Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2011/01/26/InternetLosers/print.html

by nirav • 15 years ago

359 268 15 years ago

yoyar6• 15 years ago

Seems like the CRTC needs to find a way to remain relevant. This is central planning, socialist style. I hope everyone enjoys it.

coryl2• 15 years ago

Uhh, not quite socialist, very much capitalist. This is poor regulation of a growing industry monopolized by the huge corps that own cable and phoneline infrastructure. They've somehow lobbied and convinced our government to allow them to charge us up the ass for 'overages'.

swaits2• 15 years ago

That still doesn't sound like a free market to me. Very much capitalist?

jt2190• 15 years ago

Yes, this is lobbying out of control. It was this kind of thing that caused me to move to the United States... How was I supposed to build a career in high-tech when Canadian high-tech companies were at a terrible disadvantage compared to their U.S. competitors? The country is full of very bright, talented people with initiative and drive, and it's squandered.

yoyar6• 15 years ago

This is why I wrote the comment in the manner that I did.

There is an ongoing confusion about what is the free market and what is corporatism/fascism. The free market provides for free competition between individuals where all transactions are voluntary and no force is used to interfere with any interactions between parties. In a corporatist/fascist environment the government uses force to interfere in nearly all aspects of the market. In fascism, corporations end up in bed with the government and the corps use that power to get what they want while the government sells the idea by using propaganda to fool people into thinking that "it's all for your own good".

When the government is in charge of setting rates for internet access this is the farthest thing in the world from a free market. What it is, is soviet style socialist central planning.

But there seems to be a strong desire to blame the free market for all woes, despite the obvious government interference in all aspects of these interactions.

What is free about having the government set the policies for internet charges?

In a free market the government wouldn't be involved at all, and the rates would be determined via competition.

Take a look at markets that are relatively more free, such as the cell phone market and the market for computer chips. Quality and features improve while prices go down over time.

When I admire my HTC Android phone I marvel at the quality and features and the amazing technology. This is the result of healthy competition.

Take a look at markets where the government is involved such as health care. Quality and choice are reduced while prices go through the roof. (and no, that's not going to change with "obamacare")

Please don't confuse markets that are highly regulated and controlled by the government with free markets. They are polar opposites.

nirav2• 15 years ago

There's no "somehow", it is almost like telecom companies can force govt to form regulations in their interest.

jaysoo2• 15 years ago

If this was socialism then either the government or the public would own Bell/Rogers/Telus.

This is also not free-market capitalism. I'm not sure what you would call it.

ascuttlefish• 15 years ago

Regulatory capture?

yoyar6• 15 years ago

Corporatism.

jmaygarden• 15 years ago

Tyranny? ;)

nirav2• 15 years ago

This is called Oligopoly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly in half-assed capitalism. Note that this can be worse than monopoly because few competitors can essentially create informal cartels.

rafd2• 15 years ago

"Regulation of natural monopolies." Wikipedia goes into it better than I can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly#Regulation

dholowiski2• 15 years ago

Iv'e been following this debate, but it's been difficult to find actual facts. Right now with Telus (Canadian dsl ISP) i pay for 125gb transfer a month and $2/gb if I go over. Yes, the overage charge is insane but it's been like that for a long time.

As far as I can tell, the issue is that the big ISPs (tells, Rogers, bell) all have caps/overage, but the smaller ISPs that piggyback on their network can offer unlimited data transfer. This new ruling seems to 'even the playing field'.

I want the Internet to be free and unlimited as the next guy, but I have yet to understand what the big deal is here.

coryl2• 15 years ago

And now that the big ISPs can force smaller ISPs to pay for overage rates, small ISPs must increase their prices, giving them no competitive edge against brand giants.

The end result: everyone gets overcharged for internet access as these companies try to make up lost sales in phonelines and television by killing everyone on internet.

jaysoo2• 15 years ago

The big deal here is that instead of offering competitive plans the big ISPs are _decreasing_ the level of service and _increasing_ the prices of plans.

Also, Bell/Rogers/Telus have the advantage of offering bundles if you use them for cable/satellite+cell phone+Internet, whereas a lot of smaller ISPs would not able to do such things. This screams anti-competition.

FYI, I don't mind paying per usage as long a the rates are reasonable. How about charging us $10-15 for connection fees, and then $0.25/GB of transfer?

dholowiski2• 15 years ago

>The big deal here is that instead of offering competitive plans the big ISPs are _decreasing_ the level of service and _increasing_ the prices of plans.

Are they? I have the fastest plan from Telus and over the years they have upped the speed without upping the price, several times.

>Also, Bell/Rogers/Telus have the advantage of offering bundles if you use them for cable/satellite+cell phone+Internet, whereas a lot of smaller ISPs would not able to do such things. This screams anti-competition.

agreed, to a point. However all of the little guys I am aware of offer some kind of an Internet/phone bundle

There are several wireless Internet providers here in Alberta and I'm watching them with interest. They've built their own network run along natural gas lines or old railway tracks (where it's easy to obtain right of way rights) and are beholden to nobody (other than their backbone providers). If the big three go crazy with fees, I think these tiny wireless providers are poised to jump in and beat them down.

teamonkey2• 15 years ago

The big ISPs didn't have to have caps. They did it because the markup is huge. Having no cap was a big reason that people chose smaller ISPs.

Not only have caps been introduced but the wholesale discount is alarmingly small, so small ISPs aren't free to compete on features or price. Small ISPs can't go and find another backbone because they're all owned by this group of companies.

Note that in Quebec the cap is higher (60GB/month instead of 25GB/month). In most of Canada Bell/Rogers/Shaw own the DSL and cable networks. In Quebec, Bell mostly own the DSL lines but Videotron (Quebecor) own the cable network, so it's almost like competition. Also Quebecor has unshakable ties to the provincial government.

sidek• 15 years ago

Does Telus ever charge you? I have never been charged for going over, myself.

nolanw• 15 years ago

I've never seen an overage charge in five years, yet have consistently gone over every month therein.

Someone at Telus once mentioned (anecdotally) that Telus plain doesn't enforce caps, and that the cap is written down only in case they need it.

rapind3• 15 years ago

I'd be more than happy to pay a per GB rate so long as the market was completely opened up. Do you know how attractive a market $2 / GB is? That's an insane mark-up! About as insane as the wireless text messaging markup Bell / Rogers forced us to eat.

Heck, open it up, and McDonald's might get out of selling soft drinks and start up a telco instead.

JeffJenkins• 15 years ago

This doesn't explaining what's going on very clearly. Small Canadian ISPs are allowed to use the infrastructure of Bell Canada at wholesale rates in order to foster competition. This has been reasonably successful. What has happened now is that the CRTC ruled that Bell is allowed to impose the same per-user bandwidth caps on its wholesale customers as it does on its own users.

Since the smaller ISPs should simply be getting bandwidth from Bell, this is totally ridiculous. Their ability to compete with Bell on price or levels of service is almost totally eliminated. When my friends and family in Ontario were explaining this to me I kept having to ask them to repeat themselves because it boggled my mind how ISPs using bell's infrastructure could be subject to those sorts of restrictions.

jacquesm15• 15 years ago

The Canadian government has a long history of propping up the monopolies operating inside its borders, especially when it has a stake in them. For additional entertainment read up on the LCBO and the Egg Board (no, that's not a joke).

cal5k8• 15 years ago

Not to mention the Canadian Wheat Board, perhaps the most egregious of all monopsonies (apparently it's not a "monopoly" because it is the only BUYER of wheat).

falldowngoboom• 15 years ago

And the dairy board. And the turkey board. And the beer store.

neilk2• 15 years ago

Thank you.

I'm Canadian but I have been out of the country for a longish time now. The whole debate made no sense to me.

Yeah it sucks to be charged per byte, but surely Bell has the right to charge however they like. In the linked article, The Tyee's conspiracy theory that they wanted to force people back to television seemed inane.

But if it's about imposing a user-based rate structure on Bell's competitors that use them as a bandwidth provider, that makes perfect sense.

MikeCapone2• 15 years ago

> but surely Bell has the right to charge however they like. In the linked article, The Tyee's conspiracy theory that they wanted to force people back to television seemed inane.

Bell infrastructure (phone lines) is basically a regulated monopoly the same way that a water utility is. They certainly shouldn't have the right to charge whatever they like and crush competition as they please, making things worse for everybody except themselves.

There was this quote in the Globe & Mail today (national paper):

"download caps in Canada have become so low that they are beginning to look less like traffic management measures and more like a defensive manoeuvre, by which companies such as Bell, Rogers and Shaw try to protect profits at their TV distribution and broadcasting units."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/int...

mustpax3• 15 years ago

The situation is much more complicated than that. Smaller ISPs only piggy back on Bell's telephone lines only in the so-called last mile of the connection. The resellers have their own DSLAM equipment at the switchboards and they have to make their own peering arrangements to the rest of the internet. Bell's telephone lines have been (still are) heavily subsidized by the government, which is why the government is requiring Bell to share the last mile in the first place. This last bit of regulation nullifies any pro-competitive effects of sharing the last mile.

Owning critical communications infrastructure is not Bell Canada's god given right.

ergo9812• 15 years ago

The parent sits at 38 points while being almost entirely wrong.

I want endless bandwidth as well, but this is absolutely the decline of this site, with "what I want" and "the way I present the world to support my bias" crowding out "what is real" and "actual fact".

Isn't that sort of tactic best left on reddit?

jacquesm15• 15 years ago

The telecommunications situation in Canada is terrible.

Typically, in rural areas the way to get broadband goes something like this:

A bunch of people get a deal with a small ISP to finally provide them broadband because Bell says they won't be doing it. Then two weeks after all the gear gets installed and the small ISP starts signing up customers Bell will swoop in with an offer to undercut them and suddenly all the things that made it 'impossible' to get broadband before are mere chalk lines instead of the hurdles they were made out to be before.

In Canada it is illegal (or was, this is 4 years ago, it may have changed) to have a satellite receiver that receives FTA programming and so on.

ergo9812• 15 years ago

>The telecommunications situation in Canada is terrible.

Your complaint is that some rural area has poor service. Is that not the case around the globe?

I've had high-speed cable service since long before it was available in most urban centers in the US (much less the rest of the world), including when I lived in a mid-sized town. Here in a suburb of Toronto I've had top-notch, leading-the-bandwidth (15Mbps around the clock) high speed for a low cost for almost a decade.

I think our situation is quite good, actually. Broadband penetration is very high, average caps are competitive with the world, and bandwidth numbers lean very high on the curve.

There is so much misinformation about this whole situation (not helped by people making "incremental cost" calculations that assume that the infrastructure for infinite bandwidth is already in place): The best is the other post where someone talks about it being Soviet-style central control. The humorous aspect is that CRTC is essentially unwinding that central control, put in place back when Bell was the big, untouchable monopoly. It was then that many of the "unlimited cap" companies were basically given leave to leach off of Bell in the name of competition.

Bell is far from alone in providing bulk bandwidth in Canada. If the economics are so straightforward, clearly Teksavvy and the like will just run a Cogent or the like to their distribution. If they don't, ask yourself why not.

Ultimately this is a lot of people up in arms because they want their free lunch.

jacquesm15• 15 years ago

Bell owns the lines, it is (or rather, was, I've left Canada 4 years ago) illegal to put lines in by other entities.

> Your complaint is that some rural area has poor service. Is that not the case around the globe?

No.

> I've had high-speed cable service since long before it was available in most urban centers in the US (much less the rest of the world),

Good for you :) I had four bonded 28.8 modems and four landlines giving me crappy bandwidth where a simple baseband modem would have done the job but Bell simply refused to remove the chokes from the lines.

> Here in a suburb of Toronto I've had top-notch, leading-the-bandwidth (15Mbps around the clock) high speed for a low cost for almost a decade.

Toronto is but one very small part of Canada and one of the most populous areas at that.

If you run a monopoly you should provide all your customers with equal access to the system, otherwise you should open up the market and get the hell out of the way.

> I think our situation is quite good, actually.

your situation is quite good.

> The best is the other post where someone talks about it being Soviet-style central control.

That was pretty poorly worded but the author makes a much better case further on. Also, state propped up monopolies were very much a feature of communist countries.

> The humorous aspect is that CRTC is essentially unwinding that central control, put in place back when Bell was the big, untouchable monopoly. It was then that many of the "unlimited cap" companies were basically given leave to leach off of Bell in the name of competition.

They'd gladly put their own infrastructure in to the ground, only they're not allowed to.

Just like you're not allowed to hop across the border, buy a satellite receiver that receives 'free over the air' programming and operate it legally within Canadas borders (because that would deprive the government sanctioned operators of their subscription fees that they can charge you for that same content).

pyre8• 15 years ago

  > Here in a suburb of Toronto I've had top-notch,
  > leading-the-bandwidth (15Mbps around the clock) high
  > speed for a low cost for almost a decade.

Toronto is the "New York City" of Canada. Do you look to New York City to be an exact replication of how the entire US looks, works, and functions? This reeks of "Windows never gave me a BSOD therefore all of the people that say they've had a BSOD are lying"-type of argument. Please leave your anecdotes at the door unless you promise to see them for what they really are... anecdotes.

When I was living in Toronto the quality of internet service (at least with Bell) depended very much on the area. In some areas the lines/infrastructure was really crappy and rather than fix it Bell would just blame the end-user (you need to reboot your computer, that's why the bandwidth is so slow) or acts of god (I know that you've been complaining about the bandwidth for months, but it was really caused by that large storm last night. It should be fine now.).

  > Bell is far from alone in providing bulk bandwidth in Canada.

Really? I was under the impression that Bell was just selling access to their last-mile infrastructure and companies like TekSavvy were providing their own peering arrangements for getting the customers to the internet. Would you care to explain to me what the real situation is?

                +------------------------------+
                |         THE INTERNET         |
                +------------------------------+
                        ||         ||
                        ||         ||    <-- Peering arrangements
                        ||         ||
                     +--------+  +----+
                     |TekSavvy|  |Bell|  <-- ISPs
                     +--------+  +----+
                        \\       //
                         \\     //
                          \\   //
                  _        ______      
      Bell-owned |        /  ||  \
  infrastructure |       /   ||   \    <-- last-mile infrastructure
                 |_     /    ||    \
                      +--+  +--+  +--+
                      |  |  |  |  |  |  Residences/Customers
                      +--+  +--+  +--+

It's my understanding that the infrastructure looks like the above diagram. In this case, Bell is not selling bandwidth to the internet to 3rd-party ISPs, they are just selling access to their (government-subsidized) last-mile lines.

xxpor2• 15 years ago

As an American, I'm not very familiar with the telco situation in Canada. Is Bell related to AT&T (the old one)? Do they have a approved monopoly over all phone service, ala AT&T way back when (by this I mean do they carry all calls at some point, even if its only as a wholesale co)?

jacquesm15• 15 years ago

> Do they have a approved monopoly over all phone service, ala AT&T way back when (by this I mean do they carry all calls at some point, even if its only as a wholesale co)?

Not any more, as far as I know. But because there are plenty of restrictions on infrastructure installations and because Bell simply owns all the infrastructure that was invested in in the past Bell effectively has a finger in every pie and as a provider it is almost impossible to get around them.

pyre8• 15 years ago

As it was when I was living in Toronto, the last-mile lines are owned by either Bell (DSL/Phone) or Rogers (Cable). Both of those companies are the Canadian telecom heavy-weights.

Rogers does: cable tv, ip phone over cable (ala Comcast in the US), cable internet (which IIRC it own the only coax last-mile lines in the areas where it is a monopoly -- I think that west Canada has a different cable monopoly), the only gsm carrier in Canada+, a chain of video rental stores that competes with Blockbuster Canada.

Bell does: phone, DSL++, and the only CDMA cell carrier in Canada+++.

+ At the time I was living in Canada, there were many smaller GSM players, but they had all been bought out by Rogers, so you largely just had different branded GSM services from the same provider. More recently there have been at least two new GSM players (Wind and Mobilicity) though I believe that their coverage area is mainly just the Greater Toronto Area. [Of note is that Bell and Rogers use the same 3G bands as AT&T does in the US and Wind/Mobilicity use the same 3G bands as T-Mobile does in the US.]

++ The last-mile DSL lines were being sold to 3rd-parties ISPs as well as Bell itself being an ISP on those lines. See me ascii-art diagram in the other thread.

+++ Similar to Rogers, IIRC there were a couple of smaller players that were bought out by Bell so that all of the CDMA carriers were under the Bell 'umbrella.'

rafd2• 15 years ago

I'm embarassed to be Canadian.

I'm not opposed to usage based billing - users who use more should pay more, but the rate should be commensurate to actual costs. Regulation is meant to protect the public from potentially unfavorable actions by authorized natural monopolies. Perhaps the ISPs should be selling bandwidth on a market, like with electricity.

acangiano2• 15 years ago

I'll provide one data point of how this affects Canadian internet users.

I currently have no caps with TekSavvy and pay $39 a month. Starting from March 1st, I will pay $31.95/mo with a 25 GB cap. Any gigabyte over the limit will cost about 2 bucks.

Now, you can buy a block at discounted prices. According to TekSavvy, based on my internet usage, I will need to buy at least a 275 GB extra block. Believe it or not, I don't torrent. I simply like to watch NetFlix, HD movies from iTunes, lots of educational videos online, and backup data in the cloud.

That 275 GB block costs $55/mo. So I suddenly go from paying $39 for unlimited data to paying $86.95 per month, and having to be careful about what I download and what not.

Oh, and the first thing I need to do is stop backing up my data, videos, and photos in the cloud. That's pretty much out of the question with the risk of paying $2 per extra GB. I'm buying an additional external hard drive instead.

How is that for innovation?

jacquesm15• 15 years ago

There is a reason why lots of technical people from Canada seek to find their fortune in the United States.

axod3• 15 years ago

Is the US really much better? As we saw earlier in the week from Netflix, slower average bandwidth than Canada... hardly any competition and so on.

If you want decent internet connectivity, move to Europe or Japan or something. They're rolling out 100mbps broadband in the UK.

sjs2• 15 years ago

This situation really sucks, but remember that those of us with Telus or Shaw don't have anything to complain about at the moment so you aren't hearing about all of us on 10-25 mbps lines, with 50-200 GB soft caps that aren't enforced. I'm torrenting up a storm 24/7, and regularly download shows and movies on iTunes and Netflix, stream Grooveshark at home and on my phone. I don't even hear anything if I use 2x my monthly data transfer. Our upstream bandwidth is still terrible though :/

I don't envy the US at all, I envy Sweden, Japan, South Korea. No offence but I'd sooner move to many places before the USA.

Don't get me wrong, the CRTC is worse than useless actively harming the tech landscape. We have zero competition with Internet and phone pricing at all, the big guys basically just fix prices because it's more profitable for them to collude than compete. We have a lot of major problems.

wildmXranat3• 15 years ago

Yep. Most online services that have a presence in Canadian market will start to see cuts in their revenue. I was using NetFlix, but no longer. Many of my friends and co-workers are not using Dropbox for backup anymore. It makes no sense. Many went back to good old fashioned portable drives.

In addition to purchasing less of online services, many people that I know refuse to buy anything from Bell and Rogers. No cable, no landline phone, no satellite tv. In fact, with the new mobile companies popping up in the last 12 months, you can save quite a bundle.

There is an angst growing amongst customers that spreads like wildfire. In past few years, I converted almost every one of my friends and relatives to Teksavvy internet. At that moment in time, it made sense. It no longer does and I wish that this turns up the heat enough to make it an election issue. It is, pardon my french, a fucking racket.

samatman• 15 years ago

A total OT, but is "pardon my French" at all PC in Canada? Serious question!

Maxious• 15 years ago

FYI in australia the pricing is pretty similar: 1.00 AUD = 0.994493 CAD, $40AUD = 40GB, $80AUD = 250GB, $100AUD = 350GB

a_m0d3• 15 years ago

That really depends on where you are - I live in a semi-rural area, 40kms out of Perth, and right on the border of 2 ADSL exchanges. We're not in range for either of them, so we have to resort to wireless internet: $80/month for 3GB on peak, 5GB off peak. There is nothing else available here (including 4G wireless).

sygma• 15 years ago

I'm in no way trying to hijack the thread, but where I live, I pay $45/month for a 4 GB cap and 2$ per extra gigabyte. Theoretically, I should get 512kbits per second. Practically, however, I'm getting an average of 300kb and a 200ms latency to US and EU servers. You want to know the cool part? I'm doing just fine. That is to say, if you take a step back and think about it, you could probably live off 25 GBs per months. Think of the poor souls half way around the world, that could probably help!

uxp• 15 years ago

Where I live in the States, I pay $65 USD for 7MBit DSL with a 250GB softcap. I've only gone over the cap about 3 times in the 4 years I've been with my ISP, and it is never more than 300GB total that month, with the exception of this winter. I've also never had to pay for additional usage beyond my standard monthly bill. My average per month is about 80GB for last year, which is mostly consumed by a full level 0 dump once per month and weekly level 1 dumps of 3 remote BSD VPSes to a home server once a month, yet I still only consume about 1/3rd of my allotted bandwidth.

My fiancé was between semesters at school this winter, and decided to finish watching Battlestar Galactica, among a couple dozen other movies to occupy her time through Netflix. My router's bandwidth logs show that she consumed about 35GB a day for 12 of her 15 days off. We hit somewhere under 500GB of data that month. Using TekSavvy's upcoming rates listed in this thread at $32.00 per month for 25GB with $2.00 per additional GB, we would have had a bill approaching $1,000.00. How the fuck is that justifiable?

Our current model takes in account that occasionally, users will blow through their caps with no regard for the sky, but most other months are way below the cap. My current plan, of which was negotiated over 4 years ago and has not changed since, still serves my needs perfectly. I could cut out Netflix and my VPS backups and use 4GB a month, but why should I move to a service plan that is lesser than my 4 year old contract? Did I mention my current ISP service plan was negotiated 4 years ago? ISPs have had 4 years, in my case, to upgrade their equipment to accommodate an increase in users, of which they have been pushing, because as a company, they like having an increase in subscribers. Realizing now that they are at the peak and want more money for the increased traffic is entirely out of line since they have had years of growth in their subscriber base and years of blind profit, but none of that was spent ensuring that they would have additional room to grow.

I would gladly pay a flat fee per GB of data, since theoretically it is more fair. I will not pay a flat fee that is approaching a 15 times increase profit for my ISP from what they paid for that GB. They gave me and every single other subscriber 250GB to use per month, and for the past 4 years, my habits have evolved to be aware and use 250GB of data per month. Cutting it back to 25GB and additional at $2/GB is entirely ridiculous. Moving backwards is not a solution.

blub• 15 years ago

So much for 'the cloud' and ubiquitous broadband. Next time I see someone mention that such and such iPhone app can be made as a web app I'll point them here. Web apps are at the mercy of so many third parties...

patrickaljord• 15 years ago

Web apps work offline too, that's the whole point of frameworks like sproutecore, backbone.js and sencha.

jarek8• 15 years ago

Web apps are not an issue unless media is involved. Media is the issue.

natrius• 15 years ago

How many alternative providers do you have access to? If providers can actually make a decent profit from charging you $39 for that bandwidth, TekSavvy's competitors should be knocking down your door to split the difference. In theory.

EDIT: I just read in another comment that it's Bell Canada metering charges for bandwidth resellers. That's a bit more complicated. Hm.

Swannie20• 15 years ago

Not really, from the other comments it appears that Bell Ca is not the only back-haul provider.

But as I said in another comment, ISPs got a whole 90 days to deal with this, which runs out about today. That's a pathetic amount of time to tender for alternative suppliers, especially over the holiday season, in Canada. (I hear it gets cold there???)

jellicle• 15 years ago

The overage charges go directly to the line owner, what you would call an ILEC in the U.S.

Thus there won't be any competition on the bandwidth side, and in fact the line owner has an incentive to maximize charges, which is exactly what we're seeing.

forensic3• 15 years ago

It's a government-enforced monopoly.

neonfunk• 15 years ago

I actually agree with metering; I think it's the only fair measure. Granted, the metering you describe sounds atrocious, and there'll probably be a long messy transition to the point where our internet bill is more like our electric bill.

But imagine this: on mobile networks, instead of voice minutes, text messages, data caps, fees for tethering, and every other scheme the Telcos are concocting right now (with regard to charging for individual services), we instead have a single measure of our usage — data — and our bill starts at something reasonable like $5 or $10 a month.

The problem with "unlimited" in my view is that it conditions us to think that said resource really is unlimited, versus, say, electricity where we are incentivized to be aware of our usage. Now, if they're going to charge $2 per GB above some arbitrary cap — that's clearly absurd. But to start the bill very low (for the basic connection), and then charge, say, 10¢ or 15¢ per GB? Sign me up.

fluidcruft• 15 years ago

"we are incentivized"

Nice use of passive voice.

jacquesm15• 15 years ago

A basic 20 Mbit connection goes for about $75 in Europe, that's 1.1 ct / Gigabyte (if my back-of-the-envelope math is correct). 40 Mbit goes for about $100 / month.

Metered is out, flat-rate is the future. The only hold-outs will be the mobile carriers and even there I already see flat-rate offerings.

$5 or $10 / month would not work due to fixed costs and write-off on equipment higher than that. But once the equipment is paid for you might as well use it to its full ability without being penalized further.

wildmXranat3• 15 years ago

Your intentions are good, but I would not put that much faith int telcos. Almost every high-speed line is one of many that are oversold. The traffic that people have been paying for in past years, is just starting to be utilized. There are many years of pure profit in Bell's coffers.

The piece of pie in Canadian market didn't shrink, it evolved slightly out of bounds of Bell and Rogers oligopoly, and UBB attempts to push you back into that fold.

What's even worse, there can't be any competition as firms are not allowed to lay competing cable infrastructure.

gyom2• 15 years ago

I also agree with metering if we're charged prices that we consider reasonable (defined by the prices that most people are paying elsewhere in the world).

I'd like to pay for internet like I pay for electricity. We pay by the kW*h and that's it. I think it'd be nice to pay a higher rate for electricity / internet during the day if it meant that we'd pay a lower rate during the night.

I keep hearing about how europeans get the mobile phone services waaaay cheaper than we do here. Some guy in a TED Talk said that cell phones were common in poor regions of Africa. There's no way that these poor people are paying what I pay for texting on a mobile phone. :P

skymt• 15 years ago

Universal bandwidth metering would certainly incentivize moderation. For starters, it would immediately kill the Internet advertising industry, as just about every Internet user would moderate the bandwidth they spend on ads by installing Adblock Plus.

lsc4• 15 years ago

Metering only makes sense if the costs vary with usage. In the case of DSL, the vast majority of the cost is the cost of maintaining the copper pair to your house, and that cost largely doesn't change, regardless of usage.

Now, if the line from the CO (where the DSL terminates) to the internet was a significant bit of the cost, I'd agree with you. But my understanding is that the line from the CO to the 'net is a very small cost compared to the cost of all those copper pairs.

You also have a point when it comes to shared-loop technologies like cable. Metering is probably the most fair way to decide who gets what percentage of the limited fixed loop. (and probably the best way to get the telco to add more capacity when a loop becomes overloaded)

I'm just saying, the last-mile has many situations where running the connection, regardless of how much you use that connection, dominates the cost. And in those cases, "unlimited" (up to your port speed) billing makes a whole lot of sense.

Bud• 15 years ago

The idea that metering is or will be "fair" as applied by rapacious telecoms is beyond hilarious.

You honestly think the rate will be within an order of magnitude of your guess? Pardon me while I get a hernia from laughter.

caf2• 15 years ago

The problem with "just pay for data" is that mobile voice calls use such a tiny amount of data that either the cost of voice would have to drop by several orders of magnitude, or the price of data would have to be so astronomical as to make web browsing unaffordable.

This is the problem that telcos have been struggling with in terms of mobile data for years - they don't want to give up their fat margins on voice, but the actual bytes used by voice calls is trivial.

napierzaza7• 15 years ago

You have no idea what you're talking about. Bell hasn't upgraded its service, just the price. It's been pretending it's the users fault that things are slow but it keeps putting more users on the same network. They have no incentive to improve service, especially if the government agrees they can charge whatever they want.

barrkel• 15 years ago

Fixed prices for fixed sizes of data isn't efficient, economically speaking, because marginal costs are not proportional to marginal data transit; either the price is too low to prevent congestion at peak times, or it's too high and leaves pipes underutilized at off-peak times - and the times don't lend themselves to simplistic on-off peak analysis.

What you want is spot prices dependent on congestion, but that creates a different problem, opacity in pricing, where people will be fearful to use owing to uncertainty in how much it will cost.

I think the fairest mechanism is probably some kind of QoS by inverse usage: where congestion occurs, drop packets belonging to users who transfer the most. Unfortunately, I'd expect that to be computationally infeasible, as it would require fairly complex dynamic and stateful logic in routers to process the accounting and make decisions on a packet by packed basis fast enough.

markbernard• 15 years ago

Metering just stifles innovation and lets the big ISPs make more money than they need to. It is a cash grab, plain and simple. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110126/03531712831/metere...

vacri7• 15 years ago

I've always thought it funny that people who use 250+GB of data class themselves as 'not heavy internet users'. "I don't torrent" != light internet use.

What do most people torrent? Movies and TV. And yet there you are doing lots of HD video while claiming you're not a heavy user ("I don't torrent", "I simply...").

Out of curiosity, what level of bandwidth usage do you think quantifies a heavy user?

junkbit• 15 years ago

Cheap hard disks have grown faster than the last mile of internet connections over the years, creating a bottleneck. I think people's expectations are tied to the large disks and the files that they hold.

cookiecaper2• 15 years ago

Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, and YouTube are redefining heavy internet usage. My brother-in-law (who lives with us for the moment) recently got Netflix hooked up on his Xbox and he uses 10-11 GB if he watches all day or 5-6 if he watches for a few hours.

My normal usage, downloading updates for my PCs (Arch Linux, so heavy ones come often), browsing, watching a handful of videos, doing git pulls, lots of text-heavy sites like HN and docs, etc. plus my wife's normal usage, which is YouTube and Facebook, usually ends up somewhere around 700MB-1GB of usage per day. When I torrented from home, the average consumption was maybe 2GB-4GB per day, so Netflix is even more taxing than that for me.

As the web becomes increasingly media intensive, the "normal user" threshold of <100 MB per day is going to shoot up to something around <10-15 GB per day, especially once everyone in the house gets TV and movies over web-based services instead of cable/air/DVD.

The cable companies, which incidentally are usually the only good residential ISPs, are going to lose cable subscriptions to Netflix subscriptions and on-demand rentals to iTunes rentals, and consequently we'll see moves like this one seeking to penalize net-based media providers since they take customers away from their TV offerings.

acangiano2• 15 years ago

I never claimed to be 'not a heavy internet user'. Of course I am. I simply claimed that my data consumption is legitimate, and not caused by illegal hoarding of software, movies, etc.

thebigredjay• 15 years ago

Where do you live? I've lived in Quebec for three years and before that Alberta. In both places my internet service had a bandwidth cap and above a certain amount you paid an extra fee per GB. This is absolutely not new!

What really sticks out to me here is that the various ISP's have much less to compete with. The only real motivation for me in Montreal to switch to one of the smaller ISPs was the unlimited bandwidth option.

wmoxam2• 15 years ago

I'll provide another data point (as someone who isn't as heavy a user as acangiano.

I'm with Teksavvy as well and currently pay $31.95 + tax for a 200GB cap. I'm using less than half of that, or about ~80GB/month. Under the new rules I will have to pay $40.45 + tax for 105GB cap. In the rare (for me) case that might exceed this cap I'll pay $2/GB for additional traffic.

If I cancelled Netflix I'd probably come in just under the 25GB cap. Bell has effectively doubled the price of Netflix for me.

Groxx• 15 years ago

Since you apparently now have to worry about metering, I've been very happy with this for more simple bandwidth monitoring: http://codebox.org.uk/pages/bitmeterOs

waterside812• 15 years ago

For those not familiar with Canadian bureaucracies, the CRTC governs telecom issues, similar to the FCC in the US.

What may not be so obvious, even to Canadians, is that the members of the CRTC used to work for Bell, Rogers, Telus etc. Much like employees of the Treasury Department in the US, these people go from private sector to public sector and back continuously. A running joke at Rogers used to be that whenever they wanted some sort of legislation changed, the VPs would draw straws to see who had to quit and join the CRTC.

rapind3• 15 years ago

This is very true, and the real root of the problem is abstraction and voter apathy. Of course it doesn't help any when Rogers and Bell own many of our major media outlets who might otherwise draw more attention to the issue.

No, not a conspiracy theory. If you're a publicly traded company capable of creating more wealth for your shareholders by creating an agreeable political environment it would be practically unethical to your shareholders not to take advantage of it... Regardless of the long term impact to your customers. After all, it's pretty hard to convince your board that you shouldn't do something that may negatively impact your customer base in 20 years, and should instead settle for less profit today.

So pretty much the same game as the states.

colindecarlo• 15 years ago

Didn't the Egyptians just have the Internet cut off? I'd say they're the biggest losers.

va1en0k• 15 years ago

they aren't on the internet anymore, so no, they aren't the biggest losers on the internet

ronnier2• 15 years ago

This really disturbs me. I just moved to Seattle where I signed up for Comcast internet. A couple of days later, my connection stopped working until I activated my account on comcast.com. I did, and the first thing I saw was

High-Speed Internet Data Usage: 17% 43GB of 250GB

They sure hide that fact when you signup, not that I have any options, as Comcast is the only provider where I live. This is a horrible direction we are heading. And, if you go over the limit, they call and warn you. If you go over again, they cancel your account.

citricsquid• 15 years ago

Same here. I'm with BT in the UK and I'm on an unlimited* plan with a fair usage policy. This is fine by me, I held off downloading until night time (for both my own convenience and others) but because I had 2mb/s download and a Steam library of 200+ games, I figured I may as well DL my entire library at once. After a couple of days I'd downloaded over 300GB, one night I get an email saying blah blah fair usage cap has been hit. So now I'm capped at 1mbps between 5PM and midnight every day for 1 month (thankfully the cap is lifted tomorrow) because my "unlimited" plan has hard defined limits that aren't publicised. Try finding the limit for the unlimited plan I have and it doesn't exist, yet EVERYONE gets capped at 300GB/m. In a normal month I use ~150GB and would stick to that if I'd known about the defined limit, the misleading nature of it sucks.

I don't mind limits, unlimited is impossible, but when the limit is the same for everyone regardless of how the service is used and then tout it as unlimited... it's ridiculous.

slavak2• 15 years ago

Wouldn't that be considered a breach of contract? I know that if this happened to me (Israel) the first thing I would do is call up my ISP and threaten a lawsuit unless they provide me the service I signed up for.

ZoFreX• 15 years ago

> unlimited is impossible

Tell that to Virgin. Pay them enough money and they give you real unlimited (as do several other ISPs). BT sucks, but that's pretty widely-known now. The UK is certainly not in the same position as Canada, as we have several options that are genuinely unlimited.

ronnier2• 15 years ago

http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQViewer.aspx?Guid=3ca542...

The vast majority - more than 99% - of our customers will not be impacted by a 250 GB monthly data usage threshold. If you exceed more than 250 GB, you may receive a call from the Customer Security Assurance ("CSA") team to notify you of excessive use. At that time, we will tell you exactly how much data you used. When we call you, we try to help you identify the source of excessive use and ask you to moderate your usage, which the vast majority of our customers do voluntarily. If you exceed 250 GB again within six months of the first contact, your service will be subject to termination and you will not be eligible for either residential or commercial internet service for twelve (12) months. We know from experience that most customers curb their usage after our first call. If your account is terminated, after the twelve (12) month period expires, you may resume service by subscribing to a service plan appropriate to your needs.

goombastic• 15 years ago

Ok, here is what is happening in India. It's even more sinister. The ISPs have made some sites free and everything else paid. So, facebook for instance is free while your "littlesite dot com" is charged. The regulators are sleeping.

aristus• 15 years ago

Can you elaborate? Users have to pay to visit littlesite.com, but access to facebook is free?

blntechie• 15 years ago

Yes. But it's not happening with fixed line ISPs as i know. It only happens with mobile data usage in EDGE and 3G. Mostly facebook.com and twitter.com can be used unlimited for free or for a very low cost add-on plan. Other sites accessed are charged as per the normal plan.

Even though it appears sinister, the mobile operators do this to attract young customers who use these sites the most on the move. Personally, i don't agree with this setup.

MikeCapone2• 15 years ago

I'm a Tesksavvy customer and I got a email about this yesterday.

Until now I thought it was crazy that Austrlia was getting a censored internet and wondered how such a thing could happen in a pretty modern democracy. But now I feel like something worse has happened here... While new internet applications that use more and more data are coming out all the time and the cost of moving a byte on the net is going down rapidly, caps are getting smaller and smaller here just so the big telecoms can protect their on-demand TV businesses and keep internet service minimal without having to worry about competition.

This is so anti-competitive that it sickens me.

JimmyL2• 15 years ago

If you're curious about the regulatory history of this issue - and who isn't, really - then CRTC decisions 2010-255 (http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2010/2010-255.htm) and (http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2011/2011-44.htm) 2011-44 may be of interest to you. The former is the final in a series of decisions relating to Bell's request to allow them to move independent ISPs onto usage-based billing, and the latter is the recent decision on (effectively) an appeal of that decision.

If you don't care to skim the whole thing, the bottom line is that Bell is now able to force usage-based billing onto third-party ISPs, but must offer them a discount of 15% under the retail price at which Bell sells those services directly to customers.

Some other interesting tidbits found in there:

Unsurprisingly, Bell was against the idea of any discount, saying that even without a discount it would still be possible for independent ISPs to differentiate their services on price and "other methods". It's not clear how they'd actually do this, however. Oh, and PS there's way to determine an acceptable discount rate even if those assertions weren't true, so we shouldn't have one.

There's a nice note in there that "[the] Commission also received a large number of comments, mostly from individuals, that almost unanimously opposed the Bell companies' applications [to force usage-based billing]" - thanks for pointing that out, CRTC.

Bell is only required to provide third-party access to their legacy ATM networks, and not their new fiber-optic networks. This makes sense - as I've never seen the service advertised - but I hadn't seen that in writing anywhere.

If Bell ever does some form of promotion where they let people sign up on unlimited plans, they have to let third-party ISPs do this as well - although the mechanics are unstated ("[The] Commission finds that...to the extent that each company chooses not to charge UBB rates to any existing or new retail customer, it is required to treat GAS ISPs on an equivalent basis.").

Bell was about ambitious as you can get in the list of things they requested from the CRTC in these decisions. I'm not saying that I like this decision (as of March 1st I'll be paying TekSavvy more for less), but the CRTC did OK for the little guy when you see what else Bell wanted.

No one - not Bell, not the CRTC - says this is a technical issue. It's not that Bell can't handle all the bandwidth people use (which require a technical ITMP, in CRTC-ese), but that they see this as a way to increase profits by charging people who use more bandwidth more money (hence it's an economic ITMP).

cal5k8• 15 years ago

This is EXACTLY what regulatory capture is all about. Bell knows the game and played it masterfully.

Ask for the moon - ask for really ridiculous things, but expect to only get half of those things. The CRTC, wanting to seem "reasonable" and "balanced", meets Bell halfway. Unfortunately, halfway towards Bell's ridiculous agenda is still absolutely terrible for consumers, a perspective that the CRTC has utterly failed to consider.

This is a classic problem, one that recently contributed to the Gulf oil spill as well (and resulted in the disbanding of the regulator, just as the CRTC should be disbanded or, at the very least, stripped of its ability to regulate the internet).

forensic3• 15 years ago

The fact that the CRTC is stacked with former Bell and Rogers employees and NO ONE to represent the public or small ISPs also helps.

The CRTC is just a stooge pretending the play the part of opposition, while they are actually a collaborator.

transition• 15 years ago

Would be interesting to see if companies like Google, who have a significant stake in a "free and open internet", could establish operations in Canada. Google wants users online as much as possible so they can continue to serve ads. It's too bad all that dark fiber they own doesn't extend into Canada.

mthoms• 15 years ago

Canadian telecom providers must (by law) be majority Canadian owned. So sadly no, Google could not do this.

GrooveStomp4• 15 years ago

Google has three offices in Canada: http://www.google.com/corporate/address.html

reedF211• 15 years ago

Socialism FTW! My province's government run ISP faught against the CRTC and is not implementing UBB. Bravo MTS!

cal5k8• 15 years ago

Here's another reason why this is bullshit... this is an excerpt from an article I'm working on:

The biggest problem with these caps is that they are, plain and simply, anticompetitive. Probably illegally so.

Let’s take Bell’s internet service as an example. Bell recently rolled out their “Fibe” offerings, both for internet and IPTV.

Their most accommodating plan, Fibe 25, has a ludicrously low cap of 75GB. It would be pretty easy to exceed that with HD content from iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, etc.

Fibe TV, however, delivers TV over the same network. Bell even treats the IPTV traffic preferentially, as you can in this gushing review: http://www.benlucier.ca/work/tech/bell-entertainment-service...

There’s only one minor difference: Fibe TV is not subject to the same usage caps. You can stream as many movies as you like over Fibe TV, watch as much TV as you like, and never get charged extra for the bandwidth.

Well now, that’s funny. Didn’t Bell’s regulatory spokesperson say something to the contrary just the other day? Oh yeah!

“A bit is a bit is a bit. If you’re a heavy user, regardless of what’s causing the heavy use, you will pay more. That’s the concept,” said Mirko Bibic, Bell Canada’s senior vice-president for regulatory affairs.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/net...

Yes, Mr. Bibic, it appears that all bits are equal – but some bits are more equal than others.

This is a textbook case of anticompetitive behaviour, one of a long litany of recent sleazy undertakings by major Canadian telecoms (e.g. Rogers’ suspiciously well-timed lowering of caps on their most popular plans when Netflix entered the Canadian market). It is also a textbook method for successfully stifling innovation, a problem Canadians are all-too-familiar with.

The Internet is now an essential service. While smart countries like South Korea, Australia, and Japan are making (or have made) large public investments in fast, ubiquitous, and unlimited Internet for all citizens, Canada continues to lurch backwards courtesy of myopic regulators, oligopolistic telecoms and a government that is unwilling to intervene for the good of all Canadians.

Swannie20• 15 years ago

But FibeTV is bits over their private infrastructure... they can choose how to charge that, no?

The other bits that they are charging for are ones that go "outside" of their network.

Usage based charging will become the norm, just like with electricity, water, oil/natural gas, food. Some supermarkets carry loss leaders, why should Bell.ca not be allowed to too?

cal5k8• 15 years ago

First, you could not possibly have picked a worse analogy than a supermarket. The grocery business in Canada is one of the most brutally competitive anywhere, with low margins and a large number of players.

But back to the issue at hand: it should not be allowed because it's anticompetitive and flies in the face of the entire idea of net neutrality. Can Netflix get around the caps? iTunes? No. But because Bell is both in the business of content and in the business of infrastructure, they are in a unique position to abuse their power. And they are doing so.

Further to that is the example of third-parties being forced to pass on Bell's usage-based-billing. They make use of the last mile infrastructure, graciously provided to Bell courtesy of the Canadian taxpayer, but are responsible for providing their own DSLAMs and peering arrangements. Why should Bell be able to dictate terms to third-party ISPs? How does that promote competition?

A lot of public money went into building out the infrastructure that Bell apparently believes it owns. Internet infrastructure, especially the last mile, greatly lends itself to a monopoly or at most duopoly. This is bad for Canada in a mindboggling number of ways - the internet is an economic necessity, and our digital economy is just barely starting to turn into something with real legs. Just like we regulate electricity, water, oil/natural gas, and food, we should be regulating this.

pyre8• 15 years ago

There are a number of issues here:

1) Does Bell really pay money for their peering arrangements? Is Bell paying for all of the bandwidth between their network and the rest of the Internet? Or are their peering arrangements much like other backbone providers' peering arrangements where it's a handshake and no money changes hands? Is the 'cost' that Bell says that it pays for outside internet access really the cost of maintaining their links to other peers/networks (and not payments made directly to those peers/networks)? If so, then the difference between the outside internet and their internal networks should be minimal. The only real difference would be the most of the bandwidth is leaving the network vs staying inside of the network just due to most of the content that people want being on the wider internet (not because it's somehow 'cheaper' to use the internal network b/c they are paying for bandwidth that leaves the network).

2) As cal5k states, the third-party internet providers that are using Bell's last mile lines are also being forced to pay these usage-based charges, even though they are not using Bell's connections to the internet. These providers have their own peering arrangements to the internet and are just hooking into Bell's last mile infrastructure. So if the real reason for usage-based billing is because Bell needs to recover the costs that it pays for bandwidth that leaves it's network through it's own peering arrangements, then there should be no reason to force third-party providers to be on a usage-based billing model as well.

waterside812• 15 years ago

Rogers’ suspiciously well-timed lowering of caps on their most popular plans when Netflix entered the Canadian market

I have intimate knowledge of this issue and it really was just bad timing on Rogers' part. They had been planning on rolling this out well before Netflix's announcement, at least 8 months, but they just chose to pick the absolute worst time to make their announcement.

cal5k8• 15 years ago

If you like, I could also point to the convenient dropping of calls when they are passed from Wind Mobile's network to Rogers' (and the subsequent marketing campaign around that fact) as another example of sleazy behaviour. This does not happen anywhere else in the world.

It may not have been the case in this instance, but it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility. I can tell you that reduced caps are, broadly, an attempt to make alternatives to Rogers' content services like Rogers on Demand less attractive.

napierzaza7• 15 years ago

I'm so glad to hear they they planned on pulling that crappy manoeuvre before Netflix. Thanks for the info

Swannie20• 15 years ago

A much better article explaining the same issue:

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91228/crtc-ruling-could-mean-da... (2010 Nov 3)

Sounds like the regulator really dropped the ball on this one, giving small ISP's only 90 days to investigate possible alternatives, plan for them, and implement. 90 days?! That's insanely short. 9-12 months would have been reasonable. 90days? I'm stunned.

GrooveStomp4• 15 years ago

I wonder how this will affect companies like Mobilicity who offer unlimited cell phone data usage for an additional $10/month. I have no idea how Mobilicity operates and whether they're dependent on Bell's infrastructure or not, and whether the infrastructure is the same for cell phones as it is for internet.

A systematic breakdown on how this affects all ISPs and phone providers across all of Canada would really clarify the issue!

sheldonnbbaker• 15 years ago

From the CRTC website (http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/INFO_SHT/t1003.htm): "The CRTC does not regulate rates, quality of service issues or business practices of Internet service providers as they relate to retail customers. This is because there is enough competition in the market that retail customers can shop around for service packages."

Yet they've completely paved the way for competition to be swallowed into oblivion. They're standing aside saying "it wasn't us - it's not our fault" and yet snickering behind our backs while they rake in the dough.

Disgraceful.

itistoday• 15 years ago

If this actually passes, any sentiments I had about moving to Canada would evaporate. Good job guys, you're keeping the techies out.

rapind3• 15 years ago

They also throttle our bandwidth and our taxes are ridiculously high. You'll generally have a constant feeling of being ripped off, but you get used to it eventually, and it gives you something to commiserate and bond over with fellow canadians ;)

ashchristopher• 15 years ago

The real kick in the junk is that the infrastructure Bell owns was paid for by the Canadian taxpayers when Bell operated as a crown corporation.

Not sure if the Rogers infrastructure was publicly funded (I suspect it was in part).

hekar• 15 years ago

I'm really lucky to live in Waterloo, Ontario. There's a provider called Yak that offers unlimited bandwidth, non-throttled DSL up to 10MB for $60 a month (comes with non-voip phone line and 5 calling features).

They have their own DSL centers and hence aren't going to be affected by this new proposition. I think we might see more companies starting their own DSL centers.

jarek8• 15 years ago

To confirm - does Yak own their own last mile? I'm under the impression this is the crux of the issue.

fleitz2• 15 years ago

It's not a matter of regulations, it's a matter of markets. Some companies such as Bell treat their customers like crap and just want to lock them into a long term contract. So what? There are lots of competitors who will not be doing UBB such as Telus / Shaw / Rogers. Customers on Bell just became the world's biggest internet losers. If people don't like UBB they can always switch carriers unless they were dumb enough to take Bell's crappy long term contract.

napierzaza7• 15 years ago

You're ignorant. Everyone has to apply the UBB and no one has contracts, even Bell.

fleitz2• 15 years ago

Actually I'm not. http://www.channelcanada.com/Article5436.html Some ISPs are not using UBB, nor have plans to implement it.

http://internet.bell.ca/index.cfm?method=content.view&co...

oh and here's an article talking about people being on 1 2 or 3 year contracts for bell internet. How could they be on contracts if no one has them?

Createideas• 15 years ago

Well honestly this does kind of make sense.I'll explain 1.Verizon owns the pipes an charges companies or.Facebook or NEtflix a set fee for bundled usage fee. 2.Netflix and Facebook in turn would have to charge customers basic membership or usage fees to recoup the cost of there bundled usage fees they pay Verizon. 3.Customer would pay membership fees for services that we in theory and utilize alot more because there free.

In retrospect though based on the amount of members or customers of both these companies would there usage growth take that much of a hit and would those two companies still be able to operate if they were forced to change there business models and chage people just to access there content.

In the case of Facebook how many members would thy have if people were required to pay say $9.99 a month to access Facebook.

In the case of the Internet as a whole clearly it costs money for companies like Verizon to expand and lay new lines to meet the demands of usage.Why then would it not be right to charge the data hogs for overuse of bandwith?

Society has become addicted to free and believe that content in itself should have no cost associated with it.However people don't realize the manpower,creativity and cost associated just to have that content produced. It makes sense now as to why Rupert Murdoch is against the freemium models for news via the web.

I mean just think about it on a small scale just for me to write this comment.I'm paying for Internet service,heating bill,electric and other costs also.So why shoudnt I be able to pas that cost to the end user?

commanda• 15 years ago

Literally, I think Egyptians just became the world's biggest internet losers.

sedachv• 15 years ago

Canadians can sign a petition that also purports to send email on your behalf to the CRTC:

http://openmedia.ca/meter

I've been considering not getting Internet at my new place when I move (which is coincidentally the end of the month, when this regulation takes effect) for productivity reasons, and this cements the decision. I've been pretty happy as a Teksavvy customer otherwise.

Dramatize• 15 years ago

Welcome to Australia

gregsadetsky3• 15 years ago

How expensive would it be to start a number of small independent Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs)?

I'm thinking of a decentralized "movement" of geeks organizing what's required to get neighborhoods and villages online: an omnidirectional antenna high enough that Line of Sight can be provided to most residents, a high bandwidth fiber optics connection at the center, and subscriber antennas at the residences.

I've tried to find more information on Motorola Canopy technology in the past days -- look at this example deployment in Nova Scotia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_for_Rural_Nova_Scotia...

From what I'm gathering, Canopy can be deployed over unlicensed frequencies (2.4 and 5 Ghz), allows for hundreds of subscribers connecting to a single Access Point, can provide up bandwidth in the 5-10 Mbps range, etc.

Are there particular advantages to Canopy over 802.11x? Could it become viable, with infrastructure costs spread over some years, to run a small local WISP? I'm thinking of a "Real Internet" designation/"certification" that could be given out to any ISP that follows a basic code of conduct: offers at least one unlimited transfer connection plan and does not throttle traffic.

Is starting an ISP, regardless of the physical layer, overly regulated by CRTC? The Wikipedia page says "The CRTC does not regulate rates, quality of service issues, or business practices for Internet service providers" -- is that in effect true?

How can anyone manage with 25 GB per month? Are Netflix or the NFB going to do something about this? If not, can "we"?

a_m0d3• 15 years ago

Could be quite expensive. Where I live (40kms from Perth, WA, in a semi-rural area) we use this Motorola wireless technology, and the prices are astronomical - $80 for 3GB on peak and 5GB off peak. When we first signed up, we also had major stability issues (connection constantly dropping out, connection hijacked by a hacker for a few months, etc.), although things are looking better now.

gregsadetsky3• 15 years ago

Thanks a lot -- do you know if you're using a 900Mhz, 2.4 or 5Ghz subscriber unit?

Also, what's the distance from the ISP to you?

cookiecaper2• 15 years ago

Wireless sucks if the carriers around here are any indication. My brother-in-law uses one and his connection has been throttled twice already for using too much bandwidth during peak hours -- and his usage is relatively small. The normal download rates are slow, a little less than normal DSL speeds (150k-200k) and the upload rates slower. You have to put up an antenna. They firewall you at their place and you have to call to get ports opened.

Really there's no competition to cable. Comcast is the only decent provider around here, it's much faster than DSL. Sucks.

Swannie20• 15 years ago

"How can anyone manage with 25 GB per month?"

Very, very happily thanks. I used to "manage" quite happily on 1.5GB/month (Wireless in Australia).

Now I'm in the UK, I'm doing about 25 (thanks to BBC's streaming, which I could cut out a lot of I was PVRing more). It would only become a pain when I want to download something like a VM image.

gregsadetsky3• 15 years ago

I didn't mean that to be a snark! :-)

It was simply a(n emotional?) reaction (has been said many times, etc.) to the reality of bandwidth being reduced in Canada over the past... 15 years.

I used to have the-nicest-DSL-in-high-school, provided by Bell, in the late 90's -- 74$/month for 2 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up, unlimited traffic.

Today, their "Fibe" offering (it sounds like "Fiber" as in FTTH! but it isn't! %^&^%$#!!) is 55$/month for 25 Mbps down, 7 Mbps up.

The speed is definitely better -- but the 100 GB transfer limit means that your effective average monthly speed is 38 kB/sec (100 Gb / seconds in 30 days...)

Why doesn't signing up for 5 Mbps mean that you get a full constant 5 Mbps, and that you can use up to the full 1.6 TB of transfer per month (5 Mbps * 30 days...)?

Isn't the reason because customers are sold oversubscribed connections?

SaintSal• 15 years ago

This reminds me of when the Canadian RIAA (CRIA) successfully campaigned the Canadian government for a "levy" on all blank data media in 2002. They wanted to charge an extra $21 per GB on CDs, DVDs and hard drives in digital media player - ostensibly to cover the costs of piracy. Sound silly? Canadian legislators obliged (though it was overturned in court years later.)

http://news.dmusic.com/article/4580

As I recall, this backfired since the levy eventually meant that they couldn't sue people for pirating content - they had already paid for it via the levy. Like double jeopardy.

Anyway, it proved that levies like this don't actually change behaviour much. Canadians drove to the US to buy their MP3 players. Telcos benefitted by online media consumption and competed heavily for broadband subscribers. Digital lifestyles in Canada flourished.

Ironically, it's now the telcos that are complaining for the same reason. The key difference now is that big telcos can use this decision to squeeze their competitors (who they also supply.) Though I can see ways that this will backfire too.

The good thing about the Canadian government is that they have a history of continually watching, listening, adjusting and even backtracking if they feel they made the wrong move. I hope this keeps the telcos from abusing their new rights, and from stifling digital innovation in Canada, which hurts them too in the long run.

nl• 15 years ago

We have this in Australia.

Here at least the situation isn't too bad, because we have competitive resellers at the ISP level[1].

The ISPs compete on service, bandwidth, data limits and inclusions. For example, many (most?) ISPs arrange peering with video providers like Tivo so video streamed on their services don't count towards the data cap.

[1] There are laws to ensure that any ISP can install their equipment in the exchanges, or get access to the dominate telco's equipment at close-to-cost. Most of the time, these laws work, if slower than ideal.

jay_kyburz• 15 years ago

It might also be interesting to some that in Australia, where we have always had metered plans and where people have come to accept it, natural competition has seen our first unlimited plans emerge. For $60 a month TPG offers uncapped internet and phone line bundle.

Even thought this may now be legal to do, Canadians may find that some ISPs still offer unlimited plans just to get ahead.

lukevdp• 15 years ago

Yeah, I saw this thread and thought "Wow, internet isn't billed on metered usage everywhere else in the world?"

napierzaza7• 15 years ago

Working at a Canadian university I hear my boss say that bandwidth doubles every year for the same price. But Bell has been selling the same service (DSL) for less and less bandwidth... for a higher price every year.

DrStalker• 15 years ago

It's not that bad. Really.

Australia has had data caps since broadband first came out; for the vast majority of of users a basic plan provides all the data they need, techy users with heavy usage patterns get higher plans, and people with the compulsion to torrent every TV in existence get plans with unmetered periods (a few ISPs don't meter traffic during the quiet periods at night)

The usual behavior once you're over your data cap is to drop the internet speed down to ~64kbs for the rest of the month so even if you kill your data cap you can still access email and other low bandwidth services, you're not off completely.

westajay4• 15 years ago

It is bad. We never started with caps in Canada so we're losing a lot.

In australia you get ripped so badly for broadband it is not funny.

This affects not only consumers, but also the whole tech ecosystem.. For example business models that rely on unmetered internet (think netflix, or offsite backup).

It also affects people like me who have to host services in Canada (for regulatory and/or data security reasons). If I get nailed on wholesale bandwidth, I have to pass that cost onto my customers.

This ruling appeared out of the blue.. Without much time to prepare contigencies.

snowwindwaves2• 15 years ago

it is bad. australians and new zealanders get ripped on their telecommunications.

napierzaza7• 15 years ago

I'm surprised as to how many regular people I've talked to who don't torrent and who have gone over bandwidth (with Bell). The caps are super low, even for regular users and not just the techies.

westajay4• 15 years ago

This could snowball with a nasty public backlash.

Can anyone tell me if this is specific to bell? If so, how would this affect us out west where our wholesale provider might be telus, shaw or allstream?

westajay4• 15 years ago

This is really about conflict of interest. Perhaps it is time for regulation mandating the split of telecom from media content ownership.

In Canada, the telecoms own most of the major media assets (Shaw, rogers, bell).

benregenspan• 15 years ago

Doesn't that title still belong to Sierra Leone? Or perhaps Liberia? http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm

mkramlich• 15 years ago

Selling Internet access could become something like the next oil. Almost everyone in the US has to buy oil/gas, whether directly or indirectly. Therefore, that's a good business to be in. Internet usage, both in terms of breadth and frequency and data volume, will likely keep increasing. Therefore, getting into the business of selling access to it -- especially if you can sell metered usage -- could be increasingly lucrative. And it's a growing pie.

Furthermore, since so many mediums and industries are seeing their traditional cash flow streams go away due to the easy availability of free alternatives on the Internet, it makes sense that if you can't beat em, join em, and then just charge for the pipe to it all. So-called "pirates" can avoid paying for the official e-versions of digitizable media (songs, movies, images, encyclopedic info, sound effects, games, books, news, etc.) but it's much harder for them to avoid paying for the physical connection.

switch• 15 years ago

what an overreaction. I`m in Canada and calling Canadians the biggest Internet losers is nonsense.

People who use 300 GB of data per month cost the ISP more than people who use a few GB a month. That`s just a fact of life.

Should they have flexibility to charge more - Yes.

chad_oliver• 15 years ago

You mean that most countries don't pay per gigabyte? I live in New Zealand, and there's only one company with an unlimited broadband package, and that's only with a two-year contract.

The norm in New Zealand is to pay for say, 20GB per month, and if you exceed that then you drop down to dial-up speed (or pay for more).

With all due respect to the Canadians here, it's not really that bad at all. Life goes on, and it actually seems to be a pretty good life too.

forensic3• 15 years ago

>With all due respect to the Canadians here, it's not really that bad at all. Life goes on, and it actually seems to be a pretty good life too.

You do realize you are being horribly ripped off?

It's true that life goes on, even for slaves.

dhughes• 15 years ago

This is going to suck, software gets bloated far faster than network hardware can be developed and certainly faster than network hardware can be installed.

New services such as Netflix and who knows what else is coming down the line (3D Netflix movies?) are going to use up your overpriced bandwidth faster than your ISP can evolve, they'll just charge more for the same service.

This will be like when video became popular when everyone was still on 56kbps modems, the web developed faster than the hardware meant to use it and it will stall development. Why develop when there isn't anyone using it or able to use it?

In the end people will do what they have to when they only have a limited amount of disposable income, ISPs will see people spend $50 for 10Mbps service and when the ISPs increase the monthly bill by a $1 here and a $1 there (to serve us better) consumers will get the 5Mbps service for $50.

thangalin• 15 years ago

    while true; do
      wget http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/policymonitoring/2010/cmr2010.pdf;
      rm cmr2010.pdf;
    done

Signed,

Japan ($9/month unlimited Internet access)

efsavage• 15 years ago

The most dangerous problem isn't the markup or extra cost, it's that as soon as UBB is old news, the media companies that are now also the internet companies (comcast/nbc) will offer discounts on "in network" bandwidth, so an NBC show will cost you the regular 1.99, but a movie from another network, or an independent production will cost you extra.

I'd be all in favor of this kind of pricing if it was anything resembling an open market, like how the cell phone industry had/has major downward price pressure, but there are far fewer choices when it comes to wires into your house, so the local monopoly effects are very strong.

Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

Related Stories