Usage Based Billing In Canada To Be Rescinded 364
theshowmecanuck writes "The Prime Minister of Canada and the Minister of Industry are set to reverse a ruling by the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Television Commission) allowing big Cable and Telecom companies to charge based on bandwidth usage. The ruling applied to both retail customers and smaller ISPs buying bandwidth wholesale from the major companies. The head of the CRTC has been called to testify before cabinet on why they want to allow the big internet providers to do this. In this case the elected government agrees with the very large number of angry Canadians that this was bad for competition. Most Canadians see this as a bureaucracy aided cash grab with very suspect timing since companies like Netflix are starting to move into the Canadian market (big cable companies lowered caps and increased usage fees a week before Netflix started Canadian operations). The CRTC has a fair number of ex-industry executives on the board."
An outbreak of sense (Score:2)
Re:An outbreak of sense (Score:2)
No, because our highest levels of government here are captured too.
Re:An outbreak of sense (Score:3)
Re:An outbreak of sense (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not really an outbreak of sense-- if you RTFA the big providers will still have caps, and those caps are too low to support things like netflix. My GF lives in canada and goes over the cap (with Videotron) periodically just from normal use, without watching HD movies or anything. When I finally got around to getting an HD TV I went through 15GB in a few days watching netflix, but I don't have a cap (at least officially). She'd be getting overage bills if she did anything like that-- we were a bit disappointed that when Netflix decided to offer service in Canada it was only online, since the bandwidth caps make it so it's not terribly useful.
With any luck, the small providers will be able to push the big ones into no caps or high enough caps to be useful, but it doesn't look like there will be an immediate effect.
Re:An outbreak of sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Right on! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Right on! (Score:3)
Re:Right on! (Score:2, Interesting)
Why don't you make that government mandated too? Split price over the entire population, remove private ISPs. Free internet.
Either you don't understand how government works, or you have a curiously different definition of the word "free".
Re:Right on! (Score:3)
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
Re:Right on! (Score:3)
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
I fully agree with local governments regulating and using tax payer money for the the last mile construction and maintenance. In the US now, it is already "kind of" government controlled with franchise agreements but that single company gets exclusive use after that. The users/residents are paying the same exact amount for the lines one way of the other, why not have them opened up for competition? I'd much rather pay my local government for the lines and the choice to pay Comcast for service than be stuck and forced to pay Comcast for both.
Re:Right on! (Score:3)
Yeah, let the invisible hand of the free market decide... oh wait. Nevermind.
Re:Right on! (Score:4, Insightful)
And as is regularly brought up, there's a reason for that. Without government sponsored monopolies most cities would have 50 ISPs jumping over themselves for the lucrative to operate and relatively cheap to install urban markets, while the unprofitable to operate, relatively expensive to install outlying areas would be luck to get Internet at all. The whole idea of local government owned or government managed utilities came about precisely because people outside of the urban centers got tired of not being able to get electricity, water, and phone service. Do you think the Internet would be miraculously different somehow?
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
That's a nice history, but false. When telegraph & phone companies reached-out their lines in the 1800s and early 1900s, they used barbed wire to reach distant ranches and homes. 95% of the nation already had phone service before government ever became involved.
And cable was actually BORN in rural communities, not cities, because television reception was lousy. Therefore bright businessmen set-up giant antennas on mountains & fed the feed to anyone who wanted to hook-up to the cable. Hence the abbreviation CATV - community access television.
And now you know..... the rest of the story. ;-)
Re:Right on! (Score:3)
What an interesting version of history. And tell me, where exactly was that copper laid out? The telegraph usually ran along the railways, a good chunk of which were land grants. The copper was part of the right-of-way given by state and municipal governments. The taxpayer underwrote telegraph and telephone, and ultimately Internet services as well.
Re:Right on! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then run it as a god forsaken utility! First and foremost, there are plenty of rural areas stuck with zero broadband options. No cable, no DSL, no 3G coverage.
Secondly, utilities are highly, highly regulated. If the power company wants to increase your bill by $.02 per kWh, they have to go and ask the government's permission to do so.
They generally don't even own the distribution lines, they have to bid to offer services and the lowest bidder gets access. Imagine a world where the costs of starting an ISP exactly equal to the costs of installing a trunk line to your basement and the servers and software needed to operate. And unlike electricity or natural gas, there's no reason that the distribution lines couldn't be shared by multiple ISPs. Now, can you even begin to imagine how such a system would change the way ISPs operate?
I say hell yes, treat them exactly like a utility. The current system gets all of the public costs associated with utilities and practically none of the benefits.
Bzzt, inapplicable (Score:2)
Canada != US
Re:Bzzt, inapplicable (Score:2)
But Canada is the icy dapper top-hat of USA!
Re:Right on! (Score:4, Interesting)
post office
The post office is self-sufficient and outside of the scope of your argument. We all hate snail mail spam, but it's what pays for the service that gets anything I want to ship to where I want it to go in less than a week (usually).
I'm fairly happy with the quality of roads. They rebuild them when necessary and do a good job of clearing them of snow and debris. Yesterday we were hit with about 2 feet of snow overnight, and I was able to drive my teeny-tiny Fiesta all the way to work without problem.
Internet seems like a perfectly natural monopoly like roads, electric service, and health care. Oops, I forgot. We have capitalist health care. That way when I have a heart attack, I can make a few phone calls to get some bids from area hospitals, do some negotiating for a good price, and then go into surgery. Hospitals with poor customer service and higher rates will either improve or go out of business. Right? Oops! My bad, I'm off-topic.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
* Yes, there is inefficient bureaucracy in Canadian government as well, which is mostly a byproduct of transparency and accountability, but there are many public services in Canada that just work.
And it's worth noting that it's only worth privatizing if (% profit margin)
Put another way, it's great to say that private industry will streamline everything, but then you have to remember that they'll take a percentage off the top to make it worth their while. And if the cut is more than the "pork", then we're worse off than we were before.
Back at the topic in hand, I think it'll get reversed, simply because the telecoms botched the presentation so badly - the holes in the argument are painfully transparent (the private ISP that pointed out that they're being charged the "penalty rate", not the actual cost of production, for instance.)
And some free advice for the cable companies - why aren't you offering these services online, then? I'm with Shaw, and I don't have cable so I can't have the VOD and whatnot. But they're still obviously the closest link on my net-chain. If they offer those shows streaming over the internet, they'd have to screw up pretty badly to be worse than iTunes and NetFlix.
Re:Right on! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather have pot holes and falling bridges than a road system owned by shipping companies who set-up tolls and send their own cops after those who might carry anything too big in their trunk.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
Re:Right on! (Score:3)
> What we ultimately need is a country-wide backbone that is operated
> as a non-profit and allows anyone to sub-let it!
If this country had a backbone, these asshole corporations would have been broken up ages ago. Content providers and access providers need to be separated, and anything less than that will be abused.
This decision might get overturned, but the telecom providers had a taste of total victory... they aren't going to let this go that easily.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
The situation is much more complicated than that (Score:5, Interesting)
Most Canadians who are up in arms over this are missing the point. The ministry is missing the point. Bandwidth caps are GOOD. They provide the proper incentive structure for both consumer and ISP. On the consumer side, you can pick an appropriate plan that allows for only the amount of bandwidth that you need, resulting in more effective market segregation. This means low-use consumers don't need to subsidize high-use consumers. On the ISP side, the incentive is to provide as fast a connection as possible to encourage usage and excess usage.
A little publicized fact about the recent CRTC rulings is that bandwidth caps are classified as an economic Internet Traffic Management Practice (ITMP). Throttling, DPI, etc, are classified as technical ITMPs. The CRTC is trying to encourage economic ITMPs and discourage technical ITMPs so that consumers know what they are paying for.
Imagine these two situations:
1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
I would much, MUCH rather go for the second option. I am paying for a certain service. I know the terms of that service. I'm getting exactly what I'm paying for.
The problem that most Canadians have (and rightly so) is that the caps were set way too low. The reasons are complicated, but I'll try to summarize them. In Canada, the Bell companies own the last mile infrastructure. However, they are mandated to lease their last mile infrastructure to third-party ISPs at a reasonable wholesale rate that allows for competitive plans and pricing. This has been working well for a while, as third-party ISPs were able to provide similar plans at lower cost. HOWEVER, the Bell companies recently started to roll out VDSL service. They argued that they should be able to sell VDSL service exclusively for a limited time to "recuperate investment costs", and the CRTC agreed. So third-party ISPs cannot currently sell VDSL service, only ADSL service. Then the Bell and cable companies argued for UBB, which was granted. When they were allowed to use UBB, the Bell companies purposely gutted their own ADSL plans, putting strict bandwidth limits and high overage costs. This meant that the wholesale plans that they sold to the third-party ISPs were impacted in the same way.
All of that builds up to this: The third-party ADSL rates ARE competitive with respect to the Bell companies' ADSL services. However, since the Bell companies can sell VDSL services exclusively, they used that leverage to put in place anti-competitive practices.
THIS is where the problem is. The problem is not UBB, but rather the slimy business practices executed by these Bell companies. To solve this situation, the government should NOT be repealing the UBB decision. Instead, they should either allow third-party ISPs to sell VDSL services, or mandate reasonable minimum bandwidth caps and reasonable maximum overage charges.
Re:The situation is much more complicated than tha (Score:5, Insightful)
On the consumer side, you can pick an appropriate plan that allows for only the amount of bandwidth that you need, resulting in more effective market segregation. This means low-use consumers don't need to subsidize high-use consumers. On the ISP side, the incentive is to provide as fast a connection as possible to encourage usage and excess usage.
What actually does happen, though, is that the ISP provides ludicrous plans (too much money, too little bandwidth) AND the ISP does everything in their power to encourage excess usage. They have their cake and eat it, too, because we lack proper, level playing-field competition.
Re:The situation is much more complicated than tha (Score:2)
Thanks you! It is good to see a comment that is more sophisticated then the "all UBB are bad" comments I'm seeing in much of the Canadian activism.
It is a serious problem that the current, very low, usage caps were put in place to prevent services such as Netflix from effectively competing with the incumbents TV services, but that doesn't mean we should get rid of UBB entirely.
We need either (a) real competition, which is not going to happen in Canadian telecom as the current alignment is too entrenched, or (b) government mandated caps that are much higher then the current ones.
Re:The situation is much more complicated than tha (Score:2)
The situation is extremely simple: oligopoly (Score:2)
Problem is: in practice nobody gets anything close to any of the two options for 40$ per month.
Here is what major providers are selling around 40$:
Bell "performance": 6mb/1mb, 25 Gb cap, 42$
Rogers "express": 10mb/512k, 60Gb cap, 47$
Rogers "lite": 3mb/256k, 15 Gb cap, 36$
Telus "standard": 5mb/?, 30 gb cap, "fom 45$"
Videotron "standard" 3mb/? 4gb cap, 30$
Videotron "high speed" 7mb/?, 40gb cap, 54$
Since the major providers have gained the power to throttle financially all the competition, this is what we get. Forget about 100Gb caps, they were only offered by small competitors (Teksavvy offered 200Gb (30$) and unlimited(40$)).
UBB pricing (Score:2)
Re:The situation is much more complicated than tha (Score:2)
1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
I would much, MUCH rather go for the second option.
I would too, if thats what would happen.
What would happen is you pay $40 a month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit and most of the time you'll get 3-5Mbps because of high network usage. Right now, the caps they set are too low, which would encourage even the medium and light users to watch their bandwidth. 10Mbps all the time for the 20GB limit they set... That's like 4and a half hours a month you can use the speed you were promised! Some activities that would require that speed are playing games, streaming movies. I would not want to kill half my monthly alotted amount just by using netflix once. If they set it to 100GB, That's a little better around 22 hours, but that still means if I want 1 solid hour of gaming a night, I'm STILL going over my cap.
So ISP's that currently preform the Technical ITMP's SHOULD be able to provide that solid 10Mbps connection right now, right? Because they've effectively employed the technical solution over the economic one. How come everyone at Shaw is still bitching they don't get the full speed they paid for? Because they are not equipped to handle a 100GB cap at 10Mbps. How many of the heavy users, who download 1TB a month, are ACTUALLY going to be curbed? Little Johnny Jimmy who downloads movies for all his friends 1 months, gets scolded by mom and dad, then teachs his friends to do it instead... and it just goes around.
Let's face it, the caps in theory would work incredibly well, the problem is that the ISP's aren't equipped to handle the caps. They've been employing the technical solution and they still aren't up to snuff, so I doubt the more flexible and lenient economic plan would be any better whatsoever.
Re:The situation is much more complicated than tha (Score:2)
Re:The situation is much more complicated than tha (Score:2)
I picked my cap. It was 200 gb.
I got a letter saying the CRTC would force the ISP's to downgrade my cap to 60gb or I can happily pay $100.00 more a month (50 for a higher plan, 50 for going over) to get back to my cap.
YOU are missing the point of why we're pissed off.
Re:The situation is much more complicated than tha (Score:2)
Imagine these two situations: 1) You pay $40/month for an unlimited 10Mbps connection, but can only get 10Mbps at 2-4am in the morning. Other times, because of high network usage, you get an unstable connection that goes 3-5Mbps, or even slower during peak times.
Two counterarguments:
1. Slower speeds during peak times should be expected. It's as much a fact of life on the internet as rush hour is on the streets.
2. If the ISP can't supply that 10 Mbps connection consistently, that's false advertising on their part. I'm amazed how long they've gotten away with "up to (stupid speeds)" as is - no manufacturer would get away with making a toaster that "toasts up to 100 pieces of bread at one time" and only has two slots.
2) You pay $40/month for a 10Mbps connection with a 100GB limit. Most of the time, your connection speed is around 10Mbps, but you just need to watch how much you download. There is a tool provided for you by the ISP to check your usage, updated daily.
In this scenario, why are we capping the speed at all? If I'm paying for the bit (and not a piece of the pipe), what reason is there not to push them downstream as fast as they can?
Also, by placing the cap, you've effectively cut how much data I can have regardless of speed. Even if I'm only getting a tenth of that 10Mbps "advertised speed", I'll get way more actual data that way (at 1 Mbps, it'll take 9 days 6 hours to hit a 100Gb cap, which means you've cut my effective internet by one-third.)
Re:The situation is much more complicated than tha (Score:3)
You realise there's a reason for that puffed chip bag? You're getting the same amount of chips as before, just that the bag is larger and puffed with air ... so that the bag doesn't get squished and crush your chips.
Take that Canadian mega-corporations! (Score:2)
There are two main players here in Toronto that provide internet access Bell and Rogers and neither of them competes with the other except to the extent that they want to see the how badly they can gouge their customers.
What is funny is that they both complain about the massive amounts of usage they are forced to provide and therefor makes them sped billions on infrastructure.
Our national/local public broadcaster, the CBC had a crony from Bell's "legislation and regulation" team on the radio gloating about how proud he was that the CRTC had fought for the rights of all Canadians etc... when the CRTC was only doing exactly what the corporations wanted.
As an actual Canadian citizen I am fully proud that the nasty, corrupt CRTC, had their corporation loving decision overturned
What is strange is that the decision has been struct down by the even nastier, even more corporation loving Conservative government.
I smell two things: 1) election, 2) MASSIVE tax cuts to appease their corporate masters at Bell and Rogers
Re:Right on! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Right on! (Score:3)
Now, most months I use only a fraction of that, but when a new linux distro comes out, I want to give back by sharing as much as possible - plus I have several boxes that I want to upgrade (I do the network upgrade option, and with ~5,000 packages, that's almost 10 gigs per box).
For the people who point out that water is metered, guess what? Water is supplied by your local government, at cost, and we've never had the tap stop running - not even during the Ice Storm.
Municipalities should be free to get into supplying the pipes for the Internet to their "shareholders".
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
Plus, give them their own encrypted webmail, and block facebook "like" buttons and google adwords servers, and they are no longer tracked (as much) by advertisers.
Get enough people to act as relays and we could even set up an alternate dns system.
The 12 db external antennas are currently $60 each, (yes, there are cheaper but they're not as good), and single-antenna indoor wireless N routers are under $40, so $600 would cover everything.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
My internet is provided by Sasktel which is a crown corporation. There are no bandwidth caps that I am aware of.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
The issue here is not that people are being charged for usage (entirely sensible model imho), but that the telcos are price gouging consumers.
Conversely, the 'unlimited internet' thing just doesn't work, because you have this thing called 'fair usage' that means you are allowed to redefine the word unlimited as unlimited for any value smaller than X.
The reality (for anyone that has any kind of dedicated/cloud server or hosting account) is that bandwidth is actually relatively cheap. This is the dirty little secret of the telcos, they know they are vastly overcharging and will do anything to protect their little racket.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
"costs to deliver a marginal gigabyte, which is about an hour of viewing, from one of our regional interchange points over their last mile wired network to the consumer is less than a penny, and falling, so there is no reason that pay-per-gigabyte is economically necessary"
Re:Right on! (Score:3)
I don't mind my bandwidth to be metered, but charge me the true price for it and do it from 0 and not after a specific threshold was reached.
The problem is not so much that they charge for bandwidth, but rather the way they do it and the reasons why they do it.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
They cannot.
Price of bandwidth is not linearly dependent on the amount of G transferred. Not even close.
And trust me, you would not really want to be charged according to anything close to the real formula. If you will, you will scream for the days when it was a simple quota + overspend. By the way, quota + overspend is a reasonably good approximation of the actual cost model.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
As for "the real formula", I'm gonna throw a big [citation needed] on that - it'd be good to know how much it "really costs" to get a bit down the ol' information dirtroad.
Re:Right on! (Score:3)
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
I got netflix in January. My December usage was 40GB, my January usage is 149GB. I also cut my cable as my kids are the only ones who watch movies, and about 1 a day, fortunately my kids don't care that Netflix content is crap, they can get all the sponge bob and diego they want.
So 25GB cap is a tad bit too little if you ask me.
Enabler. (Score:2)
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
Re:Right on! (Score:5, Interesting)
either the ISPs charge for volume, or they charge for speed. charging for _both_ is the problem.
so, if they want to charge for gigabyte, fine, but every line would have to be the same performance wise. like 100 Mb/s for everyone.
or charge for a tiered speeds (10, 20, 50, 100 Mb/s) with no volume cap.
the examples you gave are just like that. electicity is billed by charge (measured in kWh), gasoline by volume (in liters), fone calls by time (minutes), but there's no cap on how many amperes you can draw from the grid, how many lliters per second you can pump or how many calls per hour you can make.
choose one form of billing and stick to it.
Re:Right on! (Score:3)
Electricity is charged by volume (watt hours) and peak flow (amperes). Most domestic installations are on the lowest tier of the peak flow.
To continue the analogy, the generation cost and the size of the wire and transformers are a factor.
So charging for both peak and average flow is reasonable, but the per unit charge must be related to the supplier cost. 25GB then $1/GP is not a reasonable charge.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
I think the bigger issue isn't that it will be 10 cents per GB, but closer to 10 dollars per GB. We, the customer, are at their mercy for billing. Because of the government-granted monopolies in many areas and borderline collusion on pricing, there isn't anywhere for customers to go to get better products or services.
And with the other metered services you mention, the user is depriving someone else from using those items. They are physical, tangible things (including electricity because of what it takes to generate). Network packets aren't depriving someone else of their usage in any reasonable sense. The only thing they require after the line is laid is the electricity, which is already a metered item
Re:Meter (Score:2)
Except just for you, to show your support for metering, Comcast will charge a dollar a byte past your cap.
The danger of positions like you are recommending is the two parts - ... I don't have any problem with them charging..."
A. "I support metering
coupled with
B. (Low price that I pick, which need not at all be the actual rate).
You forgot about the "give an inch, take a parsec" effect going lately. See for example the story of AT&T illegally overbilling usage.
Re:Right on! (Score:5, Interesting)
That idiocy again. Gasoline is metered because gasoline can be stored and used later. Gasoline that you don't use now is a substitute for other gasoline that you would have to buy later. Electricity is metered because the resources from which it is created can be stored and used later. (And yes, electricity that can't be stored is free if the demand is less than the supply.) Water can be stored. Making a unit of clean water, electricity, diesel costs a relatively fixed amount of money. Making a unit of transfer volume does not cost a fixed amount of money. You can only build networks and the price of a gigabyte transferred goes down the more you transfer, because the cost of the network is practically constant, regardless of utilization. If you want to pay by gigabyte, then do so, but know that you're asking to be price-gouged and will get less for more. With consumers as dumb as you, we'd still be telling users not to surf so many web pages with big images, like admins in the 90s did when the web was new and increased the demand for bandwidth over the previous text-only protocols at least tenfold.
(If you're wondering why I'm calling you an idiot instead of calmly explaining the problem with your "argument", it's because you keep ignoring the facts. You're a Slashdot regular and you know quite well why electricity and other utilities are not a good analogy for computer networks, yet you bring up this bullshit every time. You're either trolling or an idiot, and I have no sympathy for that. Moderators don't mod you down because you're presenting an unpopular opinion, your comment deserves negative moderation because it is a display of ignorance or malice.)
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
The issue was not paying more for getting more. The issue was cable companies taxing online video by dramatically lowering bandwidth caps and dramatically increasing overage charges. Essentially saying the Internet is not for video, that is what cable TV is for.
So, no, you don't have a problem with a 250GB cap and 10 cents per GB over that cap. But what if Comcast dropped you to a 60GB cap and $2 per GB overage because you subscribed to Netflix? That is what happened in Canada.
Re:Right on! (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as someone who moderates a lot, your preemptive claim of moderator abuse doesn't help get the moderators to leave you alone. :P
As for the cap, the caps aren't like that. What actually happened is that your new cap is 25GB, and it costs $2/GB beyond that. Still think its a great idea to watch hulu or download a 10GB game off Steam? Those are the actual numbers the ISPs in Canada are pushing on people.
The other issue is that this came from the CRTC, which is notoriously stuffed with former telecom insiders and who ALWAYS rules in their favor (except when they clash with the big media companies, but Canadians never win in these things).
This decision was terrible and the government is doing the right thing by stepping in. What they actually need to do is purge the CRTC and fill it with true experts instead of former Bell employees, but I'll take any kind of forward progress at this point.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
In principle, many Canadians agree with you. In practice, Bell set the caps/charges at 25GB and $2 per gig overage.
If it was 250GB and $0.10 overage, we wouldn't be in this mess. But when I have to pay $50 in bandwidth to download a videogame from the playstation network, or pay $4 an hour to watch netflix, something is wrong.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
Re:Right on! (Score:3)
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
I don't believe your view is that unpopular, nor unreasonable. The problem is always in the details. So, let me ask you this, let's suppose you were told your Comcast cap is 25GB per month (that's for $44.95/month), and you have to pay $1/GB over that. Would you be happy with that level of service? I ask because that is what my ISP told me I will now start getting. I am *not* happy with that, even though I have *never* used more than 60GB in one month.
Now, let's say my ISP told me I would get 60GB for $29.95 and then have to pay $0.20/GB over that. Would I be upset? No. I would be happy to get a plan like that. Others may feel that is still too little and the cost too high. So, where do we set the pricing?
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
So I guess what I'm saying is that I've seen both sides of this (having lived in both the US and Canada), and that you can Comcast can kiss my ass. Internet service in Canada already makes the US look like some futuristic technological wonderland, and this was going to set Canadian internet service back by a decade or more. There's already a significant lack of ISP competition up here, and this is a decision that was blatantly aimed at making it impossible for companies like Netflix to compete with Bell and Rogers in-house offerings. For probably 95 percent of Canadians, your phone, your internet, and your television service all come from the same person, and it's very likely one of two or three companies.
I can't help but notice your sig. Guess what? Your dialup plan gets you basically the same thing as 36 dollars will get you from a Canadian *CABLE* provider.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
But I do think bandwidth should be metered. Gasoline is metered. Diesel is metered. Electricity is metered. Water is metered. Phonecalls are metered (well mine are- 18c/minute). Why not megabytes?
Because all those other things you mentioned are finite resources (except maybe phone calls over POTS/cellular which could be argued either way, phone calls over VoIP are non-scarce), to produce more of them requires more resources to be consumed and more work to be done. With data, once the infrastructure is set up, the data is infinite at a certain speed. You can run electrons or light pulses down those wires all day long and it doesn't require any more resources.* Metering bandwidth is applying applying artificial scarcity to a non-scarce thing. When the ISP sells you a true unlimited plan, they are still selling you a finite amount of data: (your bandwidth in kbps) * (60^2) * 24 * (number of days in that month) per month. They're selling you infinite data at a specific speed.
It's just like road tax. Say everyone drives a lighter car that does practically no damage to the road at all (this is the case for anything with a good surface area to weight ratio, pretty much only trucks really damage the road), once the roads are set up it doesn't cost any more no matter how much you use it. Why should the road be metered? Sure it might be cheaper for some people if it were metered, but at such a low cost is it worth it to impose a limit, against the wishes of the vast majority?
*Yes a heavily loaded connection will use more electricity than a lightly loaded one at the ISP (switches using more processing power, a teensy bit more power required to send the signal, etc), but that's splitting hairs.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
But I do think bandwidth should be metered. Gasoline is metered. Diesel is metered. Electricity is metered. Water is metered. Phonecalls are metered (well mine are- 18c/minute). Why not megabytes?
I'd actually be OK with by-the-bit internet, *if* they dropped the bandwidth caps. (So, instead of paying for 5 Mbps, I get the best speed available, but I pay for each bit.). It's getting squeezed both ways that irks me. Using your comparisons, all of those are charged by volume, not flow-rate (your water flows at the best rates the pipes can handle). What UBB is doing with billing is charging you for the water, and then charging you *again* based on how much water pressure you want.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
The problem there is that the ISPs are not being allowed the option of offering their customers options. The ISPs who provide DSL to customers are being charged these fees by Bell (the telco) and are themselves being charged $1 per gigabyte the customer uses past the first 25GB. Unfortunately, because Bell is both in the ISP and Satellite TV business, there is a massive conflict of interests here - they tend to charge the same per DSL user to the ISP that they charge their own end customers, meaning that if an ISP wants to be able to even enter the market for providing DSL access, they can afford to place about a $1 per month markup on the account in total - and then they have to pay for the outgoing internet bandwidth, tech support, server maintenance, and all of the other aspects of running an ISP based on that $1 per month. The CRTC ruling basically said "Yes Bell, you are now free to charge the ISPs more than you charge your end user customers, thus driving them out of business, and ridding yourself of competition in the ISP business, while simultaneously blocking people from using internet TV and phones to replace the satellite TV and regular phones you sell."
I'm speaking from experience here - when DSL first became available in Canada, I was running an ISP, and as owner of the phone lines, Bell wanted to charge ISPs $2 more per month per DSL customer than Bell themselves charged for home DSL service - and the CRTC thought that was perfectly OK, despite their whole mandate being to prevent monopoly abuses like that. It took massive protest and threats of lawsuits before they decided that perhaps some fairness was required.
These CRTC decisions clearly had nothing to do with the CRTC members' possession of season tickets to sporting events, use of luxury condos at resorts, and other expensive vacations paid for by Telcos and cable companies.
Re:Right on! (Score:2)
something wonderful (Score:3)
Balance as usual. (Score:5, Insightful)
The CRTC has a fair number of ex-industry executives on the board.
Apparently none were ex-Netflix.
There, fixed it for you (Score:2)
There, I fixed it for you.
* * *
Here is one of the most influential documents [dslreports.com] sent to the federal cabinet that led to the eventual ressicion.
Facebook isn't so bad, in this case.. (Score:2)
I have to say, while I, like many /. users, don't like facebook, I strongly believe that the "laymen" internet users were informed about this horribleness through social networks such as facebook. I for one was able to inform over 15 "friends" (we'll use that term, I guess) and all of my family (none who are geeks) through facebook about this issue, and they all signed up because I was able to explain it well (i.e. you're going to pay more for internet).
So perhaps facebook has its place. In any case, I'm really happy this is happening, because it makes me sick to think how the CRTC is able to screw Canadians so easily to help corporations. What a sad government we have.
Re:Facebook isn't so bad, in this case.. (Score:2)
I believe you mean the general power of the internet to inform people of breaking news. Facebook is a subset of networked people, and I feel there's trouble there siphoning off the praise for the general internet as support for a specific entity like Facebook. I'll leave it to my betters to quote the fallacy involved, but it is at the heart of all the flaws of marketing.
Re:Facebook isn't so bad, in this case.. (Score:2)
This is an issue people can understand. "Bell & Rogers are going to charge you more to watch youtube to fatten their profits" is easily understood by everybody. Bell & Rogers are two of the most loathed entities in the country, right up there with the CRTC. So, this one is easy to get people riled up about.
Toss in a minority government that really can't afford to ignore people, and you have swift action.
It doesn't work on everything. Their DRM bill has serious problems, but try explaining that to your mom? Good luck.
Not yet a victory (Score:3, Insightful)
Election season (Score:3)
Re:Election season (Score:2)
That's a legitimate concern. We're talking about a population famous for its complacency and apathy about the political process, and yet over 1% of the population -- a very significant number -- felt motivated enough to sign a petition and/or email their parliamentary representatives.
Faith in humanity... (Score:2)
Speed issue next - not enuff press :( (Score:3)
Article i wrote yesterday (Score:2)
The fox guarding the henhouse
Many other people have written articles and commentary about the CRTC's decision to allow Bell to force its wholesale customers to accept usage-based billing (UBB). This is my take on it.
I've been a very happy customer of Teksavvy [teksavvy.com] for the past few years. Teksavvy's prices and policies are fair and reasonable. Teksavvy provides jobs to Canadians. Teksavvy has been one of the companies leading the charge to protect customers Bell's dishonest and anticompetitive practices. Currently I pay $32 per month for DSL from Teksavvy, which gives me 200GB per month of data use.
Thanks to the CRTC's decision in line with Bell Canada and against Canadians, my monthly cap is going to be reduced to 25GB. In Ontario, the cost per gigabyte of overage is going to be $1.90. Fortunately, my base rate will also be decreasing in acknowledgement of the fact that my bandwidth allotment is being reduced by 87.5 percent. No wait, I lied. Of course it's not. This is just a cash grab by Bell, sanctioned by the CRTC, at the expense of Canadians.
How much is this extra bandwidth going to cost? Bandwidth needs for HD movies range from about 1.5-2 GB per hour. Therefore a two hour movie will cost about $6.70 to stream in overage charges. Put another way, if you stream one hour of HD TV a day, you'll use about 53GB of data a month, just in video streaming. That's before you've done things like check your email or the weather. You'll be looking at about $52 in overage charges. That pays for a reasonable cable or satellite TV plan. I use this comparison because, of course, Bell also provides satellite television and does not want you to stop paying them $50+ per month for that in order to watch your TV online. I'm reminded of Roger's announcement last year of a reduction in bandwidth that they publicized the day after Netflix announced they were coming to Canada. An interesting coincidence.
Back to that $6.70 in streaming charges. If you rent a movie on iTunes, you'll pay $6 to rent the movie. That means if (when) you're over your bandwidth cap, to actually watch a movie, you'll be spending $12.70. That's completely ridiculous!
I read somewhere, I think in a post from Teksavvy, that this is over one thousand times the actual incremental cost that Bell incurs. In other words, Bell pays less than one fifth of one cent per GB, yet the CRTC thinks it's fair to charge consumers almost two dollars. To use another comparison, it costs Netflix at most about $0.03 per GB [streamingmedia.com] to stream videos. If the owners of the network between Netflix and me are able to make money off Netflix by charging them $0.03 per GB, how is it even remotely approaching fair that Bell is allowed to charge me $1.90 for that same data?
I'll admit, I'm a heavy user. I'm not sure exactly how much bandwidth I use, but it's a lot. I'm a self-employed e-commerce consultant and I work at home. My job involves me regularly uploading and downloading very large files of several gigabytes each. We have two children and probably watch about an hour of TV per day that's been streamed or downloaded off the internet. We cancelled our satellite service as we found we were paying about $15 per hour of TV actually watched, and all our video entertainment comes from the internet. We subscribe to Netflix and rent movies from iTunes. Of course Bell doesn't like people like me, as I've given up on paying for their last-century business model of paying huge monthly fees for television to be broadcast to me on the network's ag
Minor grammar complaint (Score:2)
My eyes had to rescan the headline several times trying to make grammatical sense of the construction until I realized there was a missing hyphen between the first two words. At first I thought there was a preposition missing between the second and third words. Bad grammar makes reading more difficult. In the 12 years that I've been reading Slashdot, the stories have always had bad grammar, and that has never been excusable. This isn't some rinkydink site, it's a major internet destination. Its grammar should be better than it is.
Usage-based billing is the fairest system (Score:3)
I won't comment on the specific CRTC situation; maybe there really was something corrupt happening there. But if people are reacting negatively to usage-based billing, then those people are being short-sighted fools, begging to be exploited and have to pay more.
I'm not saying usage-based billing isn't a cash grab by the ISPs, but anything else is even more of a cash grab and costs the consumer more. If you are paying flat rate, then you are either being subsidized by your neighbors, or you are subsidizing them.
Now, we all think we are the ones gaining unfair advantage and getting something-for-nothing, so flat rate sounds like a good idea. But are you sure that you aren't the one who is being a sucker? Maybe lots of other people are thinking the same thing.
That's the uncertainly. What doesn't have any uncertainty at all, though, is that the ISP will get their money. Whatever profit margin they think they can get away with (whether set by competitors or set by a regulatory commission), they're going to set their rates in order to get it; their gross revenue for all customers combined, is going to be some number marked up from their costs. So the only question is how much of that sum total, you pay. If you aren't torrenting 24/7 and you are paying a flat rate, then you are subsidizing the people who do that.
Need this in the USA (Score:2)
The only reason for rate caps is to try and force customers into business class or higher rate packages. It's all about profit, nothing more.
Re:Combine it with a stirling engine (Score:3)
What?
Re:Why can't we all just live in peace? (Score:2)
At present, most ISPs are also historical incumbents(telco or cable) or little vassal companies that they are statutorially obliged to lease infrastructure access to. In many locations, the level of competition is also somewhere between oligopoly and monopoly.
The regulatory apparatus is a (weak) attempt to force an outcome more in line with what a hypothetical free-market equilibrium would look like(ie. not massive rent-seeking and destruction of novel competitors to protect obsolete but profitable legacy businesses) not some hippy love-fest, man.
Re:delusional thinking (Score:3)
If anyone believes for a minute that the big ISP providers in Canada are going to back down, you are sadly mistaken.
Hence we someday invented something called judicial and legislative power. I hear it's a great counterweight to economical power.
Re:delusional thinking (Score:2)
To be honest, I'd rather pay a little more a month, and not have to "watch the clock" so to speak. $50 a month and being able to do whatever I want is a LOT better than $30 a month and having to always worry about transferring too much and getting overages.
So let them charge a little more, I say. But don't restrict so heavily how much we can transfer, e
Re:Salute to Harper !!!! (Score:2)
Re:best interests (Score:3)
In a horribly clunky square wheel fashion, it is the best interests of the public.
1. Make terrible policy
2. Outrage threatens political viability
3. Reverse terrible policy *in the best interests of the public*
It's just a pity that the process requires way too much artificially amplified drama. Oh look, drama sells TWO copies of a news media exposure - one for the bad policy, one for the reversal.
Re:best interests (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:best interests (Score:2)
Re:Salute to Harper !!!! (Score:2)
Re:Salute to Harper !!!! (Score:2)
are you kidding me? Harper has been bending over and taking it from American big business since he got into office. Just every once in awhile his self-preservation and what canadians want coincides.
Re:does not compute (Score:2)
That's awesome. I'm glad that option was available for you to save money. However, tiered pricing would not save me money and would severely limit how I prefer to use my mobile device.
For example I ride the bus to and from work and work out several times a week. During the commute and while on the treadmill I enjoy watching Netflix on my phone. 45 minutes of Netflix appears to create about 250MB of data transfer. I'd wipe out AT&T's monthly limit right off the bat.
So while it works for you and you find it to be useless to have an unlimited account, I'm glad that the option existed when I signed up for a contract and that it continues for me to this day.
Re:The perfect plan. (Score:2)
Why is this modded Redundant?
This is EXACTLY what would happen if the CRTC was disbanded. Just because the CRTC makes unpopular and poorly-reasoned decisions occasionally (ok, quite frequently) doesn't mean that there's no need for a regulator. The only reason we had unlimited-use packages from smaller ISPs at all was because the big telcos requires CRTC approval to abolish them.
Is that really something you want to do away with? Reform the CRTC, yes. Demand greater accountability and public oversight, absolutely. But disband? Hell no!
Re:The perfect plan. (Score:2)
Good point.
Sadly it was probably the CRTC that made the ruling to have the smaller ISPs have the right to use the gigantic bandwidth from the mega-corporations.This would have been several years prior under a Liberal Party governmaent
So we fast forward to today. There is a difference in government. A much more corporation friendly Conservative Party government. This probably gave the CRTC the impetus that they ought to toe the party line and cut the mega-corps a break.
Re:french canadians (Score:2)