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Usage Based Billing In Canada To Be Rescinded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."
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"
Speaking as someone who moderates a lot, your preemptive claim of moderator abuse doesn't help get the moderators to leave you alone. :P
As for the cap, the caps aren't like that. What actually happened is that your new cap is 25GB, and it costs $2/GB beyond that. Still think its a great idea to watch hulu or download a 10GB game off Steam? Those are the actual numbers the ISPs in Canada are pushing on people.
The other issue is that this came from the CRTC, which is notoriously stuffed with former telecom insiders and who ALWAYS rules in their favor (except when they clash with the big media companies, but Canadians never win in these things).
This decision was terrible and the government is doing the right thing by stepping in. What they actually need to do is purge the CRTC and fill it with true experts instead of former Bell employees, but I'll take any kind of forward progress at this point.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
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.
I'd rather have pot holes and falling bridges than a road system owned by shipping companies who set-up tolls and send their own cops after those who might carry anything too big in their trunk.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Then run it as a god forsaken utility! First and foremost, there are plenty of rural areas stuck with zero broadband options. No cable, no DSL, no 3G coverage.
Secondly, utilities are highly, highly regulated. If the power company wants to increase your bill by $.02 per kWh, they have to go and ask the government's permission to do so.
They generally don't even own the distribution lines, they have to bid to offer services and the lowest bidder gets access. Imagine a world where the costs of starting an ISP exactly equal to the costs of installing a trunk line to your basement and the servers and software needed to operate. And unlike electricity or natural gas, there's no reason that the distribution lines couldn't be shared by multiple ISPs. Now, can you even begin to imagine how such a system would change the way ISPs operate?
I say hell yes, treat them exactly like a utility. The current system gets all of the public costs associated with utilities and practically none of the benefits.