Slashdot Mirror
Usage Based Billing In Canada To Be Rescinded
theshowmecanuck writes "The Prime Minister of Canada and the Minister of Industry are set to reverse a ruling by the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Television Commission) allowing big Cable and Telecom companies to charge based on bandwidth usage. The ruling applied to both retail customers and smaller ISPs buying bandwidth wholesale from the major companies. The head of the CRTC has been called to testify before cabinet on why they want to allow the big internet providers to do this. In this case the elected government agrees with the very large number of angry Canadians that this was bad for competition. Most Canadians see this as a bureaucracy aided cash grab with very suspect timing since companies like Netflix are starting to move into the Canadian market (big cable companies lowered caps and increased usage fees a week before Netflix started Canadian operations). The CRTC has a fair number of ex-industry executives on the board."
Will this outbreak of sense continue south of the border?
As a Canadian and as someone who signed the: Petition, I am thrilled to see this reversal! Bandwidth while having a huge upfront cost is almost negligible in costs after that. When it costs a penny a gigabyte on the wire there is absolutely no reason to be charging near-two dollars for it! What we ultimately need is a country-wide backbone that is operated as a non-profit and allows anyone to sub-let it!
Shh.
What?
Posted in the wrong story, also this has already been done.
http://www.stirlingenergy.com/
1. CRTC tells the ISPs they can do something unpopular. 2. People don't like it. 3. Government says "stop it CRTC". 4. CRTC disbanded. 5. ISPs can continue to do something unpopular.
Theres a lot of delusional thinking going on here.
If anyone believes for a minute that the big ISP providers in Canada are going to back down, you are sadly mistaken.
This issue was never about metered use. This issue is about generating income for the loss in traditional content delivery : cable tv/sat. tv.
The ISPs know the game is up and that internet content is going to take over. They are going to find a way, either via higher plans, or extra fees to make it up.
wait and see.
Powering a stirling engine with hot air is nothing new. Harvesting the hot air from the Prime Minister of Canada might be difficult.
One of the many poor CRTC decisions is questioned at the highest level. We can only hope this plants the seed in the people's mind that the CRTC is nothing more than a puppet agency controlled by the Big Three telecom companies (Rogers, Telus, BCE.)
are you afraid people will see the awful design and think they're on digg or something?
I was really hoping this would happen. Rogers and bell were getting killed by 'little guy' ISP's so they tried to squeeze them out with bandwidth caps, now that that is going away hopefully rogers and bell will be forced to remove their caps too.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
Let the internet be free man ... I mean how can you bill for ones and zeros? This is so crazy, how dare people bill me for the amount of bandwidth I use. I mean sure they bill power and water based on how much I use it ... but this is the internet man ... this is a fundamental right.
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
I honestly can't tell if you're serious or if this is a joke. Part of what you say makes complete sense while the other part is totally delusional.
i hate every unlimited-only package that i have
AT&T moving to tiered pricing on their mobile internet saved me $240/year
why consumers think they want fewer options is beyond me
While your strawman does look nice in tie-dye, it wholly ignores the real point:
At present, most ISPs are also historical incumbents(telco or cable) or little vassal companies that they are statutorially obliged to lease infrastructure access to. In many locations, the level of competition is also somewhere between oligopoly and monopoly.
The regulatory apparatus is a (weak) attempt to force an outcome more in line with what a hypothetical free-market equilibrium would look like(ie. not massive rent-seeking and destruction of novel competitors to protect obsolete but profitable legacy businesses) not some hippy love-fest, man.
"CRTC put data overage rates at CAN $1.90 per gigabyte for most of Canada, and $2.35 for the country's French-speaking region."
at least they're making french canadians pay more.
A commander in chief with the best interest of the public in mind. Im glad I voted for him.
The CRTC has a fair number of ex-industry executives on the board.
Apparently none were ex-Netflix.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Or why don't companies build out more infrastructure? They cut corners to save every penny they can while charging as much as possible for the service. Tiered Internet plans are applying the "tv" broadcast model to a medium that is peer to peer (yes, servers are peers). I think that Internet capacity should be as over-built as possible and damn the upfront costs! It would enable countless things: imagine watching any episode of any television program or any movie or listening to any music on demand - all in the highest definition possible. And everyone doing it with capacity to spare. Gone would be the days of "scheduled tv programming" and it would herald an era where you follow your interests wherever that leads.
Shh.
There, I fixed it for you.
* * *
Here is one of the most influential documents sent to the federal cabinet that led to the eventual ressicion.
I have to say, while I, like many /. users, don't like facebook, I strongly believe that the "laymen" internet users were informed about this horribleness through social networks such as facebook. I for one was able to inform over 15 "friends" (we'll use that term, I guess) and all of my family (none who are geeks) through facebook about this issue, and they all signed up because I was able to explain it well (i.e. you're going to pay more for internet).
So perhaps facebook has its place. In any case, I'm really happy this is happening, because it makes me sick to think how the CRTC is able to screw Canadians so easily to help corporations. What a sad government we have.
Canada != US
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Except just for you, to show your support for metering, Comcast will charge a dollar a byte past your cap.
The danger of positions like you are recommending is the two parts - ... I don't have any problem with them charging..."
A. "I support metering
coupled with
B. (Low price that I pick, which need not at all be the actual rate).
You forgot about the "give an inch, take a parsec" effect going lately. See for example the story of AT&T illegally overbilling usage.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
“If they don’t reconsider we will reverse their decision.” What is likely to happen is that the CRTC will go back to the drawing board and will propose another solution. Perhaps they will make some concessions or perhaps they will find a more subtle way of screwing the little guy. Also when politicians get involved, you have to wonder whats the hidden agenda. There is a looming threat of a new election in Canada and being on the side of the population will get them a few much needed extra votes. Should they get what they want, which is a majority, I say watch out. I'm certainly happy that something is being done but I don't expect the fight to be over.
FTA: "Businesses and consumers are increasingly relying on the Internet to download videos, documents and even software."
Wow, software! Who would have ever thought that people would download THAT?
In a horribly clunky square wheel fashion, it is the best interests of the public.
1. Make terrible policy
2. Outrage threatens political viability
3. Reverse terrible policy *in the best interests of the public*
It's just a pity that the process requires way too much artificially amplified drama. Oh look, drama sells TWO copies of a news media exposure - one for the bad policy, one for the reversal.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
... because the Conservatives can't risk having 350,000 disgruntled voters in an election season.
Most Canadians who are up in arms over this are missing the point. The ministry is missing the point. Bandwidth caps are GOOD. They provide the proper incentive structure for both consumer and ISP. On the consumer side, you can pick an appropriate plan that allows for only the amount of bandwidth that you need, resulting in more effective market segregation. This means low-use consumers don't need to subsidize high-use consumers. On the ISP side, the incentive is to provide as fast a connection as possible to encourage usage and excess usage.
A little publicized fact about the recent CRTC rulings is that bandwidth caps are classified as an economic Internet Traffic Management Practice (ITMP). Throttling, DPI, etc, are classified as technical ITMPs. The CRTC is trying to encourage economic ITMPs and discourage technical ITMPs so that consumers know what they are paying for.
Imagine these two situations:
1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
I would much, MUCH rather go for the second option. I am paying for a certain service. I know the terms of that service. I'm getting exactly what I'm paying for.
The problem that most Canadians have (and rightly so) is that the caps were set way too low. The reasons are complicated, but I'll try to summarize them. In Canada, the Bell companies own the last mile infrastructure. However, they are mandated to lease their last mile infrastructure to third-party ISPs at a reasonable wholesale rate that allows for competitive plans and pricing. This has been working well for a while, as third-party ISPs were able to provide similar plans at lower cost. HOWEVER, the Bell companies recently started to roll out VDSL service. They argued that they should be able to sell VDSL service exclusively for a limited time to "recuperate investment costs", and the CRTC agreed. So third-party ISPs cannot currently sell VDSL service, only ADSL service. Then the Bell and cable companies argued for UBB, which was granted. When they were allowed to use UBB, the Bell companies purposely gutted their own ADSL plans, putting strict bandwidth limits and high overage costs. This meant that the wholesale plans that they sold to the third-party ISPs were impacted in the same way.
All of that builds up to this: The third-party ADSL rates ARE competitive with respect to the Bell companies' ADSL services. However, since the Bell companies can sell VDSL services exclusively, they used that leverage to put in place anti-competitive practices.
THIS is where the problem is. The problem is not UBB, but rather the slimy business practices executed by these Bell companies. To solve this situation, the government should NOT be repealing the UBB decision. Instead, they should either allow third-party ISPs to sell VDSL services, or mandate reasonable minimum bandwidth caps and reasonable maximum overage charges.
restored!
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
Canadian radio and television stations have Canadian content rules. The rules are largely responsible for the Canadian music industry.
The rules started in the early 1970s and were intended to make sure Canadians could hear their own stories and music. Until then, almost all pop music heard on Canadian commercial radio came from south of the border.
Observing that most of the music on commercial radio was crap, one wit quipped that: "Our crap is at least as good as American crap."
The CRTC is responsible for enforcing the Canadian content rules. Their logic may have been something like the following:
If people can use streaming media in place of over the air or cable delivered broadcasting, we will no longer be able to ensure that Canadian artists can fairly compete in the market place. Canadian culture, as we know it, may be in jeopardy. If we make it too expensive for Canadians to stream all of their media from the United States, we can protect Canadian culture.
On the consumer side, you can pick an appropriate plan that allows for only the amount of bandwidth that you need, resulting in more effective market segregation. This means low-use consumers don't need to subsidize high-use consumers. On the ISP side, the incentive is to provide as fast a connection as possible to encourage usage and excess usage.
What actually does happen, though, is that the ISP provides ludicrous plans (too much money, too little bandwidth) AND the ISP does everything in their power to encourage excess usage. They have their cake and eat it, too, because we lack proper, level playing-field competition.
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
I'm all for hating on Harper, but to be fair on this particular issue, it was the CRTC and not Harper who made the decision. I honestly don't believe that Harper was specifically aware of this until it became a PR nightmare. The main problem in this case is that the CRTC is appointed and not elected, and it's made up mostly of former telecom employees. Their recent decisions have shown that they either a) have no understanding of Internet issues at all, or b) simply favour major telecoms by default and are corrupt asshats. Or maybe both.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
Our politicians do have balls! Unless of course it's only because they want to implement a new internet tax.....
CRTC = "Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission" not "Canadian Radio and Television Commission"
Thanks you! It is good to see a comment that is more sophisticated then the "all UBB are bad" comments I'm seeing in much of the Canadian activism.
It is a serious problem that the current, very low, usage caps were put in place to prevent services such as Netflix from effectively competing with the incumbents TV services, but that doesn't mean we should get rid of UBB entirely.
We need either (a) real competition, which is not going to happen in Canadian telecom as the current alignment is too entrenched, or (b) government mandated caps that are much higher then the current ones.
In Canada another issue at the moment affecting the 3rd party/wholesale ISP's (small guys & gals) is the speed (megabits per second). Bell sells speeds 6 meg and below to the wholesalers at roughly 50% of cost of Bells lowest retail rate (at least they are suppose to do that). For about 3-4 years now there has been a battle with the CRTC/Bell/Small ISP's regarding access to higher speeds (25Mbit/etc) - Bell recently came back and proposed a rate of about 95% of resale value for wholesalers. A wholesaler cannot run a business with such a thin margin - it's impossible. Sadly, I do not believe the small ISP is going to get as much public support as the bandwidth cap issue has affected EVERYONE including Bell/Rogers/Wholesale subscribers. The speed (not cap) issue is now only going to affect the Small ISP/Wholesale market - not enough people subscribe to wholesale/3rd party ISPs. Sad really.
Your on crack... this is just a way to gouge customers out of more money for less.... its like a the damn potato chip bag with 75% air and 25% chips... MORE MONEY FOR LESS.
I personally don't mind the idea of UBB, because it technically puts the internet costing as other utilities do - i.e. you pay for what you use.
The problem I have with all of it is the cost was far far higher than any real cost of providing it.
The irony of the government over-ruling the CRTC is that it was the government who over-ruled the CRTC in the first place and ordered it to make this decision.
The reason the CRTC made this decision is because Maxime Bernier under the Conservative Government, over-ruled the CRTC in 2007, (in response to a CRTC ruling that promoted competition in the home telephone market by preventing the ILECs from slashing home phone rates) telling it to "rely on market forces to the maximum extent possible". In other words, don't interfere with private companies doing business.
This policy directive has had far reaching negative implications. Canada was already slipping behind in telecommunications but the pace has accelerated now that the CRTC has been effectively prevented from doing their job.
Given that the "market force" in Canadian Telecom is one of a monopoly, or at best a duopoly, it shows just how ill informed the Conservatives are on telecom policy.
More info with links to consumer group studies if you're interested:
http://www.johnlange.ca/2010/12/30/conservative-government-phone-deregulation-fails-consumers/
I agree - however Bell did come back with 25Mbit pricing for the wholesalers recently (only 4 years later!!). Normally Bell sells wholesalers services at about 50% of what Bell retails a service for. The higher speed stuff has been priced at about 95% of what Bell's retail rate is. A wholesaler can't run a business with such limited margin. Pricing still hasn't been approved yet and I think the follow up meeting with the CRTC is scheduled for sometime this summer. Things move very slow with the CRTC. The only reason there are such long delays for this is (my opinion) is to get the Bell legal team time to come up with a plan to counter the wholesaler argument. I also agree that UBB is not such a bad thing generally speaking. The CAP has been set far too low and the cost going over the cap is set far to high per gigabyte. Something like $1-2 per gig :(
There are two main players here in Toronto that provide internet access Bell and Rogers and neither of them competes with the other except to the extent that they want to see the how badly they can gouge their customers.
What is funny is that they both complain about the massive amounts of usage they are forced to provide and therefor makes them sped billions on infrastructure.
Our national/local public broadcaster, the CBC had a crony from Bell's "legislation and regulation" team on the radio gloating about how proud he was that the CRTC had fought for the rights of all Canadians etc... when the CRTC was only doing exactly what the corporations wanted.
As an actual Canadian citizen I am fully proud that the nasty, corrupt CRTC, had their corporation loving decision overturned
What is strange is that the decision has been struct down by the even nastier, even more corporation loving Conservative government.
I smell two things: 1) election, 2) MASSIVE tax cuts to appease their corporate masters at Bell and Rogers
I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank.
Problem is: in practice nobody gets anything close to any of the two options for 40$ per month.
Here is what major providers are selling around 40$:
Bell "performance": 6mb/1mb, 25 Gb cap, 42$
Rogers "express": 10mb/512k, 60Gb cap, 47$
Rogers "lite": 3mb/256k, 15 Gb cap, 36$
Telus "standard": 5mb/?, 30 gb cap, "fom 45$"
Videotron "standard" 3mb/? 4gb cap, 30$
Videotron "high speed" 7mb/?, 40gb cap, 54$
Since the major providers have gained the power to throttle financially all the competition, this is what we get. Forget about 100Gb caps, they were only offered by small competitors (Teksavvy offered 200Gb (30$) and unlimited(40$)).
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
You're right: Flat-rate pricing leads to inefficiency.
But you're also a little wrong: markets need competition to be efficient. Merely doing away with flat-rate pricing won't solve the problem when the market is oligopolistic.
I'd be 100% for paying by the bit, if the price I paid were the price as determined in a free market. But it's self-evidently not. The price I pay is set by the monopoly provider of the DSL line I have, and they screw me.
So, withe a choice between:
1) Pay by the bit in a competitive market
2) Pay by the bit in an oligopoly, and
3) Flat rate pricing overseen by a government agency
I'd choose 1
But that's not the choice. The choice is between 2) and 3).
I, and 300,000 other people, choose 3.
This is step in right direction!
I totally agree with posters above - government taking over infrastructure of cable and telephone lines and charging fees for anyone that wants to hook in and provide TV or phone or Internet services and compete! That money can go back to enhancing infrastructure to organization that will spend all that money and not collect profit for their deep pockets - this way we will have 100Mbs fiber in our homes withing 2-3 years for $10/month! Our phone bills will go down to $10/month or something close to VOIP packages, and we wont get gauged with Cable/Satellite TV with +$50/month... more like $5/month... or you might even get to choose and pay only for channels you want to watch...
We should also look at:
1. Privatizing LCBO (Canadian Liquor/Beer stores )
2. Beer Store
3. Allow US Satellite companies in for competition.
4. Allow for creation of new power companies where government can control the grid and you decide who you are paying for power (so I can opt out of expensive green energy) that is being pushed!!!
This is all common sense and I'm amazed how little politicians actually apply to building a better society...
This would be so AMAZING to bringing jobs and create innovation, and create opportunities for small businesses and new startups in TV/Cable/internet to Ontario and Canada and average family that has cable TV and internet and phone would save on average +$200/month - better than any tax deduction government can give!
But we Canadians never step forth to actually do anything about it until someone actually starts raping us... like CRTC/Bell in this instance... in France they would have had riots long time ago...
So the government should be mandating the business models of private companies?
How many times do I need to say it: Competition, Competition, Competition.
Imagine these situations:
1) Unlimited usage but speed only good at 2am.
2) Capped usage but speed is good all day.
3) Unlimited usage and speed is good all day.
If there was competition then I would choose #3 from the providers who are competing for my service.
You're right, that UBB as a concept isn't a bad thing. As a heavy user, I think it's reasonable I pay more than someone who hardly uses the internet. However, pricing excess usage at $1.90 per GB clearly shows what this is really about. It's not about providing appropriate plans for different segments of users, but about grabbing more money from internet consumers, and protecting their TV businesses. If the pricing was something more in the $0.05 per GB, that would allow Bell to make a healthy profit of probably around 66%, and it wouldn't be gouging users.
www.clarke.ca
SpeedyDX has is right, it is a complex issue. I would like to add that it shouldn't be this complicated. If we started to think of internet connectivity in terms of a utility model, like electricity, water or natural gas, that should be the way to do it; in other words, I want to pay for what I use, and I don't want to subsidize someone who uses more than I do, nor do I want to leech off of someone who uses less. I pay a one time fee to connect my house/apt to electricity, to gas, to water, and then I pay per kWh, m3 or whatever. I should be able to do the same for internet, let me pay x cents/Mb be done with all this crap.
Yes, this is an ideal, and yes, I don't think this will come to pass in my lifetime, but hey, one can wish.
I can no longer read Dilbert. It's too depressing, because it is too real. -- Hyperhaplo
I was really hoping this would happen. Rogers and bell were getting killed by 'little guy' ISP's so they tried to squeeze them out with bandwidth caps, now that that is going away hopefully rogers and bell will be forced to remove their caps too.
I say separate the ownership of Layer 1 from the providing of Layer 3 services. There's too much of a conflict of interest in the incumbents (both telco and cableco) having both. Have the physical plant owned by a neutral third party (either non-profit or a co-op owned by the ISPs themselves), and allow any ISP to connect and offer services.
While there may be a Chinese wall between the different units within the incumbents, it doesn't appear to be very high or very strong.
1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
I would much, MUCH rather go for the second option.
I would too, if thats what would happen.
What would happen is you pay $40 a month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit and most of the time you'll get 3-5Mbps because of high network usage. Right now, the caps they set are too low, which would encourage even the medium and light users to watch their bandwidth. 10Mbps all the time for the 20GB limit they set... That's like 4and a half hours a month you can use the speed you were promised! Some activities that would require that speed are playing games, streaming movies. I would not want to kill half my monthly alotted amount just by using netflix once. If they set it to 100GB, That's a little better around 22 hours, but that still means if I want 1 solid hour of gaming a night, I'm STILL going over my cap.
So ISP's that currently preform the Technical ITMP's SHOULD be able to provide that solid 10Mbps connection right now, right? Because they've effectively employed the technical solution over the economic one. How come everyone at Shaw is still bitching they don't get the full speed they paid for? Because they are not equipped to handle a 100GB cap at 10Mbps. How many of the heavy users, who download 1TB a month, are ACTUALLY going to be curbed? Little Johnny Jimmy who downloads movies for all his friends 1 months, gets scolded by mom and dad, then teachs his friends to do it instead... and it just goes around.
Let's face it, the caps in theory would work incredibly well, the problem is that the ISP's aren't equipped to handle the caps. They've been employing the technical solution and they still aren't up to snuff, so I doubt the more flexible and lenient economic plan would be any better whatsoever.
I wrote this blog post yesterday and planned to send an edited version to my MP as well, before I read the news that the decision is going to be repealed. I think I'll still send the letter to my MP as an encouragement to make sure his party leader comes through on his promise.
The fox guarding the henhouse
Many other people have written articles and commentary about the CRTC's decision to allow Bell to force its wholesale customers to accept usage-based billing (UBB). This is my take on it.
I've been a very happy customer of Teksavvy for the past few years. Teksavvy's prices and policies are fair and reasonable. Teksavvy provides jobs to Canadians. Teksavvy has been one of the companies leading the charge to protect customers Bell's dishonest and anticompetitive practices. Currently I pay $32 per month for DSL from Teksavvy, which gives me 200GB per month of data use.
Thanks to the CRTC's decision in line with Bell Canada and against Canadians, my monthly cap is going to be reduced to 25GB. In Ontario, the cost per gigabyte of overage is going to be $1.90. Fortunately, my base rate will also be decreasing in acknowledgement of the fact that my bandwidth allotment is being reduced by 87.5 percent. No wait, I lied. Of course it's not. This is just a cash grab by Bell, sanctioned by the CRTC, at the expense of Canadians.
How much is this extra bandwidth going to cost? Bandwidth needs for HD movies range from about 1.5-2 GB per hour. Therefore a two hour movie will cost about $6.70 to stream in overage charges. Put another way, if you stream one hour of HD TV a day, you'll use about 53GB of data a month, just in video streaming. That's before you've done things like check your email or the weather. You'll be looking at about $52 in overage charges. That pays for a reasonable cable or satellite TV plan. I use this comparison because, of course, Bell also provides satellite television and does not want you to stop paying them $50+ per month for that in order to watch your TV online. I'm reminded of Roger's announcement last year of a reduction in bandwidth that they publicized the day after Netflix announced they were coming to Canada. An interesting coincidence.
Back to that $6.70 in streaming charges. If you rent a movie on iTunes, you'll pay $6 to rent the movie. That means if (when) you're over your bandwidth cap, to actually watch a movie, you'll be spending $12.70. That's completely ridiculous!
I read somewhere, I think in a post from Teksavvy, that this is over one thousand times the actual incremental cost that Bell incurs. In other words, Bell pays less than one fifth of one cent per GB, yet the CRTC thinks it's fair to charge consumers almost two dollars. To use another comparison, it costs Netflix at most about $0.03 per GB to stream videos. If the owners of the network between Netflix and me are able to make money off Netflix by charging them $0.03 per GB, how is it even remotely approaching fair that Bell is allowed to charge me $1.90 for that same data?
I'll admit, I'm a heavy user. I'm not sure exactly how much bandwidth I use, but it's a lot. I'm a self-employed e-commerce consultant and I work at home. My job involves me regularly uploading and downloading very large files of several gigabytes each. We have two children and probably watch about an hour of TV per day that's been streamed or downloaded off the internet. We cancelled our satellite service as we found we were paying about $15 per hour of TV actually watched, and all our video entertainment comes from the internet. We subscribe to Netflix and rent movies from iTunes. Of course Bell doesn't like people like me, as I've given up on paying for their last-century business model of paying huge monthly fees for television to be broadcast to me on the network's ag
www.clarke.ca
While your reasoning works well for the people who live right in urban sprawl, I live outside of the capitol city of BC. it takes me about 40 minutes during rush hour to get down town. However; I have trees around me. The Telcos can't justify putting in the same kind of infrastructure to support fewer customers, therefore, my house is 2Km from the node where the fibre magically transforms to copper. I cannot subscribe to VDSL. I have a 3.5Mbit ADSL service. So I get screwed because I'm actually unable to get the new service.
There's already bandwidth caps.
Shaw cable plans have bandwidth caps. For example, their high speed plan has a data transfer cap of 60 GB/month:
http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet/High-Speed/
Can somebody clue me in?
A couple things you aren't taking into consideration. Bell and Rogers were heavily subsidized by the Canadian government (recall "information super highway") to build national fiber networks. So tax payers have paid for the backbone of our big providers. They have imminent domain rights to property that smaller ISPs will never have, so the CRTC mandated that they allow smaller ISPs to use their last mile access. Some of the arguments put forth by Bell/Rogers/Shaw is that a small percentage of users were taking up most of the available bandwidth and that it was increasing costs. In reality, it is the practice of basing your required bandwidth to support X number of customers on the lowest bandwidth users, then taking the results and averaging it over a 24 hour period. Divide that number by 10 to get your 10:1 standard telco over-subscription and you get the current bandwidth problem. These bandwidth problems aren't as bad as Bell and Rogers are letting on. Distributed content networks like Akamai allow them to keep streaming the content local. Youtube, Bittorrent and other media sites are the big targets for Bell and Rogers because it allows Canadians to download tons of content without paying a PPV fee. The really big problems stem from the fact that ISP A and ISP B co-locate in the same building yet they do not peer with each other in a non-transit capacity...Along comes US ISP C that both A and B connect to, now if a user from ISP A wants to download data(torrent) from a user on ISP B he has to transit an expensive US carrier. Now cut to the future, imagine communities being able to communicate via streaming channels on the net without requiring ANY rogers or bell IP TV services. I can be Bob the cabinet maker and have a daily show streamed from my house to a local, regional, national and international community for $40/mo. I can be Jane the concert pianist and I can internet stream one of my performances. I can be the "Next Great Band" and allow people to stream our music or download it without UMG, WMG or BMG ever seeing a dime. There are a thousand different uses for Fiber to the Home level bandwidth and none of them make money for Rogers and Bell....Hence the situation we are in. Solutions: - Don't base your capacity planning on the lowest common denominator - Don't over-subscribe links so much - Make every Canadian ISP peer with every other Canadian ISP so that if the content exists in Canada there is no need to pay US carrier costs. - Enable a national multicast backbone and MAKE Rogers and Bell be a part of it. - Invest in more local content caching - pay Bram Cohen to add an Autonomous System affinity into bittorrent to have peers local to Canada higher on the desirable seed list. Cost about 500 bucks. - stop fighting change
This argument is bogus imo. If the ISPs can deliver 10Mbps speeds with caps, they can deliver it without too. The amount downloaded is an independent variable from the speed it's downloaded. Your argument is like saying you can drive your car at 60kph only if you only drive within 10km of your home, but any farther and you can only drive that speed at night.
You realise there's a reason for that puffed chip bag? You're getting the same amount of chips as before, just that the bag is larger and puffed with air ... so that the bag doesn't get squished and crush your chips.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Obviously there are those for and those against but this ruling was strictly to give them the rights to print money. There is a 27 page document that was written by one buisness that tells us exactly why UBB is bad. The fact that business are up in arms as well as consumers, even though we have been passive aggresive when Rogers and Bell set their own data caps on us it's just a mater of time before even us most passive of people get angry and when you push that far you've gone to far. I mean enough is enough. Price gouged for gas, electricity, HST, property taxes and the list goes on it's just a matter of time before the people snap. As Canadians we put up with alot of that and our entertainment passivies us to put up with some of the BS we continue to get gouged at but when you start ripping us off with our entertainment the shit hits the fan lol. This CRTC fiasco is like our little Egypt revolution lol. Anyway props to all who have voiced their concerns on this decision and no need to relent on it. Now it's time to attack Bill C-32 before we end up getting sued by big content companies here for copyring infringment, criminal records, fines, etc...
If there was ever a proper usage for stoning, this would it. Find out who let this happen, and stone them. Set an example.
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
My eyes had to rescan the headline several times trying to make grammatical sense of the construction until I realized there was a missing hyphen between the first two words. At first I thought there was a preposition missing between the second and third words. Bad grammar makes reading more difficult. In the 12 years that I've been reading Slashdot, the stories have always had bad grammar, and that has never been excusable. This isn't some rinkydink site, it's a major internet destination. Its grammar should be better than it is.
I would like to know which Canada you live in where you can pay only $40 a month, get 10 Mbps and have a 100MB cap. Rogers is currently charging me almost $60 (taxes) for a 60 MB cap and "10" Mbps. I put 10 in quotes because I have yet to see anything realistically approaching even 1 Mbps from downloading through Bittorrent. I would KILL for a connection that, degraded, was "only" 3-5 Mbps.
Bottom line, we need more competition at the ISP level in Canada. I despise both Bell and Rogers for their lack of flexibility, their business practices and their near-monopoly on data transmission across the country.
I only post as AC, but this post almost makes me want to sign up for Mod points...
I am fairly "leave the market alone" in mentality, but you always have to compare that mindset with a reality check. The fact is bandwidth caps on land line internet would end up just like they are now on cellphones-- ridiculously high, no choice, no competition. It's bad enough as it is, lets not make it worse.
I picked my cap. It was 200 gb.
I got a letter saying the CRTC would force the ISP's to downgrade my cap to 60gb or I can happily pay $100.00 more a month (50 for a higher plan, 50 for going over) to get back to my cap.
YOU are missing the point of why we're pissed off.
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
That is excellent analysis. Thanks. Unfortunately we are now operating in the realm of politics. I signed the petition, but I agree UBB is not the problem. It is the ridiculously low caps. I'm not sure how that point is going to come across in the political discourse we are about to engage in.
I won't comment on the specific CRTC situation; maybe there really was something corrupt happening there. But if people are reacting negatively to usage-based billing, then those people are being short-sighted fools, begging to be exploited and have to pay more.
I'm not saying usage-based billing isn't a cash grab by the ISPs, but anything else is even more of a cash grab and costs the consumer more. If you are paying flat rate, then you are either being subsidized by your neighbors, or you are subsidizing them.
Now, we all think we are the ones gaining unfair advantage and getting something-for-nothing, so flat rate sounds like a good idea. But are you sure that you aren't the one who is being a sucker? Maybe lots of other people are thinking the same thing.
That's the uncertainly. What doesn't have any uncertainty at all, though, is that the ISP will get their money. Whatever profit margin they think they can get away with (whether set by competitors or set by a regulatory commission), they're going to set their rates in order to get it; their gross revenue for all customers combined, is going to be some number marked up from their costs. So the only question is how much of that sum total, you pay. If you aren't torrenting 24/7 and you are paying a flat rate, then you are subsidizing the people who do that.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I dread hearing things like 'capped' and 'pay per useage' especially since I am so pleased with my provider and plan at the moment. Day or night no matter the hour I can get a 16gb file in maybe 20 minutes. I can download a whole series in a hour and my speeds online in terms of hosting capability and latency on FPS is unparalelled. I can honestly say the money im paying now for internet is worth every penny. I never have to worry about high traffic times or if i do my internet provider seems to be unphased by its current load. Good for Harper.
When you dislike the human race as much as I do, Karma:Bad is inevitable lol.
Imagine these two situations: 1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
Two counterarguments:
1. Slower speeds during peak times should be expected. It's as much a fact of life on the internet as rush hour is on the streets.
2. If the ISP can't supply that 10 Mbps connection consistently, that's false advertising on their part. I'm amazed how long they've gotten away with "up to (stupid speeds)" as is - no manufacturer would get away with making a toaster that "toasts up to 100 pieces of bread at one time" and only has two slots.
2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
In this scenario, why are we capping the speed at all? If I'm paying for the bit (and not a piece of the pipe), what reason is there not to push them downstream as fast as they can?
Also, by placing the cap, you've effectively cut how much data I can have regardless of speed. Even if I'm only getting a tenth of that 10Mbps "advertised speed", I'll get way more actual data that way (at 1 Mbps, it'll take 9 days 6 hours to hit a 100Gb cap, which means you've cut my effective internet by one-third.)
I would much, MUCH rather go for the second option. I am paying for a certain service. I know the terms of that service. I'm getting exactly what I'm paying for.
I've been sold a 10mbps connection, I expect to be able to use 10mbps any time, including ALL the time. A bandwidth cap + throttling is just a lame excuse to oversubscribe high speed connections without having the infrastructure to support it. This, in an age where bandwidth costs are becoming cheaper and cheaper. ALL of these changes (UBB, bandwidth cap, torrent throttling) are a step backward which leaves Canada with third world internet.
"You just need to watch how much you download" is not an excuse. Especially when Bell has made profits upwards of $500 million. They have MORE than enough money to provide fast unlimited Internet.
Imagine this situation...The year 2015, The bandwidth Cap was applied.
infrastructure across Canada is improved 90% of Canadian have access to VDSL, and there is no more concerns for throttling as the 'tubes' are wide enough for everyone now.
The Problem.
Netflix, and like companies leave Canada for two reasons.
1. the bandwidth Cap
2. Bell and Rogers are ok to sell any movie they like through Cbl/Sat or Rogers Plus Movie rental stores. Netflix is faced with the CRTC AGAIN telling them they must have a minimum amount of Canadian Content.
Not to mention
OnLive or other Gaming related companies doesn't enter Canada due to consumer concerns.
And who knows about what other technology could come from the internet in the next 5 years...
One thing is for certain... if the Bill were passed... we wound have had a BIGGER problems in 5 years.
If our government only cared about its people for once, we might get them to ban this here as well. No usage caps, Net Neutrality, OMG the ISPs would have to actually start labeling their packages for what they really are! I was recently looking at a local ISPs packages... they had a 60MB/s package for $80... In the fine print of their user agreement there was a 250gig cap. The stupidity of such a package boggles the mind. If anything, users with this package would have to conserve their use to the point that they'd noly be using it to watch netflix and the like at peak times. Their high rate combined with usage habits would almost ensure that they only add to the ISPs congestion problems. While customers with lower speeds but no cap would be spreading their usage out over longer periods of time and not using high instant-use services like netflix.
The only reason for rate caps is to try and force customers into business class or higher rate packages. It's all about profit, nothing more.
the Minimum was not the only problem, they didn't leave room for growth. Moores Law would be somewhere to start.
We know data usage over the internet will double... eventually and it'll double again. so you think they thought of that?
if it's not 10mbps all the time... then it's not 10mbps and you should be complaining, you have a very odd view of how things work and by the sounds of it, you're sitting on the evil side of the fence, don't let them have an inch cause they're going to take the last mile....
you're argument sounds all nice but when you consider that low caps for "low users" is actually working towards keeping "low users" who think "expensive plans are for nerds" don't realize they can buy little boxes that hook up to their internet and get a better (e.g. cable/satellite alternative... it's an obviously conflict of interest which you haven't addressed
The one (and really, it's just the one) good thing I can say about Harper is that he knows which way the political wind blows. He'll have this reversed - not because he disagrees with it, or supports telecoms, or any ideological view. It'll be reversed solely because there's been enough outrage to possibly make this an election issue. And the one thing Harper stands for is being re-elected.
Where are you getting these strawman scenarios from? We were going to being charged $40 (for a 5Mbps connection and only 25GB of bandwidth, and then charged another 2 bucks PER GIG. What's the point in having superfast service if you can't download anything without paying through the nose? If you want I can give you 100Gbps service but you have to pay $100/month for the first gigabyte and then another $20/gig after that.
Canadians *already* have to pay far more for their internet than almost everyone else, and they wanted to charge MORE for LESS service than what we were already getting currently. Your hypothetical situations don't reflect current reality whatsoever.
VDSL isn't going to help improve the congestion problem when they already are unable to delivery the speeds they promised with regular ADSL. What WILL help is having Bell and Rogers actually use some of their money to upgrade their infrastructure like they should have been doing in the first place, instead of blowing it all on solid gold toilet seats for their executives yachts.
If you're going to be a shill for Bell, then at least have the decency to state your conflict of interest.
You must work for the ISPs. Capped and per use internet is like giving you the power to fly, but only up to 5 miles a day, even though you can do it at will.
I'm assuming you are part of the "me" society. Please leave the scene because we are demanding a "we" society.
If I am paying for 10MB and only getting it between 2-4 am then my ISP is not providing the service they advertised. What makes you think that they will change anything about their systems? They will need to install more equipment to get you that bandwidth. History shows that these companies invest as little as possible into infrastructure. Only adding when things are broken. And in rare cases to add new technologies.
They will monitor your usage on the same slow connection and charge you more to use it, shake your head. They will not invest to make the customer experience any better, when a customer calls that they are not getting the speed they paid for, the rep will tell them they have malware. They will blame it on the lines in the customers house, anything other than admit it is their systems.
So no this will not be a good thing, you do not give the big three more power to charge you more under the pretense of better sevice. First they should fix the existing issues with their infrastructures and start supplying the advertised rates, then if they can get that right, maybe we can consider tier based internet. Because eventhough they claim you are on a 1.5 MB connection, your sharing the same line your neighbour uses for their bottom tier connection. The lines are already full, too many people using them in most places. Why? Beacuse they ISP's will not spend the money to reduce congestion.
I would prefer option 3. I pay 40/month for a 3 Mbps commit burstable to 10 and actually get it because the ISP has a clue. Some people hate being nickel and dimed to death. I don't want my every breath to be followed by the cha-ching sound.
This is especially true when I know very well that most of the costs in providing DSL service are fixed.
I wish I could up your karma but instead I will say I agree. I think that usage based billing isn't nessisarily bad but when I can't use my netflix account and download a game off steam in the same month I'm feeling pretty taken advantage of. I've got 100gig cap and I was poping up to 120-150 with game updates/downloads and netflix. Now I have to check my usage daily and setup an allotted amount I can download a day and give myself carry over. If I want a steam game 7gigsish I have to save up my bandwidth for the month. I've been doing this for the last two months getting myself ready for the caps to take place. I'm with shaw so I'm not sure if this will change how they do their bandwidth capping. It's been looking like parliment wants to overturn UBB just to selling of pipe to other companies. Like I said I don' t mind the caps but a 250 cap like comcast has would be nice. I think people also need to remember Bell got a lot of money from the government to create their huge network.
I would also like to say that the overage charges that they are putting in are way higher than they need to be. Maybe it needs some regulation so that the consumers don't get hosed and the ISP's don't get hosed. I don't think UBB should be in place to cap spending on upgraded infrastructure which seems to be the current case.
The REAL issue is that Bell is dictating a business model. period. full stop.
First, 25GB in Ontario vs 60GB in Quebec is completely retarded. Yet somehow CRTC lets this pass.
2nd, Bell already offers HDTV service on their VDSL. Yes folks, that means no usage limits. And this VDSL sits in the same physical location as, you guessed it, wholesale ADSL. If 2 TVs in the house are on, it's like having 6mbps maxed out, forever. Yet somehow Bell has the 'bandwidth' for this in their infrastructure. No UBB here folks.
3rd, Bell could put in bandwidth caps based as an average to each ISP. ie: they must maintain a 25GB or 60GB average monthly usage or some bulk overages occur ACROSS THEIR ENTIRE USER BASE. So 25000 subscribers means 625TB before overages hit. We all know why Bell chose not to do this. $$$. And this point speaks directly to allowing ISP to choose their sales model and Bell isn't allowed them to do that. Bell is FORCING the ISP to do overages per-subscriber.
4th, the pricing is not commensurate with reasonable costs and profit for CO to BRAS traversal. At $2/GB it's somewhere between an 1 and 2 orders of magnitude over that mark. Here's some insight -- UBB insurance (blocks of extra bandwidth) are offered at $5/40GB or $0.125/GB. This is still VERY PROFITABLE for Bell. Their costs are BRAS (beyond the 25GB or 60GB base package).
5th, all the swear-words one can think of.
That's just a statement of fact in many municipalities.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times. 2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
I would much, MUCH rather go for the second option.
Speak for yourself. I would much rather have the first option.
I would much rather have an Internet plan where I pay $40/month and I know it's going to cost me $40/mo.
My Internet usage is variable; I rarely hit a particular 'average' - I've used as much as 300GB to as little as 10GB in a month.
That's one problem.
Another problem is that the caps are low and overage prices are exhorbitant. $1.00 (or more) per GB is just highway robbery, especially since bandwidth costs the ISPs about $0.02 at max per GB. The only reason one would be able to charge that much per GB is because the ISPs are either defacto monopolies or oligopolies - $0.10/GB would be reasonable AND would provide a 500% profit at least.
A third problem is that I just don't trust my ISP to measure bandwidth effectively. Since the measurement happens on their end, they could be inaccurate and I'd just not know.
There's no reason ISPs can't offer a "unlimited speed but per/GB" vs "limited speed during peak hours but unlimited GB" plan, using QoS policies for the former and latter. So that people CAN make that choice as you suggested.
Because I'm going to be honest - I just spent 6 months in New Zealand. I found it a very hard adjustment and moved back to the states - one of the reasons I did so was because I don't think the Internet has affected the culture of New Zealand the way it has the culture of the United States.
New Zealand has pretty much always had UBB from the beginning, and there's no Internet plan that doesn't have UBB in the country.
So people use the Internet sparingly; they associate use of the Internet with cost and do not wish to incur that cost themselves, nor do they want to impose that cost upon their friends.
In the long run, it ends up that people don't use the Internet socially. It's less often in New Zealand that people organize social gatherings on the Internet, it's hard to find businesses, services, events, etc. on the Internet - in short, the entire country pretty much feels like you're living in the mid 1990s, where Internet is *there* but nobody really considers it central to the way they organize their lives. It's a culture shock that was just a huge problem for me; and I think it's actually retarded New Zealand's cultural growth. Now, there were other reasons I moved back, but that was a big one.
So I think there are some serious social problems associated with UBB.
This is true of Harper, but it's also true of pretty much every politician, especially at the federal level. The higher up the chain you go, the worse it gets. The good thing about this issue is that it's something the public can easily understand and get behind, at least on a fundamental level. Copyright law reform intricacies? They don't understand that. Massive increase to their Internet bill for stuff they're already doing today? That's something Joe Public understands.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
The bandwidth caps are so ludicrously low and prices so ludicrously high here already that they stifle behaviour. Downloading a few movies and watching some youtube videos sticks you right over the limit. There's no alternative ISP to head to as the CRTC has made sure of that with this ruling.
Bell and Rogers, the two companies with the most to gain here - earn a lot of money from people renting movies On Demand. It's in their interest to block internet use for things like Netflix. (only a cost to them with bandwidth, and no revenue).
Bell who owns the last mile, obtained that last mile with massive government subsidies- and is therefore required to play a little bit by gov't rules on the use of the last mile. This pushes the ownership 100% to them.
Rescind the ruling, and dammit - make Bell and Rogers offer some sort of unlimited plan (they don't right now).
Sorry to say this but you sound too corporate or too well off (a good paying job) to be here... and i'm going against what you say...
if you actually know what this is and if you actually use the internet...
- The first paragraph you wrote
It's a lie, the companies haven't and won't drop the price for internet access when the cap will be applied. In fact they are using this opportunity to add penalties if you do not add these services.
Do you get charged for how many book you read or look at sitting at the library? If someone has a research to do for school or job or other, the last thing you want is to be limited on how much information and how fast you can access that information (copying images, how to videos, audio and other)
A connection speed is also affected by how far you are from a central system. The further you are, the worse is it, no matter if you are the only one using it or not.
- The second one
Even with the bandwidth limit cap applied, it is not explained to the clients in question. Half of the readers don't even know what a bandwidth is and how much space 100kbps connection takes up on a hard drive (trick question). In fact, the companies are using this opportunity to confuse even more the clients by pushing for a high paying plan.
- The third paragraph
Imagine these two situations:
1) Paying 40$/month for a service that states that you can reach UP TO 10mbps and that if you do not reach that speed, it's normal cause you are too far from the central distribution center. They don't think it's worth investing the necessary money to be able to get those client their hard earned moneys worth.
2 )Paying 40$/month for a service that states that you can reach UP TO 10mbps and that if you do not reach that speed, it's normal cause you are too far from the central distribution center. They will also reduce that speed once you passed their bandwidth limit unless you pay an extra fee so they can INCREASE that limit (not even remove that restriction)
- The fourth paragraph
I would rather they invest on increasing their capacity to handle their clientele.
Example: when a restaurant notices that they are always full, everyday, they expand (build a terrasse). If it's only busy during lunch, they have more hired help during that time. When did you see a restaurant charge you extra cause they had to call in someone to help with the lunch rush?
- The fifth paragraph
Generally when you put a price in front of a client, it includes all the suppliers expenses. Bell has a bigger call support time and center and more employees then the other 3rd ISPs do. When bell rents out this it's only counting the hardware (plus extra since it's still renting off bell) expense and not that extra good services bell is known for (lmao). VDSL rolled out cause of demand for high speeds. "Recuperate investment" reason is to be able to apply this cap law. For how long will this cap last? And when that time is up, will they keep it cause it's going on so "well"? Why not just increase the general cost of your services? Increase the base cost and everything balances out.
- The sixth
Truth but bell still gets a slice of the pie!
- The seventh
Summary: read what i wrote on top.
My 10 cents
I barely make enough to pay for everything i have (no dish or phone line). My internet (including online games) is the only thing that i have for entertainment. I'm very often on youtube and also programming/learning software development (boring life i know).
To test my software, i need to give it to ppl so they can test it out for me THAT racks up my and THEIR bandwidth. The ppl that help me and myself are with these 3rd party ISPs because of the no limit (that and bells service is too awesome for me).
Also, limiting internet speeds puts a limit on the flow of information and THAT is wrong. It's like asking the library or the clinics to close the doors when x amount of ppl come in. Or, to put a counter on your radio and when you reach your limit, it's tur
Speed aside, I'd like the bandwidth cap theory except for the price reason. I'm sorry, but the absolute slowest, cheapest possible plan available at $40 a month or more? And absolutely insane prices for going over? No. Just no. Make the prices at least vaguely reasonable and people won't object so much.
The big thing not released by CRTC is that the major supporters of this; BELL, Rogers, etc have their own movies on demand system via the internet. If you had Roger's TV and internet package the limit and filter did not apply when you accessed Roger's on-line broadcasts while if you tried to use a competitor you had the restriction slapped down on you hard.
It was not only a huge cash grab it was attempt to lock you into using only their online controlled content. The idea was to fuck your choices - the internet you paid for should only connect you to the ISP. Then the ISP can charge you extra for any services like movie, music, voip, skype, etc.
The CRTC does not seem to represent the general citizen's interest. The costs are going up and not down. We will be getting less upload/download data for the money each citizen pays. Simply look at what the telecom companies are doing to make profit with mobile UBB services business model: 2GB quota plans for a month + cost/GB. That is the biggest rip-off scheme almost resembling the costly 1-976-FOR-XFUN $/call phone UBB numbers. However it's more subtle in approach because consumers aren't aware of it and we don't naturally count in terms of Gigabytes(GB). Try using Google maps in satellite mode for a week and you'll end up using your entire Mobile UBB 2GB monthly quota. For the rest of the 3 weeks you use your internet you'll be paying extra fees $$$ and you won't know it until you receive your statement in the mail if you're like me. In China, it's less subtle, when you hit the 2GB limit on your dataplan at 80RMB a month, not only does your mobile internet get cut off, but your normal mobile service gets cut off until you pay the extra service fees for the month. One thing you need to know about Chinese Mobile/Landline Voice and Data providers is that BELL advise them on how to institute their next-generation service infrastructure. I'm not criticizing China here. That's just the way their service operates thanks to the wonderful advice BELL has given them. All I can say is BELL loves their the mobile UBB price model so much that they want some excuse to move that UBB model from the mobile domain to the landline domain. BELL has the CRTC in the pockets it seems. It's about time the Mr. Harper and Mr. Clement public investigates what Mr. Von Finckenstein(Chairman, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission)'s salary and all the other CRTC people. Something doesn't feel right.
Why is the CRTC the one guiding the Business Model for this? PRIME MINISTER HARPER AND HON. M.P. CLEMENT SHOULD STIPULATE "MOBILE/LANDLINE FLAT-RATE UN-CAPPED USAGE PLANS" as a requirement from the get-go.
CANADIANS SHOULD NEVER ACCEPTED MOBILE UBB IN THE FIRST PLACE EITHER.
Network hardware infrastructure is on public land because this is for the entire Canadian public. Bell wishes to artificially augment network prices and institute to "usage-based billing" and is dreaming up ways of justifying it to the public. Get smart people! The government should ask how much the Network hardware infrastructure costs. The markup is huge! We could just do this hardware infrastructure ourselves without Bell's intervention, there would be no mark up. There would be no intervention from CRTC. We could buy our network hardware once, get the unlimited bandwidth upload and download. It's possible the quality of service would vary, but the network would be highly utilized at the most reasonable fee. When the network gets too sluggish, the network hardware infrastructure on public land could be upgraded, but at a service fee which would be much lower than BELL alone has the monopoly to offer. OUR CURRENT GOVERNMENT SHOULD DO WHAT'S RIGHT AND CORRECT THIS BEFORE THEY SEE GRASSROOTS ORGANIZATIONS MAKING THEIR OWN DO-IT-YOURSELF NETWORK PEER-TO-PEER NEIGHBOUR TO NEIGHBOUR, CITY TO CITY NETWORK COME INTO EXISTENCE.
Hardware is getting cheaper and the know-how is out there in open-source land and it's growing.
I wish I could find stats but I know intuitively that in the past 10 years Canada has gone from being a world leader in bandwidth penetration and value to a solid middle-of-the-packer.
You can thank the CRTC and established Telcos for that. Also for the terrible value you get from cellular companies. And TV companies. Because the same three companies exclusively own all three services.
For sure this latest push is an effort to make great services like Netflix streaming (welcomed to Canada only this past summer) less affordable when compared to my internet/TV provider's $7 video on demand. And yes our dollars are worth $7... more in fact when you consider the cost of all other consumer goods vs. USA.
Forcing people to keep an eye on their internet usage to avoid overage charges at best is annoying, at worst will stifle our citizen's innovation as we compete in the global technology market.
I think I'm going to move closer to the border and throw a Cat 6 cable over to my Yankee neighbour!
If the ISPs were in it because the networks have issues, they should have no issues, and by default, with a hard cap. Once you reach it, you're disconnected.
The problem is, the UBB policies are like cellphone policies - you don't know the true damage until the bill comes, and by then, instead of the $200 cable bill, it's suddenly $500. Or more. (Remember all those people with $18,000+ phone bills?).
Make it a hard cap and less people would complain because if they go over, they go over and have to seek out alternatives (like upgrade their plans and be careful).
And also, why am I capped on speed? I'm paying by the byte, I should get the maximum speed that the network can give me due to technical limitations. I pay for power and water, and I can use as much as the breaker box and water pipes can give me. If you want to charge me by the byte, give me the 25Mbps+ the hardware can give me.
Also, I want a standalone meter - not one that I have to load up on my web browser (using my cap, and to which you'll load up with megabytes of ads and other crap, which also use up quota). Give me a standalone box, sealed, certified, and tested by NIST (US) or Industry Canada/Measurement Canada, like my water and electric meters and anything else I pay for by quantity. That way I can monitor my usage by looking at its screen, like I do with my water, electric and gas meters.
Right now it's a fox guarding the henhouse thing - they say you used 200GB this month? Well, their numbers are the value that counts. Oh, you're going to count the PHY headers in the byte counts as well (not just Ethernet headers - but DOCSIS and ADSL packet headers...).
UBB is a good idea, no doubt, but profit seeking shouldn't be its primary goal.
Imagine these two situations:
1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
I would much, MUCH rather go for the second option. I am paying for a certain service. I know the terms of that service. I'm getting exactly what I'm paying for.
Reality check: for me to get 100gb download + upload a month it's not $40 a month, it's easily $70 with taxes...
for 40 gb a month, it's $45 a month at 8mbps
Those fees have been there for years, i remember going from 200 GB a month download to 200GB a month combined to 100GB a month combined at $20 more
If you really think that's a good deal, go ahead, WELCOME TO CANADA!
Also remember that the american dollar is pretty much at parity to the canadian dollar right now...
I know there a mixed emotions about network neutrality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality Network neutrality is a good thing! Network neutrality means the isps can't create a monopoly and bandwidth shape to make there sites faster and other sites slower.
Isps have been doing this for years to make there premium sites appear to be a better service.
Please every one head to http://openmedia.ca/netneutrality and voice your opinions to get Network neutrality a reality!
Why not take this a step further. Charge for individual local phone calls, this way little old ladys who only use their phone once a week won't be subsidizing blow hards who talk all day and night. See? Market segregation works!
You quote this as your source: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/932571--ottawa-to-reverse-crtc-decision-on-internet-billing?bn=1
The article from "the Star" contradicts itself by saying:
"The promise to reverse the ruling comes as CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein is scheduled to explain the decision Thursday before the House of Commons industry committee."
They say it is a "PROMISE" nothing more. I see no official releases from the CRTC to verify that a decision has been made. My understanding is that the have until March 1, before making a ruling. I don't think this is over yet.
You quote this as your source: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/932571--ottawa-to-reverse-crtc-decision-on-internet-billing?bn=1 The article from "the Star" contradicts itself by saying: "The promise to reverse the ruling comes as CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein is scheduled to explain the decision Thursday before the House of Commons industry committee." They say it is a "PROMISE" nothing more. I see no official releases from the CRTC to verify that a decision has been made. My understanding is that the have until March 1, before making a ruling. I don't think this is over yet.
1. Your situations are unrealistic. It is NOT POSSIBLE to provide 10Mbps bandwidth and guaranteeing that bandwidth at $40/mo. The bandwidth is always shared, caps or not. If you want 10Mbps @ 7pm to watch netflix, and a few 10s of thousand people around your city also want to use same amount of bandwidth, then sorry, you will get slowed down. The only way around it is if the destination sites have CDN in your city.
2. I would also love 10Mbps or 100Mbps symmetric connection with 100GB limit, and then pay reasonable charges, like $25/TB. But the bandwidth is not guaranteed. Even at a colo, the bandwidth is not guaranteed if all the servers started to move data at same time..
Finally, these decisions were not about caps to end consumers only. This was about caps to 3rd parties too. A reseller of DSL couldn't provide unlimited internet access, even if they provided their own internet feed and only needed the telco for the "last mile" connection. Then they also traffic shaped the last-mile connection so they couldn't get better speeds with competition. This is where the decision should be overturned immediately.
As I recall, there was also a decision about "monopoly holders do not have to resell their lines to 3rd parties" - basically killing competition. Hell, the entire CRTC should be fired for stunts like this.
PS. The government does not exactly care about customers. They only care about votes. When I wrote to my local MP about these issues, they said they would get "on it", but of course did nothing. Forward 6 months, and they suddenly woke up to the "evils of CRTC decisions"? Give me a break - that ship has sailed 6+ months ago!
The word "utility" is practically synonymous with "delivered by network with huge front-end costs". Water, Sewer, Electric, Gas: the big bucks are in burying or stringing all those miles of network connections to your house. The incremental costs per unit of product delivered (sewer: "taken away") are generally small.
Almost no utility can offer unlimited usage of the product, though - unlimited local calling on your telephone network was the first. The incremental cost per local call was so very low, however, that they went with it. That's valuable information, because it tells you that the very common $30/month/house costs for telephone are just a little over the cost of having a phone network come to your house at all.
Everybody else buries the fixed-costs of providing the network in the cost-per-unit of the product, meaning low users get a subsidized network connection, and heavy-volume users subsidize other's networks.
Usage "caps" (they aren't actually caps unless your modem shuts off) - which are really gargantuan markups on incremental costs, do the save thing; but "unlimited" usage does the opposite: low users subsidize heavy ones.
Here's a radical suggestion: why not have the Internet be provided by the first utility.that actually uses FREE MARKET FORCES to match usage with real costs.
Many thanks to the other poster who provided the link to the fact that Netflix seems to be able to buy bandwidth in bulk for 3 cents a GB:
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2009/03/estimates-on-what-it-costs-netflixs-to-stream-movies.html
So, we have all the information we need for a truly fair billing structure: $30/month, plus a nickel a GB - a dime a GB at peak times. Most people would pay about $32 per month, heavy users $40 or $50. When you compare that to what the ISPs were after, it's plain they were out for a major gouge, which is very typical of privately-owned utilities that achieve regulatory capture and don't have an irate citizenry disrupting the heist.
The notion that anybody should be paying $70 or $80 per month for a bunch of electrical pulses is easily dismissed by the cost of delivering water to your house. In contrast to wires that weigh a few grams per metre, a tonne of sterilized water, cleaned in huge, billion-dollar treatment plants that take hundreds of people to run and pumped long distances, usually uphill from a river by massive pumps, are delivered to your house through heavy, expensively buried cast-iron water mains that break every day at a cost of thousands per break: and your water bill is probably under $50/month for 30 tonnes of water.
But I'm not happy to see caps or unlimited - both are unfair. As a friend of mine put it when "unlimited" cable broadband came in 14 years ago here, "Great; people will leave HDTV streaming for four weeks straight to keep the cat company while they're on a long vacation." Considering HDTV was 10 years in the future at the time, I think he was pretty prescient.
You're quite right. As someone so rightly pointed out already Canada != the US
How many times do I need to say it: Competition, Competition, Competition.
Imagine these situations:
1) Unlimited usage but speed only good at 2am.
2) Capped usage but speed is good all day.
3) Unlimited usage and speed is good all day.
If there was competition then I would choose #3 from the providers who are competing for my service.
... but there isn't competition. The would only be competition *if* Bell et al didn't try and kill off smaller independent ISPs.
I think it is you who is missing the point...
The bandwith caps are a good thing, I agree, however if an ISP would like to offer shitty speed and unlimited caps then they should be able to.
If there is an opportunity for someone else to make money, then they can offer a capped service with a higher quality connection. Or even both.
It is when you force them to only offer capped service that the problems begin.
3) You pay $60/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 40GB limit, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning because of Bell's throttling. Other times,because the CRTC has artificially eliminated any competition, Bell has no incentive to upgrade their fiber, so because of high network usage you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times. Europe and Asia continue to enjoy 20,50, 100Mbps or higher speeds. Bell explains they can't offer those speeds because of Canada's low population density, even in large urban areas like Toronto or Vancouver.
"Imagine these two situations:"
Actually, I'd rather imagine a third situation--utility style billing. Charge me $30/month for administration and local infrastructure costs, and 10 cents/GB for bandwidth.
In this environment, the ISP is encouraged to give you the fastest possible net connection so that you use up as much bandwidth as possible.
As many others have pointed out, there is a real negative effect on the Canadian digital economy, harming innovation and keeping new business models out of the country. Simply put, Canada is not competitive when compared to most other countries and the strict bandwidth caps make us less attractive for new businesses and stifle innovative services.
Addressing the bandwidth cap concern involves far more than reversing the CRTC's poorly reasoned UBB decision, however. Independent ISPs have functioned without UBB for years, yet have struggled to make a serious dent in the overall Canadian Internet services marketplace. Moreover, the CRTC has indicated its strong preference for "economic measures" to address bandwidth congestion.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5615/125/
This guy gets it. We need to keep pushing against this sort of thing because the market is fundamentally anticompetitive. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
I'd be happy with 10 cents/GB flat rate.
An additional benefit to this pricing model is that the ISPs would have a natural incentive to provide you with the fastest possible connectivity in order to let you use more bandwidth more easily.
Also, the bandwidth rate should be tied to the actual cost of bandwidth such that the rate drops as the wholesale cost drops. (Otherwise you know they'll keep charging 10cents/GB when the true cost is 0.1 cents/GB.)
There's nothing wrong with usage-based billing, as long as they're regulated in terms of how much they can charge.
I'd love to see a $20 flat rate monthly fee for admin and infrastructure costs, then 10 cents/GB for bandwidth. This maps naturally to the real costs of the ISP, and would tie their profits directly to bandwidth consumption so it would provide an incentive for them to give consumers the highest possible connection rates in order to drive up bandwidth usage.
Ideally the bandwidth cost should be tied to a cost-plus-reasonable-profit calculation, so that as bandwidth costs drop (which they have been doing) the rates charged to consumers would also drop.
You are so obviously paid to post this.
Excuse me while I barf all over your shoes.
The unethical part, as far as I understand, is that smaller ISPs rent the "last mile" piece from Bell, which they're allowed to since the infrastructure is wholly, or partially, tax-payer funded. However, they don't buy big-pipe bandwidth from Bell, but instead peer with someone like Cogent. The cost of the bandwidth over the last mile is zero, since additional bytes don't degrade the infrastructure and therefore don't add to maintenance costs. However Bell wants to charge the ISP, for this zero-cost bandwidth, at the same scale as they charge their end-users, who, unlike the ISPs, *are* using their peering connection to talk to the rest of the internet.
My spoon is too big.
Imagine these two situations:
1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
Imagine this. I pay $50 for 120/10 Mbit, but I can only... oh wait , I CAN saturate it 24/7 both ways (seeding torrents right now). No filters, no caps, no nanny internet censorship. This is in Europe of course.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
No, sorry, 10 cents per GB with no base-cost means everybody who uses less than 250GB /month is getting subsidized wires.
Water utilities have no fixed amount on the bill because very few people use less than half the average. The plain facts of internet usage at present - before we get around to sweeping away the whole TV-broadcast-with-ads system - are that most people don't even use 10 GB/month, and a tiny number are using hundreds of GB.
It's exactly when usage patterns vary by orders of magnitude that you need real-cost-based billing.
A "cap" system can account for fixed costs if the cap is extremely small and the usage-based cost is realistic after that. Cabs do this: you've seen "$4 for the first 1/8th mile". So you COULD do the $30/month for connection plus 5GB, say. That might eliminate usage-based for over half the subscribers and save on some billing effort, but it's a minor tweak.
No, caps are fucking retarded. I don't need a cap for the gas or electric companies. I pay a fixed 'customer charge' and delivery charges that decrease with increased usage, plus the bulk rate for the underlying commodity. I never have to monkey with my plan or think "am I using 60 or 500 kwh this month?". That is some weak shit. What we have seen is a migration of retarded cell phone plan models. If the consumer has to adjust their plan for the commodity (I don't for water, gas, electric, garbage), then the fucktards in sales/marketing should be fired.
No, they aren't. They are literally a non-solution to a non-existent problem. If you want to charge users for how much bandwidth they use, then have a low fixed rate charge on the order of $0.10/GB, which is a 10 fold markup on the cost to provide service, on top of a nominal monthly connection fee. That would be a proper UBB implementation: bandwidth as a metered utility. Instead they decide to charge over a 1000x markup with a tiered pricing structure that makes absolutely no sense. It's a legislated price gouging, pure and simple.
What you seem to be forgetting is that bandwidth is cheap and getting exponentially cheaper every year. In that sort of market, the whole concept of caps is frankly ridiculous, and the justification that such low caps are somehow required due to congestion, is a blatant out and out lie. I am completely mystified that you would support legislation based on no verifiable facts.
Firstly, this is a false dichotomy. Constraining your problem such that your solution is the only possible outcome is a fallacy. The space of possibilities is very large. For instance:
3) They guarantee a minimum sustained bandwidth, with higher peak speeds of up to X when there's low congestion. They provide pricing tiers for higher minimum bandwidths for those who are interested, because bandwidth is the service being provided here.
Of all the alternatives, this is clearly the most sensible, as it requires no legislation, imposes no new fees or intervention or "management" on the user's part, and requires little to no investment in new equipment by ISPs who have already widely deployed QoS and deep packet inspection throughout their networks. I think you need to forget all the propaganda surrounding this issue and look at it purely from an engineering point of view. Technical solutions are always preferable to legislative solutions.
But I'll let you in on a not-secret: Rogers and Bell know that technical solutions won't solve their fundamental problem with cheap bandwidth, which is the real reason for UBB with these high prices: online content distribution and online services are cheaper than tradition content distribution and traditional telecommunications services, which are their major cash cows. So they tried to legislate a solution by bringing bandwidth costs in line with their traditional offerings, THEN they deploy bundles where their online offerings don't count towards your cap, so third parties are unfairly penalized. This is why UBB needs to be repealed.
I agree, Bell would not have invested in that new infrastructure if it weren't attractive in its own right, even after being forced to share it with third-party ISPs. That doesn't change the fact that UBB is an anti-competitive regulation that benefited no one except Rogers, Bell and Shaw, who frankly need no help from the government to generate profit. So I disagree, UBB should be repealed, immediately.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
And, more likely,
3) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
Do you really think that companies still won't oversell their bandwidth just because they also assign you a bandwidth cap? 'Cause that's what I'm seeing in my neck of the woods; I get a bandwidth cap and still see my speed drop precipitously during periods of heavy traffic (complaints to the provider result in the usual "we promise speeds 'up to' the specified speed, with no guarantee you will always get that bandwidth" cop-out).
No, better to limit how much the providers can screw you. They are still going to stick us with bandwidth caps, they are still going to oversell their bandwidth; I'd rather they not nickle and dime me for actual usage in addition.
This is something I've been thinking about. I think it might make sense to have more liberal access to Internet services. Now, I am not a techie on networking so I'm probably quite short or (possibly!) wrong on the technical details, but here is my food for thought.
Say a group of residential users want Internet access. Rather than each pay $50 bucks a month to Bell, why not lease an dedicated line from an ISP. In this proposal, I would say the best solution would be to have independent ISPs administer the Internet access part of the Service. The dedicated line would be leased from Bell or Telus.
So the neighborhood pays for the leased line. Everyone shares a common access point. A contingency should be that if there are only a few users they each get a proportional access to the service. (if I'm the only person in my building to pay for the access, i would not get unfettered access to a T3 or OC-12 or whatever).
At least in this way, Bell instead of being the ISP, is only leasing and servicing the actual cable. The ISP part can be handled by another company. This I would hope would remove Bell from any conflict of interest.
The only thing that this idea leaves to discussion is Rogers and Shaw since I didn't use cable providers as an example (and yes, I know there are other Cable and Telephone companies in Canada doing the same thing. :) ).
A little publicized fact about the recent CRTC rulings is that bandwidth caps are classified as an economic Internet Traffic Management Practice (ITMP). Throttling, DPI, etc, are classified as technical ITMPs. The CRTC is trying to encourage economic ITMPs and discourage technical ITMPs so that consumers know what they are paying for.
This is what the service contract is for. It's something that is legally binding. What you are describing is something that will allow the ISP to circumvent its contractual obligation, something Bell would love to do.
Imagine these two situations:
1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
I would much, MUCH rather go for the second option. I am paying for a certain service. I know the terms of that service. I'm getting exactly what I'm paying for.
Ha! 100Gbps? You are off. The cap was set at 21Gbps ( 60Gbps for the province of Quebec because cable companies can compete with DSL ). You are not a Bell customer and it shows. I would NEVER trust them with any system that allows them to charge for "extras" while allowing them to change the definition of "extras" regardless of what is in the contracts.
The infrastructure you are talking was in large part financed by the government so that Canadian could have access to decent bandwidth. It has to do with the size of the country. "Recuperating investment cost" is nothing but bullshit. Bell is at the brink of bankruptcy due to it extremely poor management. Pissing off their customers by lying to them and changing signed contract is what got them in trouble. Something that should be flatly illegal but somehow allowed if it's Bell doing it.
I am the last of 10 people who used to be Bell's customer who still has 1 service with them: internet. I no longer have land phone, cell phone, satellite tv or long distance plan. Those 10 people are not going back to Bell, even if the offer is cheaper. Something to do with service...
This is why we are taking up arm against this non-sense: This is a legal loop hole that will allow ISP to disregard their contracts. Nothing else. There is no "reasonable" argument that you brought that can't be placed in the service contract other that people wont sign it.
The "bandwidth caps and UBB are good because they protect low-use users from slow speeds when high-use users use more than their fair share" argument is false. My connection is advertised as 1.875 MB/s with a 100 GB monthly cap. If I download 200 GB at ~0.8 MB/s over a month I would not reduce other users speeds as much as if I only download 50 GB but do so at my maximum speed of 1.875 MB/s. That is about 1 MB/s that other users cannot use if I stay within my cap as opposed to violating it. Obviously there is the case where users will download huge amounts at the highest speed they can achieve for long periods, but capping the volume is not the solution. If the network cannot support x users at 1.875 MB/s, do not sell x users a connection that can get to 1.875 MB/s. I would be far happier with a 0.5 MB/s connection and no cap than what is currently offered as it would actually be based on the limitation of the technology rather than an arbitrary volume that my ISP has chosen for reasons that have nothing to do with improving service to other users.
I think the reason for the pricing at ~$2.00 GB is that it makes the bandwidth price for a Netflix or other streaming movie about equal with your standard cable On-Demand movie. If the ISP, which also is a cable company, owns the On-Demand rights to content also available to streaming, it seems very likely that they would want to find a way to keep people watching their $4-$8 movies when they are "free" with an $8 Netflix subscription.
Bandwidth caps are GOOD. They provide the proper incentive structure for both consumer and ISP
Bandwidth caps meter total usage. ISPs need to control congestion more so than total usage. ISPs should encourage downloading during off-peak hours. If no one is using the internet in the middle of the night and you want your latest linux download, then there should be some incentive to do it at night. Those that want quality of service guarantees during peak hours are the challenge the ISPs need to resolve. Bandwidth caps address this challenge in a very indirect way, and those inefficiencies are born by the retail consumer.
On the consumer side, you can pick an appropriate plan that allows for only the amount of bandwidth that you need, resulting in more effective market segregation. This means low-use consumers don't need to subsidize high-use consumers.
Let's think about the marginal cost of the bit being transferred. The bulk of the cost is to transfer the first bit. This goes for both the low-use consumer and the high-use consumer. The cost to the ISP of the total usage of both the low-use consumer and the high use consumer is nearly identical. Remember, we're talking about usage, not speed. How much does it cost the ISP if I transfer 1000 GB overnight? Some electricity? But there is a cost if I want to do the same during peak hours (degradation of their service to other consumers). Bandwidth caps are unrelated to time of day. A fair and efficient economic internet traffic management practice would make such a distinction. The overage charges are completely fictitious and are not proportional to the real cost of the bits in anyway. I understand they are to recoup upgrades, but I don't buy the argument that the low-use consumer is somehow subsidizing the high-use consumer
Imagine these two situations: 1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times. 2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
I would much, MUCH rather go for the second option. I am paying for a certain service. I know the terms of that service. I'm getting exactly what I'm paying for.
Correct, option 1 does not provide a minimum level of service, but neither does option 2. Consider option 2 in practice. Won't you get tired or policing your family's usage? What about unused bandwidth from a previous month, shouldn't you get credit for not being a burden on the network? After you accidentally go over your cap, will you just choose to upgrade your service so you don't have to monitor it as much? Do you want some kind of cost certainty for your internet bill, or do you want it to fluctuate like a cell phone bill due to overage charges? Why would we trust that Bell, Rogers and the CRTC would be capable of determining reasonable caps & overage charges when they have demonstrated so clearly that they are out of touch with reality? If caps are a good solution, and no other country has caps, are we an internet pioneer or are we being bamboozled? Too much smells here. Too many logical inconsistencies.
Instead, they should either allow third-party ISPs to sell VDSL services, or mandate reasonable minimum bandwidth caps and reasonable maximum overage charges.
This is an interesting solution, but how long before the these reasonable caps and overage charges become unreasonable? I think time-of-use based billing would be a better economic ITMP at addressing the problem of congestion better than caps and overages
I agree. Rogers' default bandwidth limit is only 15gb per month or something ridiculous like that. Watching youtube alone I think i use about 20gb/month plus i have a Netflix account. I currently use Acanac with is unlimited bandwidth at 33.95/month. Rogers 15gb/mo is 35.99... their rates make me want to vomit.
I disagree with just about everything you just said. Also the CRTC isn't trying to discourage technical ITMP. They already ruled in favor of Bell in this regard and against the independent ISP, this even despite a report that was gotten from Bell itself that basically proved that they were lying, and it had nothing to do with line congestion and all about profits.
Yes caps are too low, but as a power user that is not what ticks me off. I do not mind paying for what I use. I mind getting taken to the cleaners simply because they can, and the regulator is in their pocket.
Just like the 15 cents (BOTH ways) text on your cell phone isn't in ANY way reflective of the cost to provide that service, merely an arbitrary value they make up that they believe the market will take. If I exceed my cap I am paying 1.5-2$ per GB. When they first came out with this payment "plan" Teksavvy was selling the same service (with 200GB cap VS 60GB) at 0.25$ cents a GB. They also had a bulk package you could pay for up front (100GB for 10$ I think) that would be 0.10$ cents a GB.
I do not think it is the CRTC's job to be limiting bandwidth, infrastructure, and innovation as a result. If Bell and Rogers want to play that way, then nationalize the whole system and be done with it.
I do not know much about VDSL so I can't comment on that. However when I was doing research into this I also found out that Bell actually did have "Dry" DSL, but didn't advertise the fact because they want to sell you a land line also. They are just slimy... Also only allowing a static IP on buisness accounts, which start at 100$ a month is BS also... or that might be cable.... whatever they are pretty interchangeable anyway really...
1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times. 2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
You forgot an option:
3) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 40GB limit., but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
The problem is you are starting with a questionable initial premise. You are equating total monthly usage with maximum use at any given moment. The two are not necessarily directly related.
There are bound to be certain times which are most heavily used, simply because those are times when people can be online using it. Sure a cap might make someone decide to forgo a download of a large game from Steam or their consoles online store when they could just pick up a copy instead. But when they are using the internet will still tend to be during those peak hours.
The degree to which it restricts use (a bad thing) will be greater than the amount it reduces congestion (a good thing). A large bad for small gain isn't a good trade.
To make the obligatory car analogy, if your town taxed its citizens based on monthly car mileage, would that be effective at cutting down on rush hour traffic? Or would people still drive to and from work, but just cut down on driving for non necessities? How would making the roads a ghostland at midnight help you get to work faster on monday morning?
The fact is most ISPs in Canada have put in caps in the last few years. The holdouts were the independents who piggyback on Bell and this decision as you seem to understand was really about trying to limit them by taking away the only thing they really had left to differentiate themselves with. So when you talk about the magic which will happen, sorry, if it was going to happen it would have already. It didn't.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible -W.B.
OK, so you live in mill bay or duncan? Or like down some logging road in shawnigan?
You're telling me you dont have shaw service out to where you live?!
You're exactly the reason why I'd love to setup wimax stations on some of the mountain tops. Feel for you sir.
Ps, from langford, just before the malahat starts.
Here is a little something I saw today that about sums up how ridiculous I think our current internet is:
http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI5NjY2NzEwNHRrdERDNHBLY1ZfMV8xX2wuanBn
I'm paying $100/month for 5mbps down and 800kbps up. I have a choice of ONE ISP only. Until now I'm actually pretty happy with what I'm getting. But as of March 1st Xplornet (my isp) is imposing massive limitations. 2gb per day. 60gb per month. My price stays that same but they will heavily penalize my transfer rates if I go over that amount. This is completely unethical IMHO. Online backups, Netflix, Linux ISO downloads, not to mention normal usage will eat up that bandwidth in short order. You say that UBB is good? Until you suffer under a ISP monopoly with greedy business practices don't even dare say that UBB is good.
What actually does happen, though, is that the ISP provides ludicrous plans (too much money, too little bandwidth) AND the ISP does everything in their power to encourage excess usage.
I disagree. I have a 60 GB cap that I would gladly pay to go over if my torrents weren't throttled down to 30kb/s. If they were providing incentive, they wouldn't be throttling my torrents. And as a Canadian, I've already been fined for commiting piracy - so I don't understand what the concern with torrents are.
There should be no caps, and no charge based on usage; bandwidth should be strictly flat rate.
Once you turn ion a transmitter, it will be sending *something* continuously, no matter what you feed to its input(s). It might be anything from dead air to the the latest movie release over Netflix, but there is still a signal present, which means it is expending energy. Similarly, once you turn on a router, it starts expending energy just staying awake and doing its job, no matter how much load it is carrying. Of course power usage will vary day-to-day in both cases, but once you factor in the thousands of such devices an ISP has, and the hundreds of thousands to millions of customers, the power usage will average out. Further, the hardware itself costs whatever it costs to repair or replace whether you use it heavily, lightly, or not at all. So, the equipment and the labor to go with its maintenance is another FIXED cost.
You gotta pay the geeks to make things actually work or the whole damn thing comes to a halt anyway. Such folks might have to work a little harder than usual to handle the needs of a high-bandwidth service - after all, faster services require faster software and hardware, which demands higher-skilled people to install and program such things. Such folks would rightfully demand a higher rate of pay. This is the only somewhat variable cost I can think of, BUT it isn't based on bandwidth usage, and sooner or later you'll have replaced all of those who couldn't do the job, so it goes into the FIXED category anyway.
As to the maintenance of the lines themselves, those lines will be the same pieces of fiber and/or copper, whether they're totally dead or fully loaded down with every last signal you can cram through them, save for copper wires possibly heating up if you push them enough. Those lines are going to fail at the same rate as they ordinarily would, they'll be installed in the same manner as before (there's no real reason not to, is there?), and you'll be paying the same techs as before to do the repair/install work, so that cost isn't going to change. Any such company is going to roll this into their normal budget as a FIXED cost.
Then there is the small matter of paying the various desk-bound employees, the company officers/partners, etc. Somehow, I get the impression that your average teller or tech support rep at the cable company will be the same and will get the same pay as any other time, whether the lines in a given area are stone dead or maxed out. Call centers will still be in Outer Mongolia as usual, and they'll still act like scripted robots. I'm sure the CEO wants his cut also. Most companies will work these things into their budget as an approximated FIXED cost as well.
As a side note, there is the issue of stocks and stockholders. I don't know how to figure this one, as stocks can vary wildly in value over just a second or two, let alone from one day to another, and it is impossible to know if an out-of-company stockholder will want to take a dividend when the time comes, sell it all at the first 0.1% drop in value, or whatever. Of course, the value of a stock is based on the perceived value of the company as a whole, which is influenced just as much by the intangibles like goodwill and respect as by actual assets or predicted revenue, so perhaps such things don't actually account for that much on the balance sheet.
That leaves only one thing: The bandwidth costs the ISPs pay to their upstream providers, but many ISPs are already bitching that they are constantly MAXED OUT. So, if they can't use any more, and they don't expect to use any less (or they wouldn't be complaining), their upstream provider's charges will end up as another FIXED cost. If there's a peering agreement in place, which I gather is the norm anyway, then the ISP is going to be paying a fixed cost anyway.
Some are comparing bandwidth to things like electricity, but those folks are ignoring a critical difference: electricity is billed by the amount used beca
The federal conservative government here in canada allowed this travesty to happen, and only changed thier "plan" when the masses just about started a riot over it!!....its also common knowledge that they (the conservatives) are taking orders from their GOP advisors south of the border (the US)...Harper himself, has admitted he worships the disfuctional US model of politics (and society) and their political attack adds. If the federal conservatives are re-elected in this next election, we can expect more of the same (who knows, they may find a way of reversing this decision if they gain full majority power) , the only reason they backtracked on this CRTC descision is that we are heading into another election (that the conservative want because they cannot stant having this current minority parlement situation). Back in the 1980's, the right-wing government here in BC recieved a very public donation of about 25K for the CIA before the provincial election (more than once)....you wonder how much influence the US has with the federal conservatives (since they are major advisers to the conservatives), however, as can be seen in Egypt, a lot of people around the world are very disturbed by the constant interference in their local politics by the US super power!
The cost to deliver a byte over the Internet is dropping every year, some say by as much as 50%.
Yet the cost to the customer paying for that delivered byte is rising through increased rates, caps, UBB, and overage charges.
Anyone who has these two simple facts can see that the uninformed customer is royally being screwed.
And regarding Netflix, I pay to have Netflix delivered. It shouldn't be any different than any other byte delivered to my house. Suddenly, however, Netflix bytes have become golden bytes that somehow cost so much more to deliver that Netflix has to pay on their end as well. Hey, I've looked at those bytes and they look just like every other byte to me and shouldn't cost anything more to deliver. Heck, Netflix is even trying to make it easier to deliver their bytes by setting up mirrors close to ISP's, and STILL they're being told to pay more. Netflix is NOT getting a free ride on an Internet that I'm paying to connect to. Would someone in authority please tell Comcast that?
And while I'm in my rant, I am so fraking tired of being told that the top [name your single digit percentage] of the heavy users are destroying the experience for everybody else -- especially on the cable systems -- but if those heavy users only just pay more then those overburdened pipes are suddenly open and freely freely flowing again all with no hardware changes at all!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
My current adsl internet bill is $89.99, comes with 20GB, I then pay $10 per GB over - I'm lucky if I get 1/2 MB download speed, 3g in most big cities is faster. It's cheaper to buy movies then to download them wether they be legal or not, nowadays my base (20) is barley enough to cover all of the os and app updates in a month. The only telco option is a non "bell branded" bell company. I can't see how usage caps are anything but good for telco's and bad for customers. When is the crtc going to look at this high-way robbery?
Not only do I agree with shovas that the lack of any substantial competition creates a market where the base prices are already excessive (In my province for example we have a single cable provider and a single dsl provider. They do basically whatever they want.) But, the other problem is the base caps on these already over priced packages are ridiculous... We have a 50 Mbps package from one ISP with a 175 GB/month data transfer cap. What the heck is the point of 50Mpbs if you're limited to 175GB. Obviously you are only buying 50Mbps if you are doing things like serving content, video conferencing, connecting a large number of devices, or things of that nature. 175GB/mo is ridiculously low for such a high-speed package. The same ISP has a "business" package that costs almost 80$/mo., has a speed of only 15Mbps, and a transfer cap of 110 GB/month. What is a business going to do with that?
Its best to leave it to the provider to decide what speed and when to cap or not. As soon as you allow governing bodies to do this like the crtc the one size fits all nature of those rulings screwing some and help others which is not a fair playing field for competition. It is not up to the CRTC to dictate how companies manage their resources and or prices its up to the market to decide that.
Like more than 400,000 other people, I signed the online petition hosted by openmedia.ca. I have now been opted in to receiving e-mails on this topic from the Liberal Party of Canada. In looking back at the online petition, I now see there is no privacy statement or agreement not to share my e-mail address.
Although I have no proof, I strongly suspect that openmedia.ca shared my e-mail address with the Liberal party. Frankly, I feel duped, given that openmedia.ca touts itself as nonpartisan.
Does anyone else remeber seeing something on Slashdot about Bell being forced to produce documents demonstrating that traffic from heavy users "clogged" their pipes? I think when the documents were made public, they showed that heavy users were not slowing their network down at all. Can anyone provide a link? I've tried Google and have had no luck.
But how it's being or was going to be done. In theory, charging the amount that a service is worth (plus small markup for profit) is great business. However, BELL and ROGERS have complete ownership of all telecom infrastructure in this country. Given this situation, does anybody familiar with capitalism and human nature expect prices to be fair and proportional to usage? Technology has improved in the last ten years - fact. Whether it's routing or transmission, all relevant equipment is cheaper and better. Prices have remained static or in many cases kept up with inflation - fact. Service has remained static. Hardly any improvements in the last decade. Some better plans are available for much more money. Does all this add up to fair service? I wouldn't mind usage-based fees if: - the infrastructure PAID FOR AND DEVELOPED BY THE GOVERNMENT (and hence the people) didn't belong to just one company - I could use the internet to replace tv (you can't due to collusion and racketeering by cable providers) Compare all this to cable tv. What is the typical cable subscriber's costs? 40$ per month? 50$? This will not change if the tv is on 24/7. How much bandwidth is that? Clearly the infrastructure can deliver massive amounts of data at little cost to the provider.
The cable companies had nothing to do with this UBB business. This is solely the telephone companies, namely Bell.
As for which choice I would go for, I choose neither. I have a 10 mbps unlimited plan. ISP's tell us that they want to cap us because of congestion. Why not build a better infrastructure? How much money does an ISP make off of its customers? Over 1.7 billion dollers in profit for 2009. (http://www.itworldcanada.com/blogs/nw-watch/2010/02/04/bce-inc-profits-up-84-per-cent/52826/) What do they do with it? With that much profit, is that steep a cap penalty necessary? Is a penalty necessary at all? What is actually spent in improvements to the infrastructure?
Most Canadians who are up in arms over this are missing the point. The ministry is missing the point. Bandwidth caps are GOOD. They provide the proper incentive structure for both consumer and ISP. On the consumer side, you can pick an appropriate plan that allows for only the amount of bandwidth that you need, resulting in more effective market segregation. This means low-use consumers don't need to subsidize high-use consumers. On the ISP side, the incentive is to provide as fast a connection as possible to encourage usage and excess usage.
A little publicized fact about the recent CRTC rulings is that bandwidth caps are classified as an economic Internet Traffic Management Practice (ITMP). Throttling, DPI, etc, are classified as technical ITMPs. The CRTC is trying to encourage economic ITMPs and discourage technical ITMPs so that consumers know what they are paying for.
Imagine these two situations:
1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
I would much, MUCH rather go for the second option. I am paying for a certain service. I know the terms of that service. I'm getting exactly what I'm paying for.
The problem that most Canadians have (and rightly so) is that the caps were set way too low. The reasons are complicated, but I'll try to summarize them. In Canada, the Bell companies own the last mile infrastructure. However, they are mandated to lease their last mile infrastructure to third-party ISPs at a reasonable wholesale rate that allows for competitive plans and pricing. This has been working well for a while, as third-party ISPs were able to provide similar plans at lower cost. HOWEVER, the Bell companies recently started to roll out VDSL service. They argued that they should be able to sell VDSL service exclusively for a limited time to "recuperate investment costs", and the CRTC agreed. So third-party ISPs cannot currently sell VDSL service, only ADSL service. Then the Bell and cable companies argued for UBB, which was granted. When they were allowed to use UBB, the Bell companies purposely gutted their own ADSL plans, putting strict bandwidth limits and high overage costs. This meant that the wholesale plans that they sold to the third-party ISPs were impacted in the same way.
All of that builds up to this: The third-party ADSL rates ARE competitive with respect to the Bell companies' ADSL services. However, since the Bell companies can sell VDSL services exclusively, they used that leverage to put in place anti-competitive practices.
THIS is where the problem is. The problem is not UBB, but rather the slimy business practices executed by these Bell companies. To solve this situation, the government should NOT be repealing the UBB decision. Instead, they should either allow third-party ISPs to sell VDSL services, or mandate reasonable minimum bandwidth caps and reasonable maximum overage charges.
"Bandwidth caps are GOOD" SpeedyDX are you working for the CRTC? You gotta be kidding me
The two situations scenarios you outline were true back in 1998- no one uses a 386dx anymore get real- we are in 2011 technology has evolved quiet a bit since those days- routers- fiber optics- bandwidth has increased tremendously - theres enough resources to handle everyones needs- i am quite sure a wealthy provider like bell- rogers can afford to upgrade their hardware to handle millions of users and still profit handsomely. Profits based off services are endless and it doesn't cost anything to rake it in. There is no excuse. These fools are using these bs reasons as an excuse and are ripping people off like crazy(to make even more money) and their getting away with it Until now
the only valid point you have is that the caps were set way too low. and doing so their crippling everyone.
I could go shaw, but I prefer CONSTANT bandwidth, rather than shared. this way I know what I'm getting, all the time, is the same 3.5Mbit.
Also, we have Telus for:
Satellite TV
3 physical phone lines (2 business accounts) plus a '2nd ring' number
4 cell phones (2 business)
I dropped telus for rogers for MY cell, because of the poor coverage, and their stupid policy regarding roaming charges along the border zone. I'm more likely to roam to Port Angeles, Washington than pick up a telus signal. Rogers just drops the charges automatically.
Yeah, i used to work near royal roads --> Port angeles. One thing Ive found out about shaw in the western communities (atleast langford) is that their speed has been very generous, i've got 'extreme' and they advertise upto 15megs/sec, but I hit 2MB downloads frequently (16megabit), so like wtf? :D
Ahwell, hello to you sir! From an man from langford (and no camaro on his lawn)
So what is making option two give you 10Mbps almost constantly, the fact that the cap is in place? You realize they will still sell you the same shitty service, but you will now have a cap on the amount of your shitty service you can use. If you are paying the same amount but now there is a 100GB limit what part of that influences your speed at peak usage hours?
I was told from Teksavvy that business accounts using their 5meg ADSL is still unlimited.
you make a good case, but the issue I have is akin to media and the freedom of speech. We US citizens all have the freedom of speech, and we're all told that we are all created equal. However, he with the most money, when you combine these two facts, has the most power.
So... in a world where knowledge is power, and it's only costing pennies on the dollar... why should he who pays more be entitled to more consumption of information? Because you *know* the usage tiers will be price-gouged.
Where do you live that you get 100GB/month for $40?? That type of pricing isn't what the big companies are offering to all Canadians. Rogers has 95GB for $60/mo, and the best Bell has to offer is capped at 75GB.
A couple things you aren't taking into consideration. Bell and Rogers were heavily subsidized by the Canadian government (recall "information super highway") to build national fiber networks. So tax payers have paid for the backbone of our big providers. They have imminent domain rights to property that smaller ISPs will never have, so the CRTC mandated that they allow smaller ISPs to use their last mile access.
Some of the arguments put forth by Bell/Rogers/Shaw is that a small percentage of users were taking up most of the available bandwidth and that it was increasing costs. In reality, it is the practice of basing your required bandwidth to support X number of customers on the lowest bandwidth users, then taking the results and averaging it over a 24 hour period. Divide that number by 10 to get your 10:1 standard telco over-subscription and you get the current bandwidth problem. These bandwidth problems aren't as bad as Bell and Rogers are letting on. Distributed content networks like Akamai allow them to keep streaming the content local. Youtube, Bittorrent and other media sites are the big targets for Bell and Rogers because it allows Canadians to download tons of content without paying a PPV fee. The really big problems stem from the fact that ISP A and ISP B co-locate in the same building yet they do not peer with each other in a non-transit capacity...Along comes US ISP C that both A and B connect to, now if a user from ISP A wants to download data(torrent) from a user on ISP B he has to transit an expensive US carrier.
Now cut to the future, imagine communities being able to communicate via streaming channels on the net without requiring ANY rogers or bell IP TV services. I can be Bob the cabinet maker and have a daily show streamed from my house to a local, regional, national and international community for $40/mo. I can be Jane the concert pianist and I can internet stream one of my performances. I can be the "Next Great Band" and allow people to stream our music or download it without UMG, WMG or BMG ever seeing a dime. There are a thousand different uses for Fiber to the Home level bandwidth and none of them make money for Rogers and Bell....Hence the situation we are in.
FTFY.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYizoh_r6D0
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Imagine these two situations:
1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
I would much, MUCH rather go for the second option. I am paying for a certain service. I know the terms of that service. I'm getting exactly what I'm paying for.
Except that option 1 is what we have now (except congestion isn't nearly that bad -- in fact, I still get 10Mbps pretty much all day long), while Option 2, would actually cost more like $100 under the new scheme (if not more). The fundamental problem: the are cutting service without reducing cost, they are just charging more for existing services. No matter how you look at it, this is a backwards step.
HOWEVER, the Bell companies recently started to roll out VDSL service. [...]When they were allowed to use UBB, the Bell companies purposely gutted their own ADSL plans, putting strict bandwidth limits and high overage costs. This meant that the wholesale plans that they sold to the third-party ISPs were impacted in the same way. [...]However, since the Bell companies can sell VDSL services exclusively, they used that leverage to put in place anti-competitive practices.
This.. kind of. By gutting their own ADSL plans, and thus third-party ISP plans (through UBB), Bell is effectively giving preferential treatment to traffic associated with their own services, instead of letting the users decide which of their traffic is important. Bell claims network congestion in the last mile, and yet allows for completely un-metred use of said network for their own video services, and effectively block any third-party services like YouTube, Netflix, or (some day) Hulu. This is the core of the net neutrality argument -- if I want to get my entertainment from someone other than Bell, I am SOL (Rogers aside; if UBB stays, you know they will switch before long).
All of that builds up to this: The third-party ADSL rates ARE competitive with respect to the Bell companies' ADSL services.
No -- you can't be competitive when someone is regulating the business model that you are forced to use, and force it to be the same as the company from which you are wholesaling. In the past, TekSavvy et al were competitive by offering better service for less cost (if you were willing to side with a third-party ISP, pay for your own modem, etc.). With UBB, TekSavvy's ability to do this has been completely hamstrung, and there is no longer an incentive for users to choose them over Bell.
Aikon- (sorry, not logged in, and shitty interface makes it hard after I've already written this)
Bell/Rogers/etc are a monopoly. AKA a market failure, thus heavy government regulation is required since there is no real competition. Allowing bandwidth to be charged at 2$ per gigabyte is ridiculous when it really costs pennies. Have all the charges you want, but at 7 cents a gigabyte.
Bell/Rogers/etc are in the TV business, they want expensive bandwidth charges to run companies like netflix out of business.
What I find appalling is that the CRTC (regulator) should have investigated what bandwidth actually costs (all costs) and then put a proper return of 15% and regulate it.
here here!
Please don't speak for "most Canadians" Thanks.
I think it's you who is missing the point. The point is that Bell and Rogers are trying desperately to protect their antiquated media business models. Bell wants UBB applied to the second-last mile for wholesalers yet they supply their own media over that same infrastructure for a very low flat rate.
For some numbers: An average Canadian watches 80 hours of TV per month. Bell streams its video over VDSL at 6.5Mbps and their middle tier is $60. That's 252GB per month at $0.24/GB. Getting that amount of data from Taksavvy with UBB in place (25GB+40GB "insurance" for $31.95+$5=$36.95 plus $2/GB overage) would cost over $400. That's what Bell wants and that's what they're protecting.
Bell is trying to keep network congestion as the focus of the debate when that's not the point at all.
Bandwidth caps are great. Unfortunately, greed is even greater then providing reasonable amounts of BW. In Quebec, we have a few major providers, and one of them is just overpriced beyond reason, except that the excessive charges pay for their expansion and into new revenues. If the ISPs could do it, they would start with a zero byte cap, and charge too much for every downloaded or uploaded byte. In North America, public highways are just that, public. There is no cap on the mileage you travel, but there is a cap on the speed. I could see this action with ISPs, where dsl speed should be unlimited to what DSL can deliver, and fibre speed should be at a fixed premium rate.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
How about mandating that the first option can only be sold as "3Mbps or more" instead of "10Mpbs or less"? Makes comparisons a lot fairer, I would imagine: 3Mbps/unlimited vs 10Mbps/100G.
Is there a lawyer or Lawyerese fluent person in the house?
Seriously, just a question here i have heard conflicting opinions from Internet and Radio media. Could someone answer the following based on the ruling itself?
Does this ruling apply to all users? or only those using third party (GAS) connections purchasing bandwidth via a primary provider (Bell/Telus/SHAW etc)
Does this ruling have any repercussions for users that aren't considered 3rd party users (currently subscribed directly to SHAW etc)
Is the public Hue and cry actually over what we think this is? (metered billing/usage restrictions of all internet connections)
Thanks )