CRTC To Allow Usage-Based Billing

Idiomatick writes "The CRTC ruled in favor this week for usage-based billing. Bell Canada was given a monopoly on lines in Canada, and in exchange they were made to resell to competitors at cost in order to have a functional market. The new CRTC ruling will allow Bell to charge their competitors more money based on individual customer usage. They are now able to implement a 60GB cap on a competitor's highest speed lines (charging $1.12/GB for overages). The effect on the market seems clear."

Comments

You WANT usage based billing

[SuperKendall]

As long as you are allowed to purchase some higher level of service in addition to base, usage based billing is better because if you are a higher paying customer you can get better support. Annoyed that you have to pay a little more for huge bandwidth use every month? Well cry me a river freeloader, you were benefitting from all the people that paid a lot for bandwidth when they were using an order of magnitude less bandwidth than you were and that time is over (for Canada anyway).

Usage based billing means more people can afford internet service, it means more choice for what kinds of packages make sense for you. It also brings to light the simple fact that you cannot give away unlimited amounts of something for a fixed price forever, eventually any system that tries will come crashing down.

Re:You WANT usage based billing

[SuperKendall]

Are you a shill, or some sort of moron?

I'm not a shill, but you accusing me of being one automatically makes you a stooge. Sorry about that, out of my hands.

In France [arstechnica.com] for the price I pay monthly, I could get a line which is 10 times faster than mine is along with unlimited phone calls to a bunch of places and HDTV.

Look at a map sometime ignorant stooge. France is roughly the size of one of your Canadian shopping malls. You in the city are paying prices that subsidize rural coverage.

And have you ever travelled internationally? I have found most of europe to SUCK for bandwidth, in hotels or rented residences. I have yet to ever encounter these high-speed meccas people like you regularly tout. If bandwidth there was so amazingly cheap every hotel would have amazing service. And when you say "asia" you are of course talking about Japan, Korea (also very tiny) and isolated pockets (read: Hong Kong) in China.

Why was Bell able to offer unlimited access plans 5 years ago, and now they can't?

Go back and read the last sentence of my post. If something cannot continue, it will not.

They are freeloaders

[SuperKendall]

They are not "freeloading", they are using what they paid for.

They are freeloading in the sense that the amount of bandwidth they enjoy at the price they pay is paid for greatly by the fact that so many other subscribers are hardly using any bandwidth.

They are in fact getting a much higher level of service than they are paying for. How is that not freeloading? I use a lot of bandwidth myself but I'm not going to lie and pretend that there are not a lot of other light network users that help make this possible. Why is "freeloader" such a negative term to you in this context? Taking advantage of a situation is not always negative.

Re:60GB is nothing

[commodore64_love]

>>>You're a moron...

Strawman argument. MY IQ's well above the "moron" level of 70.

>>>who will defend corporations at any cost, aren't you?

False. I hate corporations almost as much as I hate government.
.

>>>Have you ever considered seeing a psychiatrist?

Sometimes but I'm pretty good as solving my own problems, even when I'm depressed or times are bad.

>>>Electricity costs derived from data usage are negligible

No they are not. Servers generate a lot of heat, due to the high electricity usage of moving that data around. It is not negligible, but quite significant, and also a key reason why Google and others are moving their Internet Servers to cool places like Buffalo or Toronto.

>>>you moron.

Strawman argument again. Please talk to ME, not your imaginary scarecrow. Thanks.