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Internet Downloading Costs To Rise In Canada 433
An anonymous reader writes "According to CBC News, 'Surfing and downloading from the internet is about to get more expensive for many Canadians as internet companies Shaw and Primus have announced plans to impose new fees and caps on internet usage. Over the past year, the CRTC, Canada's communication regulator, let Bell and Rogers start charging extra for customers who download a lot of data. ... Primus and Shaw have said they will begin passing on higher fees to their customers beginning Feb. 1. Primus, for example, rents bandwidth on Bell's networks and said Bell is inflating the costs for everyone, including them. 'It's an economic disincentive for internet use,' said Matt Stein, vice-president of network services for Primus. 'It's not meant to recover costs. In fact these charges that Bell has levied are many, many, many times what it costs to actually deliver it.'"
Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
You can always switch to other providers. That's what Capitalism says. Corporations will never get large, agree together for certain things and therefore control the market directly.
No sir-ee.
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Funny)
But that's only part of the picture. Don't forget that as these companies prosper, the wealth will surely trickle down and benefit everyone. We can attribute the current strong economies and low unemployment rates, especially in the US, directly to the benefits of trickle-down economics.
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Funny)
It took me a while to realise that you're being satirical. I was going to write a point by point rebuttal.
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The parts about "strong economies" and "low unemployment rates, especially in the US" should have been a very quick tip-off...
Don't forget how America's strong, robust housing market can also be attributed to not hamstringing finance companies with oppressive regulation.
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Insightful)
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but those low unemployment rates don't seem to have been made better
Fundamentally, employment isn't going to get 'better' over the long term. We're seeing the end of scarcity and demand (as measured by in-demand workers preferring purchases to free time, liquidity or savings) will fail to keep up with production capacity, leading to constantly falling employment rates
There are only a few ways to go from there: A 'services' economy, basically reducing prevalent wages across the board until 'high employment'
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Funny)
It just took a little while for the humor to trickle down to you.
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Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that for a working class family of four here in the US, health care costs take more than 20% of their income (and as they age that number just goes up), I think it's fair to say the French are doing a LOT better. When a 65 year old American coal miner will face another 5 years of going down in the mine, or an unempolyed 59 year old is facing another 11 years of poverty I wonder how many of them will still think they're "doing better than the French".
And other countries with universal health care are even further along. Somehow, Israel manages to provide universal health care AND have a competitive economy based on innovation. Germany, of course, does even better (and they're one of the most pro-labor, pro-union countries in the world). You go from country to country in northern Europe, and they're way ahead of the US. Why do you think Canada makes it so hard for Americans to immigrate there? Because we'd double their population overnight.
You know, we hear a lot about all the "new conservatism" in the UK and Germany and Canada, but still, not one of these "new conservative" leaders is crazy enough to even suggest getting rid of universal health care. And they'll continue to retire earlier and work shorter weeks than Americans. Their economies will recover quicker, their standards of living will remain higher than that of the US, their health will be better, and they'll be happier. No wonder they look down on us.
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Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Informative)
You can't put Israel into the comparison. Their economy is HUGELY subsidized by the U.S.
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Germany, of course, does even better (and they're one of the most pro-labor, pro-union countries in the world).
Hah, I just had a couple friends from Germany visit me and stay with me a few days. One of them is a Lt. Colonel in the German police force and apparently they get 1 year off with pay every 5 years they work. He was taking that year to drive from Alaska to Argentina on a motorcycle, and stopped by my place in Costa Rica.
Yeah, I think the Germans are doin
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
All of them. What else can they do? What else can they draw comfort from?
Delusions are a poor man's opium. Get people to think they're doing better than someone else, and they delude themselves to thinking they're doing well. Make them think that Government and socialism are evil, and you can get them to vote against their own bests interests. And keep feeding them the lifes of rich and famous, and make them think "that could be me someday", and they stop thinking how to improve the lifes of the poor which they are.
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Sweden [wolframalpha.com] - 58
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Informative)
And don't forget:
Sweden [wolframalpha.com] - 22.4
Norway [wolframalpha.com] - 15.7
Canada [wolframalpha.com] - 3.66
Australia [wolframalpha.com] - 2.77
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Especially if they told Russia whatever they wanted to do in Europe was cool by us
What do you think Russia wants to do in Europe? Take a look at the list of nuclear powers who signed the NPT. Two of them are in Europe and both have a similar sized stockpile of warheads to China and a fleet of nuclear submarines to give second-strike capability. Several other countries in Europe have nuclear weapons on loan from the USA - with this kind of attitude from the US government I doubt you'd see them returned.
And I suspect that the EU would be quite likely to intervene. Several member st
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Re:It's Pessimistic but I have to agree (Score:3)
As a Canadian, I have always had mixed opinions on US foreign policy. Sometimes I agree completely with decisions made south of the border, sometimes I think you are all a bunch of wingnuts, and can't understand your government at all. Generally, the US seems very right wing in its political perspectives, what you folks call "Liberals" down there would often be conservatives up here in Canada, although our political leanings are moving more and more to the right as well (our one time "Liberal" party is now
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Funny)
The way "trickle down" actually works is this:
1. Megacorp X gets a massive tax cut.
2. CEO of megacorp X buys himself a gold-plated urinal.
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True, as Communism is working great for North Korea. Just look at how cheap and plentiful their bandwidth is.
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Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Communism is working great for China. They are becoming a major world power and if I remember right, they have great internet service (might be censored, but still a good speed at a decent for them price).
Their Communism is working great because our Capitalism is over there injecting billions of dollars into their dead economy. Would you like to live in China (as an average Joe Schmo citizen that's not in a position of particular wealth or power)? I sure as fuck wouldn't. And that there is proof enough that their system doesn't work.
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Actually it's China that has injected billions of dollars into the US. [washingtonpost.com] There Communism is what has been keeping the US's Capitalism alive. China is also a very fast growing economy, not a 'dead economy'. [go.com]
You don't seem to realize that all this has only happened in the last 3 decades. Yes, China's government has given our government a bunch of loan money, but their government got all the money with which to give us loans from our private sector. Not their private sector. Their private sector has no fucking money. It's their government that has money. Their economy doesn't have any money, our economy is giving them money. And their government (and the government-controlled and government-controlling coporatio
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Interesting)
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You don't seem to realize that all this has only happened in the last 3 decades. Yes, China's government has given our government a bunch of loan money, but their government got all the money with which to give us loans from our private sector.
Citation needed.
Not their private sector. Their private sector has no fucking money.
Thats why the next investment wave from China is coming from it's private sector. Because they are broke... [findarticles.com]
It's their government that has money. Their economy doesn't have any money, our economy is giving them money. And their government (and the government-controlled and government-controlling coporations) keep it all (and loan it back to us).
They have been deregulating a lot of that in that past few years. No, their government doesn't control everything, their economy has money.
without us it would return to its sorry state, because they don't know how to survive without us.
Considering their global investments, I doubt it. [heritage.org]
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't seem to realize that all this has only happened in the last 3 decades. Yes, China's government has given our government a bunch of loan money, but their government got all the money with which to give us loans from our private sector.
Citation needed.
Find the nearest object to your person. Locate "Made in China" imprint.
Not their private sector. Their private sector has no fucking money.
Thats why the next investment wave from China is coming from it's private sector. Because they are broke... [findarticles.com]
The wealthy businessmen in the private sector aren't broke, you're right. The teenagers working for technology manufacturing aren't broke, you're right. Everybody else is broke, though. There is a major income inequality between the rich and the poor in China, and you thought it was bad in the US.
It's their government that has money. Their economy doesn't have any money, our economy is giving them money. And their government (and the government-controlled and government-controlling coporations) keep it all (and loan it back to us).
They have been deregulating a lot of that in that past few years. No, their government doesn't control everything, their economy has money.
Deregulating a lot of what? What are you talking about? Are you trying to say that the Chinese government is voluntarily dropping their stranglehold on the Chinese economy and selling the huge numbers of shares they have in nearly every powerful Chinese corporation? Are you simple?
without us it would return to its sorry state, because they don't know how to survive without us.
Considering their global investments, I doubt it. [heritage.org]
I do submit that at this point, yes, China could survive on their own without us. They couldn't have ten years ago, and the only reason they can now is because we keep pumping more and more of our GDP into China's economy.
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Citation needed.
What do you think this is, Wikipedia? Welcome to slashdot.
And also to remember (Score:5, Insightful)
There are really two Chinas. The China you hear about is the urban China. It is a few cities across their eastern seaboard mostly. They are quite developed over all, and have a good deal of modern conveniences, though their pollution and other health issues are rather severe. This is actually the minority of China though. The rest of China is rural China where people are still, in a very real way, peasants. They have no medical care, no education, and live very much a subsistence living. This is the reason people will put up with the poor health/environmental conditions in the city, because that is far preferable to rural life.
China has a massive divide, and as you accurately point out is hardly communist at all. It is a major capitalist system, and in some ways a fascist system in that the government has major stakes in many companies.
China is, if anything, an example of a failure of communism and a success of capitalism, though to what extent you consider it a success may vary depending on your perspective and priorities.
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Communism is working great for China.
As long as you don't count the happiness of the people living in the country...
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It's the ultimate endpoint: Leninism-Capitalism.
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Communism isn't the only alternative to capitalism. In fact, capitalism isn't a single beast but a slough of different ideologies and practices. Personally i think the major problem is the size of modern corporations. Our corporate and political environment favors large corporations, so the market tends towards ever larger and larger mega multi national corps. Unfortunately those corps are really the worst offenders, and the most resilient to market forces, meaning they don't give a shit about you or what y
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As IgnoramusMaximus said above, that's called a false dichotomy. First, there are other political lines besides Communism. Second, even "Communism" itself can't be defined - there are multiple schools of thought on it. NK follows a Stalinist line, which isn't at all the only possible.
The core principle of council communism is that the state and the economy should be managed by workers' councils, composed of delegates elected at workplaces and recallable at any moment. As such, council communists oppose state-run "bureaucratic socialism". They also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary party", since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party dictatorship. Council communists support a workers' democracy, which they want to produce through a federation of workers' councils.
Governments tend (Score:2)
to make it near impossible for other competitors to get into many markets, before mocking the system you need to realize how many times it is the government which makes it not viable for competitors to enter an existing market. A great example is personal health insurance in the US, where the Federal Government has prevented people from buying insurance across state lines. Related to this article, in my locality, the larger city here is exclusively one provider because they cut a deal for the government s
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Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, that doesn't work. Bell, Telus and Rogers wholesale bandwidth to most of the other ISPs, who are forced to up their prices as well. There is a virtual monopoly here in Canada, owned by only 3 companies.
The real reason behind the rate increases is to preserve their monopoly. You see, Bell and Rogers are the largest Sat TV and Cable vendors in Canada, respectively. By capping everyone at 60 Gig, it means that you *cannot* replace their Sat TV or Cable services, since it is ridiculously easy to use that up...for example, the average 720p TV show runs about 700 Megs without commercials. A DVD or better resolution movie, that is, 720p or 1080p can run you easily a couple of Gig in size. The average family watches something like 4 hours of TV a night. So if you watch two TV shows, that is 1.4 Gig, watch three, that's 2.1 Gig. Now imagine you also watch a movie once a week...so that would run you anywhere from 2-5 Gig.
Working with those numbers, we take the 60 Gig cap, and divide it over 30 days, which gives you around 2 Gig a day, enough to watch 3 shows a night...but if you watch a movie approx. once a week, that adds, assuming at least 4 weeks (4weeks*3.5 Gig=14 Gig a month). You can easily go over your cap, and if any software you use needs patches, or you download a new version of Linux, or World of Warcraft unleashes a huge patch...suddenly your bill could be massive! Imagine if you are coming up on the end of the month, and watch that 4 hours a night of TV via the internet....and on the 23rd of the month, your favourate MMORPG releases a huge patch...you may have to wait until *next month* before you can patch up to run the game, if it's a mandatory patch.
Bandwidth is cheap. But when you have a monopoly, money is everything. :-(
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Informative)
Switch providers? You're kidding right?
The CRTC just handed the only 3 companies with the infrastrure cart-blanche to strangle anyone, even if you're with a competitor who happens to be leasing their lines.
No my friend, we're foobared.
Yo Grark
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Informative)
I believe this particular logical fallacy is called a "false dichotomy". [wikipedia.org]
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Interesting)
Since organization of human societies can be completely arbitrary, there are literally an infinite number of possible permutations.
Anything from religious communes all the way to totalitarian corporate empires.
I sense however that you somehow, for reasons probably personal, have invested all your ego into "solutions" based on philosophies that center on individual greed as being the cure-all for all ills of humanity as the only possibility.
May I point out that the level of happiness of the members of a society is the only criterion of its success, and that, for example, "innovation" and "enterprise" are four letter words to people whose existence becomes unhappy because of them.
So ultimately it does not matter how the society is organized, as long as its members are happy with the state of affairs. And this is the point a lot of hard-core ideologues, like yourself, seem to forget. A "primitive" agrarian society that has 90%+ of happy members is in actuality far superior to a high-tech empire where 90% of people are depressed in their pan-global-information-network interface equipped climate-controlled apartments complete with automated anti-depressant dispensers.
But then again all this is probably entirely lost on you, because greed-centered world-views have a way of making their victims evaluate everything only in terms of amassing of possessions and the degree of power one has over others and so consequently you probably cannot be happy until someone else is enslaved and in pain. And so all your scenarios revolve around that theme.
The obvious and universal solution is to create multiple societies so that people can choose one that fits them best and then work on making those people and their society mesh to maximum of their potential, rather then trying to force your one-size-fits-all, simplistic pet solution down everyone else's throat.
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The obvious and universal solution is to create multiple societies so that people can choose one that fits them best and then work on making those people and their society mesh to maximum of their potential, rather then trying to force your one-size-fits-all, simplistic pet solution down everyone else's throat.
Y'know, there ARE multiple societies on this planet. If you don't like the way ours works, go choose one that fits you best.
If you think that America should make room for whatever new political philosophy rears its ugly head and allow them to live in total separation from all the other political philosophies for the sake of carrying out the "obvious and universal solution" (that combination of words sounds so Orwellian that I can actually hear Wallace Breen saying it right now) and not forcing our "one-size
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
That is patently not true. While there are many nations, most subscribe to a very limited set of recipes for their organization.
Worse, powerful nations, with US in the forefront, attempt to remodel the weak nations for the benefit of the powerful ones and to make them fit the world-view held dear by the dominant forces in these powerful nations and so the number of choices is actually shrinking.
Your assumptions are telling - I never even mentioned the US - as well as your arrogant, pig-headed belief that anyone opposing your beloved pet idea must be "insane" for only "insane" people would not recognize your self-assessed, infinite genius so vast and brilliant that it makes whole galaxies seem puny and dim and so naturally any choices other than the one you officially and personally anointed with your Divine Insight must be completely deranged ...
Also, an idea of offering many, many choices and "Orwellian" do not really mix, unless you've been reading books by some completely different George Orwell then the rest of us.
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Derr, ifn ya don't like America, den use can GET OUT!
That's not what I meant. I was simply turning his own logic against his own argument.
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You mean the argument in your head?
What is it about the "in-between" that makes it invisible to you? What happened to you growing up that made you only see some extremes that don't even really exist? A true Communist state is no more possible than a "free market"? They're both fantasies of ideologues. Most of the world lives in the real world, in the "in-betweens" between having a bureaucrat tell you where to line up for breakfast and having to
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
How 'bout instead we switch to whatever it is they've got in Germany, Denmark, Sweden? Why is it that you are only able to see our system vs soviet-style communism?
Wait... you've never been outside the US, have you? Geez, man, I'm sorry. I shouldn't pick on you since you just don't know any better.
Never mind.
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What a lame cop out. I'm afraid I cannot think of any rational reason why providing health care might be affected by the physical size of your country. you ARE aware that over 80% of USAians live in big cities?
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Informative)
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However, the CRTC isn't forcing Bell to offer access to the highest speeds of service, isn't preventing them from throttling the BitTorrent (et al) traffic from customers of third parties (e.g. TekSavvy), and is now allowing them to impose 60GB bandwidth caps on third party customers with big fees for going over.
This is absurd. If they are required sell bandwidth to other companies at a given price, how are they allowed to impose limits and extra fees for individual customers of the other companies that have absolutely no contract with Bell directly? Assuming they are legally required to sell TekSavvy bandwidth at price x, how can they invent random rules that lets them bill more than price x? Has the CRTC explicitly given Bell permission to do this stuff?
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That's my predicament exactly. I have 3 choices. Dialup, wireless internet (at 600 Mb a day), and satellite (at ~600 Mb a day/17 Gb/mo). Any way you look at it, I don't really have a choice. There is no free market to speak of. The only reason I have the wireless ISP option is that a guy that does wireless ISP for a living happens to live in my area and he wanted it for his house.
The only light I have (at the end of my tunnel) is that the town I live in is actually pursuing a local fiber rollout to the
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How Many Affected? (Score:2)
This writeup isn't too useful without stating the caps, nor the percentage who currently exceed them.
As for the percentage who may exceed them in, say, 3 years... well, it's the future, a lot could change including the caps themselves.
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I doubt that. I have been a Shaw customer for over a decade (they are slightly less evil than Telus). In the time from when I first got Shaw high speed cable Internet my desktop went from a 486DX2/66 with 8 megs of ram and a 100 meg HD to a quad core AMD with 8 gigs of ram with a 120 gig SSD and a terabyte HD. In other words almost exactly 1000 times faster/more ram/storage/etc.
On the other hand my high speed cable Internet connection (roughly the same cost plan) has gone from 10 megabits download and 1 me
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Competition from 3G (Score:2)
Now what is there to stop [cable companies] to decrease that usage cap to 2GB?
The fact that even cell phone companies offer 5 GB/mo, and you don't even have to be at home to use it.
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Yeow. The 20GB/mo plan better be cheap. If the webpage I just check is to be believed, Netflix streaming is almost 2 GB/hr (or 3 for HD). I just tallied my family's Netflix streaming for the last from Dec 9 through Jan 8 and got 22 hours, so figure 50 GB. And that's not counting Youtube (which my kids watch quite a bit) or the occasional paid streaming movie from Amazon. Then Internet phone (ooma).
Root Cause (Score:5, Insightful)
The root problem here is the monopoly on infrastructure owned by a company that also provides services. For years now, other competitors offered uncapped DSL using Bell's infrastructure, while Bell offered a fraction of the bandwidth for much greater prices (and hassles.) I guess enough people woke up and started switching away from Bell's native service and jumped to other providers. And naturally, Bell uses their governmental friends to kill the competition, instead of, you know, competing and improving their services. BELL CANADA IS THE WORST COMPANY IN ALL OF CANADA. BELIEVE IT.
For much of the most densely populated area of Canada, Bell and Rogers own both the infrastructure and provide services to end users. I don't think that should be permitted. Companies should not be able to perform both functions. This is already what happened in our electricity industry in Ontario, when Ontario Hydro was broken up into separate generation and transmission entities.) Bell continues to use the CRTC, which is an impotent and ineffectual organization that seems to be on the leash of the same politicians that decided their friends at Bell would get a monopoly, to prevent other organizations from laying down wires underground in new residential developments.
This problem would not exist if a real competitive market was in place.
I am continually surprised by the amount of energy that Bell puts in to creative marketing, customer disservice, finding ways of adding hidden fees, and downright screwing people. If they just put a fraction of their efforts into actually improving their services, they would actually be a competitive company. But wait, they aren't interested in fair competition. Bell just wants passive income through forced usage of their monopolistic network.
By the way, it bears repeating again, Bell Canada is THE WORST COMPANY IN ALL OF CANADA. I am seriously not joking. Imagine the incompetence, bureaucracy and arrogance of government incorporated into a business. Add the fact that it's their intent to screw you at every turn and "accidentally" add 48 month contracts onto every deal that to which you've never agreed, and for which they somehow lost the audio recording of that CSR's call. That's Bell. They're like government for much of the Canadian population because you pretty much HAVE TO USE THEM because they own the wires.
*Note for other Canadians: I am fully aware of the other Telus / MTS / and other monopolies outside of Ontario/Quebec.
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Bell Canada is THE WORST COMPANY IN ALL OF CANADA
I dunno, Rogers is giving them a run for their money. It's hard to decide which one is more incompetent / corrupt / douchebag-y.
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Well, that's just a symptom.
The root problem is that Bell and Rogers are heavily invested into by the governments of Canada/Ontario/Toronto. They are government monopolies, just like Ontario Hydro, just like the entire Health Care fiasco in Canada, just like energy sector, just like education system, just like food industry, etc.etc.
Canada is not exactly a bastion of Free Market Capitalism, so BLAMING Free Market Capitalism for these problems in CANADA of all places? Give a fucking break, this is political
I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
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How much does this have to do with things like Netflix now being in Canada?
Probably a lot. My father recently decided that he was tired of paying $100 a month for his Bell Satellite TV, and would rather pay $8 a month for Netflix. I crunched some numbers for him and showed him that he'd have to spend at least an extra $20 per month on his internet connection, and that's assuming that his household goes through only an average of 2 hours of SD TV per day. I'm guessing that was their intent - charge ridiculous amounts for bandwidth in order to keep their customers from abandoning
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I think you misunderstood what they meant. Netflix doesn't cost them a lot of money, because of bandwidth. It costs them a lot of money, because people would rather ditch their cable television service in favor of Netflix.
Bell Canada (Score:4, Informative)
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I've heard that Sonic is really good, but they aren't available in this region because of the company controlling the infrastructure. All the other options suck or suck and are expensive. I think Speakeasy is probably the best alternative at the moment, but the speeds aren't really any higher and the cost is at least double what I'm paying now.
Bell is evil (Score:4, Informative)
Bell already owns the majority of pipe in Ontario, and they deliberately restrict pipe for end users of the ISPs that lease bandwidth from them. It's done entirely to make Bell's half-assed service look better.
Rise is an understatement. (Score:5, Informative)
The cap is pretty much universally 40GB with overage fees around CAD$3.00/GB. Some providers cap the overage fees and cut off service (possibly illegal for VoIP providers) whilst others don't and just rack up the charges. The actual tariff has not yet been finalized but that's the standard figure being pushed by providers who have started billing already. I'm with Acanac who hasn't started billing, has no caps, has declared that they have no intention to add them and is fighting Bell both at the commission and in the media.
This is a direct result of Netflix hitting the Canadian market a few months ago as it competes directly with Rogers and Bell, the two largest ISPs who happen to also be the two largest cable and satellite providers. Netflix HD movies take around 4GB each and a couple hours of TV programs is about the same. If you are in the habit of watching two hours of TV a night then you'll easily go over 100GB in a month. Bell wants to blame this on piracy but the fact of the matter is that this is perfectly legal and normal usage.
Internet connections used to be faster and cheaper and the providers were rolling in cash. We've seen price hikes, throttling, and severe curtailing of progress. The current government is clueless on the portfolio but wants the market to sort it out- the only problem is that we don't have one and the regulatory commission is stacked with former Bell/Rogers execs with active financial interests in the company. It's a blatant conflict of interest but the conservative government claims they're powerless.
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Ironically, here in Quebec Bell is having competition it doesn't have elsewhere in Canada: Videotron. The result? Thanks to better (not saying great, but definitely better by a long shot) customer service, more incentives and better offerings, they're simply dominating the home Internet market. Once more, while I still do have a cap (and I pay a lot for the net I have), I still get 120gb/month and 30mbit down, ~8mbit up. The cap sucks, but it's better by far than even the top service Bell offers and it's fa
Regulatory Capture. (Score:5, Insightful)
No caps...but throttling (Score:2)
I remember when we had unlimited internet a while ago. Yet companies had throttling.
Then people complained about throttling. Today we have all these bandwidth caps.
Yes I work in networking... I know about peering costs and the limits of bandwidth.
Yes, you cannot have everyone maxing out their data all the time.
However, having dealt with ISPs many times at the vendor level, I had a very bad feeling when throttling fell out of favor for bandwidth caps.
I would rather have had them keep throttling. It keeps
rural Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
I am sick to death of how horrible the industry is in Canada, and the CRTC is not our friends either. I pay $150 per month for satellite internet as I live in rural Canada and don't have any other options...well dial-up, but I don't consider that an option. When I first heard of Netflix coming to Canada I was excited, but not anymore. I won't be able to use it. That's with a $150 per MONTH plan! This plan I'm on is xplornet's [xplornet.com] second best offering (Kabang). I recently received information from them about how they control are bandwidth usage, through what they call Fair Access Policy (FAP). Here is an excerpt:
I apologize for not formatting this table below in a better fashion. It appears I can't use tables in Slashdot's HTML.
It gets better....
I'm completely disgusted by this whole industry and their price gouging. What's worse, there is no competition really. I can't even tell xplornet to shove it and go elsewhere.
I may respond to future replies of my post here, but you'll have to excuse me for at least an hour or so until I wait out 'Recovery Mode'! ;)
Re:rural Canada (Score:4, Insightful)
Judging by their pricing and traffic shaping policy, I'd venture that they have some heavy congestion in their backbone, i.e. that they need to invest more in their infrastructure. This emergency throttling is very typical for this. However, since you're on a satellite link, remember that both the RF spectrum AND the number of transponders on the satellite is a scarce and very limited resource. You're essentially competing with many other customers for limited physical resources that are (in the case of the RF spectrum) absolutely not, or (in the case of the number of transponders and satellites) not easily and cheaply extended. This fundamental limitation applies to EVERY wireless plan, worldwide, and there's not much you can do about it.
My Name Is Mud (Score:2)
That's nice, but what I'd like to know is: when did Primus get back together? Why wasn't I informed? Are they bringing back Tim Alexander on guitar?
And why do they need a vice-president of network services? Or is that just a euphemism for the roadie who goes out to score weed?
Bandwidth hogs.. what about bandwidth non-hogs? (Score:4, Insightful)
You keep hearing about how they want to raise prices for all those lousy bandwidth hogs. I guess thats fair, on some level? So what about all the people who use much less than the average amount of bandwidth?
If they want to charge the hogs more, then they should also proportionally charge the non-hogs (mice? sippers?) less!
Yet I have never heard anybody seriously suggest anything of the sort.
I wonder why...
"Extreme Usage" Fee... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
He's VP of a company that leases from Bell and is having the price increase imposed upon them.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
'It's an economic disincentive for internet use,' said Matt Stein, vice-president of network services for Primus.
Translation: "We are discouraging you from using our product." What VP in their right mind says that?
Umm, a VP who is upset with the company he's renting bandwidth from. Primus is making Bell out to be the "bad guys", hence the comment.
Re: (Score:2)
That's exactly right. All the little guys are pissed at bell. Initially, it was because bell started throttling download speeds even on the bulk-bandwidth it sold to other providers if they thought it might be P2P traffic. One of those companies - Acanac - said fuck that shit, and created an SSL gateway to allow their technically-minded customers to get around the throttling. Now Bell seems to have won the right to not only throttle speeds, but also charge extra based on usage. It's retarded. This is
Hmmm..... (Score:3)
I read that as:
Primus VP delivers a verbal jab at Bell, Bell having raised its rates, which Primus is going to happily pass on to its customers.
On second look, it still appears to be a bizarre, mixed message....
Re: (Score:2)
Switch to where? Bell and Rogers aren't any cheaper.
Re: (Score:3)
With all due respect to the anti-conservative/capitalistic commentary (which has a lot of apparent validity) this type of situation occurs BECAUSE of government regulation... not because of insufficient regulation. At least in the US, governments have permitted and even encouraged monopolistic business practices that restrict the free market and customer choice. Whether traditional carriers (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) or traditional cable (Comcast, etc.) they all have PURCHASED - FROM THE GOVERNMENT - an ex
Re: (Score:3)
The bigger issue which you're ignoring is that it's not cheap to do that last mile. The only reason why anybody did it was for a monopoly control over to guarantee that they'd be paid back for extending into territory that wasn't necessarily profitable.
You're not going to get a change b
Re: (Score:2)
Do you actually know if this is the situation in Canada, or are you simply spouting off without any knowledge?
Yes, stupid regulation has made the situation worse in the USA. Here in the EU, there is strong regulation and our (Portugal) bandwidth caps have risen through the years until they're not "unlimited" (well, it seems some ISPs have those undefined fair use policies), and we have *more* competition due to regulation (a huge telecommunications company was cut in two, and each offer competing services n
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, in concept, but do you really believe any broadband companies would have laid all that cable if it hadn't been subsidized by the tax payers? I doubt even one would have, much less enough to generate actual competition. I don't know what alternatives there may have been, given that.
Re: (Score:2)
This has been happening for years. Long before the Conservatives wrestle the country away from the Liberals. Just take a look at the state of the Canadian cell phone market. Makes me want to move to another country in Asia or Europe where I can get fiber pulled right to my door for half of what Bell or Rogers charges for copper here.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Only difference is 4chan allows you to upload pictures (...)
It's seems you're not familiar with 4chan's text boards [4chan.org].
Re:Who has a problem with this? (Score:4, Informative)
The difference is that companies like Shaw/Bell are sometimes directly publicly supported (tariffs/taxes/etc.), and always indirectly supported, i.e. right of ways, gifted infrastructure, etc.
Re: (Score:3)
But in any event, why would you be upset that someone else's business is running the way that they want it to run? The only people who can rightfully be upset are those who based their business on those prices. And yeah, for those providers reselling another ISP's service, sure raised prices are a problem. But having a supplier change their prices is nothing unexpected -- especially when your entire business model is based on under-cutting your supplier's from selling exactly the same thing.
Big surprise.
I ran an ISP in the early 90's here in Canada... This is before Shaw, Telus, Rogers, etc, got into the ISP business... We billed customers on a usage basis and were transparent about everything. It was a simple cost+ arrangement. Then the big companies all got into the Internet game. Since we were buying phone lines from Telus, they jacked up our contracted phone line rates well in advance of our contract running out... They all came in with their own dialup plans and had big bus advertisements touting "