Slashdot Mirror
Internet Downloading Costs To Rise In Canada
An anonymous reader writes "According to CBC News, 'Surfing and downloading from the internet is about to get more expensive for many Canadians as internet companies Shaw and Primus have announced plans to impose new fees and caps on internet usage. Over the past year, the CRTC, Canada's communication regulator, let Bell and Rogers start charging extra for customers who download a lot of data. ... Primus and Shaw have said they will begin passing on higher fees to their customers beginning Feb. 1. Primus, for example, rents bandwidth on Bell's networks and said Bell is inflating the costs for everyone, including them. 'It's an economic disincentive for internet use,' said Matt Stein, vice-president of network services for Primus. 'It's not meant to recover costs. In fact these charges that Bell has levied are many, many, many times what it costs to actually deliver it.'"
The root problem here is the monopoly on infrastructure owned by a company that also provides services. For years now, other competitors offered uncapped DSL using Bell's infrastructure, while Bell offered a fraction of the bandwidth for much greater prices (and hassles.) I guess enough people woke up and started switching away from Bell's native service and jumped to other providers. And naturally, Bell uses their governmental friends to kill the competition, instead of, you know, competing and improving their services. BELL CANADA IS THE WORST COMPANY IN ALL OF CANADA. BELIEVE IT.
For much of the most densely populated area of Canada, Bell and Rogers own both the infrastructure and provide services to end users. I don't think that should be permitted. Companies should not be able to perform both functions. This is already what happened in our electricity industry in Ontario, when Ontario Hydro was broken up into separate generation and transmission entities.) Bell continues to use the CRTC, which is an impotent and ineffectual organization that seems to be on the leash of the same politicians that decided their friends at Bell would get a monopoly, to prevent other organizations from laying down wires underground in new residential developments.
This problem would not exist if a real competitive market was in place.
I am continually surprised by the amount of energy that Bell puts in to creative marketing, customer disservice, finding ways of adding hidden fees, and downright screwing people. If they just put a fraction of their efforts into actually improving their services, they would actually be a competitive company. But wait, they aren't interested in fair competition. Bell just wants passive income through forced usage of their monopolistic network.
By the way, it bears repeating again, Bell Canada is THE WORST COMPANY IN ALL OF CANADA. I am seriously not joking. Imagine the incompetence, bureaucracy and arrogance of government incorporated into a business. Add the fact that it's their intent to screw you at every turn and "accidentally" add 48 month contracts onto every deal that to which you've never agreed, and for which they somehow lost the audio recording of that CSR's call. That's Bell. They're like government for much of the Canadian population because you pretty much HAVE TO USE THEM because they own the wires.
*Note for other Canadians: I am fully aware of the other Telus / MTS / and other monopolies outside of Ontario/Quebec.
How much does this have to do with things like Netflix now being in Canada? Not to mention other things like slowly more and more games being sold digitally for the XBox360, PS3, PC/Mac (Steam, Mac App Store), iTunes movies, ect.. These are all using more and more data and I think they are wanting to capitalise on the digital download bandwagon. They watched Rogers do this and hey, it didn't hurt Rogers so the others are just following suit thinking "If they can do it and make more money for nothing, why not us?" And what is the caps? Anyone can say that only a small percent of users hit these caps, but that could also be based on just a rough estimate of "users typically do basic web surfing and check email, meaning they should only need 5-10 gigs max a month". Helps make gov look the other way by making baseless claims like that.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Considering that for a working class family of four here in the US, health care costs take more than 20% of their income (and as they age that number just goes up), I think it's fair to say the French are doing a LOT better. When a 65 year old American coal miner will face another 5 years of going down in the mine, or an unempolyed 59 year old is facing another 11 years of poverty I wonder how many of them will still think they're "doing better than the French".
And other countries with universal health care are even further along. Somehow, Israel manages to provide universal health care AND have a competitive economy based on innovation. Germany, of course, does even better (and they're one of the most pro-labor, pro-union countries in the world). You go from country to country in northern Europe, and they're way ahead of the US. Why do you think Canada makes it so hard for Americans to immigrate there? Because we'd double their population overnight.
You know, we hear a lot about all the "new conservatism" in the UK and Germany and Canada, but still, not one of these "new conservative" leaders is crazy enough to even suggest getting rid of universal health care. And they'll continue to retire earlier and work shorter weeks than Americans. Their economies will recover quicker, their standards of living will remain higher than that of the US, their health will be better, and they'll be happier. No wonder they look down on us.
You are welcome on my lawn.