assume that, if we trust businesses, that this will somehow lead us to a golden age. We were there in the late 19th century, it didn't work. Given the chance, corporations can be as brutal and idiotic as our government. Remember the land grabs by the railroads? It's lack of accountability that causes this, not whether the players are in the public or private sectors.
Learn some economic history. Not everything you read in Ayn Rand has a basis in fact.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
As for higher tax rates, I'll have you know that Alberta is moving to a 10.5% FLAT tax at the start of the new year. There will still be federal tax... but even at its worst, if you live in Alberta you won't pay more than 38% in taxes no matter how much you earn. And look at what you get - space, a clean environment, safety, cheap living expenses, etc.
I live in Ontario, please friend, ask Alberta (and the west) to stop voting Reform (Alliance). I really believe what we will find under the aura of this 'progressive' party who encourages 'change' is an extremely right wing, pro BIG BUSINESS (ala America) group that will very literally sell our Canadian community out. I agree that change is good, and I welcome new ideas with very open arms (the true debate in Canadian policy and politics is refreshing and a great source of pride), but I am not convinced of Mr.Day's intentions and his honest commitment to his fellow Canadians. I am also not disagreeing with the 'flat tax' idea - I feel it deserves analysis and debate...
Also, please read the article at Discover.com and contact your member and ask them to end plurality voting. It looks like the elections people have already had some analysis.
I remember a while a go, the CRTC said something along the lines of:
"We wont get involved in the Internet in anyway"
This inlcudes censoring (blame Canada!) and other things that the rest of the world getting their panties in a knot about.
This is a great time for startups to get their act together and get those companies out there before the CRTC makes this ruling. Once the CRTC does make it (and I am pretty confident they will) you can see the likes of Bell and the all the other well established companies raking in the cash.
This is also a good opportunity for the likes of Look TV (www.look.ca) and other alternative media companies to further their progress in wireless technologies and internet.
A current PriceWaterhouseCoopers poll puts Canada at the #1 list for Internet usage in the world:
"..that 48.2% of Canadian households now have Internet access, ahead of the U.S. (43%) and other countries surveyed. The study says that 22% of Canadian households using the Internet have high-speed access."
You can only expect this figure to increase if this ruling is made.
Personally, I feel the same way. The internet is ESSENTIAL to me. It's like eating and sleeping. It's just as important as the telephone or money. Glad someone "up there" feels the same way.
(yeah, yeah spelling is terrible - you know what I am trying to say though - i'm a lazy bastard)
As a canuck with cable through shaw (@home), I'd just to put in my two canadian pennies by saying the service here rocks!
Sure it's not 100%, sometimes the network goes down between 2am and 4am, but beyond that I'm very please with the service. Here in Edmonton high speed service is basically through Telus (phone DSL), or whichever cable company provider is in the neighbourhood (a duopoly consisting of Videon and Shaw).
Prices are $40 CDN ($25 US) per month for cable and $50 CDN for DSL. Shaw has been great for me personally. All of my Shaw buddies started off with 800kB/s - 1000kB/s DL speeds about 18 months ago. Now with more people on it has come down to 50kB/s-300kB/s. Upstream connects are about 70kB/s.
The best part about my provider has been that their DHCP server allows as many computers as I want and they've never capped my UL/DL amounts (I average about 10-100GB per month), although technically it is in violation of my contract.
Anyhow, this long winded tirade is just to illustrate that we do not get substandard service up here simply because it's not a free market scenario...
Alberta? Clean environment? Cheap living expenses? Space? You obviously don't live there, unless it's in a village of less than 1000 people...
But if the market itself is pricing it that low, then why would you need a government regulation stipulating that it's below $50? It would seem to be creating an unnecessary bureaucracy
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Yeah, CRTC classifies 'canadian content' (for songs in this case) by determining the percentage of Canadian(s) that:
there has to be a minimum percentage of 'canadian' content to qualify as being 'canadian'. Bryan Adam's song, even though he wrote part of it, sang it, recorded it, and jointly produced the album, was not considered 'canadian content'
It would appear that, to the canadian government, canadians don't matter
Gee, I'm so proud to be canadian! ( NOT! )
All thanks to the CRTC.
AC comments get piped to
-Flat tax is good
-Making Indians pay tax is good
-Free votes are good
-Tightening immigration is good
-Endorsing the use of the notwithstanding clause is a serious problem.
Enough of a problem that I will not be voting for the Alliance this election.
--Clay
Microsoft is obviously not a true monopoly (mono meaning one, Linux, Mac, BeOS, etc. being more than one).
;)
Not to continue the MS is a monopoly debate... ok just a little
There _are_ other alternatives I know. But in effect MS is just so big and so powerful that it can do as it pleases now. If MS 'played fair' meaning, produced products for all platforms, didnt force OEM's into locked contracts, didnt 'bundle' products to end competition, didnt actively break protocols (embrace/extend) and participated as a peer in setting industry-standard protocols. I dont think regulators would have that big a problem. With the barrier-to-entry being so high (thier market share and these actions) it really ends competition in the industry.
The barrier to entry idea is essential in understanding the logic in the CRTC and considering DSL as essential. Really, who's interests are best served with MS being in the position they are? Citizens or MS? Same case here, with Sympatico (bell DSL) and @Home (cable) - dont you think that first consideration should be given to the interests of Canadian Citizens?
Citizens and their community first (all cases and all instances)
Business second (all cases and all instances).
Let's face it, if you didn't have the US on your border driving down prices through ruthless competition, you'd still be going ga-ga over the pushbutton phone.
Although you are obviously unaware - Canada enjoys the best communications system on the planet, at very reasonable prices, with exceptional quality and reliability of service. This is a product of commitment to providing a service to our community vs providing profit to big business. Case in point: The quality/reliability/price of communications in Canada vs. the quality/reliability/price of communications in the US.
Anyone care to debate which system provides more beneift to the citizens?
heheh, yeah considering that Telstra's international link is down ;)
:) Southern Cross Cable is nice for now - but when you read news that Canada is trying to get a 800Gbit pipe someplace, it kinda puts a damper on things.
;)
GOOO OPtus, GOOO SCC
"TELEGLOBE EQUIPS FOR 800 GIGABITS PER FIBER: Teleglobe will pay Nortel Networks US$400 Million to supply its global IP network with optical Internet services that will increase fiber capacity to 800 Gbps."
Or is teleglobe American?
I am raising a family of 6
Have you ever heard of BIRTH CONTROL or POPULATION EXPLOSION/ENVIRONMENT?
I believe the NWTel organization (NorthWest Territories) gets to justify higher cost because of the higher expenses for establishing services that far north. Aliant (NBTel, MTT, IslandTel and NewTel) on the east coast are fairly uniform in residential DSL offering - 3.2 Mbps down 1.1 Mbps up in NS for under $40. when bundled with local and long distance service. They (NB and NS) have or will have Digital television over DSL as well - 1MB for internet traffic and 3+ MB dedicated for the TV for less than $100 per month. Maybe even less than $80, I'm out of the loop living in the US now but market wise that is the route they are going. Cable is fairly pervasive with a few different providers and having similarly competitive rates. Concentric is there for an example of available independant competition - not sure if ATT and Sprint have launched their broadband competition in Eastern Canada yet. Having worked in support in the DSL world I can relate to the frustration customers feel, particularly in Canada, because the price has made the customer base grow exponentially - 300 - 3000 in one year, almost 10,000 by the following in NS alone. The high rate of attrition, (more than 30%) turn over in those positions means that the majority of technicians are relatively new - so performance is approximately 35 to 50% less than that of a senior agent familiar with the issues. Having worked in the environment I would say the majority of troubles in Canada are due to understaffing (numbers) and poor compensation which contributes to the high rate of attrition, which in turn cycles back to the lower level of experience which means the staff can never seem to get completely on top of the issues or call volume. If they ever get on top of the issues then the Telco perceives them as overstaffed. One begins to see a vicious cycle. Until they learn in Canada that it is much cheaper and more productive to keep experienced agents happy, you'll continue to see this type of trouble.
For CAD$50 they have to provide broadband, but broadband can be *many* things. The first broadband cable connection I had was 300kbit/64kbit, while a friend of mine abroad had a 10Mbit/1.5Mbit (about 25 times faster).
Johan Veenstra
Right on.
Come and hang out, all my American friends...smoke bud till your hearts content and surf the internet on fast connections. You won't go to jail and we have a head of state!
Have you read the papers or watched the news lately? Several different papers/chains (Southam, CP, Hollinger) and networks (BCTV, CFJC) covered Day's remark about teaching Creationism alongside Evolution. It happened. Deal with it.
Personally, I'd love for that to happen. Either that, or go back to teaching the THEORY of evolution, as opposed to the (so-called) fact of evolution that is taught now. Maybe creationism isn't right, maybe evolution isn't right, maybe a combo of the two isn't right... we don't know, and we should teach it that way.
As to CRTC regulations for high-speed Internet connections: if it forces the telcos, cable companies, wireless companies, etc to hook-up every/90% of all households, than I am all for it. Been waiting for 3 years now to get anything faster than 46K (and I live less than 5 clicks from the main downtown telco switch/CO/whatnot). And Shaw has few plans for out area (if you consider Canada had a working cable data network in the late 70's, I've been waiting 20+ years for them to hook me up).
If it sets minimum standards for every/90% of all Internet connections (ie: 256K up.down), then I am all for it.
If it sets minimum service levels (ie: down less than a day a year), then I am all for it.
These are all things that have come about because of gov't regulation of the telcos, the power companies, the gas companies, etc. And these are good things. If the CRTC tries to control what services they provide, or mandate a specifics, than I can see it turning into one *huge* mess. Keep it general.
My $0.02 Can.
You say that 50.00 is dirt cheap for High speed internet connection in the US? I pay only 39.00 flat a month for my static IP addresses and thought this was standard for DSL service. Is this inaccurate? I live in LA, but figured that was the standard price nation wide. I am confused by the comment that 50 is dirt cheap for the US.
I'm sorry while I can agree that telephones should be considered an essential service mainly for contacting emergency services, I just don't see broadband as an essential service that needs to be regulated for QoS like the phone network. It's not as if a cable modem outage could cost someone their life (aghh Bob's having a heart attact, call 911, shit the dsl is down again, sorry bob) About the only thing you could really lose from a cable modem outage is money and if rock solid 24/7/365 uptime is essential to your business your web server shouldn't be plugged into the cable modem and sitting your living room.
;-) for my service, which means my ISP can afford redundent equipment and enough staff to keep things humming. In the 18 months or so I've had the cable modem I've had maybe 5 days of downtime that weren't the fault of some piss poor wiring in my building, maybe 10 days of downtime that were due to the wiring and 7 of those were in my first month of service as they were trying to nail down the problem. Pretty damn good service considering that I live in the unregulated US. I should also point out that I do live in Alaska, so the climate and infrastructure is probably less forgiving than in eastern Canada.
On the other hand the 5 and 8 days of outages per month quoted in the article are just plain unacceptable, if my cable modem service were that bad I switch to DSL in a heartbeat, but then again I pay $40US (actually $60 but I pay extra for a static IP and a "double speed" cable modem, well worth the expense to run acerbic.org out of my living room
I'd also like to point out that I have my choice of two DSL providors and one cable modem provider, this is true for all of Anchorage and any community within 60-70 miles of Anchorage. Statewide nearly every city/town/village with >5k people has at least one broadband option. Plus AT&T has chosen Anchorage to be a test market in 2001 for a wireless broadband pilot program, if nothing else that'll encourage even more spee/price competition. Ah the joys of fast, reliable, reasonably priced, unregulated broadband. For all geeks across Canada I truely hope you manage to get rid of regulated broadband.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
Whoa, there. Just because I live in the USA doesn't mean I agree with its politics all the time! I know the US is an inherently socialist system, and I think it's a terrible shame. I believe in all those things you said: privatizing the roads, schools, research, etc. I think that in the end, requiring people to adhere to arbitrary standards in the name of "fairness" will only hurt those it purports to help. And I challenge you to back up your statement about government regulated monopolies. Just because they "work" doesn't mean they can't work better in the hands of people who really care about improving them and turning them into a better product for less money than the competition. Mandatory lack of competition will always breed stagnation. A free market, even a market where "monopolies" are allowed, will always be more productive than one ruled by fiat.
9% sales tax in Alabama on prescription drugs and food, everyting. I got stuck up once, a friends son carjacked and murdered, person broke into our group home and attempted to rape one of our assistants, etc. etc. I am really enjoying my cable modem in Winnipeg MB and it is only $39.95 a month CDN. I hear it was the same price USD @home in Mobile, just coming out. I am so glad to be out of the states. Paxmark
"We have guided missiles and misguided men." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
But this is a Good Thing. The job of government isn't to do everything for us, but to put all people on a better grounds to compete. For many small businesses, that is high speed Internet access. For many people in remote areas, better Internet access means better access to basic educational resources. The CRTC has done a good job with telecom; in Canada we have a lot of competition, and prices are good. As for the $50 (Canadian!) cap on consumer broadband, we still get better service than the vast majority of Americans are able to get. I think the CRTC has been pretty reasonable with this, as we have a lot of competition in the broadband market (I can get @Home, Bell Sympatico DSL, or DSL from a number of other third parties, all in the $50 or less range). That wouldn't be there if there was no money to be made in it.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
The reason wireless is so prominent in Europe is that the government-provided telephone service is unreliable, expensive, hard-to-get, and inflexible. Yet these telcos were created with the same reasoning that Canada is using for broadband.
And Canada is using the same reasoning for broadband as it is for standard telephone service - and I have never, EVER heard a single good thing about an American telco. Ours, however, are simply beautiful. I can call some places in the US for cheaper than other Americans (even ones that live in the same state sometimes), my phone service will always cost $20/mo, and will always work. If it breaks, Telus will be out here to fix it within a day at the most.
Compare this to a friend in Seattle. They had two phone lines, with extra services on one line (call display, call waiting, etc) that they didn't want. They call the telco to get those services removed. Telco says they'll take those services off. What happens? Their OTHER phone line gets CUT OFF. I was amazed when I heard this, and asked her if she'd called them to have it fixed. She proceeded to tell me that they had called to have it fixed several times over the last six months, and nothing had happened
Another occasion (since remedied): I compared DSL (1.5 down, 640 up) last year, between NW Bell and Telus. Telus charged about $40/month CDN to provide this service, while NW Bell charged approx. $230 I believe (Canadian or American, that's still far too much) to provide it in Seattle. That's just sad.
I'm not trying to US-bash (though these are examples I use when I feel so inclined), but when you compare our regulated telcos to your unregulated telcos, I think the differences are obvious. Yes, it's a shame that the CTRC has to stick their nose into our broadband access, because look what it's done to our telephone companies.
~Sentry21~
I've experienced the Canadian and British systems, and those in some better-off Third World countries. All provide a better level of service than American HMOs. Sometimes there are delays for non-essential services, but I have never seen the outright denial of essential care that happens so often here in the U.S.
I can't think of a single developed country that would choose to adopt the U.S. health care model. We pay triple the percentage of our (larger) GDP for health care that the UK does, and the outcomes are worse by every accepted measure of public health, from life expectancy to infant mortality.
It seems that many of those who post absolutist views on this subject have never actually seen any of the alternatives at work. They're just repeating dogma.
Based on that, I wouldn't rule out "socialized broadband" before seeing how well it works in practice. I live in the U.S. because I like the weather and because I was born here, not because our system is vastly superior to all others in every way. Are we really so arrogant and pig-ignorant that we refuse to learn from other countries' experiences?
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
You *CAN* get more expensive services, very easily. There are Home Business and Small Business (or larger) plans for every ISP.
I can get part of a T1 redirected to me with a Small Office plan (at least that's what it used to be). Or I can have the upload/download speed caps on my DSL raised to 4Mb/1.5Mb with the Home Business plan.
As for higher tax rates, I'll have you know that Alberta is moving to a 10.5% FLAT tax at the start of the new year. There will still be federal tax... but even at its worst, if you live in Alberta you won't pay more than 38% in taxes no matter how much you earn. And look at what you get - space, a clean environment, safety, cheap living expenses, etc.
As for the rather... pardon me... idiotic statement that "Monopolies are in some respects a different story, but keep in mind that the majority of monopolies are a product of government regulation, not of the free market." I'll just point to Standard Oil, US Steel and a multitude of other exampes of a 'free market' at work, which it was back then. Unrestrained competition and battle ultimately produces a winner, and his reward is monopoly up until he gets lazy and taken over by a younger, more dynamic enemy (ie, a new company with bright ideas, low overhead, etc.) Monopolies are hardly exclusively the product of government regulation... though they can be.
And no, I'm not some Canadian out on some crusade to prove that we're as good as Americans. I, and most other Canadians, don't need to prove anything to you. I'm just trying to argue your invalid points.
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
I get cable modem in Montreal for $30/month. I get a peak speed of about 250 KB/sec on a ftp download.
Socialized medicine does not equal socialism. A social safety net does not equal socialism.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion about what socialism is or isn't, and I'm entitled to mine. I say income tax is socialist, and I think the US is way too close to socialism for comfort. You sure as hell ain't gonna convince ME that socialized medicine doesn't equal socialism. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, to use a trite phrase. =-)
I would also like to take this opportunity to observe that, while I have never intentionally attempted to insult anyone in this thread, I have been the subject of several ad hominem attacks and insulting terms in this thread (e.g., being called a "prat"). I do not believe this is a particularly good debating style.
A company does not have the ability to put a gun to my head! I can always simply refuse to pay them and do without the service. Sorry Inoshiro, but to say that a company can put a gun to your head is disingenuous.
Are you telling me that the only reason their prices dropped was due to this law? You said above that people left Sasktel and joined Shaw, who was charging $40. Wouldn't the huge loss of customers be enough by itself to convince them to drop their prices??? Are you telling me that if it wasn't for the law, Sasktel would have stayed at $90 for eternity, ignoring the fact that they had no customers????? Oh please. It's not as if all Canadians believe in this social engineering by the government. And it's not as if all Americans believe as I do. We aren't worlds apart as societies, but as individuals we can and will have differences of opinion.I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I did last December 99. No regrets
"We have guided missiles and misguided men." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
And did it ever occur to you that remote areas should pay more because it costs these companies a lot more to run cables & supporting equipment into areas with very few people?
So if they can't charge rural customers enough to cover their costs, then the company has to make up the revenue elsewhere. So they'll end up charging the city customers more to make up for the difference.
Very nice for the rural customer. Sucks for the city customer.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Well if you're such a happy customer, why are you giving free publicity to the outfit you don't like and keeping secret the one that you do?
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
That's what I'm saying! You can technically define "broadband" as "anything faster than an analog modem." Broadband can be crappy, intermittant, and slow, and for $50CDN/month mandatory, it most likely will be.
I'm a Canadian Telecom consumer, and I think the CRTC is overbearing to both corporations and consumers.
WHY?
1. Radio stations have to play a certain percentage of "Canadian music" in there rotation in their program or they get shutdown, even if it's Bryan Adams or Anne Murray. (apoligies to fans of either, but I hate them) I resent the idea that a business would have to mold their business model around government "approved" content which has nothing to do with profanity or common FCC issues.
2. Same thing for Television - better have that Canadian stuff, even if no one wants to watch it. Cable companies have to go the expense of providing "extra" channels/programming very few people want.
3. Until the CRTC took their grimy mitts off long distance, we were still paying a fortune to use the phone. In some areas, the CRTC WILL STILL NOT ALLOW COMPETITION. I'm living in such an area.
4. DSL service, not being touched yet, is commonly available nearly everywhere for $40-50. This is generally 1-2 mbit serice asymetrical. It's good service, NOT REGULATED BY GOVERNMENT.
Why can't the consumer, through market forces, decide what services will be offered?
To the CRTC, FUCK OFF!
You can have all the liberals and NDP freakshows you want.. plz take em.. they're about to get re-elected...alah save us.
The $50/mo. is a welcome rate for somewhat decent bandwidth now only if we can as paying customers can hold both Bell Sympatico and Rogers@Home accountable to some sort of level of service. I've had intermittent 'Net access for approximately 3 weeks with most of my weekends without 'Net access. Now and either the outage isn't recorded or Rogers@Home 1-800 number is busy. The problem with traditional carriers is that they think a small outage won't upset too many people. Face it, Rogers and Sympatico haven't engineered their services properly to handle the customer base and are so busy fighting fires they can't re-engineer any of their infrastructure, (I've heard of people that have their @Home e-mail accounts in B.C when they are based in Ontario). The CRTC should step in and do something about it, I'm not sure making it an essential service is the answer but it's a step in the right direction.
I'm not sure how Sympatico works it but with Rogers@Home you can purchase IP's from them for either $5 or $10 dollars, it's not free but it's still cheaper than getting ISDN and several IP's. :)
We have the ACCC here - Australian Consumer Competition Commission [http://www.accc.gov.au]. They have the power to force price and operation changes, but so far have only "recommended". I really do agree with this Candadain ruling - as we come to rely more and more on the internet in our daily life, high-speed, affordable, quality internet access is VITAL to quality of life in all areas of Autralia.
Phew. Getting passionate really tires me out.
Comments Welcome!!
Cheers,
Daniel.
--
Daniel Zeaiter
daniel@academytiles.com.au
http://www.academytiles.com.au
ICQ: 16889511
"I'm sorry but without the CRTC's regulations on Canadian content on Radio and TV Canada would have almost no entertainment industry."
So what? Better that I have content made in my own country than content I would _prefer_ to have? That doesn't make any sense. This is the crux of the anti-CRTC-content-control argument.
You don't have to live in a rural area, even in Toronto, high speed service through the phone company is not available in many areas of the city.
Fortunately, wireless microwave Internet (recently introduced) is going to break through the barrier and delivers both video and Internet at higher speeds and cheaper prices than alternatives. Mine gets installed next week - can't wait!
Do you realize that if *local telephone service* were a regulated by a free market that we'd have chaos?
Effectively, the regions that are attempting deregulation of local utlities are enjoying quite a bit of price RAISING.
The problem with competition & the free market is that it works in the macro, but has a difficult time providing "standards of service" in the micro. It's all at the whim of the market -- but most of all (and this is the kicker) -- while in the end the market WILL make things better -- IT TAKES TOO freaking long.
Is this acceptable? Sorry. People need problems solved now. If that interrupts the utopian neo-classical view, so be it. "In the long run, we are all dead" - JMK.
-Stu
...for all the UCITA fanboy software companies who will be putting Trojans in their software which'll send (via DSL) all kinds of extra information about you and your PC (and your online habits) to their databases. Who'll notice when it's being sent during your idle hours on an always-online system?
At the very least I STRONGLY suggest Americans AND Canadians get Zone Alarm from www.zonelabs.com so as to catch and block such trojan activity.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
And it's "eks", not "eggs"! :)
For you and everyone else! Rememeber this next time you hear about something happening in Nova Scotia, or Ontario or somewhere else about something completely unrelated.
I have DSL - I think you should too, I will be phoning my member, the Deputy PM no less, and suggest that he address this issue. Please remember to do so next time you hear someone else in Canada getting the shaft on some other issue. You look out for me, Ill look out for you. Remember: Solidarity.
Some of the biggest lies they tell you there:
Please! Just about every economist admits that this is at best, a useful fiction. Most aren't even convinced of the usefulness anymore - there are some good models of the irrational ways people make decisions. And if you're honest, you have to admit your purchase of a GeForce 2 wasn't exactly a cost/benefit analysis.
No market is really free, whether it is influenced by large players in the market or government regulation. There are tons of examples of government regualtions benefiting industries - the U.S. securities industry is one good example, aerospace is another, Volvo is another interesting example (stringent safety regulations). Regulations and government contracts can be the seed for new features and products that come to dominate the market. A great book about this stuff is Michael Porter's Competitive Advantage of Nations . A good read and some very interesting arguments.
This is probably the most relevant here. Market pricing may be the best pricing method available to us in most cases, but that doesn't mean that it's ideal in all circumstances. Perhaps someone who bought Red Hat for $50 could explain this in convincing detail. The key problems are information (not every consumer has enough accurate information to make a reasonable decision about value), and external costs. If a large portion of the costs of your products manufacture are borne by people outside the buyer/seller relationship, in free market capitalism, that's just too bad.
Just in case you need someone to tell you which way the wind blows...
yes, in a way, if you consider Copyright law as government regulation
Canada is in America, North America. I'm sure you mean the USA, but I can't blame you for calling it America since USA isn't really a name, it's just an acronym.
American refers to a citzen of the United States of America, just as Mexican refers to a citizen of the United States of Mexico, or Chinese refers to a citizen of the People's Republic of China. It would be linguistically and logically absurd to call a citizen of the US anything other than American. What are the options? United Statesian? That would be ridiculous. Many nations are comprised of various states, it would lead to confusion. USian, as I've seen suggested on slashdot? That would sound even worse. Both would be as ridiculous as calling a citizen of the People's Republic of China a "People's Republican" or "PRCian".
--
You're presuming not only that there is competition, but that there is any company willing to supply at all.
In rural areas such as Canada, the initial logistical expense means that buying the service from a truly free market would be unaffordable.
Discriminating against rural areas is as unacceptable as discriminating against, say, hispanic areas or native american areas. Now that isn't a problem for corporations who only want to make profit, but it is a problem for governments who want to be re-elected.
The standard way to get around this is to set minimum levels of availability, typically as part of a company's licence to trade.
For instance, I live here (as my wife points out) in the Cotswolds.
There is NO WAY any teleco is going to be able to supply my house with digital comms for a profit for less than, I'd imagine, US$500 a month.
Yet I have unmetered dual channel ISDN for US$90 a month (plus ISP fees of US$35).
This is because British Telecom is forced to supply ISDN to my house as part of their licence to trade across the UK.
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Where do you live?
Ermm - naah - I hate to take something and don't give something in exchange. :) :) They're bonus! :)
So I'll change yours for our reformed-communists (soon to be elected), nationalists nazi-in-disguise (too close to be elected as well), liberals, christian-democrats (previously in power), liberals (all sort of them), social-democrats. Though I claim the good part of the minorities - you can have the gipsies too
--
And now there is this government official spouting about how Cable Internet is going to be as normal as electricity, water and gas. Unfortunately, in my region one company monopolizes those products. Will I have to put up with even more crap from those guys if they're my only way of getting Internet on a 56+ Speed? Ah well, guess we're not as interesting as Canada...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Look, I live on the East coast of Canada, and I can honestly say that I have had two DSL and one cable services all of them at 1.5/0.5 Mb/sec for less than 50$ a month. Never any problems, and great service. The CRTC will impose a regulation that will force companies to offer a high speed service for under 50$, but extras will cost extra, if I want a static IP it's 30$ more/month. If I want 7/1.5 Mb/sec with 5 static IPs it's 200$/month, and yes that is exactly how much it costs, all in Canadian funds. So seeing as how my service is already pretty cheap already, I don't see anything wrong with the new guidelines.
Bah!
What will happen now is that in 10 years, Canadians will still be paying $50, while unregulated U.S. service will continue to drop in price.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
- Phones. Nope, free choice of suppliers on a per-call basis. Line can be BT or cable in most places.
- Cable. Well, only one cable company in each place, but not a monopoly for phones (see above), TV (most channels are also on satellite), or broadband in many regions (BT provides ADSL).
- Gas, Electricity. Both completely competitive. I can change supplier with 10(?) days notice.
- Buses. Private companies, competitive, but tend to have monopolies except in large cities.
- Trains. Sort of monopolies. Private companies awarded franchises for particular routes.
- Health service. Universal free health-care, but you can pay for private care or insurance.
- Post Office. Monopoly for letters under 50p.
Basically, the Post Office is the only big government-owned monopoly. We are probably the most deregulated country in the world for utilities. But then that's because we had Margaret Thatcher and the rest of you didn't!11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
If you read the article, you'll see that there really isn't a need to get all worked up about this right now. The CRTC is *not* seriously looking at designating high speed access as an essential service: ``We've never defined high-speed as the essential tool,'' said Colville. [VP of CRTC] ``Low speed (dial-up) is the essential tool.'' It's the public in the form of consumer associations trying to force this, but ``Colville cautioned that he doesn't know of any short-term answers to the high-speed dilemma.'' Have to wonder these days if the /. guys actually read past the headline.
Anyway, something constructive. It's interesting seeing (what seems to be) the opinion of the majority of Americans here, that this would be a bad thing as it would impose necessary restrictions (eg bandwidth, dynamic ips, etc) on the service to keep the cost down. I suggest that that is maybe because the American market is already heavily competitive, and you already have these services, so base expectations automatically become raised.
Here in the UK ADSL is *just* now, after about 2 years trialling, being rolled out. BT (the main Telecoms provider) is massively behind schedule, and coverage will probably be 10% of urban areas, maximum, by the end of the year. The basic home package is on a 512k pipe with a 50:1 contention ratio, non dynamic IPs, and standard BT support (ie wait several hours in a queue, speak to someone unqualified, wait several days to have it fixed). For this wonderful service you pay £50 a month (ie around $70-$75).
Personally, I'd love nothing better than for some official intervention in the UK to designate broadband as ``essential''. When you're running to catch up as badly as we are (and, in a different respect, as Canada is) it's a pretty effective way to get some standards and requirements settled, even if they are comparatively low to elsewhere.
High Speed Internet and High Quality Pot! I'm coming!! Wait for me!!!
--------
get jiggy w/ ayn rand!
The exchange rate is currently about 1.54 in favor of the US dollar. So $40(US) would be worth somewhere around $61(CDN). $50(CDN) is about $32.40(US). Before I dumped my cable modem service I was paying $35.00(US) for the service, 5 logins/email addresses, and 15MBs of web hosting for each login.
<socialist type=partial>the first three should be deemed 'essential' services, and as a result, not permitted to raise a profit (or at least, not any that isn't returned to the consumer, via either lower prices, or by funding the govt. and therefore lowering tax).
think about it, there are only so many gas/water pipes, electric/data cables that can be laid into any one area, so it's not like you are able to get true competition. moving to another city because you have a pet peeve with the power company isn't really an acceptable solution.
IMO, only when dealing with non-essential items should companies be allowed to charge 'a price the market can stand' (read: rip you off for as much as they can get away with). eg. RIAA/MPAA.
other things, like the Post Office, can be easily competed with (red tape not counted) as it doesn't rely on limited multi billion dollar infrastructure.
It's not BS. First-class mail is a government-spec'd monopoly in the US.
The Post Office's FAQ:
http://pe.usps.gov/text/qsg/q011.htm
These laws are too old to be available on THOMAS, or I'd give you a citation there as well. Feel free to look up 18 USC 1693-1699, 1724 and 39 USC 901-90. (Kind of interesting being that Title 18 is "conservation of power and water resources"... but heh, there it is; the parts in Title 39 are more truthfully labeled).
Have fun!
I leave in a small Canadian town in the middle of nowhere. Reason being that rent is cheap here and I'm not that well off. For Internet access I have a choice. I either pay the telephone company for local access, $25 CDN a month, for 100 hours, and about $4 an hour after that (no use to me as I work on the net) or I can do what I currently do which is dial long distance into Edmonton for unlimted access at $20 a month. The phone company offer a "free long distance within Canada for $20 a month" which is how I access the net.
There are NO high speed options where I live. No DSL (doesn't even come close to me), no cable (local cable company said they'd be offering it this winter. They lied). About the only option currently will be when Starchoice offer full 2 way satellite net access, but that is at best going to be next July so I was told by them.
So anyway, speaking as someone who has piss poor net service in Canada, I welcome this statement from the CRTC. If whatever they do gets me high speed net access, that's fine with me. Though I won't forgive them for Canadian content laws which advocate X% of and radio must be Canadian content...
---
All you need now is the Water Company, and you can charge even more in rent!
-- The One and Only NotMike.
We do have higher productivity and work more hours per year.
Also higher rates of obesity, lack of access to primary health care, and homicide (though the last of these has a minimal effect on the mortality rates... at least, so far). At least in "Brave New World" they had free drugs to kill them off before retirement age, not just occupational stress...
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
The population of Canadian provinces is too spread out for the Telcos to make this happen (with the exception of Ontario). 1 million people in Saskatchewan, ~50% of them in rural areas, covering the same area as your average 5 states and the infrastructure required will cripple a provincial Telco/Cable Company. Most of them are loosing money on the current $40-50 ADSL/Cable Modem package as it is. The odds of Pangman getting High Speed anytime soon is very unlikely.
And for those weird 'I want more than basic service' rants, man, get a grip. Our telephone service is already a 'essential service', and you can get every freekin option you've could ever dream of on your phone (can anyone say 'worlds largest fibre optic network'?). For an example Highspeed offering, take a look here.
"What do I care, if life ain't fair,
If you look at me real sore.
I've paid my dues and you should too,
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
Terribly sorry, but I'm going to have to flame your post, and my own as well, while I'm at it. We've been going on about how evil all these monopolized services are, but as far as I know all those non-monopolized in the UK don't really deliver well, do they? Opinions, other people? Can anybody comment on the situation in their respective countries? Because my unfortunate experience is that these (previously) government-regulated providers with monopolies do turn out to do an effcient job on the overall...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Given that I have a computer and don't do business with Microsoft, it sort of implies that they aren't a monopoly, no doesn't it?
No, it doesn't. Even I can remember that from my grade 11 economics classes. Microsoft may not have 100% of the market, but they do have effective control over the market. There's the difference between a government-regulated monopoly and a "natural" monopoly. One gets laws to back up its control, and the other will never be albe to squash ALL competition, even if it can kill off companies that irritate it with little effort. Which actually makes the natural one slightly more dangerous to consumers, because they have loads of power and are in a precarious position they want to maintain.
Oh, you left out two other monopolies: the RIAA and MPAA. And if you expect me to believe the members of either organization compete with each other to any large degree...
-RickHunter
While CDN50$ is the highest price, big companies as well as small ones are only charging CDN30$ (somes charges a 10$ modem location fee). This bring DSL connections to US20$. The Bell sympatico service is the biggest DSL provider in canada. See for yourself : at http:/ / bel l.sympatico.ca/DynamicContentServlet.dyn?/english/ home.html?s=1
I suppose it's obvious from the context, but I meant "The government shouldn't say who gets rich or not," rather than "The govermnment should say who gets rich or not."
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
Sorry Guido del ranto. The service here is often far better than the crappy service you seem to think exists here... In the last 3 years my cable modem has probably been down a total of a weeks time. the rest of that time my servers are happily suckin on the bandwith teat that i pay less than $50 a month for... Now I work for a large ISP and take ADSL tech support calls from 9 states... If I had thier service I would never remain a customer and ya know what?? they pay $60 (u.s) for crappy service.. YEA GO FREE MARKET!! Exploit your workers! Who cares about the quality of the product we just want the botom line!
But my own experience with telephone, gas and electricity is that I get at least as good service for much cheaper with the new providers than with the former monopolies when they were monopolies, or with the former monopolies in their current incarnations as private companies.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
I've heard about that, I'm actually still on a dialup because cable isnt offerend here yet, but it will be in a matter of days. The only problem is getting a Samsung cable modem..
Here's how in 5 easy steps:
1) Unlace your shoe (either is fine).
2) Take off your shoe (the one you unlaced).
3) Take a firm grip of your shoe (the one you took off).
4) Smack yourself in the face with the heel of your shoe (the one you're firmly grasping).
5) Repeat step 4 until you pass out.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
It's Not Here Yet - but Bell South is offering an interesting package deal in central Florida simetime in Q1 2001. The come-on is up to six months of free ISP service via standard dial-up, then connection to their nearly-finished DSL infrastructure. After that, you get an ISP connection, five mailboxes, standard DSL connectivity, and a free DSL modem for US$40/month. I don't know what the current exchange rate between US and Canada is, but it may be that US$40 is pretty close to C$50. And besides, if things get bad enough, I can always switch to Time Warner Cable Modems, since I get cable.
Rock on! This means when our new president decides that he just isn't living up to his daddy's presidency, and starts some crazy war, and begins drafting American men because armed forces enlistment is lower than ever (Given the quality of politicians in America, it isn't surprising. Who would want to fight for these jokers?), I can run to Canada where I will be able to both dodge the draft AND get cheap DSL!
I agree totally however there is a slight problem with all of this. That problem is the rapid changing technology. With standard house wiring the basic underlying technology really hasn't changed a whole lot in 50 years. We still run AC 120/240 Volt copper wires throughout our houses and businesses. Insulation for the copper wires have improved however the technology itself hasn't changed. The problem with wiring a new house with CAT5 cable is that in 5 years or less it will probably not meet the current specs for high speed access, so the question is even if there were some sort of building code what would it be, it would probably change at least every year. One year it would be CAT5 and the next Fibre Optic. The techonology is moving to quickly to standardize it, maybe in 15 years it will reach a plateau but I really doubt it.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
Domain Names for $13
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
It's worth noting that while the CRTC regulates fees to a max of $50/mo, I have not seen DSL or cable high-speed internet advertised for more than $40/mo (ie. just over $25US) in the GTA.
So this is evidently not socialism at work.
This is definately good news - we've all had our problems with internet service providers and their (un)reliability, bandwidth problems, etc . . . I welcome the move by the CRTC to come in and straighten them out.
BTW - I don't think any Yankess really should have their opinion count here. They don't know how good we've got it in Canada with our "high taxes" and "big government".
Something about: "The best country in the world in which to live" . . .
:)
Nortel is Canadian.
I think (but do not quote me on this) That Teleglobe is the old CN\CP microwave networks.
Yes I can not spell...Wait....for a second there I almost cared.
Good gosh! Whats so horrible about looking out for other people? Regardless of what anyone thinks, there are in fact people who want to get onto the internet (and who want health care) who genuinely can not afford it. Is it so bad to help them out?
In my opinion, and in the opinion of many people, its not so bad.
is $40 (US$26) or less. Free modem and installation. Static IP (for cable anyway), no port restrictions, though licence doesn't allow servers. 2 common ongoing promotions are first 3 monts at $30, and first month free. Highest d/l speed I've seen on my cable is 250KB.
I've not had any downtime in 2-3 months. Had regular interuptions before this, and its quite possible that other areas still have problems, but for me the last few months have been great.
Tech support is fine. Hard to expect better.
You can need more, and I can't say your not allowed, but its a sweet option for those of us who have it.
Dialup ISPs have also been cheaper than they are in the US.
Well all you Yankees may not like regulation, but its the CRTC that has forced Bell in Canada to allow other ISP's access to its network to offer DSL service. As a result I'm with a small ISP in Toronto with 1.2M ADSL with a static IP and less contract restrictions than Bell Sympatico for US$25 per month. That ROCKS!!!
draconian measures are BAD... well, unless they don't effect me directly!!! Ummm, Canada is rather popular for having government enforced monopolies, then pulling this crap. Well, perhaps they should pull out ALL government regulation that creates and sustains monopolies, allowing competition to reduce prices as it normally does. All this, and no backlash of bad service and slow innovations. Down in America, it is amazing how they claim that citizens come up to Canada for treatment and drugs, yet reality is that all of Canada's medical staff goes to America to work, and that Canadians with serious conditions are forced to head south as well. Sure you can get your free check up, and when your nose is runny , you can get a free clinic visit and some diphenhydramine... but if you actually NEED a doctor, you are screwed.
I have often bitched about how ambigous the term "Internet Service" is. It would be really nice if the CRTC in it's control brings this term out and regulates its use. Hystorically the CRTC has taken eons to move anywhere so I doubt any of this will happen in less than a few years anyway. At any rate...
What if I provided you with a high speed link to my http proxy. You get a RFC reserved IP and only access to the proxy. Is this Internet? A lot of new users and people who only surf the web would never know the difference.
I once had Internet Service with a telco (MTT) in Nova Scotia where we all had RFC reserved IPs and had NAT access through Cisco PIX firewalls. This firewall assigned a real IP to you once you accessed an exteral resouce. Problem was, your IP would sometimes change. This was supposed to curb people running FTP servers on their nice 7/4 megabit service. Imagine your SSH sessions dying every 5 minutes.
So that qualified as "Internet Service" and most people didn't have a problem with it. All of us power users had problems. All the FTP was passive. Many services never did work properly. DCC chats and file transfers never worked and a lot of other services were also broken.
The real question here is: To what degree can a company brain dammage or otherwise filter your "Internet Service" before it's not called "Internet Service" anymore.
Sometimes I think things like this can only be regulated by an organisation who has some teeth. Here are some suggestions:
Full Internet Service:
Users get a real static IP and any proxies they use would have to be fully transparent and not set to filter out any "objectional" material. If they do filter any ports they would have to list them, ie ports 137/139 are common.
Restricted Internet Service:
Same service as Full, but with dynamic IPs. Here, they should have to say how often it changes. This of course affects those of us who use persistant connections (like telnet or SSH).
Limited Internet Service:
Users are not assigned a real IP and have only limited access using non transparent proxy servers or NAT servers.
I think because there is a lot of marketing around each of these terms most ISPs would have to be more flexible about the types of service they provide. I'd be willing to pay a few more dollars for the "Full Internet Service" rather than put up with the BS behind limited service where most of the ISPs wouldn't even tell me what they filtered or the fact you didn't get a real IP. Might get rid of the "Sign up and pay the disconnect fee if you don't like what we're giving you" attitude that MTT had.
-Michael
"that it's because of the CRTC that no high-speed Internet company in Canada is able to charge residential customer more than CAD$50 per month."
One counterexample: (A service that I had over last summer) - Northwestel's Sympatico HSE ADSL service (2.5Mbits down, 800kbits up) - $60/mo.(Canadian Funds)
See http://www.nwtel.ca/adsl
Eh? .. target="_blank" does that. If you do target="harry" then ALL your links will open in THAT frame.. not a new one each time.
--
Delphis
Living in Yellowknife (still a part of Canada even though some would say otherwise) I get charged about 60 bucks a month for high speed access. Addbo
Read your phone bill
that flat rate $20/mo was just changed to the first 800 minutes of long distance (By Bell in Ontario), I suppose others will do the same
you might be in for quite a surprise, I almost was
take off, hosers!