CRTC Approves Usage Based Billing In Canada 381
qvatch writes with this from CBC News: "The CRTC has approved Bell Canada's request to bill Internet customers, both retail and wholesale, based on how much they download each month. The plan, known as usage-based billing, will apply to people who buy their Internet connection from Bell, or from smaller service providers that rent lines from the company, such as Teksavvy or Acanac. ... Customers using the fastest connections of five megabits per second, for example, will have a monthly allotment of 60 gigabytes, beyond which Bell will charge $1.12 per GB to a maximum of $22.50. If a customer uses more than 300 GB a month, Bell will also be able to implement an additional charge of 75 cents per gigabyte."
People are going to whine and bitch, but... (Score:5, Informative)
net neutrality means "treat the ISP like a utility", and guess what???
Most utilities (even some PPTs) sell metered service: the more you use, the more you pay.
Re:Got it (Score:3, Informative)
I guess everybody should start getting a little more worried about their open wifi connections.
Hopefully Cogeco will continue to charge overage fees to residential customers only. Us "Business" on commercial accounts aren't subject to such fees, yet.
I think Bell needs to work harder on providing Broadband to all Canadians rather than ripping off those who already have it.
Re:Got it (Score:5, Informative)
actually it's 60+(22.5/1.12)GB, or about 80GB.
From 0-60GB, you pay a set amount X.
Between 60-80GB, you pay an amount between X and X+22.50
From 80-300GB, you pay X+22.50
Over 300GB, you pay more.
I'm sorry, how is this new? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Got it (Score:3, Informative)
The CRTC has approved Bell Canada's request to bill internet customers, both retail and wholesale, based on how much they download each month.
I think Bell needs to work harder on providing Broadband to all Canadians rather than ripping off those who already have it.
CRTC = Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
In other words, the Government regulators approved this.
You have a problem with it, take it up with them [crtc.gc.ca]
Re:Got it (Score:5, Informative)
My new TiVo box streams Netflix in HD when available. It seems to average around 5mbit/s for the duration of the program. That works out to ~2.2 gigabytes per hour of programming.
It's not really all that hard to exceed 20GB in this day and age. Looking back at my Cacti logs I seem to average around 55GB per month. And no, I don't download stuff for the sake of downloading it.
Nailed it. This destroys captive competitors. (Score:4, Informative)
Usage billing was already being done by most ISPs.
This move just let Bell (completely ridiculous) lets bell impose bandwidth charges on the competitors who get their local loop from Bell.
These guys generally are paying for their own backbone to the internet so it is ridiculous that they have to pay bell again for that bandwidth.
Anyway more monopoly supporting moves from the CRTC, not a real surprise.
Double billing (Score:5, Informative)
The structure of all this is hidden from consumers so it's pretty difficult for the average user to understand but this scheme amounts to double billing.
These charges are for WHOLESALE clients.
So Bell is selling ADSL access services to ISPs. Those ISPs are required to pay for a high capacity link to the Bell backbone in order to receive the traffic generated by their customers. That link between the ISP and Bell is the point where Bell used to be billing for usage. A lower volume ISP would pay for a link that could burst up to a certain speed, they would pay for the loop charge and the would pay for BANDWIDTH usage. A larger ISP may decided to pay for a dedicated link which allows full time 100% usage of the link they have paid for. They could saturate their link 24/7 and they would pay a higher price for their bandwidth fee to Bell. That is where the billing of bandwidth on a wholesale basis has occurred for years. This link is 100% dedicated to the transport of ADSL customer traffic between Bell and the ISP. It doesn't get used for any other purpose.
Now on TOP of the fee the ISP's have already been paying to Bell for bandwidth on their dedicated link to the ADSL aggregation backbone they now want to bill the customers directly for the traffic they inject into the ADSL backbone. So they now collect a toll at the entrance to their network and the exit of the network effectively billing twice for the same ISP to customer traffic.
If Bell feels they are not charging their wholesale ISP's enough for the bulk pipe they bought well then who's fault is that? Those pipes are on contracts and when those contracts expire they can renegotiate those rates.
I don't understand why the CRTC is going to allow this.
Actually I do understand why they made the decision to allow it, if you look at the makeup of the CRTC boards they are stuffed full of big telecom ex executives. The majority of power at the CRTC comes from people who used to hold jobs at the old monopoly telecoms providers. I just don't understand how they can defend their decision as their explanations seem to defy the facts.
Re:How is this news? (Score:3, Informative)
Just perfect, and then there's Harper... (Score:3, Informative)
Capping vs. charging (Score:5, Informative)
Ignoring for the moment the fact that apparently TFA is about wholesale rather than retail pricing ...
Based on the experience in New Zealand (which faced this problem earlier than elsewhere, due to the high cost of sending data underwater) most consumers prefer a fixed bill. Nowadays, after some initial thrashing around, most ISPs offer plans where if you exceed your data cap your bandwidth is cut down to a little better than modem speed, but you don't incur any extra charges. My ISP allows you to choose to pay an extra charge to increase your cap on a given month.
I expect eventually the rest of the world will catch up and offer similar schemes.
Re:Got it (Score:2, Informative)
Catch Up? or Regress (Score:1, Informative)
Catch up, seriously. The only reason that our data was capped so eairly and so harshly was Telecom's profitering and simmilar anticompeditive games with double billing. When forced to bring down international data costs they upped the price of national links to compensate crippiling most national free bandwidth plans. We have only started to make any real progress because the government forced unbundeling on them meaning that we finally got not only ADSL2 - 5-10 years late - but also much lower contention rates. The big issue that remains is the cost of international bandwidth which is again largly controlled and overcharged for by Telecom with very few compeditors.
I know this as I am also in the technological backwater that is New Zealand to and have to pay prices that would make most Canadians cry for a 30GB cap with extra bandwidth costing easily $2/GB on some ISPs with no cap on charges. I know some people who have been saddled with $400 bills for using around 120GB (their own fault but still)
I really do hope that the rest of the world does attempt to avoid this situation otherwise the internet will become a global joke not just a national one.
Re:Got it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Got it (Score:2, Informative)
no there not, they are regulated, because the government gave them a phone monopoly for years and they still have the monopoly on the copper to you house.
Re:Got it (Score:1, Informative)
All arguments involving netflix streaming are moot, so are those invovling hulu.
Neither of those services are available to Canadians.
This isn't actually very good for Bell... (Score:3, Informative)
Mark Goldberg has a nice analysis [mhgoldberg.com] of the decision. Note that Bell must first apply this usage based billing for all their existing retail customers before they are able to do so for third party ISPs leasing lines from them. This means they risk losing existing retail customers who have legacy unlimited plans, i.e. the ones who have been around the longest. In addition, their tariffs are actually being lowered, which will improve the profit margin of the independent ISPs. In other words, this isn't happening in the short term.
Side note: If you're a Teksavvy customer like me, they are also launching a cable-based service through leasing lines from Rogers as well. The details are up on their site [teksavvy.com], however I believe it's limited to the GTA only right now. You can get faster speeds, but lower caps. However, if the Bell usage-based plan eventually goes through, the caps will actually be about the same. I'm not affiliated with Teksavvy, I just happen to use them for Internet and home phone service and think they're awesome.
Amusing anecdote about how awesome they are: I have a Linksys WRT54GL router and flashed it with the Tomato/MLPPP firmware in order to bypass Bell's throttling when we signed up for Teksavvy. Eight months later, I convince my wife's parents to switch over (from Rogers, ironically) and they can now actually buy this same router along with the modem when they sign up for the service. So they do this, and I come over to set everything up along with the Tomato/MLPPP firmware on my USB stick so I can flash the router. After setting everything up, I discovered that they've already done exactly this. They've put the Tomato firmware on their, configured the modem for passthrough mode, set up all the login info on the router, and turned on single-link MLPPP to get around Bell's throttling. I literally had to do nothing but plug the wires in. Now that is what I call good customer service!
Re:Double billing (Score:3, Informative)
Sir –
Incidentally, these fees to wholesale clients are not for internet traffic. The internet traffic for e.g. Teksavvy does not typically travel over Bell's backbone - these independent providers have their own backbone internet providers, switched from the copper DSL lines to the independent ISP's backbone at the DSLAM (essentially). The fees the CRTC is imposing cover the cost of setting up and maintaining the "last mile" of copper between the household and the DSLAM. The backbones by these independent providers such as Teksavvy are hardly ever through Bell. Which means Bell doesn't pay for anything other than the DSLAM equipment and the copper wires - both of which are capital costs, subject to some pretty nominal maintenance costs.
So it's worse than double billing, in my opinion. Bell gets to charge premium rent on their capital investment, even though they aren't paying the real cost – for backbone traffic. The independent DSL providers are double billed - for backbone and for Bell's premium rent on the copper line to the DSLAM. While Bell did submit some evidence that their DSLAM's are saturated, I suspect they've intentionally failed to upgrade their DSLAM's precisely to bring about saturation as evidence before the CRTC of the need for fees.
Given the lack of competition for the "last mile", they might as well call this an anticompetitive tax.
Re:People are going to whine and bitch, but... (Score:3, Informative)
The powerco doesn't "rate limit" me depending on what I do with the electricity I use
Actually yes they do. It is a requirement to have a meter plus a main disconnect breaker on your electrical service. If you for some reason were to exceed your permitted service capacity (think of amperage as being equivalent to your bandwidth like Mbps) of say 100A then the breaker would trip and cut you off the grid. The meter is there so the utility can bill you the cost of energy (kWh == GB) and if you use a lot you get a big bill.
Industrial power customers have contracts based on "peak demand" and the utility can reserver the right to cap your demand (cut off service/rotating blackouts) if peak demand reaches intolerable levels. Plus they also have (very large) breakers at their incomers just like a big version of what is in your home. If your demand were to go above what the utilities' infrastructure can handle the breaker trips and cuts you off. I know of a couple of occasions firsthand where an industrial customer was ORDERED by the electrical utility to shut down production becasue of lack of capactiy (a large genereating station was off-line for scheduled maintenance and another had a unit trip unexptectedly) or pay hefty fines and face possible disconnection. This action was allowed based upon the terms of contract and is completely justafiable (cut off one factory or institute rolling blackouts of 100s or 1000s of homes at a time...).
Billing-wise is where peak demand REALLY gets expensive. If you're sucking (for example) 1MVA out of the grid for just ONE 15 MINUTE interval in the ENTIRE BILLING CYCLE you pay your "connection fee" portion of the power bill based on that maximum even if your normal daily peak demand is a small fraction of that. For one factory that can add to many thousands of dollars on a power bill because of mismanaging your power consumption for 15 minutes!
People are actually quite ignorant about the details of delivering their utilities (or how industrial is different from residential) even though everyone pays for it every month one way or another. The diffference with the Internet is that it SHOULD be billed in the same way (albeit without the complex "riders" and fees utilitiessometimes add) but if electrical service was like internet service is today the cut off wouldn't be 100A it would be 15A for your whole house and you'd get cut off or billed heavy surcharges if you happened to use the stove and microwave at the same time one day, and the cost of electricity would be a factor of 10 higher.