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Usage Based Billing In Canada To Be Rescinded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."
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?
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.
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"
If anyone believes for a minute that the big ISP providers in Canada are going to back down, you are sadly mistaken.
Hence we someday invented something called judicial and legislative power. I hear it's a great counterweight to economical power.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.