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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'
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.
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.
I've found when I take that attitude it leads to in-action on my part, then eventually I get whittled down to caring for nothing.
It's a frustrating when the people making the rules either know nothing about the Internet (most judges) or that they are motivated by little more than greed RIAA, MPAA, could it really hurt to voice approval of sensible behavior?
I know it hurts our position to give up by assuming we are done for.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
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 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.
I don't understand.
Rogers' customer retention tried to keep my mobile business, but I just hated them far too much.
Shaw didn't try retention deal and I wanted to be rid of them anyway. Had they matched TekSavvy's deal, I'd still not have stayed since Shaw would likely have continued to up the price every few months.
Unfortunately, TekSavvy screwed up my order, which I didn't find out about until connection day.
Fortunately, Wind includes unlimited internet for my $40 / month, so I tethered with them until TekSavvy waived their $50 connection fee (and, double bonus, the first month's fee too!).
All in all, I feel good about who I do business with now, and how rare is *that*?