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Canada CRTC Rules Against Usage Based Billing
iONiUM writes "In a somewhat surprising end to the ongoing fight between large ISPs (a duopoly in Canada), and independent ISPs, the CRTC has ruled in favor of the small ISPs. This means that independent ISPs can continue to have unlimited plans offered to customers. From the article: 'Under the CRTC’s new capacity-based approach, large telephone and cable companies will sell wholesale bandwidth to independent ISPs on a monthly basis. Independent ISPs will have to determine in advance the amount they need to serve their retail customers and then manage network capacity until they are able to purchase more. Alternatively, large companies can continue to charge independent ISPs a flat monthly fee for wholesale access, regardless of how much bandwidth their customers use. Both billing options give independent ISPs the ability to design service plans and charge their own customers as they see fit.' Score one for the citizens."
No, there are certainly more than two major Internet providers in Canada.
Shaw, Telus, Rogers, Bell, Cogeco, MTS, etc.
That said, good decision.
It cuts out the suprise bills at the end when you find out just how much bandwidth you really used last month, but it doesn't really stop ISP's from charging consumers based on how much bandwidth they actually use, or, more specifically, they intend to use.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
s/paid for in a money/paid for in a month/
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Lets hope some of that sensibility flows down south.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I think the consensus is that this will basically double the price of wholesale Internet.
see this :
http://teksavvynews.ca/index.php
Chatham, Ontario, November 15, 2011 â" TekSavvy Solutions Inc. (âoeTekSavvyâ), one of Canadaâ(TM)s leading independent internet service providers, is disappointed with the rates for the wholesale high-speed services that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (âoeCRTCâ) approved today. The rates are for services that Internet service providers need to purchase from the large telephone and cable companies, such as Bell and Rogers, in order to provide Internet access services to their own retail customers.
In Telecom Regulatory Policies CRTC 2011-703 and 2011-704 issued today the CRTC implemented new rate structures and rates for wholesale services.
TekSavvy is pleased with the rate structure adopted, but the actual rates will increase the cost of Internet for Canadian consumers.
âoeThe CRTC decision is a step back for consumers. The rates approved by the Commission today will make it much harder for independent ISPs to competeâ, said Marc Gaudrault, TekSavvyâ(TM)s CEO. âoeThis is an unfortunate development for telecommunications competition in Canadaâ, he added.
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Usage-based billing with variable pricing is actually the most efficient way to charge for a limited resource. Under the "all you can eat" flat rate model, the most economical amount of capacity is not where there is no network saturation ever, but where the cost to your users of the inconvenience of network saturation equals the cost of adding capacity. That means a little network congestion is actually a good thing in this pricing model.
Under the "usage-based billing with variable pricing" model, there are neither heavy periods nor light periods, but expensive periods and inexpensive periods. It gives people the freedom and ability to economize by scheduling their heavy downloads for the cheap periods to save money.
If something is in less demand during certain times of the day, why shouldn't the seller charge less during those times? This is why restaurants offer lunch and happy hour specials.
Aren't freedom and the ability to economize good things?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I live in Quebec, and the only "small ISP" that allow unlimited internet are based on the Bell ADSL network. That's 2.5mbps here, instead of the cable (videotron) who can reach 50mbps. If only some of these small ISP would allow unlimited cable use, but no.
Sure, score a small point for not letting Bell and Rogers increase the abuse, but our wired broadband status quo is still terrible. High prices, low monthly caps (60GB typical) with massive overage fees, absurd asymmetry between D/L and U/L rates (10 Mbps down / 0.5 Mbps up typical), unmitigated throttling any time the provider feels like it (apparently 65-85% of the time), 'unintentional' throttling of gaming, etc. Aside from the low caps, you can't even get around any of this by going with one of the smaller ISPs since AFAIK the leased lines are subject to the same 'traffic management' policies.
The service is pretty shitty also - video buffering on a 25Mbps D/L connection, ping to the west coast randomly spiking up to 400ms, problems that 5 calls to tech support over the period of a month and one modem replacement failed to resolve. The tech support guys and technicians all but admit that it's a policy issue rather than anything they can fix.
Where is the utopian society he dreamed of in 1984? Put control back in the hands of big business for heavens sake. They know what is best for us.
The CRTC's UBB Decision: Bell Loses But Do Consumers Win?
If I've done my math right, then for Bell-based customers this works out as roughly 14.6GiB per dollar, or seven cents per gigabyte, assuming the network is always congested. The actual cost depends on the peak to off-peak traffic ratio and on how much congestion is considered acceptable, but this provides a minimum.
Folks who want, say, 5Mbs free-and-clear (no congestion and no data cap) would be paying Bell $110.65 per month plus a $14.11 access fee. That's more than I'd prefer to pay myself, but it isn't out of reach.
However, it isn't clear to me exactly what this is buying. I suspect it doesn't include actual internet connectivity, but is just what the retail ISP is paying for Bell to get the traffic from the customer to the ISP. So you need to add the ISPs internal costs, profit margin, any applicable taxes, and whatever wholesale internet rates the ISP pays. I strongly suspect that by the time you've added all this up, 5Mbs free-and-clear is still going to be too expensive for most people.
I'm on my first month using TekSavvy (a 3rd party reseller) here in Vancouver, over Shaw Cable's "last mile".
Can't say how happy I am to have cut Shaw, Rogers, and Telus from my life (thanks to Wind Mobile too).
Just putting this out there for anyone else who might be interested.
To top it all off, "Humongous Bank" is history too, thanks to VanCity.
I believe you are wrong there. It says for their wholesale customers, they are allowed to bill based on connection speed, but not total monthly bandwidth usage. This means a small ISP would pay for a 100Mbit link, or 2 Gbit link, etc... It is billed in 100Mbit increments. ISP can use as much as they want, but they will only get that amount per second they paid for. This makes sense to me, you pay for the size of the pipe you need, doesn't matter how much data you put through the pipe.
"Hey gang, I have to leave and join everybody at the ISP Summit as we all digest this further. In a nutshell though I'm not happy.
In essence I like the model but the usage component is way too high. As an example, a gig link from Bell currently costs us something like $1700/mth and under this plan it would go up to $22000/mth then looking at the MTSA pricing - $2810/mth for the same thing... it just doesn't pass the smell test."
PARENT poster has it soo wrong as does all the main media
the costs for indie isps are going up by a factor of roughly 13 times in my case and at best doubling in small regions
this effectively puts a lot a people out of work and off the net that barely afford it now.
I live in Canada, and some time ago wanted to switch from one of the 'Big Two' to one of the small ones (in fact the very first local ISP i ever signed up with).. Turns out that they have to 1) apply for permission *from* the big two, before they can provide you service..if there's any unresolved issues between you and the big boys, including , but not limited to) unpaid bills, arbitration, complaints due TOS violations of any kind, etc etc, they can refuse permission to allow subcontracting access of any kind.. and they did in my case.. This is the nature of 'Free competition' in a fascist social domocracy.. and Canada fits the description to a tee.. the description is, by the way .. Fascist social democracies are those states win which the government owns, and regulates, in concert with big industry, almost everything, and has no mechanism in place to appeal decisions, to one's elected representatives between elections..
These small 'independents' provide illusory free market operability, and only can offer more variations of packaging of the same services already offered by the big boys.
Say, for example, that the big two are practicing DNS blocking of 'implicated copyright infringing' sites, which they do.. with regularly.. here in Canada, one of the few alternate services these smaller ISPs can offer is alternate DNS management.. However, that's already available online for free, with 30 seconds searching..
If there's throttling occuring, it is NOT going to be released via the subcontracting plan.. Even with Megabit internet, my speeds NEVER exceeded 1000 Kbps..
And now, down one step, on the high speed plan, i average only 300 to 450 Kbps.. on a good day .. if downloading from a 'suspect' file hosting service, my speeds often average 12- 36 Kbps... this does not change simply due to a subletting of the account. The main ISP is still watching the sub-letted account name, IP address, and history..
I could go on.. it's no different buying , say , car insurance, medicine (even if paying cash you still need a government registration card to be allowed to buy your prescription).
Not as bad as the UK here.. but on the way..
The duopoly is telco vs cable. Like the USA, it is illegal in Canada for 2 telcos or 2 cable cos to operate in the same area.
To cut my bills I did the following:
* Internet: Teksavvy over Cable. Long ago I had Rogers Cable ($70/month, 5 Mbps Up / 256 Kbps Down), then Teksavvy DSL and now Teksavvy Cable (Extreme: up to 24/1 Mpbs, 300 Gb cap, $43/month)
* Telephone: Unlimitel (VoIP) with my dedicated Asterisk computer at home. $3.50/DID (I have 3), plus usage, which comes to about $7, so around $10/month for 3 lines
* Television: cut Rogers Cable in Feb 2011. Now I have Netflix (US & Canada), and antenna. I don't watch sports on tv (or in real life if I can help it) and the news are acquired on the net or on the antenna. $8 for Netflix Canada, $8 for Netflix US, $5 for US proxy to get Netflix US. I could cut Netflix Canada but they have shows not available on Netflix US. For the price, I'm ok with paying both.
Now if only I could find a way to reduce the Electricity bill (Toronto Hydro hiked their rate many times over the last 2 years), I would be golden. Unfortunately, solar is out of reach for me. Last quote I got was $50,000 to equip my roof and that equipment cannot even store the electricity I produce, it's gone to the grid immediately.
JigJag
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Here are the facts:
- Of the developed world, Canada has among the worst Internet speeds for the worst prices.
- Our Internet providers are all posting record profits year after year.
- Our Internet providers are all buying up big media companies so they can control the gateways and the content itself for their own benefit.
- Alternative forms of content distribution are between throttled and bandwidth-capped.
- I can get better service for significantly less money through a competitor who is a fraction of the big company's size. If Wal-Marts taught us anything is that the little guys can't compete with the big guys. If the big companies don't have to undercut the little companies to stay in business or to keep their customers, they're obviously doing other uncompetitive things.
It's safe to say that Usage-Based Billing, or anything else these companies are advocating for, are not in the best interest of everyone. You can argue the theory of pricing models and justify traffic management policies until you're blue in the face, but as long as the facts are laid out like this there is no reason to trust anything the companies are pushing for.
I'll be interested to see how this plays out in the north. The current standard for ISPs in the north is with usage-based billing and I am curious to find out how this ruling plays out with them. If they are forced to adopt them, I'm sure they will switch to a very restrictive throttling model, much like the current model XplorNet uses.
Good if you live where they offer coverage. I have looked into getting Teksavvy myself after getting abused by Cogeco and Bell for years. However according to their website there is no service to Peterborough, Ontario.
It a good win, and a surprising one for consumers however, a small step to a better future in broadband.
However one spinoff I see of this, is the purposeful degradation of lines, and further inhibiting of growth. Both Bell and Rogers won the right previously in an earlier CRTC ruling to be able to throttle speeds based on usage (p2p or whatever they like really, no regulation). They justify this by saying that they do it to their own customers, and thus it is a fair market (they tried to show that they needed to, to protect the network from congestion, however internal leaked Bell documents showed this was a pile of BS). What use is a unlimited or 300GB account if your speed is reduced to a crawl.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/P2P-Internet-Torrents-Comcast,news-3340.html
Anyway currently this isn't the case, but it could be a result of this decision. So long as the big two (Bell/Rogers) do the same to their own networks it would not be in violation of the previous ruling by the CRTC.