Bell Proposing Usage-Based Billing

Idiomatick writes "Bell Canada is attempting to impose UBB on its wholesale customers. As Bell was given a last-mile monopoly in much of Canada by the government, they are required to follow rules set up by the CRTC; this includes leasing their lines to competitive ISPs. And they are given a directive by the CRTC to provide competitive speeds to said ISPs. Teksavvy has informed its customers that were this to go through, the current monthly cap would be quartered and the cost for exceeding it would be 'multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on overages.' They have also helpfully included a link where you can send your comments/concerns to the CRTC directly."

Comments

Do-over

[concernedadmin]

How much would it cost to rip up the ground and lay down more fiber? It seems like in most cases, a (natural?) monopoly results. When things get this bad, is there any chance that a new generation of telecommunications companies can spring up (perhaps with government subsidies to get them going)?

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[digitalchinky]

It's not so much the cost that matters, it's the monopolies you mention. They are not natural though, they were formed from contracts that were drafted with precision greed and much forward contemplation of their potential future value. They did have a hundred years or so of prior telephony contracts to give them a good heads up. It'll be many years and many legal battles before your new generation get to turn their first clump of dirt.

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[Jurily]

It'll be many years and many legal battles before your new generation get to turn their first clump of dirt.

Nah. This pile of crap that is the world economy will collapse much sooner.

Fun fact: The US is bankrupt since 1971.

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[ILongForDarkness]

Not likely. That is why is is a natural monopoly. It isn't just that you have the infrastructure owned by one company, it is that the marginal cost for another company entering the market will be much much higher than the prices of the existing supplier, and even if you subsidize a second company while they roll out their infrastructure it still will cost more. There will now be two backbones sharing the same pool of customers, thus the fixed costs will have to be recovered fro, whatever the fraction of customers you can lure away is, not the whole market as it was before.

Also, the new company would have to run new wires to the house. So you buy a house and want to go with a different phone provider in this scenario you'd probably end up with a house full of the other guys boxes that are inactive and eye sores.

In short, people like to think that competition is the cure for everything, but unfortunately it is not. Sometimes the nature of the game is that it is cheaper for the customer to give one company excessive profits then to have two companies competing and have the price still be higher but now the companies' are just breaking even (in an economical since, ie including "fair" return on investment). If things get out of hand governments regulate the natural monopolies and make them lease their backbone, or only charge fair prices. Other natural monopolies belong to the government because it makes the most sense, education (though that depends were you are I suppose), national defence (could you imagine time sharing a tank with your neighbours? Would be fun though).

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[Swizec]

This is what happened in Slovenia. A new comer (T-2) came along and decided to say fuck you to the biggest and the baddest and just start laying down fiber, offering FTTH at prices much lower than the market value and simply work against all conventional business ideology.

What happened was that after a few years they were the cheapest, fastest and all around bestest internet provider in the country. This forced the biggest and the baddest to sharply drop their prices and start laying FTTH to simply stay in business at all.

Now, about 5 years after this started happening, Slovenia is the 7th in the world in FTTH adoption right behind Scandinavia and Asia.

Fun fact: It's about half cheaper to get 20/20 FTTH here than it is to get 1024/256 ADSL.

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[Shrike82]

It costs a lot more than you'd think. Somewhere between $70,000 per mile in suburbia, up to $250,000 a mile in a city cente (Source) Other sites quote different prices, but they're always in the region of 10's of thousands of dollars per mile for rural areas, up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for cities. So it's not economically desirable to run more cable I'm afraid.

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[wvmarle]

This should be compared to e.g. roads, railways, waterways, airports and other major pieces of infrastructure. As such it is best owned by the government or a government-appointed company that takes care of the maintenance only, and is not providing services. All users pay a certain fee, based on a flat fare or per use or whatever. I say here government, it may also be a public non-profit that is set up for this very purpose.

For example the government builds and maintain roads, and charges a vehicle tax to use them.

An airport, often also government run, charges the aircraft that want to land there a certain fee, possibly depending on size of the aircraft.

So it would be the government that builds/maintains the cables, and then rents it out for the ISP to provide services on it. Or maybe even telephone companies, or TV services. All the government should do is lay a digital cable, and other companies can connect to it with their digital services (and provide end-point equipment such as set-top box for the TV, modem for an Internet connection or telephone set). The cable just provides a way to get those bits from a to b regardless of what those bits are for. The only limits may be the legality of content, and the bandwidth demanded.

It is not doable, also not desirable, to lay more than one set of the same infrastructure. Coax or telephone cables may be replaced by fibre for example, but it is not a good idea to put two sets of coax (TV cable) in the ground.

The competition should not come from more sets of cables here, like there is only one road network but it is operated by various bus companies, minibus operators, taxis, rikshaws, and private cars. They all pay a certain fee to be licensed to use the road, and maybe tolls for use of certain tunnels or bridges. That's how cables should work as well.

The problem is of course that lots of cables were laid by private companies, though often government sponsored, when it was thought that it all should be privately owned and run. That legacy we have now basically all over the world, and this is why they are talking about a "third channel" and thinking of ways to do Internet over electricity cables just to get more competition. It is just patchwork. Cables should be publicly owned like the roads and other major pieces of infrastructure, become a common carrier, and sell no more than their transport service to wholesale customers. Just like the telephone companies sell telephone calls (data transport) to anyone, regardless of whether you are just having a nice chat with your mum, trying to close a business deal, or are having a bout of telephone sex. The call costs the same, and everyone is allowed to make as many of them as their line allows (which is usually one at the time but more lines can be rented if you need it).

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[$1uck]

Bankrupt?

The word doesn't mean what you think it does.

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[jank1887]

last I checked, bankruptcy meant you were unable to meet payments asked for by creditors, and you seek formal means of restructuring or partially satisfying your debt by fulfilling the negative side of lender risk.

Last I checked, China hasn't come callin' for payback.

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[Tejin]

There is one way to surreptitiously build infrastructure on the cheap. Cable companies have connections to nearly every home, and many are getting into the internet/phone gig. Where I work, the cost per metre of fibre optic cable is low enough that we're running new cables all the time.

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[dfiguero]

There will now be two backbones sharing the same pool of customers, thus the fixed costs will have to be recovered fro, whatever the fraction of customers you can lure away is, not the whole market as it was before.

Given that the story says:

As Bell was given a last-mile monopoly in much of Canada by the government they are required to follow rules set up by the CRTC this includes leasing their lines to competitive ISPs.

"Much of Canada" must be a significant amount of customers and I think you would need to consider that whatever new company would compete against Bell would try to offer some nice incentives to attract customers. They would probably push the status quo and consumers would get the best.

I know your point is that it doesn't seem to make much sense for a company in terms of profit but although the profits might not be the same as that of a natural monopoly, I think the profits of an oligopoly would still be attractive.

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[Locklin]

This is the only solution that will work, in my mind. How much do you suppose it would cost to ship a parcel if a single postal company owned the roads? would second-tier postal carriers like UPS have to lay down their own roads? or bend over and pay the monopolies whatever they want to "rent" time on the existing roads? Government owned infrastructure like roads, AND CABLE, leads to more competition, a free-er market, more innovation, jobs and better service for customers.

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[Jerry Smith]

"bestest" ??

Oh hell YEAH, this IS the appropriate situation to use that word!

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[Hizonner]

How the heck is education a natural monopoly?

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[BPPG]

Bankruptcy is declared, like crying Uncle. I can be a friggin' hobo and not have declared bankruptcy, as I'm not required to until creditors are banging at the front door of my cardboard box.

Until then, I'm allowed to claim my cardboard box to be a fully-furnished mansion if I wanted to.

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[billcopc]

It's not about fiber or infrastructure or anything like that. It's about Bell playing dirty and dodging the anti-monopoly laws that were specifically enacted to keep Bell under control.

Every single move is a direct attack to shut out resellers and competitors. With this particular predatory billing strategy, they are guaranteeing that any DSL reseller goes out of business because the "wholesale" cost is greater than their own 1st-tier retail service. At the same time, the low caps proposed are ensuring that their users won't be able to ditch their $200/month DTV and phone bills in favor of IPTV and VoIP.

You guys in the states see the same bullshit, although it is not _quite_ as dramatic (yet) because you still have a handful of telecoms fighting over the market. Up here Bell is god, and has been for nearly a century, because every time they've been split up or shoo'd out of an area, they have bought back their shares in the newly-formed companies that replaced them. The few conglomerates they don't own outright, they collude with, like Rogers and Videotron. There is no real competition.

Bell is so ominous up here, many people mistakenly believe it is a crown corporation run by the government. The CRTC, which is supposed to be a media watchdog, is Bell's lap dog. Let me put it to you this way: If the Bush family ran a telco the way they ran a country, Bell Canada would be the result.

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[commodore64_love]

Yet.

The national debt is now at $110,000 per U.S. home and will climb to $150,000 before the next presidential election. Add another $90,000 in personal mortgage/credit card debt (on average). $200,000-$240,000 per home may not be bankruptcy, but it's as close as you can get without crossing the line. We are in deep trouble.

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[Vu1turEMaN]

Verizon ran it for free to my house, almost a half mile from the main road. Are you saying that it cost them 30,000$ to do that? I mean, we were one of the very first to have fios (at all) in the pittsburgh area.

I guess they strategized and said "oh man he torrents 2TB per month, so when we move to a usage-based model we'll pay it back in a year".

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[commodore64_love]

In my area Comcast and Verizon compete with one another, and I see a lot of benefit: (1) Lower prices and (2) increasing speeds.

If there was a monopoly it would probably be ridiculous (Verizon used to charge $100/month). It's akin to when AT&T controlled everything and phone quality sucked, but once Sprint, MCI, and other competitors entered the market, prices dropped to ~5 cents a minute and data speeds increased from AT&T's maximum 300 bit/second modem to non-AT&T 28,000 or 56,000 modems. Breaking-up the monopoly removed the stagnation that had existed for thirty years.

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[swb]

Or for that matter, defense?

How completely aligned are the national defense needs of, say, Hawaii with those of, say, Ohio? Note, I don't say there aren't mutual interests, but to say that there is 100% overlap is ridiculous.

We've been kind of snookered into this one-size-fits-all all-national-interests-are-aligned mindset.

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[ILongForDarkness]

I meant more for primary and secondary education. The government mandates the curriculm and forces parents to send their kids to a school that meets that teaches that curriculm, and taxes you to pay for it as a public resource. I guess it might not be a natural monopoly, just highly dominated by government run institutions.

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[TheRealMindChild]

You do know that Asia isn't a country, right?

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[Swizec]

It's got countries doesn't it? Therefore I can simplify. YOU do realise Scandinavia isn't a country either right? It's a peninsula.

At least be consistent in your trolling.

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[commodore64_love]

>>>A new comer (T-2) came along and decided to say fuck you to the biggest and the baddest and just start laying down fiber

Your example supports what I've been saying for several months now - competition is better than monopoly, even if it means laying duplicate lines to every home. Competition between two or more companies promotes lower prices or better service. Sometimes both.

We should do the same with the U.S. School Monopoly - force schools to compete within the same district - students can choose school A or school B. The "fear" of losing customers is what stimulates innovation. A monopoly only stimulates stagnation which is why the U.S. education monopoly is close-to-last place.

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[dayton967]

The problem isn't the Fiber, it's the copper to the homes. With the distances involved, it's not as cost effective. In the cities FTTH is doable, though, it's usually only done in New Communities where the infrastucture can be installed before much of the infrastucture is in place. The only other way that FTTH is being done here, is when the Hydro Companies (Hamilton is doing this) is doing work for you, they can run fiber for you. Now outside of the major cities, FTTH is very difficult, because of distances, in some areas you could have only a dozen or so people served in an 80km range. Now if you go to Northern Canada, you are dealing with the Canadian Shield, which at the surface is just large plains granite with very little soil above it. Our 3 territories are no more then 100,000 people for nearly half of the area of Canada, so in these areas FTTH is probably not cost effective. Only 2 provinces have over 5 million people. But we must remember about 75% of Canadian's live within 100km of the US border. So in these areas FTTH is doable but it's getting the land and facilities to do such things.

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[Anonymous Coward]

That is what Rogers - evil as they are - have done on the backs of tax payers. There is nothing, imho, wrong with multiple entities providing the same subsidized services. But under our current policies, the catch for our government is who do you provide "incentives" to. Not all bids for such projects are necessarily sound.

What they should being doing is treating providers of public infrastructure, as a public utility company. If the infrastructure uses public property, it should be considered as an investment by the Government for its people. I guarantee you that Rogers, nor Bell, pay the same pole or land use rates that an ordinary citizen would.

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[commodore64_love]

>>>it is not a good idea to put two sets of coax (TV cable) in the ground.

Why not? Is the amount of room underground so limited that we only have room to run one cable? Sorry but I'm not buying your argument. In my area we have exactly that situation with two cables running in parallel, and a choice between two CATV companies*. It's great because it promotes competition, and I think this model should be copied in every U.S. city. It puts the power in the hands of the customer to choose. "Power to the People" as some like to say.

*
* Soon to be three CATV companies once Verizon finishes the FiOS upgrade.

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[ILongForDarkness]

In my area Comcast and Verizon compete with one another, and I see a lot of benefit

This is phone versus cable. They aren't using the same infrastructure. I guess it all depends on how you define the industry whether they are a monopoly or not. Bell owns the infrastructure for phone, but has been forced to lease it out to create competition. They still are the sole supplier of the underlying hardware as far as I know.

My understanding is that Sprint and MCI bought their service from AT&T wholesale and then resold it. It was the government that forced AT&T to sell the minutes at "fair prices", which allowed MCI and friends to undercut AT&T which in turn forced AT&T to reduce its prices/change service etc. The government could have achieved the same thing with a price cap. It is all a matter of which flavor of glue politian's happen to prefer to sniff at the moment. Before they tried to regulate to make sure that the cable and phone guys didn't charge too much, then they got hooked on the efficient market theory and decided that free markets were the way to go. Now they think under-regulation helped cause the financial crisis so are going to regulate some more. Big old circle.

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[ILongForDarkness]

I know your point is that it doesn't seem to make much sense for a company in terms of profit but although the profits might not be the same as that of a natural monopoly, I think the profits of an oligopoly would still be attractive.

Actually it was completely the opposite. I was arguing that a natural monopoly exists (and a government allows it to exist) because it is in the best interests of the customers. You can only discount to get into the market for so long. Eventually you have to start paying for the infrastructure and need to earn a normal return on investment. Several infrastructures, with sets of administration overhead etc, is just going to be more expensive than one in some scenerios.

There is a concept called minimum efficient scale, where the cost of producing another item falls with number produced and then levels out. Sometimes the whole market can be served by one company running at the minimum efficient scale, but any competitor that enters would not only not initially run at an efficient scale, but would take enough customers away from the first company that neither company would be in the efficient region. Thus prices would be higher with competition than by letting the monopoly continue in these cases. Governments then can try to prevent the monopolist from taking advantage of customers by either regulating (or control as a public entity) the monopoly, or create artificial competition by breaking down parts of the market and forcing the monopolist to allow the competitors (eg. leasing the infrastructure to other companies that provide the service).

Personally I don't like forced competition. It just seems like beating around the bush. You force a company to provide their equipment at competitive prices to competition so that the competition can undercut and force the monopolist to lower their prices. Why not just tell the monopolist what price they can charge the end customer? It's effectively the same thing and removes the costs associated with switching providers a lot of advertising overhead etc.

Also I don't like the situation were my service provider isn't the one that owns the infrastructure. I recently got DSL installed. The provider couldn't tell me when the phone guys would be by to activate my phone system because it was another company that owned the underlying phone line. When it breaks will I have the same problem, oh it's not us it is the phone company? I just don't like the idea of more than one company being responsible for one product that I purchase.

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[commodore64_love]

>>>This is phone versus cable. They aren't using the same infrastructure.

No it's internet versus internet, and it's irrelevant how they provide that service whether it's coax, twisted pair, fiber, or squirrels with packets tied to their backs (like sneakernet but more furry). What's relevant is that I have a *choice* for my internet, and that competition for my business benefits me with lower prices ($15/month) or higher speeds or both. That's better then the old monopoly that charged $100/month for high-speed.

>>>My understanding is that Sprint and MCI bought their service from AT&T wholesale and then resold it

Perhaps initially, but by the 1980s Sprint and MCI had installed their own long-distance networks. Sprint used to brag that their new fiber optics network was better-sounding than AT&T's old twisted-pair service. So it was not simply leased lines, but a whole separate infrastructure. It was true competition with separate companies and separate lines.

>>>It is all a matter of which flavor of glue politian's

Let's leave the bullshit out of this and focus on the economics. Time-and-time again history shows competition leads to "fear" of losing customers which means better service overall, whereas monopoly leads to a "don't care" attitude amongst the managers and stagnation. After all if your customers have no place to go, you can treat them like crap and still make your money. That includes both types of monopoly - whether it's AT&T or Uncle Sam.

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[Dragonslicer]

Better examples of natural monopolies would have been things that have strict limits that can't be overcome in any feasible way. Education is a poor example, since it's always possible to go a few miles in the other direction to attend a different school. Natural monopolies are things like roads, water pipes, and utility lines, since there isn't enough space to have three roads and five water pipes running to everyone's home, nor would you want a different company every week closing the road to your home so that they can work on the pipes or power lines.

Probably the best solution for Internet access is something similar to what has been done for some electricity providers. One entity owns the physical lines, and different ISP's buy bandwidth on those lines to sell to customers. The ISP's are then competing on things like service, and the line owners are encouraged to build more bandwidth that they can sell to the ISP's.

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[wvmarle]

In case of one shared cable you save half the cost of putting two cables in the ground, save half the disruption to residents due to dug up sidewalks, and you could even have five no ten companies offering services on the same cable. Now that is competition, and because there is only one cable to maintain the costs and final price for the consumer will be lower.

In my home country of The Netherlands, everybody has a choice of a couple dozen ADSL providers on a single telephone network. Serious competition.

In my current residence Hong Kong there are possibly hundreds of IDD companies, all operating on the same telephone networks (that includes fixed and mobile). IDD calling is almost as cheap as local calling. Also serious competition.

But in HK only one cable Internet/TV provider, and one ADSL Internet/TV provider. No competition. And as such our Internet fees are quite high, and customer service is poor. Mobile internet is better as there are more than two providers (about five on 3G alone) and they are really competing with one another, driving down prices fast. It'd be great if there were more companies that could offer ADSL services on the same cable.

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[nabsltd]

The national debt is now at $110,000 per U.S. home and will climb to $150,000 before the next presidential election. Add another $90,000 in personal mortgage/credit card debt (on average).

Mortgage debt doesn't count if your home value is more than what you owe. This is true of any "secured" debt.

So, although I owe about $109K on my house, since its current market value is about $350K (down from over $450K two years ago, but up from the bottom of about $325K), it's not an overall negative on my net worth.

The really sad part of your numbers is that I'm middle class and although it would be really, really tight, I could pay off my portion of the national debt. If much more wealthy people did more than their fair share (not even a lot more, relatively...maybe $500K for people with net worth over $100M), the debt could easily be paid off.

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[maxume]

I'm not happy with the debt load, it should be far lower, but it is important to point out that the U.S. economy generates something like $100,000 of income each year for each household. At that level, the debt is entirely serviceable (but it is quickly running away from serviceable).

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[nabsltd]

No it's internet versus internet, and it's irrelevant how they provide that service whether it's coax, twisted pair, fiber, or squirrels with packets tied to their backs (like sneakernet but more furry).

So, what you're saying is that in order to reach 100Mbps on the last mile, we need to cross-breed all the nut-bearing trees (oak, walnut, pecan, etc.) with methamphetamine so that the squirrels can keep the latency down.

Now, that's something I'd really like to see the "broadband stimulus package" pay for.

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[Anonymous Coward]

The national debt is now at $110,000 per U.S. home and will climb to $150,000 before the next presidential election. Add another $90,000 in personal mortgage/credit card debt (on average). $200,000-$240,000 per home may not be bankruptcy, but it's as close as you can get without crossing the line. We are in deep trouble.

Why? Because you quoted a bunch of numbers? The current GDP per household is $122K. I don't see any trouble making payments which I calculate at about $25K per year using a 30-year loan at 10%.

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[ILongForDarkness]

The original article is about other DSL companies complaining that Bell's policy will make unlimited internet service unavailable because Bell is going to charge them usage based billing not fixed for their use of their infrastructure. Comcast/Verizon are totally different hardware. Yes I agree with you to the end user the internet should be the internet. To these other DSL companies though, they are seeing one companies billing choices forcing them to choose a similar billing method. Wether that is the case is debatable. They could still charge a flat rate and average out the costs for heavy and light users.

Time-and-time again history shows competition leads to "fear" of losing customers which means better service overall, whereas monopoly leads to a "don't care" attitude amongst the managers and stagnation.

Good point. The quality of service probably would improve.

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[Chris Burke]

When it breaks will I have the same problem, oh it's not us it is the phone company?

Yes, and even if it's not just an excuse, you're still screwed. The company selling you DSL would like to keep you as a customer, but the phone company has zero incentive to help a competitor's customer out so they'll drag their feet like its going out of style. Happened to me when I had a third party (can't remember the name, this was in 1999 and it started with C I think?) DSL provider, but Ameritech owned the phone lines. It took my DSL provider a day to get it installed, but they discovered that a piece of equipment in the apartment complex was very old and worn and would only allow a trickle of data through. It took two months of harassment before Ameritech would fix it. If I'd been paying for their (shitty shitty shitty) DSL, they'd have fixed it right away.

But hey, end result was better than letting Ameritech have exclusive use of the lines and do whatever they want to their captive customers!

Your 3rd option of heavy regulation of price etc (and in a way that isn't just a regulatory blowjob to the company anyway) is sadly much less likely than either of the other two.

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[I_Voter]

WOW!! I sure am glad that I live in an apartment.

I_Voter

Although the pile of democratic nations has been growing, when the ability of U.S. voters to influence their government is considered, the U.S. voter is close to the bottom of that pile!
Political Power in the U.S.
A Work in Progress

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[NeoSkandranon]

Don't forget: the phone company will insist their shit is working just fine and that it's the provider's issue. Good luck.

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[NeoSkandranon]

Between labor and equipment it quite probably did cost them that. Why they decided to do it, who knows. Are there many houses between yours and the road that might be hooked up later?

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[frieko]

They are not natural though, they were formed from contracts that were drafted with precision greed and much forward contemplation of their potential future value.

Actually it is a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly has to do with the economics of the situation, not with who or how the contracts are given. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

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[NeoSkandranon]

It's not a bad example, although it may fit better in a local sense, where there may be "You go here if you live within X miles and tough luck if you don't like it" sort of rules. Charter schools among other things are making it less so, lately.

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[Vu1turEMaN]

I live directly on a main road near pittsburgh international airport, so its hard to say. My house is tucked in 1/2 mile off of the road, so maybe they said "oh, he lives right on the main road where the fiber is...it won't cost much to get him as a customer", but when the installers came to lay the cable they didn't second guess their install orders.

They loved our install too, as we have a conduit from the pole to our house. Even got a fios t-shirt :)

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[NeoSkandranon]

Lucky.

My current home, (Charlotte) has, as i understand it, an almost nil chance of getting FIOS in the near future :(

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[JesseMcDonald]

There's no need to get the government involved. Last-mile natural monopolies (roads, power, water, communication) are among the few cases where co-ops happen to be ideal. They have all the advantages of local democratic control over infrastructure, and lack the ethical quandaries inherent in government due to the legitimization of force.

Many existing utilities, most notably electricity, are already managed in large part via co-ops. The trick is to recognize that the co-op is there to own the shared infrastructure and provide oversight, not to run the day-to-day operations. Co-ops are useful when properly applied, but are otherwise inefficient compared to other organizational models.

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[Anonymous Coward]

The actual cost of digging and laying fibre lines is quite cheap.

It is prohibitivly expensive obtaining the proper right-of-ways.

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[MightyMartian]

I agree completely. I think governments essentially giving money to private concerns to build infrastructure is ludicrous. Either it's a private concern, or it's a public one. I have no problem with telcos and cable companies being contracted to build and maintain infrastructure, right down to billing if need be. But it should be contractual, and the infrastructure belongs to the public. If it's the other way around, and this is a private concern, then the government should have nothing to do with it at all.

Now we have the worst of both worlds. Essentially, our telecommunications networks in North America were basically paid for in large part via tax dollars, but the companies act as if it's all private infrastructure.

Quite frankly, I'd simply tell the communications companies "If you want to do this, that's fine, but first please pay back every last nickel of taxpayer money you ever got directly or indirectly to build these networks."

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[commodore64_love]

>>>Mortgage debt doesn't count if your home value is more than what you owe. This is true of any "secured" deb

Gotta disagree. What about homes that carry $400,000 mortgages, but now are only worth $150,000 on the open market? In theory banks can evict the tenants and sell the homes, but that represents a huge loss for the banks and it's why many of them are crumbling. You can't just pretend that mortgage debt doesn't have any effect on the overall debt load.

As for the rich "paying their fair share" - The top 1% already pays 90% of the national tax bill. The top 5% pay 99%. How much more can we bleed these people? The truth of the matter is both we and our representatives need to stop spending so damn much money.

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[commodore64_love]

>>>I live in an apartment.

An apartment is considered a "home". So yes you owe ~$110,000 towards the national debt. ($12 trillion divided by 110 million homes). And climbing to $150,000 before the next presidential election arrives. To give you some idea how much that is, I had $30,000 in college loans and even though I paid them off as quickly as possible, it still took 3 years. So figure 15 years total to payoff my share of the U.S. debt.

Of course our government won't actually pay it - they'll just pass it off to our children and grandchildren. And devalue our money by ~8% a year. You have $100,000 in the bank? In ten years it will only be worth the equivalent of $43,000.

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[commodore64_love]

>>>the U.S. voter is close to the bottom of that pile!

This is why we have a Constitution. The power of that contract between the States, the People, and the U.S. is supposed to protect us from abuses.

Re:Do-over

[commodore64_love]

>>>The original article is about other DSL companies complaining that Bell's policy will make unlimited internet service unavailable because Bell is going to charge them usage based billing not fixed for their use of their infrastructure. Comcast/Verizon are totally different hardware.
>>>

Still non-relevant since cable companies are also imposing usage fees (see Time-Warner). Yes they move different technologies, coaxial versus twisted-pair, but the end result is leading down the same path with the same increased fees.

As for the actual fees, it doesn't bother me at all. The more you download, the more electricity you are using all along the wire back to the ISP's central office. I think they have a right to charge higher rates to those specific customers, in order to cover the increase electrical cost.

Re:Do-over

[commodore64_love]

I like how you completely & totally ignored my *working* example of having two cable companies serving my home (soon to be three with FiOS). Your argument is nulled. Competition works right here at my home.

Re:Do-over

[nabsltd]

Gotta disagree. What about homes that carry $400,000 mortgages, but now are only worth $150,000 on the open market?

What part of "if your home value is more than what you owe" wasn't clear?

If you owe $400K and your house is only worth $150K, then you are $250K in the hole. Your debt is still technically "secured", but like anything else, you have to owe less than you can sell it for to be in the black.

For "unsecured" debt (like credit cards), though, you are in the red from the get-go. This is primarily because much of unsecured debt has absolutely no backing in real goods. If you buy a Playstation 3, you might be able to sell it off to pay the credit card bill, but all those burgers and beers you downed at Bennigan's/TGIF/etc., have no resale value except to fans of 2G1C.

As for the rich "paying their fair share" - The top 1% already pays 90% of the national tax bill. The top 5% pay 99%. How much more can we bleed these people?

What they pay compared to the rest of the country isn't important. What they pay as a percentage of their income is far more important as far as "fair" is concerned. For that, they pay far less as a percentage, since much of what they earn isn't classified as income, so they pay things like capital gains tax instead.

The truth of the matter is both we and our representatives need to stop spending so damn much money.

I don't know about people, but I definitely agree the government needs to be cut back. As the thread on energy savings noted, far too many government budgets are based on how much they spent last year, so they always spend every dollar they get, even if they have to waste it on stuff that doesn't really need to be done.

Re:Do-over

[mengel]

Given that the top 1% own about 40% of the financial wealth in the country, having them pay 90% of the income tax bill seems pretty reasonable to me.

When they get down to maybe owning 20% of the country's financial wealth, then maybe it's time to back off a bit on the taxes. But it doesn't seem to be slowing them down much.

And as a member of the top 20% of income, (who own over half the country's financial wealth) I pay a noticably higher percentage of my income than someone who is poor. And I think that's fair too. I can afford it much better than they can. And the Gates and Forbes and other top 1% of the country can afford it even better than I can.

Re:Do-over

[Man On Pink Corner]

Why in the world would you suggest government subsidies? The existing telcom companies were subsidized. It obviously didn't help. Even though they are gouging the public with infrastructure built with the public's own money, no one seems interested in holding them accountable.

Let's try capitalism for a change.

Re:Do-over

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I guess we can't fault them for trying what Roger's has been doing for years.
CRTC needs a backbone...

Re:Do-over

[wvmarle]

Do you really get competing offers with lower prices from the other company than you use currently (I mean you use company A and company B sends you a better offer)? Has the price really gone down significantly (as in more than 30%) since the second operator is there? Are your prices significantly lower and service quality significantly better than in locations where there is only one cable operator?

Two companies is a duopoly, that is not free competition. There is no way for NEW competitors to enter the market, that's why. And that is the part YOU conveniently forget about. It's better than one, as you have a second choice if one totally screws up.

Re:Do-over

[Anonymous Coward]

Why in the world would you suggest government subsidies? The existing telcom companies were subsidized. It obviously didn't help. Even though they are gouging the public with infrastructure built with the public's own money, no one seems interested in holding them accountable.

Let's try capitalism for a change.

Well, if anyone else wanted to step up to the plate and lay down fiber, they could have for the past 30+ years. No one did. You need someone to step in. Who better than the people you already pay to represent you?

Thats it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm moving to.. oh. Well fuck them!

Re:Thats it...

[shimojimatto]

I'm moving to.. oh. Well fuck them!

Move to Japan! The AWESOME internet choices are endless!

1000Mbit fibre Optic for $50/mo after a $300 setup fee (this service is pretty new)
Unlimited usage... no caps... no filters

OR
100Mbit fibre optic for $60~70 a month no setup fee
Unlimited usage... no caps... no filters

OR
50Mbit ADSL for $30 a month.. no setup fee
Unlimited usage... no caps... no filters

OR
3.0Mbit (down... only about 1Mbit up) wireless internet anywhere through the cell network for varying prices based on data usage...

And those top 3 also usually include free IP phones and some sort of video download service... optional Video On Demand services etc.etc...

Why does the US suck so bad?

Re:Thats it...

[arogier]

Not everything going on in the US broadband wise is completely disheartening. Last week my hometown passed a bond initiative to fund fiber to the home as a municipal utility.
http://www.highlandilnews.com/index.html

Re:Thats it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Move to Japan!

The bandwidth ain't the only reason I'd like to move there, if you get what I mean.

Re:Thats it...

[TheP4st]

The bandwidth ain't the only reason I'd like to move there, if you get what I mean.

Would the other reason have something to do with tentacles?

Re:Thats it...

[shimojimatto]

Yeah. The AWESOME porn choices are endless!

You can get used school girls' panties at vending machines, and act like it's totally normal.

OR Buy mangas with shitting dick-nipples in them, and act like it's totally normal.

OR Can play "Say the tongue-twister correctly and get loads of money. Say it wrong, and get a kick in the balls." on live countrywide TV, and act like it's totally normal.

no one here would call any of that normal...
except the being crushed into the train and the studying...

OR leave your car, bike, and apartment/house unlocked all day and have it all be there when you get back and act love the country for it.

OR see about a gazillion hot girls on my way to and from work everyday and love the city for it.

OR recycle 75% of your garbage and use economical ecological public transit every day... and love the country for it.

OR have a decent sized house that really wasn't that expensive but is still only 30 minutes commute from anywhere in the city... and wonder why people who pay $5000 a month for an apartment are so retarded.

... and yeah... some of the porn/sex biz stuff is pretty messed up. And some of the TV shows are kind of crazy... but F-ing hilarious!

Re:Thats it...

[ag0ny]

OR
Pay $5000 for a 30 m2 apartment, share it with 5 other people, so you can pay the rent, and act like it's totally normal.

Not true. More like $800/month for a nice 40 m2 apartment, for myself alone. Oh, and that price includes 30Mbps fiber optics. Unlimited and unfiltered, of course.

It's also probably worth noting that our IT-job salaries are much higher here than they would be if we were working in the USA.

Re:Thats it...

[Mishotaki]

Yeah. The AWESOME porn choices are endless!

You can get used school girls' panties at vending machines, and act like it's totally normal.

OR Buy mangas with shitting dick-nipples in them, and act like it's totally normal.

too bad that there is a law against showing genitals in porn...

Re:Thats it...

[darkstar949]

That rent really isn't that bad considering I'm paying US$1000 for a 42 sq meter apartment near Boston and I have to pay for my internet and phone separately, another US$90 a month.

However, how much did it cost for you to acquire and move into the apartment? I've heard that some of them what up to six months worth of rent up front.

Re:Thats it...

[Anonymous Coward]

by Hurricane78 (562437)

So, I assume 78 is your IQ and not your year of birth. Fucking retard.

Re:Thats it...

[socrplayr813]

It's much more feasible for them to run cable in Japan because of the population density. They get a lot more people out of those 1000 ft of cable than most of the US. Only our biggest cities can come close to that value, and most people in the US don't live in them. All that open space means a lot of digging to get people connected, even in relatively dense suburbs.

Re:Thats it...

[Anonymous Coward]

It sucks so bad becasue of the size of your infrastructure. Japan is 143,619 square miles. That's slightly smaller than the state of California. How much would it cost to put in fiber in the entire US, as apposed to just CA?

Why do you think Japan is on the leading edge of cellphones? How many towers would you need to cover CA? Compair that to number that you need to get nation wide coverage in the US.

Re:Thats it...

[BAKup]

Now just wait for the local Telco and Cableco to sue your hometown for doing that. While your town is getting sued, they will start building out their own network while the town is having to fight in court and not be able to do any work.

Re:Thats it...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's crap. There are no such services except in test markets.

Re:Thats it...

[Abcd1234]

Watch it, dude, that's socialism! Don't you see? Your township is now on the slippery slope to becoming a pinko commune filled with evil godless heathens hell bent on destroying the American way of life! Soon enough, you'll be French, and then what'll you do??

Re:Thats it...

[commodore64_love]

>>>Move to Japan! The AWESOME internet choices are endless!.....Why does the US suck so bad?

It doesn't. The U.S. average speed is comparable to other continent-sized nations. In fact the European Union and United States are essentially tied, and both ahead of China, Brazil, and Mexico:

Korea 18 Mbit/s
Japan 16
Russian Federation 7
European Union, United States 6
Canada, Australia 5
Brazil, China 2
Mexico 1 Mbit/s

And if you prefer to look on a state-by-state basis, you will notice the fastest places are almost as fast as Japan's national average (16 Mbit/s). So if you want Japan-like speeds, simply move to Delaware or Washington and order-up some FiOS instead of bitching:
1 Sweden 11
2 Delaware 10
3 Washington 9
4 Netherlands,RI,NJ,MA 8
5 VA,NY,CO,CT,AZ,Germany, British Columbia 7 Mbit/s

Re:Thats it...

[commodore64_love]

>>>love the city for it.

Cities make me ill. Seriously. I don't mind visiting the city, but if I had to live there I'd have a nervous breakdown. Too much noise, too much crowding, too much concrete. I need to be surrounded by lots of trees with animals scurrying about. I have no "love" for the smelly, filthy, city. I prefer the healthy green of nature.

Re:Thats it...

[neoform]

Move to Japan! The AWESOME internet choices are endless!

I hear emigrating to Japan is a breeze, they hand out citizenships like toilet paper.

Re:Thats it...

[ag0ny]

I had to pay:

• 2 months in advance
• 1 month deposit (refunded when I move out)
• 1 month key money (money given to the owner, lost)
• 1 month for real state agency fees (lost)

So yes, it was 5 months paid in advance, two of them upfront rent, two more lost, and one that will be refunded when I move out (assuming no repairs are needed when I leave). But depends on the place anyway.

Re:Thats it...

[TheRaven64]

Soon enough, you'll be French, and then what'll you do?

Enjoy the cheese and wine and complain about the English?

Re:Thats it...

[Anonymous Coward]

too bad that there is a law against showing genitals in porn...

That explains everything. I watched some Japanese porn the other day and thought the myth of masturbation induced blindness was coming true!

Re:Thats it...

[snowraver1]

1 month key money (money given to the owner, lost) 1 month for real state agency fees (lost)

What is that garbage? I would have told the rentmaster to go f*ck themselves. Key Money? What is that for? A key costs like $5. Real Estate agency fees? Why would you pay that? It's not your house.

Re:Thats it...

[Paperweight]

1000 Mbit internet? The mind boggles.

Re:Thats it...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, vending machines.

Re:Thats it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny when I read it I saw the word goddess and though it might not be that bad.

Re:Thats it...

[arogier]

Well we already have socialized power. The government monopoly beats the hell out of the "private monopoly." Try selling me on the private utility idea when there are actually enough private players to create a market. Otherwise a private monopoly is just a cash machine.

Re:Thats it...

[Hurricane78]

Hey moderators. Replace your humor detector. It seems to be broken. ^^

Re:Thats it...

[Hurricane78]

You should have realized, that I like Japan, and thought you would get the humor. Obviously you did not. You suck. ^^

Re:Thats it...

[Hurricane78]

And who cares? By the way: I like kinky porn anyway. And that kind of porn does well with pixellated genitals.

Re:Thats it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I would prefer the porn/sex biz stuff and hilarious whacky TV to the glorification of violence and the way of the gun.

Re:Thats it...

[shimojimatto]

Well... you forgot your tags... so I was taking it all pretty seriously. I get feisty and defensive... Sorry for sucking! ...btw, I still haven't gotten around to buying any of those panties... Maybe I should sell my wifes? I wonder what I'd get for them...

Re:Thats it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the US suck so bad?

It's all about population density, Japan has approximately 10 times the population density of the US, making it necessary to have a LOT more infrastructure to reach the same number of customers. As such, prices are higher in the US. In Canada the problem is even worse, since it's population density is approximately one tenth that of the US.

Re:Thats it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan: 377,873 square km - 127 million people

US: 9,629,091 square km - 306 million people

Canada: 9,984,670 square km - 33 million people

Need we say more?

Re:Thats it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Surrender to the Germans?

You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[jonwil]

No wholesale provider here in Australia could impose such charges on 3rd party ISPs in this way, if they did, the ACCC would put a stop to that. (at least as far as fixed line DSL goes)

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[freedom_india]

Australia??? The land where Telescum is the provider of crappy broadband experience, and where Optus sucks??
Where the Government has plans to engage in gagging free speech at a level that will make Himmler jealous?
Seriously??

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[Anonymous Coward]

he said teeth, not brains... key distinction there 'mate ;)

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[Anonymous Coward]

Teksavvy is just a reseller of Bell service. Any charges Bell imposes on Teksavvy get passed onto the consumer.

This is still better than the alternative with most Canadian ISPs where if you go over the (low) cap, you just get kicked off your contract (paying the early cancellation fee).

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[Nazlfrag]

Australia? Where you get charged $150 a gigabyte for excess usage? As detailed in the light grey text in smaller font underneath the plan? Yeah, we're doing great.

Telstra: Additional usage charged at $0.15/MB.
Optus: Excess Data: $0.15/MB up to 2 GB then Speed Limited to 64 kbps

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[Techman83]

Yeah as backwards as the current government seems to be, certain things have been put in place in the past. Telstra internally isn't even allowed to talk to it's own wholesale department.

Not to say the situation is at all that great here, Telstra have a monopoly, especially in Mobile phones (Leave any major city and you'll only get Telstra coverage)

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[Anonymous Coward]

Internode? Adam? iiNet?
And Telstra have been slapped down over their crap in the past, and the Rudd government looks like it is going to do that better (and I say that as a paid-up member of the Liberal Party). there are many things wrong with our broadband system, but at least we are better-off than the USA and Canada.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignoring that Internet access in Australia is worse than in Canada (for you Americans, Canadian Internet access is quite a lot worse here now than in most places in the states), I'd say it's a combination of CRTC incompetence, ineffectiveness, some historical artifacts due to our proximity to the US, and a government that sucks on telecom policies (not to say that Liberals were much better seeing as how ACTA got started under them, but at least they were incompetent/lacked political will regarding these issues & only payed lip service to appease US interests).

There's also the whole issue with it seeming like the CRTC is pretty much owned by the communication providers (Rogers in particular). DSL is at least somewhat regulated (whereas for some reason the same regulations don't apply to Rogers). They get even worse when it comes to cell-phone service where we have little to no competition (we have about 3 national cell-phone providers - 1 GSM, 2 CDMA), although that is arguably the fault of the CRTC but of legislation* that severely limits/forbids foreign-ownership of communication networks in Canada.

* I think the legislation is correct in spirit even if the wording is wrong. One of its goals is to ensure that these companies come under Canada's far stricter privacy laws.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[RuBLed]

I don't live in Australia and I can't believe the pages you had sent. A 1GB cap (combined upload and download) per month at at least 8Mbps speeds. Isn't that like consuming your bandwidth in a few minutes after (accidentally) clicking some HD video streaming site? Why not limit it in speeds? I'm inclined to think that the ISPs there like their victims to rack up additional charges and laugh maniacally while printing the bills.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[jonwil]

I am paying AU$50 per month and getting 25GB (10GB peak and 15GB off peak) per month with no excess usage charges ever. If I exceed the 25GB, I get shaped back down to 64kbps for the rest of the month. Only idiots who sign up with Tel$tra BigPond or Optarse get hit with crap like that, there are options available (no matter what bit of gear your phone line is hooked up to) that have no excess usage fees ever. (pretty much all of them do have the "you get x amount per month and then get shaped down to 64k or 128k for the rest of the month" though)

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like an incredibly bad deal. In the UK I'm paying £17.50 (~US$25) for unlimited broadband at around ~400kbps down, 25%-50% of that up. The sort of deal you're getting for AU$50 would typically cost £10 or less a month, and Sky offer a free service not far off that.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[Anonymous Coward]

Which kinda shows that all the people in the United States who are complaining so much about restrictive internet need to pull their head out and realise that they rode a fairly sweet deal for a long while and it's about time they came back to reality.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[Malc]

I was paying almost half that with Teksavvy when I lived in Toronto (up to last year). I was on the "premium" plan, which gave me 100GB/mo. I can't remember what the charge was for exceeding that, but it was reasonable. Their other non-premuum plan had unlimited usage, but used transit/peer connections or something that weren't as good (i.e. higher or variable latency).

In Australia, if you have DSL but not ADSL2+, many people have 384kbs upstream or less (yes, I'm one of them), which is just ridiculous. I haven't had upstream that slow for 9 years (limited to 320kbs back then due to the Nortel platform Bell was using before they switched to regular G.DMT), and it's amazing how much difference it makes. That coupled with poor performance in Sydney where I'm routed across the Pacific makes it pretty sluggish at times. Maybe a different ISP would be better, but oh, you get locked in to contracts here too, making it expensive to change. Kevin Rudd would be better spending the $2,000/person on things other than the last mile, as that's not really the main problem.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[linzeal]

So do banks. Some banks live off overdraft fees and ATM surcharges, wait all of them do.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[DarqFallen]

I am paying $45.00 a month for DRY loop 5meg w/ 200 gigabyte (not gigabit) cap. If I go over Teksavvy averages this over the last 2 months. If that average is under 200gb, No charge, if its over $0.25 per GB or I can buy a pack of 100GB for $10. There is no throttling if you use MLPPP which Teksavvy fully supports.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[donatzsky]

Ouch! I pay EUR 30/month, and for that I get whatever my line can handle (18/1 in my case) and no limits what so ever. Plus free landline phone (including international calls) and a decently large iptv package. http://www.free.fr/adsl/

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[Sinbios]

Did you read the article? You're about to get royally penetrated.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[bemo56]

In Australia, if you have DSL but not ADSL2+

Actually we have just started getting ADSL2+ Connections hooked up in the city areas. I was able to download a 10mb file in the time it took to click the link, I'd be blown away by the speeds you can get in other countries.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[Hobb3s]

Oh how I wish I could get another internet provider. I live in the middle (literally) of a major Canadian city (Ottawa) and my options for high speed internet access (anything above 'Lite') requires the purchasing of cable internet. Which is supplied by only one cable company, Rogers. Who then traffic shapes and caps the hell out of the connection. Sure I can download at 8Mbps but my cap space runs out in under 48hrs if I do that. Try seeding a linux distro back to the community, nope sorry that is traffic shaped, no seeding. Not to mention like clock work every year or less I get a notice in the mail that prices are going up on my tv and internet because of all the great service they're providing me... which really, hasn't changed at all. So I'm now paying more for the same level of service that I've had for the last 5 yrs... and next year.. I'll pay more. They say, it's not a monopoly, you have options.. yeah, if I pay to get fiber strung to my house from an independent ISP at $200 a foot, or use my phone line with a 56k modem. End rant.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[syousef]

I am paying AU$50 per month and getting 25GB (10GB peak and 15GB off peak) per month with no excess usage charges ever. If I exceed the 25GB, I get shaped back down to 64kbps for the rest of the month. Only idiots who sign up with Tel$tra BigPond

Actually as much as I hate Telstra I have to tell you that your information is out of date. I'm paying $54/month for 10GB, and contemplating moving to $80 for 25GB/month. Both are slowed to 64kbps after the cap. Neither of them have any of this peak/off peak nonsense attached, and I get many Linux distros for free and without it contributing to the limit at files.bigpond.com.

The down side. Customer support has gotten worse over the years and if I can't tell if the problem is at my end or I get an incompetent tech I could be charged for having cable dropouts etc. fixed. They still only support their own equipment so you're SOL if you are using your own router/firewall. (If you do have a problem you can get around this by using a PC you don't care about and connecting it directly, then wiping it when you're done).

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[jonwil]

This isn't Telstra, its TPG.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[syousef]

This isn't Telstra, its TPG.

Please re-read. The GP complained that Telstra and Optus were the problem and said that being with TPG he got a better deal. I retorted that while Telstra has its problems they've adjusted their pricing to be more competitive.

Consequence of CRTC regulations

[Dr J. keeps the nerd]

The CRTC requires Bell to resell its lines for fixed rates. Bell must offer service that's at least as good as what it provides to its own customers. As the regulated rate is below Bell's own rate of return from an actual Bell customer, Bell has no incentive to provide better service that what it provides to its own customers. If the CRTC allowed for other arrangements, Bell could strike a deal with a wholesaler to offer unlimited service at a higher price. As it stands, it can't. Nothing here is surprising.

Re:Consequence of CRTC regulations

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. For wholesale DSL, "Bell" is two different companies. One division (Nexxia?) owns the last mile and is the reseller to wholesale DSL providers. The other division, "Sympatico", is Bell's internet retailer.

The CRTC can only mandate what the 'last-mile' division of Bell does. Sympatico is free to do whatever it wants. The Sympatico tail is wagging the Nexxia dog.

The CRTC needs to keep Nexxia on a leash and allow for proper competition between Sympatico (DSL retailer) and all the other DSL retailers that get wholesale access to the last-mile network.

Re:Consequence of CRTC regulations

[bartok]

Bell make more than enough money to both maintain and enhance the infrastucture it was given the *priviliedge* to administer. Your argument is bogus.

Re:Consequence of CRTC regulations

[camperdave]

Bell make more than enough money to both maintain and enhance the infrastucture it was given the *priviliedge* to administer.

When looking at the company as a whole, I agree with you. However, with more and more people dropping land lines in favour of cell phones, and more and more people using the cheaper DSL and voice resellers, I wouldn't be surprised that there's a financial pinch within a Bell division/subsidiary somewhere along the line.

What should happen is a complete separation of physical provisioning and communication services. One company should look after the wires, and a different company should provide the voice and/or data links. We had a similar situation here with the power lines. One company provided the wires and the power that those wires carried. If you wanted to use a different power provider, you were Straight Outta Luck.

Re:Consequence of CRTC regulations

[Anonymous Coward]

The CRTC does, in fact, allow for other arrangements. Bell does not enter into them because it has no incentive to, not because it isn't allowed to.

Greed at its finest....

[notarockstar1979]

It's too bad really. They will do everything they can to keep any actual competition from showing up in a market. They're just making the customers of the smaller ISPs suffer out of spite.

Re:Greed at its finest....

[PhilixDMA]

Consequently they'll lose my business. I'm currently with Teksavvy and the pricing/service is excellent. Best I've ever recieved. I've used Rogers and Bell in the past and paid easily three times as much for the bandwidth I've used. Teksavvy also has an extremely helpful set of tech support staff and maintains an open dialog with their customers on the dslreports.com forums. Sadly, if Bell manages to get this usage based billing by the CRTC, I'll be changing to a cable service like Rogers as I won't want to provide Bell with any money even through another company. Currently, I use an analog phone service from Bell for around 30$ a month, with Teksavvy costing 35$ + Tax monthly for 200GB and a static IP. If I switch to Rogers, Bell will lose me as a phone customer. I'll have no reason to not subscribe to a digital phone service from Rogers.

Re:Greed at its finest....

[multipartmixed]

> If I switch to Rogers, Bell will lose me as a phone customer. I'll have no
> reason to not subscribe to a digital phone service from Rogers.

Make sure your port your number. When you port your number away from Bell, it triggers some magic retention-department panic. They'll call you several times asking how they can get your business back. Make sure you tell them exactly why you're no longer a Bell customer, maybe if enough people shout loud enough they'll eventually listen.

In my case, there was no DSLAM in the nearest CO; they suggested I get Bell WiMax. After I finished laughing at them, I explained that my new phone company had their own ADSL2+ DSLAM in that same CO, and that I was pleased-beyond-belief with the service I was receiving. The bits... they torrent!!

Re:Greed at its finest....

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is providing you with ADSL2+ DSLAM? If that is available in Montreal I am switching right away!

Re:Greed at its finest....

[inject_hotmail.com]

Who did you go to?

Re:Greed at its finest....

[DarthVain]

You may want to re-think that.

Its not a monopoly as the article suggests, but rather a duopoly. Rogers is just as bad. Its sort of like peoples complains about oil companies and price fixing. Bell and Rogers are *supposed* to be in competition with each other, but really both are happy with the way things are and they pretty much just mirror each other as far as it goes.

Case in point, Rogers recently changed the way I look at my bandwidth usage a week or so ago. They made a new web page under your user account... Guess what I noticed when I checked it?

Your monthly usage limit is: 60 GB (61,440 MB)
Additional usage costs:$ 1.50 per GB (1 GB = 1024 MB)

You have to love their EULA that basically states, "we can change this whenever the hell we damn feel like it. Too frickin' bad!"

A) When I first got my account there was no limit.
B) Currently or maybe I should say previously if you exceeded your limit you were given a warning and then disconnected.
C) Now or in the future it looks like they plan to charge you 1.50$ per GB extra. Isn't that nice. Also note that it is 6 TIMES the price of what Teksavvy is charging now for the same service.

Complete bullshit. This is how I find out also, on some obscure web page that no one really checks, which they just created. So underhanded.

I HATE telecommunications in Canada. The CRTC really needs to grow some balls for a change.

 

Re:Greed at its finest....

[multipartmixed]

Westport Telephone / WTC Communications. ILEC for a very small community in Eastern Ontario that is also a CLEC for the surrounding area.

Why, Oh Why!

[Skal Tura]

Why are they constantly attempting this, even tho users will always be mad?

And with these high prices too ... If the per gb price would even be something sensible! I transfer probably over 1Tb a month (backups, video feeds etc), so 0.25 would endup being 250euros per month for me ... Many times what i currently pay

Re:Why, Oh Why!

[Idiomatick]

It isn't Bell raising it's prices. Bell owns the last mile lines which it is forced to lease out to competition. Bell is raising it's competitors prices. That this would even get considered is scary.

Or come and live in SA....

[Sken-Pitilkin]

Where I pay around 60 times what Americans pay per gig (at a whopping 384kb/s) and I have a really cheap service provider :)

Re:Or come and live in SA....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then don't vote for the ANC again. Them thar bitches are milk'n you dry, beeaatch!

Re:Or come and live in SA....

[inasity_rules]

Move north one country and it gets even worse... Though at the moment I'm paying US$25/month for unlimited EDGE (~100kbps). When it works...

Go kill progress

[Bender Unit 22]

Everything these days are done on the internet from entertainment to doing taxes.
In some countries the goverment are even investing money in internet connectivity to provide better connections to more people.
But when you then start to charge by usage then you'll see people stop using it and development slows down.
One would think it was better for the country as a whole to have people to embrace the technology rather than do bean counting on their internet traffic.

Re:Go kill progress

[TheSpoom]

What's better for the country does not mesh with what's better for Bell.

Welcome to the world of business.

It's no coincidence

[myspace-cn]

This was planned, with everything going to hell, we can't have alternative voices. Any excuse to copy and analyze every packet and plan future attack on the people getting organized against the corruption in each respective country's government.

Canadians have their Republican Problem
Americans have their Corrupt two party problem.

The Broadcast spectrum is fascist owned in each country.

So as they crack down on people, there won't be many tools left to fight back.

(It would be nice if Canadians and Americans could get along in this light. Our LEADERS are the scum, not the citizens.)

Re:Christ this shit is funny.

[DeadDecoy]

Maybe being outspoken, vocal, and whiney, is the only way to get what you want. Sometimes if you let people take an inch, they go all the fucking way because they want to make money. You should try it sometime, maybe you'll get what you want. :)

Sounds like blackmail

[rossz]

That's a nice internet you have there.
It would be a shame if something were to happen to it.

sounds entirely reasonable

[petes_PoV]

you pay by usage for every other commodity, so why not bandwidth too?

If this had been the model from the very start (when modems ruled the earth), it would be taken as normal. It's only because the data volumes of users have been low, that it's not worth billing per megabyte. However now we have the "power users" (read: bandwidth hogs) bleating on, as if someone's taking away their candy.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

... because you already pay for bandwidth. I pay for 18Mbit. I don't pay for transfer volumes, and I like to keep it that way.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Because bandwidth isn't finite, as long as the pipe is there and lit the difference in cost for using 100% of the bandwidth compared to 0.1% is practically nothing. Unlike other utilities no resource is being consumed.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Nesa2]

Internet = Information
Would be nice if only rich people would have access to information and keep lower classes there, where they are?
What about public libraries? Only rich people can read unlimited amount of books, poor will have to read only 2 per month? Is this your logic?
Internet is not same as any other commodity.
Govermenets will take over Internet eventually or at least control it's access to ensure everyone is able to get at information equally.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Minupla]

Balderdash.

If bandwidth hogs were the issue they'd be going after companies who share a DSL with 100 staff. Ours is pegged all day every day. Check Bell's rate plans, business bandwidth is unlimited. How are the third parties going to compete with that? If Bell can sell unlimited bandwidth to business clients, shouldn't their wholesalers?

The issue is they want to put their competition out of business. Simple. They like being a monopoly (who wouldn't?) and want to make it as unprofitable as possible to compete with them, or at best, require all the wholesalers to lower their customer service to Bell's (crappy) standards.

Min

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[stephanruby]

If this had been the model from the very start (when modems ruled the earth), it would be taken as normal.

It did start like that initially. In France, the Minitel was charging by the minute (for most non-essential services). And in the US, the AOL service was charging by the minute as well. I remember that time well, one month -- my family had to pay AOL $500. The only other competitors were Prodigy and Compuserve (both were still using awful looking DOS interfaces, and I believe they also both charged by the minute as well).

It's only because the data volumes of users have been low, that it's not worth billing per megabyte.

Bullshit. Just take look at cell phones. Texting (even without any pictures) is ridiculously expensive for very little data. They attract you with what seem reasonable sounding rates, but they bank on you (or your family members) going over your limit -- charging you an arm and a leg if you go over (way more than their marginal cost for the overage).

It's just like the credit card industry, the people who always pay their bills on time are referred to as the deadbeat customers. And the customers that they can justifiably punish, they're allowed to rape them with overage/late fees.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Culture20]

Because bandwidth isn't finite, as long as the pipe is there and lit the difference in cost for using 100% of the bandwidth compared to 0.1% is practically nothing. Unlike other utilities no resource is being consumed.

"100%" can't be reached for something that isn't finite. Bandwidth is not infinite.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Hognoxious]

If bandwidth hogs were the issue they'd be going after companies who share a DSL with 100 staff.

Not that many comapnies have 100 employees, and those with more than that will have something like a leased line rather than DSL.

Plus I'm sure they charge plenty more for a business line.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[YrWrstNtmr]

you pay by usage for every other commodity, so why not bandwidth too?

Do we pay by the minute or hour of (digital) cable TV? No. So why then are other bits coming down the exact same wire any different?

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

This was this case from the very start.... AOL, CompuServ, and prodigy all had hourly billing... something like 25hrs a month + $x per hour over that and no way to track usage.....
ISP's discovered that customers like the unlimited option more and it just kind of took off from there. In fact, I still know of at least 1 isp that provides hourly dialup accounts.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Slavik81]

That's not true. Bandwidth is most definitely finite.

The marginal cost is a steps function. For example, on a 100Mbps Ethernet network with 5 computers with each computer using 10Mbps, it's free for any single computer to use 25Mbps if necessary. But if all the computers start trying to use 25Mbps, there is a significant cost to allow that.

Solar Power is another example where your created commodity is 'free', but finite.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, they do charge more.. about 7$ more at wholesale then the equivalent residential rate, for a slightly higher speed.

Not a big difference IMHO.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you believe you need more bandwidth? You can get twice as much for twice the cost (or the same cost if you're currently on a Bell service), by going to an ISP that supports MLPPP.
For instance, Teksavvy supports MLPPP (but requires effort), and some of their whole-sellers, such as Candlelight Communications, will most likely sell you a prepackaged solution.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiotic, not insightful. If I am to pay per megabyte of downloaded data, I won't be browsing with images on, nor flash on, nor anything with bells and whistles.

I also would aggressively filter out adverts. Google's entire business model would begin to collapse as adverts never get seen by anyone. In fact, if adverts ARE shown and I don't want them, and I PAY for the priviledge of them being sent to me, that surely is grounds for a court case?

A price per data downloaded plan will return the web to text only. Is that what you want?

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

you pay by usage for every other commodity, so why not bandwidth too?

I wouldn't have a big problem with this, except bandwidth is incredibly cheap and only getting cheaper. The CEOs of a few ISPs have stated themselves that bandwidth is not a problem in the slightest. Yet ISPs are presenting plans to bill you up to, and in some cases more than, 100x the true cost.

However now we have the "power users" (read: bandwidth hogs) bleating on, as if someone's taking away their candy.

Except that even one slightly tech-savvy person could blow through their very low caps or rack up an outrageous usage fee just for surfing youtube, Hulu, and making the occasional download of patches, games, movies, or music. Downloading a game from STEAM, which is common, could take you over the limit in one go. I won't even mention how easy it would be for a family or roommates who are sharing the same connection. Considering you're posting on /., I find it hard to believe that you do none of this or more.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[zaffir]

You're talking speed, Bell is talking volume.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[greed]

To keep the exact same wire analogy, we don't pay by the minute for local voice phone calls. So I could place a call to a TekSavvy modem at 151 Front St, where they have peering arrangements with The Big Pipe Providers, and I could leave that modem dialled 24/7. And it would be using far more of Bell's resources than the little bit of string they use to connect my copper loop to TekSavvy's network.

In fact, leased lines, which are much closer to the type line services used for Internet access, have been around for business data for decades and aren't usage-based.

Finally, the costs of those last mile services are pretty much independent on the data transferred. They're dependent on the data capacity. Once the string is run, it's maintenance is not usage-based. It's time-based, and event-based. (Squirrel chewing through the wire; degradation over time, that sort of thing.)

Given that DSL modems _MODULATE_, and the modulation schemes in use make sure the line is _NEVER AT DC_, even the cost of ELECTRICITY is independent of usage.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I'd like to listen to groovesalad for a day, and not have to worry about the possibility of going broke the way I do for a long distance call.

Imagine if you listened to the radio, and had to be concerned about usage charges. And having to sort through megabytes upon megabytes of daily spam will suddenly have a deep impact on your pocket book. Or someone emailing you wmv or mov files.

How many people will get a few of these overage bills and dump the internet because, like leasing a Mercedes, decide they can't afford it?

I don't mind if they choke excess bandwidth, but I don't like the idea of being charged for 'extra use'.

I suppose if the provider gave a choice for "variable/bill for overages" vs. "flat rate/choke for overages", that would be OK.. I just want to know my bill isn't going to walk all over the place each month because some virus goes bananas, there's some big spam run, and the kids all decide to watch a lot of youtube or download itunes all day while I'm not looking.

IMHO the technologies involved in 'using the internet' is too new and unstable to charge for service like a phone call.. there are too many things out of the control of the user.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Qzukk]

Teksavvy supports MLPPP

If they use Bell's lines to do it, Bell STILL cuts you off at the knees.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[BikeHelmet]

Their bandwidth cap is far too low. Their most expensive plans would cap at 60GB, and least expensive closer to 10GB or 20GB.

Teksavvy currently offers 200GB/mo for $30/mo, then $10 for the next 100GB.

With Bell's UBB restricting their pricing, they'd have to charge closer to $40/mo for 60GB bandwidth, and then ludicrous fees for overages. ($1/GB, $2.50/GB, whatever)

This directly impacts me, and I don't like it. :P

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Slavik81]

Mbps * seconds = Mb. Multiply every value in that post by 1 second and the post still stands.

Makes sense in the long run?

[Max Romantschuk]

Ultimately I think Internet access may well be another utility like water or electricity. It sort of makes sense to pay for what you use, so to speak.

But the charge should be so low that you need to really strain your connection a lot to feel it, and at the same time normal monthly fees need to go away.

I don't like the idea, but it makes sense economically. It costs energy to move packets around and keep networks running. The more you use the more you should pay.

But having some crazy base fee and then some punitive extra usage fee on top of that... No thanks.

Re:Makes sense in the long run?

[Locklin]

Water and electricity have monthly connection fees that are fixed in most places. Usage is tacked on top of that. If you use zero electricity or water for a given month, you will still get a (smaller) bill covering the infrastructure.

Usage based is fine if you're an honest ISP

[syousef]

- That means charge a very low initial access fee. Say $5-$10 max per month
- Don't force customers to pay for 20GB/month if they're not using it
- Don't force customers to predict how much they'll be using period then take their money anyway if they don't use it
- Do not charge a ridiculous amount beyond the cap. Charge a fixed rate per GB and keep it reasonable

ISPs and phone companies have had it too good for too long oversubscribing and overcharging for people using way under their quota. This move isn't to make things fair - it's to gouge heavy users. I don't pay $10 for my first 5 litres of petrol then $400 for my next 5 litres. One reason is that I could go to the competition. ISPs typically have monopoly, near monopoly or at best duopoly. They are NOT playing fair.

Re:Usage based is fine if you're an honest ISP

[Anonymous Coward]

In Romania, I'm paying 9 EUR/month for 3 Mbit Internet + 30 Mbit metropolitan (connections with peers from the same provider). Next time someone wants to say bad things about Eastern Europe, they should stop for a second and consider not only the technologies that are available, but also the costs for using them. We may not have many iPhones here, but almost everyone has a mobile phone.

Re:Usage based is fine if you're an honest ISP

[Idiomatick]

The problem is that Bell has a monopoly. To deal with this they are forced to sell their lines to other companies to compete with them. But now they are charging said companies per usage which is not how it is supposed to work for backbones. This will result in tripling the cost of competitors services. Which will in turn kill their competition and give them another monopoly. Teksavvy customers paying for the over 200GB/mo service (40$) will end up paying almost 200$ a month in the low end.

Another thing that Bell has been doing is shaping. They have been shaping Teksavvy's customers for years now. Which I think is another fairly clear abuse of monopoly power. Teksavvy is completely against the practice, had they their own lines they would not throttle torrent users or anything like that...

Re:Usage based is fine if you're an honest ISP

[Hizonner]

I agree. UBB actually makes a lot of sense, but the UBB structure they're proposing is wrong. If you're going to bill on usage, bill on usage; don't set up some arbitrary cap at which the rate goes insane.

I don't think it's a matter of gouging heavy users, though. Not exactly, anyway. The problem is that the carriers sized their infrastructure on the assumption that the subscriber base would grow a lot, but the data transferred per subscriber would not grow as much as it has. They didn't see mass-scale P2P file sharing coming along, let alone YouTube coming along and replacing cable TV.

So now they have a big, expensive, inadequate infrastructure (and an inadequate pricing model to go with it). The depreciation schedules they based their plans on require that infrastructure to last a long time before it gets replaced, but it's already being overwhelmed.

I think what they're really trying to do is less to gouge heavy users, and more to discourage heavy use entirely, so that they can continue to limp along on their old infrastructure long enough for it to pay for itself.

In other words, they screwed up their market forecasts, and now they want everybody do without improved service until they make their money back based on those flawed forecasts.

Of course it was their screwup in the first place, and most of them (I don't know about Bell or Canada) got a lot of subsidies and tax breaks based on promises of fabulous networks. They then kept as much of that money as they could get away with while building out the cheap network they thought they could get away with. I therefore think they (their shareholders) should really be first in line to eat the costs of writing off the infrastructure they built in error.

Then they can go ahead and do UBB to create a revenue stream to get financing to build a proper network.

Re:Usage based is fine if you're an honest ISP

[canajin56]

It's not even for backbones. The independent ISPs still have to pay for their own internet access. This $1/GB charge, plus the packet filtering, is done on the DSL connections themselves! TekSavvy does not get to use Bell's backbone connection, they must pay to run their own to Bell. This is just for the copper line and the DSLAM that's placed on it.

Re:Usage based is fine if you're an honest ISP

[Anonymous Coward]

> So now they have a big, expensive, inadequate infrastructure

That is wrong, last year when they were forced by the courts to reveal their actual usage, they showed that they only use 2% of their max capacity. They just want more money, period.

Re:Usage based is fine if you're an honest ISP

[Anonymous Coward]

>Teksavvy customers paying for the over 200GB/mo service (40$) --- that's actually $29.95 Canadian dollars

The UBB would be capped at $22.50 under the tariff, so you'll be paying $52.45 which is a +75% price increase in your internet connection charges.
There might be an additional extra $2 increase in Bell's cost on your DSL connection.

The kicker of this is Bell offers thier MAX 10 service at $42.50 for the first year with "up to" 10Mbps and transfer limit of 100GB. They are effectively under-selling the proposed tariff prices.

Re:Usage based is fine if you're an honest ISP

[Dhalka226]

but it's already being overwhelmed.

Is it? I can't find the precise post, but in a similar thread a few days back a slashdotter dug through a cable company (Time Warner?)'s financial filings. For their broadband business, they brought in $4 billion dollars last year, and their costs for it were around $230 million*. Let's assume, just to be nice to them, that those costs don't include employees and such, and let's be super-dooper-extra-nice and say that brings their total broadband costs to $2 billion.

They're still making $2 billion dollars a year profit on their broadband business. Even if their lines really are so taxed to the brim that they're about to buckle, this is not exactly the picture of a company that needs massive rate increases and overage fees to continue to provide service. And if you're bringing in $4 billion and expending $235 million, it doesn't even sound like a company that feels they NEED infrastructure improvements. Or at best, one who's certainly in no hurry to implement them.

More annoyingly, those same financial statements indicated that although they brought in significantly more money in 2008 than 2007, they spent only half as much money to provide those services. Again, this is not a picture of a company whose infrastructure is in dire straits.

Maybe they really are getting dangerously close to capacity; I sure as hell don't know. I do know they're not acting like it. They're acting like nothing but greedy corporate pigs, taking tax dollars, not improving infrastructure, then demanding you pay a higher fee because of seemingly phantom infrastructure issues.

How about a compromise: Let's pass a law establishing their rates right now, before any of these usage schemes or tiered pricing structures, as a baseline. Every few years we'll re-consider adjustments for inflationary purposes if they can justify it. Then they're free to do whatever scheme they want, with one caveat: Every single dime above those rates that they make must be used DIRECTLY, IMMEDIATELY and UNEQUIVOCALLY for broadband infrastructure improvements. Every dime. If they stick it in the bank, they have to use the interest for the same thing. If they fail to do that, they're fined that sum of money plus a nice little penalty on top, and their rates get locked back at the baseline we established, since obviously it was nothing but BS money-grubbing under the guise of needing to improve infrastructure.

I doubt they'd go for that, which in itself makes me believe something ain't quite right with their claims.

* These are off the top of my head and I'm being pessimistic. The best my memory serves me says it was just over $4 billion income last year on about $100 million expenditures, and they spent twice as much the previous year, which was the $200+ million number I ended up using to be on the safe side.

Re:Usage based is fine if you're an honest ISP

[Livius]

It's simply that Bell is evil. They found the worst ways to abuse their monopoly, and when they were forced kicking and screaming into competition, they found the worst ways to abuse that. It's not even about the money, they do it for sport.

Re:Usage based is fine if you're an honest ISP

[yabos]

It hasn't been years since they started shaping 3rd party ISPs. It was last year that they started it. ALso it is being applied to Sympatico as well. The problem is, Bell basically lied about the reason they had to shape the traffic. 3rd party ISPs pay a tariff to Bell which is regulated by the CRTC. This tariff pays for transit over Bell's network from the DSL headend to the 3rd party network.

Bell was saying that their transit network was being overloaded but they refused to reveal any network traffic graphs or statistics showing such a claim. The CRTC forced them to release some information to the public and it was clearly seen that their network was not overloaded like they claimed.

The biggest bunch of shit about this is how little 3rd party ISPs actually get after Bell's tariff and how much better a service they can provide. Teksavvy for example has about $10 CAD per month and they give people 5Mbit, 100GB/month AND still make money somehow on that. Now Bell is basically FORCING 3rd party ISPs into a 60GB cap, and now it seems that they'll be forcing them to charge extra on top of that.

Re:Usage based is fine if you're an honest ISP

[Rudeboy777]

Gotta nit with your correction, the GP was right. The >200GB/month service IS $40, the capped (200GB) service is $29.95.

http://www.teksavvy.com/en/resdsl.asp?ID=7&mID=1

The options here already suck

[mongolian]

In Montreal, we are bound to either Bell (or someone who wholesales from Bell) or Videotron. I've taken all three routes at some point or another and have yet to have a stable connection.
Videotron would sell 10Mb and give you 3-4 max. Support sucked.
Bell was the worst. It didn't work for the first month because they had been ripping up wires in our area and they just never got around to our case. After that it was only out any time it rained or snowed. 30GB cap and their 15Mb really meant 5.
Electronic Box resells from Bell and has generally been good. It's more expensive ($45 for 5Mb, unlimited and without dealing directly with Bell). At least support is good, though all of our requests get forwarded to Bell because they have frequent outages. I'm otherwise just contented to not be dealing directly with Bell and their outrageous prices for exceeding their traffic limit.
Anyone got anything better around here?

Re:The options here already suck

[bartok]

I'm in Montreal too and I use AEI.ca Costs me 29.99 per month for the same thing you get from Electronic Box. (I purchased the modem so I don't have to pay an extra modem rental fee).

Re:The options here already suck

[Kinetix303]

I live in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhood and I'm an Acanac subscriber. They're only $18.95/mo for the first year, although they are a DSL backend and will suffer from the same problems that this article lists.

I have never been disappointed, and yes, they offer unlimited bandwidth on all accounts. I've been a subscriber for two years now and hope to be for many more.

Re:its =/= it's

[oodaloop]

Your right. You should of put the typoinsummary tag in.

Re:Christ this shit is funny.

[Idiomatick]

My Internet service has gotten progressively worse for almost a full 10 years now. Its not that we aren't doing ok on a global scheme it is that our services we once had are deteriorating and I've no idea why that is so.

Deadline for filing comments has passed

[debrain]

As I understand it, the deadline for filing comments on the UBB passed on midnight April 14th, 2009.

If you nevertheness wish to file (and high volume of comments, albeit late, may nevertheless be of interest to the CRTC), the commentary ought to fall under "Tariff", and an appropriate subject might be File Number #8740-B2-200904989 - Bell Canada - TN7181.

Keep in mind that this is DSLAM bandwidth (i.e. the "last mile" copper wire) that Bell proposes to impose this tariff on. It is not network bandwidth from an ISP to the backbone. Bell is obliged to sell DSLAM access on a wholesale basis to competitor ISPs. For interesting statistics, consider reading this: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20690166-The-Bell-Disclosure -- the statistics read, if I understand it (and there's a pretty decent chance I don't) the risk to a customer of having less than 100% bandwidth available at any one point is exceedingly low (i.e. less than 1% of it occurring for less than five minutes on any given day).

Interestingly, Bell has not disclosed how much money it has paid for Arbour Networks' deep packet inspection and bandwidth limiting hardware. I understand, informally and anecdotally (and, again, there's a decent chance I'm wrong), that the amount spent on the bandwidth limiting hardware greatly exceeds the cost of upgrading the DSLAMs to eliminate any risk of the above mentioned rare less-than-complete bandwidth. I would quite like to see more information on the cost of Arbour Networks' bandwidth limiting hardware, and the cost of upgrading DSLAMS. Hopefully the CRTC board does, too.

Re:Deadline for filing comments has passed

[Idiomatick]

The CRTC is probably used to getting 2~3 emails a day. I'm sure getting a hundred even a few days late will be of interest to them haha.

Re:Deadline for filing comments has passed

[bartok]

Thanks for the info. I sent them a letter.

Re:Deadline for filing comments has passed

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand, informally and anecdotally (and, again, there's a decent chance I'm wrong), that the amount spent on the bandwidth limiting hardware greatly exceeds the cost of upgrading the DSLAMs to eliminate any risk of the above mentioned rare less-than-complete bandwidth. I would quite like to see more information on the cost of Arbour Networks' bandwidth limiting hardware, and the cost of upgrading DSLAMS. Hopefully the CRTC board does, too.

When they call you to find out why you cancelled all your services, and in the course of trying to make them understand, you inquire as to cost of their DPI hardware, Bell's representatives have no qualms about emphatically stating it's completely negligable, no big expense. Somehow I don't trust them at all.

Precluding competition

[yamfry]

I think it is worthwhile to note that unhindered access to the tubes would provide competition for a number of Bell services. Skype [or insert favourite service] provides competition for Bell VoIP and Bell landlines. Streaming video and video download stores (and their unlicensed counterparts) compete with Bell satellite TV and the Bell video store. Unlimited transfer (or a reasonably high cap) may inspire more open hotspots which would compete with Bell cellular internet service. By creating artificial scarcity in bandwidth (and their already-implemented throttling of encrypted and torrent transfers), they ensure the survival of their own services.

Teksavvy's email for those curious

[Idiomatick]

The teksavvy email every customer got, nice to see an ISP fighting filtering even if it is for their benefit. The enemy of my enemy I guess...

Dear Valued Customer,

We are writing to you today as many activities are underway to shape/reshape
Internet use as you all know it. Over the last year some of you have been
made aware and/or have seen activities on throttling in the news or in your
daily lives. Another proceeding relating to the Internet in Canada required
Telecom providers (Bell/Telus/etc.) to provide ISPs with wholesale service
speeds that match those that they offer to their own retail customers.
Specifically, Bell has been directed by the CRTC to provide matching speeds
which would allow us all to have more flexibility in our day to day online
requirements. Instead of adhering to these directives, Bell decided to take
this issue to the federal Cabinet and at the same time file a tariff
application with the CRTC proposing to introduce Usage Based Billing (UBB)
on its wholesale customer accounts.

What does this mean for you, the consumer?

Bell provides TekSavvy with last mile, wholesale DSL access services, which
TekSavvy uses to provide you with your Internet access. If Bell were to be
allowed to introduce UBB on this service, a cap of 60GB would be imposed on
all of its users, with very heavy penalties per Gigabyte afterwards
(multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on
overages). This would inherently all but remove Unlimited internet services
in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs
from month to month.

If you'd like to make your comments/concerns known about what Bell is
attempting to do, please do so here:

http://support.crtc.gc.ca/crtcsubmissionmu/forms/Telecom.aspx?lang=e [crtc.gc.ca]

Select the word "Tariff" from the drop down list.

Add the following in Subject Line "File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 - Bell
Canada - TN 7181" and make your thoughts known!

Is this the resurgence of Newpapers

[Jon_S]

As soon as customers start getting charged by the kilobyte, everyone is going to turn off ads. I don't bother with ad blocking right now since I have plenty of bandwidth and I'm lazy. But if I have to *pay* to watch some stupid flash ad in the side of a web page you for sure I will install the ad block plug-in.

Once everyone starts doing this, internet advertizing will be less attractive and advertizers will go back to newspapers. OK, so maybe that is a little far fetched. But my point remains, selling internet ads will be significantly less lucrative if UBB become widespread.

Australia's got it all worked out!

[David Gerard]

Canada should look to Australia. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced that the Australian government will build a new $43 billion national broadband network, connecting 90% of homes to 100-megabit fibre internet. "We believe that fast broadband is absolutely essential for our nation's future", he said.

"Telstra has raised issues with the amount of bandwidth usage this will produce, given we're still hooked to America by tin cans and string, but our Great Firewall of Australia Internet filtering project should keep usage down to reasonable levels at near-dialup speeds. We promise you won't go over your download cap."

The Great Firewall will reliably block all illegal material, child pornography, terrorism and unAustralian thoughts.

"Not only are the contents of the list illegal," said Senator Stephen Conroy, " but revealing the list is also illegal, and so is linking to someone linking to someone claiming to reveal the list. So we're blocking Google Search. Having to use Anzwers should keep usage right down."

Calling it, the "single largest infrastructure decision in Australia's history," Mr Rudd said the project would employ up to 37,000 people a year monitoring citizens' net access, reading their email and correcting spelling errors in their football forum posts.

A consultative process will determine the regulatory framework for the network. "We're considering getting Senator Fielding to do it personally," said Senator Conroy, "since he's the dickhead who demanded the censorship in return for his votes. Hopefully it'll melt his brain. Bloody balance of power. At least Xenophon's bloody sane."

Re:Australia's got it all worked out!

[freedom_india]

Australia is a British Commonwealth. Britain and Australia have the same Head of State.
Its no wonder that the Orwellian attitude of the Britain is rubbing on its penal colony, which seeks to outlaw free speech under the guise of unAustralian speech.
How come when Himmler did this you guys shouted foul?
I used Vodafone 9 years ago in Australia and i continue to use Vodafone in every country i go.
My friend had Telstra in Sydney and he kept shouting at them every month for billing issues.
 

Complain!

[whisper_jeff]

I urge all Canadian slashdotters to write to the CRTC and lodge a complaint. If they receive enough complaints from informed people (and I'd like to think we're a relatively informed lot), they will hopefully take action and put an end to Bell's shenanigans. Until they are put in their place, they will continue to abuse their infrastructure monopoly.

Re:Complain!

[Anonymous Coward]

I urge all anonymous canadian to write to the CRTC

non-profit co-op for Layers 1 and 2

[Anonymous Coward]

How much would it cost to rip up the ground and lay down more fiber?

Or simply take the current infrastructure and nationalize it into a non-profit co-op. The ISPs then buy into this co-op.

The fibre and copper is maintained via fees to the ISPs, but the actual Layer 3+ routing is handled by them.

Equal footing for all, and you have a neutral third party taking care of the hardware that doesn't have a conflict of interest with running their own ISP.

Re:non-profit co-op for Layers 1 and 2

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this being that whoever you get to run the cable plant will someday feel the need to sort the packets so they can charge more for two leg packet than they do for four leg packet.
 

Cutting it close?

[Belgaren]

You missed the last lines of the email:

The deadline for filing your comments is today (April 14 [sic]) at midnight, so hurry!

Regards,

Rocky

Re:Cutting it close?

[Idiomatick]

More emails will always help regardless of whether they come a day late or not.

Re:This is Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not understand this comment. I cannot find a thought expressed in the words. A greater mystery is why the comment got 2 mod points, unless those came from meat puppets.

Canada Big, Slovenia Small

[mrops]

I think cost of doing the same in Canada would be astronomical. But then again, US national debt is more than the number of stars in the Universe, so astronomical is not what it used to be.

Re:Canada Big, Slovenia Small

[Swizec]

I'm sure the cost wasn't very low around here either. I think they even circumvented the law a little bit in some places and decided to "do it now, ask for permission later when it can't be reversed and the benefits are apparent". It was a gamble and it paid off.

Re:Canada Big, Slovenia Small

[Anonymous Coward]

This Canada big argument loses any meaning if you'd start with the urban areas especially southern Ontario.

Re:Canada Big, Slovenia Small

[kalirion]

But then again, US national debt is more than the number of stars in the Universe, so astronomical is not what it used to be.

Hmm, I'd've thought we'd've gone bankrupt once debt reached the first $sextillion....

Re:Canada Big, Slovenia Small

[maxume]

Your astronomy is poor. If you take the U.S. debt as $100 trillion, there is still a factor of 1 million to go before it is larger than the number of starts in the universe.

Re:Canada Big, Slovenia Small

[Anonymous Coward]

If you cut out the long tail of the bell curve, Canada's population density about matches Slovenia's.

People forget that only about 3% (perhaps less) of Canada actually has city water, never mind sewers. Paved roads will only get you to maybe 20% of Canada. Yet, the average Canadian *has* city water, sewers, and plenty of paved roads (never mind highways) at their disposal. Basically, if you talk to the average Canadian, they live within a few hours (often less than 2 hours) drive of the US border.

The only thing that makes Canada a challenge to wire up is that you have to run a backbone E-W across the southern part of Canada (actually, you could cover nearly half of the population just running it against the 401--it actually has the most traffic of any highway in North America!). The 401 is a stretch of highway that takes about 10 hours (you could do it in 7 if you drive at the speed of traffic at about 3 am) to drive across, so it's not ridiculously huge. Then to cover another 30% of the population, just run fibre over to Saskatoon, Edmonton, and Vancouver. Done.

The old saw that Canada doesn't have the population density needs to end. Nobody living in areas without city water actually expects decent or reliable internet. EVERYONE living in the top 10 cities in Canada expects it (and, as residents of one of the most highly taxed countries in the world, deserve it). Check the population density of those areas and you'll see Canada is quite competitive to many places considered somewhat "population dense", like many smaller European countries, the UK, etc. Although, obviously, we don't beat places like Singapore, Japan, etc.

Re:Canada Big, Slovenia Small

[matts-reign]

I disagree with your statement about city water. Lots of people living in rural areas have wells and septic system. But when my old telecom provider replaced the party lines in 1998, they ran fibre instead of copper, and so now people have "cheap", reliable internet, but live 10 kilometres from the nearest water pipe. It might not even be as good as my Teksavvy DSL now that I've moved to a larger place, but it is definitely possible to have.

Re:Canada Big, Slovenia Small

[Ctrl-Z]

The cost of laying fibre from coast to coast would be astronomical. There are plenty of densely populated areas in the country which could be implemented more effectively.

Re:Canada Big, Slovenia Small

[Malc]

Why? Although Canada is huge, it's a very urban country. Something like 7 or 8 million of the 32 million people live in the Toronto-Niagara region.

Re:Canada Big, Slovenia Small

[Anonymous Coward]

I think cost of doing the same in Canada would be astronomical. But then again, US national debt is more than the number of stars in the Universe, so astronomical is not what it used to be.

More than the number of stars in the Galaxy. There isn't enough currency on earth to account for the number of stars in the universe.

I believe you're referring to the Feynman quote.
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26930.html

Re:Canada Big, Slovenia Small

[bluetigerbc]

Well not everyone has cable/dsl yet either. If it's not "financially possible" (you aren't a bother in the back 40 outside the major city) then I bet it'd work JUUUUUUUST fine. any company, ANY company wanting to do this will have my 100 bucks/month each and every month. in Canada, there is NO EXCUSE why we don't have fiber to the door ALREADY in EVERY major surburban/city center other then the ISP's holding us all back for personal, if pety, greed motives. Astronomical from a personal standpoint. These big players will RAKE in cash, customer will be jumping ship from Rogers Cable, Telus DSL, Bell DSL, & Shaw Cable quicker then you can say "ARRRRRRRRRR" They'll ALL take their 50-100 bucks/month (inc cable tv btw) and real world banks will take the gamble that they can pay the debts /w monthly cheques coming in regularly. :D Bandwidth will be less of a concern for all, video services will flurish, high bandwidth won't be a problem anymore, and the Internet might even start streaming live movies same day as theatres (some have big screens hooked hdmi to towers in the living room, media companies would prob want to get money for people not wanting to leave their home). BRING ON THE FIBER! Part of a balanced Internet meal!

Re:Canada Big, Slovenia Small

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with deploying Alberta's Supernet was getting permission to install fiber in urban areas. A lot of the existing conduits are owned and the owners are reluctant to allow another party add cables to the conduit. The company responsible for installing the cable proposed microwave links instead because it was cheaper and easier.

landlines are flat rate

[Anonymous Coward]

you pay by usage for every other commodity, so why not bandwidth too?

Not for local landline telephone calls. It has always been flat rate in North America, which is what spurned the growth of the telephone here, as compared to Europe where it was per-minute.

As I've mentioned in another comment, there's an inherent conflict of interest when the main ISP also owns the physical infrastructure. Governments once mandated monopolies for phone (and cable) companies, and that allowed the companies invest in infrastructure. This worked for the telephone and it will probably work for Internet.

Make a holding company that owns Layers 1 and 2, and have any ISP become a "shareholder" / owner of the co-op. The conflict of interest is gone, and ISPs will now compete on Layer 3+ services, while a neutral party will worry about Layers 1 and 2. Any profits are invested back into infrastructure, and low-cost, high-density areas can help subsidize building out in more rural areas (just like was done with electricity and telephones).

Such a scam

[nurb432]

( excuse the vague "profit" comparison here )

1 - charge per use, people balk ' why do i need that internet thing'
2 - make it unlimited flat rate and people love it and flock to sign up
3 - let people get used to it for a decade or so
4 - start overselling to get the last few holdouts
5 - slowly add caps, incrementally so people to complain to much
6 - reinstate charges per use now that its an integral part of daily life.

Sounds like drug dealers to me.

Why does the US suck so bad?

[nurb432]

Because here they can charge people until they cry. The market currently supports it, so it will continue.

Wake Up! This is Really About TV and IP Phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Bell and Rogers are the two big ISP's in much of Canada and they are also the biggest Satellite TV/Cable companies and phone companies. They also own TV and radio stations. It is in their best interest to keep people from using unlimited internet which whittles away at their other businesses. When Bell throttles or caps 'wholesale' (really last mile) ADSL customers and then uses a loophole to justify it by saying it's no different than what they do to their retail customers they're saying 'we (with Rogers) are the monopolies (could there be any price fixing going on here???) we're going to make our generic ISP service as crappy as we can because 1. We want you to remain the monopoly for providing you with TV. 2. We want to remain the monopoly (or duopoly) for providing you with land-line telephone. 3. We want to remain the monopoly (depending where you live) for providing reliable (because they are less responsive to properly fixing problems for wholesale service customers) internet. 4. You can kiss our asses because the CRTC won't do anything about it. This is all after the government subsidized these companies to lay cable all those years ago.

Not really

[SilverJets]

I don't like the idea, but it makes sense economically. It costs energy to move packets around and keep networks running. The more you use the more you should pay.

Turn on a switch. Connect it to the network and let it start handling packets. Measure its power consumption. Now increase the traffic to 100% capacity of the switch. Measure its power consumption again. How big is the difference? Is it really so big that it costs the astronomical amount companies like Bell charge for going over your monthly cap? NO. Bell's just gouging and they have you convinced that it is appropriate.

Also, the lines are already there so there really is no extra cost for those lines to be dark or to be at 100% capactiy.

Its a Ponzi everybody knows about

[bussdriver]

If ending the ponzi scheme you were roped into, screwed you worse than the procrastination keeping the ponzi scheme going - would you take the losses?

If you could prolong it beyond your lifetime would you take the loss?

Capital punishment for exceeding cap?

[grandpa-geek]

"...Teksavvy has informed it's customers that were this to go through the current monthly cap would be quartered"

Will they be drawn as well as quartered?

Isn't that extreme overkill for just exceeding a usage cap?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanged,_drawn_and_quartered

Re:Capital punishment for exceeding cap?

[gordguide]

" ... "...Teksavvy has informed it's customers that were this to go through the current monthly cap would be quartered ..."

WHO did WHAT now? Isn't Bell supposed to be in there somewhere?

Who expected anything different?

[inject_hotmail.com]

Not me.

This is sorta old news, this was on the docket 9 months ago.

This probably won't affect 80% of all users, so it'll fly under the radar. If this was back in the 90's when it was mostly computers guys/gals on the net, this wouldn't squeak through. Now that Joe S. Pack pays out the nose for his shitty cell phone and net service in Canada, the incumbents don't care (there are no Cell packages available now that are all-you-can-eat...Internet is almost 'unlimited' right now, but will be usage based in 2 months). The CRTC is just a floor show to lock in Bell/Rogers desires.

What incentive does any company have to do what is 'right' here if the government won't back its own people? Well, the government doesn't care about people, it cares about money and power...neither of which any person has, only big corporations. See that? They feed each other, a perfect relationship, and we consumers get blood-let in the process.

I want my money back, I'm going home.

I would support this with the following condition:

[Rhipf]

the extra money that Bell makes MUST go into upgrading the rest of their network. I am still only able to get dial-up service and because of ancient equipment that Bell uses here can only connect at 26.4k (at best).

Yes but...

[Anonymous Coward]

What the article doesn't say is that BCE has been loosing customers since 2001 due to its bad business practice. To the point where they are facing bankruptcy. Their attempt to make some more money like this is perfectly in line with their other bad decisions.

This is just typical mismanagement like GM, AIG, FORD, NORTEL...

Re:This is Canada

[robinsonne]

When did Canada become the 51st state?

Just the beginning...

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for a large western-Canadian ISP/communications company and know that they have been making plans and preparations to start doing UBB but they are waiting for Bell or one of the other players to do it first, and that they would then follow suit "as soon as the heat dies down".

Additional usage costs:$ 1.50 per GB (1 GB = 1024

[DarthVain]

Is the note I found when I went to check my bandwidth with Cogeco (Rogers Communication), Bell's *supposed* competition.

I got no notification other than it is posted in some obscure web site no one checks that they just created. Nice how they just change their agreement with your contract whenever they damn well fell like it.

No idea if this is implemented yet, but obviously it is on its way if not already here.

Notice it is also 6 TIMES the 0.25 cents per GB that Teksavvy charges. That seems reasonable doesn't it?

Telecommunications is horrible in Canada, and the reason is the CRTC will do nothing against either Bell or Rogers.

Open it up, or nationalize it and be done with it. What we have now is not working.

Re:This is Canada

[mario_grgic]

I cannot find a thought expressed in the words

Are you from Canada?

Re:This is Canada

[Palmateer]

Hey everybody. Billy Bob Thornton reads Slashdot!

net neutrality + beyond

[Anonymous Coward]

Let it be known Bell Canada is also a content provider. They own several television stations, as well as other forms of distributing this content (ie expressvu satallite) By imposing these caps on their internet competition, Bell Canada is also putting a stranglehold on digital distribution services.

For example, with this pricing structure Bell is imposing on their competition, with a streamed movie averaging about 3 gigs of data - at $1.25 a gig it will cost the end user an extra $4 of internet bandwidth to watch a movie through netflix or xbox live.

Theyve made it cheaper for and end user to just use Bell's pay per view service if they want to watch a movie.

Lots of sound and fury...

[Areyoukiddingme]

...from the Slashdot readership. Now can we do something about it?

Let's do something in the style of the Beagleboard. Design and build a bare board for ultra wide band radio, aimed squarely at establishing a mesh network. That is, design from the beginning for every node to simultaneously "connect" to multiple other nodes. Design for as much range as we can squeeze out of it, while still maintaining the ability to ramp up to as much usable bandwidth as possible as nodes get closer together.

I thought about suggesting a Beagledaughterboard. The Beagleboard has lots of pins available on its expansion header, and even more pins available on its LCD header that can be repurposed in software. Making it a Beagledaughterboard would mean there would be very few inquiries from random people wanting to know why the board they bought from Digikey doesn't work when they plug it into their Windows XP machine.

On the other hand, designing it as a USB2.0 highspeed client device would mean that it would work practically anywhere, given software support. The chips and parts required to speak USB2.0 are dirt cheap and trivially available. I'll volunteer to write the software drivers, if somebody will design the hardware.

So... where are the hardware people? I know damn well that lots of you read /. Anybody want to kick the phone company in the nuts? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

its my yard ill dig if i want too

[Anonymous Coward]

its my yard ill dig if i want too, and that means ill drop my own fibre in and get neighbors to do it then we can get more and soon we'll have a city wide network. as that spreads you will get access.

DONT LISTEN TO THE LIES

Most of Canada?

[Linegod]

Since when is having a portion (although a large portion) of Ontario and Quebec subscribers 'most of Canada'?

Reply at the CRTC

[twilight30]

Dear Mr Gaudrault,

Below is the text of my response to the CRTC.

I am cancelling my Bell dryloop DSL tonight, and moving to TekSavvy for the same, as a vote of confidence in your firm. I have had nothing but fantastic service from your staff, and I am looking forward to the change.

If you would like permission to reproduce this letter for your use, please consider this granted.

Kind regards
Massimo Savino

This is an unreasonable request on Bell's part, and I am saying this as a Bell Sympatico customer.

This request is an effective call for the CRTC to limit competition and the free flow of market capital, because reducing the terms of third-party providers to equal status of Bell itself will effectively mean no real difference in objective Internet service between Bell and other providers using Bell's lines -- which are at last count, paid for by those 3rd-party ISPs. Surely Bell should have no ability to dictate these unreasonable terms to those 3rd-party providers when they are paying for the service, no?

These pricing plans of Bell's were implemented on its own customers, previously on 'Unlimited' lines, about 18 months ago, with a correspondingly-high overage rates. In my case, they did this without informing me of the change, and billing my account.

This action is the last straw for me. I am going to move from Bell right now, actually.

I urge the CRTC not to accept this request.

Respectfully submitted,
Massimo Savino
[address redacted]

Cost per blu-ray movie

[UNFAIRMAN]

Fairly soon I'm sure I'll want to get blu-ray quality movies digitally. At $.25/GB that will be $5.00 just for the digital transportation costs of the disc, let alone the price for the movie. Um, no thanks. I think I can do better with UPS.

Re:Additional usage costs:$ 1.50 per GB (1 GB = 10

[freedom_india]

Nice how they just change their agreement with your contract whenever they damn well fell like it.

No, they can't.
One of the first Act in Contract laws is that the contracts are immutable. They CANNOT be changed unilaterally by one party. That void the contract.
Even if the contract says one party can change terms, it has to be done only after giving due written notice. Posting the same on an obscure site is invalid as has been upheld by courts.
Simply state in your letter that since they violated the terms of their contract, you are terminating it and ask for financial compensation.

Re:Additional usage costs:$ 1.50 per GB (1 GB = 10

[DarthVain]

Oh I made this argument when they put a 60GB cap where there was none before.

From what they told me (and IANAL), it is not "written notification", only notification, and thus posting a NEW EULA on their web site is totally acceptable. That is how they made the cap changes anyway. They just pointed me to their web site and said "see!".

Understandably I was very pissed, and as you said almost terminated my contract then and there, financial compensation or no. However upon doing a bit a research it really doesn't matter what I do. Basically Bell and Rogers mirror each other's policies, so if I dump one for the other it is no better. The only alternative is to go with a independent. 99% of those are DSL based and lease Bell phone lines. I do not have a home phone. Anyway if Rogers screws me again (aka I get a Bill for usage over 60Gb at 1.50$ per) I have told myself I will be trying out Teksavvy Dry DSL and seeing if the Latency differences really matter for me.

Re:Additional usage costs:$ 1.50 per GB (1 GB = 10

[freedom_india]

IANAL, but i have studied contract law as applicable to financial instruments.
Get a Justice of Peace to sign an infringement finding against the provider.
Or better yet file a case in small claims court with your proof.
Get a judgment against them for violating a contract and asking for enforcement of old contract.
Make sure you keep the copy with you, and the judge sends a copy by Normal post to their Registered Office where it is discarded unread.
Wait till next month for a violation (they send you a metered bill).
Approach the SAME judge and show them the bill, along with record of his past order. This proves the company did not obey a court order.
Now you have a variety of choices: Ask the judge to uphold the original contract and force the company to provide you unmetered access and also get the judge to make them NOT disconnect you for enforcing a contract.
Or ask them judge to rule against them for financial compensation.