Canadians React With Anger to New Internet Usage Caps

[Daveman]

My student household of 4 guys, one of whom downloads games (moi), all of whom watch lots of streaming media and occasionally play online and generally have a lot of time on their hands to browse teh internets, only ever reach a maximum of 50GB a month. How anyone can rack up 200GB is beyond belief to me. Stop bitching.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I have an obsolete plan from Bell. Yeah, it's only 7Mb/s (6 down, 1 up) but it has no bandwidth cap. I was pondering changing to a faster plan... but not now. And if Bell puts a cap on my plan I'll switch to the competition even if they have a cap too.

Ordinarily I'd be fine with usage-based billing, but in this case the mark-up on the billing is atrocious. No one needs a 500% margin; that's ridiculous. I'll sign that e-petition when I get home... and I'll sign a paper petition should one come my way.

(As bad as this is, it's nowhere near as dreadful as wireless data plans here. A 1Gb monthly bandwidth allowance on a cell phone costs something like $40/month. My laptop has a 4G modem and a SIM slot, but I can't afford to use it. We really need to do better; dammit, Alexander Graham Bell had his lab around here for Pete's sake and we've got worse billing plans than Kenya does.)

-- Steve

 

[The Funslinger]

I don't see the point, besides money hungering greed, to charge like that for something that isn't a finite resource. I mean I'd understand if this was gas, or electricity. In the respect that it's none of other people's business, this is kind of like limiting how much of your own money you're allowed to spend.

It's times like this I'm glad I live in the UK. Though we do have that apparent porn block, or something, but I haven't seen anything of that yet

 

[Jaeger_CDN]

I hope a new firm with fiber-optic cable will come to Canada and kick Bell's ass(financially speaking).

And in order for a new firm to come in they need to be approved by the CRTC (and defacto by the big ISP companies since they control the CRTC).

This whole thing is basically the big boys flexing their monopolies to squeeze out the smaller guys so the likelyhood of competition ever coming in and providing faster/better service is slim to none.

I'm currently using Telus and they've been quiet in this whole mess and their pricing schemes are somewhat reasonable for a primary ISP (we're still capped but I get 75 GB/mo with my package)but I still wish they'd just bring the faster packages to my town.

 

[Aptspire]

this is so bad, even Stephen Harper is asking the CRTC to revise it

 

[vivster]

well...and then there is tunisia and egypt...just sayin

 

[Uncle_Brainhorn]

Wow, this is a complete load. Just pisses me off.

 

[Twad]

This decision is so stupid, on so many leels i dont know where to start.

Plus it wont encourage competition, if ISPs have all the same offer (wich is 60gig) who want to bother paying millions to "compete" for the same thing? Heck, where i live bell already have a monopoly on the offer of internet access, and it isnt a good monopoly. We pay a lot of $$$ for a passable service and speed.

 

[DVS Storm]

I call bullshit on that. I feel sorry for Canadians right now.

 

[SilentHunter7]

so how much does it cost to get 200gb limit?

Right here:

*snip*

Wow. Just wow. That picture definitely puts some perspective on it. I knew the rates were bad, but I didn't think they were THAT bad. This is totally outrageous. If I were you guys, I'd be rioting right now. This is just absolutely, positively, fuck-tarded.

I'm an American, so excuse my ignorance, but companies are allowed to lobby your parliament, yes?

If so, then I think I good course of action would be to write letters to not only your representatives, but to Netflix, Valve, Direct2Drive, Apple, and the ESA. Each of these companies/organizations sell products that rely on affordable data rates, and this will cripple a huge market for them. If you can get the big guns on your side, the chances of this ruling being overturned, or new laws being passed stopping this kind of shenanigans will be a whole lot greater.

 

[MasterWhatever]

I move back to home to Canada and this is what I'm greeted with this? Whats going on, i got to monitor my usage. I've done unlimited my whole internet usage career. I signed the petition and if you care you should too.

 

[Furrama]

Isn't this encouraging monopolies?

 

[Steve Fidler]

Something that is being missed here are two things:

This legislature is already in place, as of March 2009...

... and what is now being enforced is that every ISP has to conform to the same standard. That is being achieved by Bell forcing the ISPs that use their bandwidth (which is essentially free) to pay a premium equal to the same premium a consumer pays, plus a 15% discount. To make any money off of this, these independent ISPs have to charge at least as much as Bell or Rogers, and that likely won't cover adminstrative fees and produce a profit. So they will go out of business, and the big companies will stay afloat.

 

[Jaker the Baker]

Fuck, / even signed the petition, and I'm an AMERICAN

 

[standokan]

It's not like they NEED internet while riding on bears through the mountain though.

 

[jabrwock]

You know what socialized internet access gets you in Canada?

Unlimited internet. Thank you Sasktel.

Until Bell's tax-dollar built monopoly on the internet backbone infrastructure is removed, this problem will never go away, because Bell can just cut off any competition because it owns all the wires. Which it only owns because the federal government gave them a monopoly in order to "encourage" them to build it in the first place.

Bell is the railway baron of the modern era. Given a leg up by socialist policies, and then whining "oh poor us" when anyone protests their use of said leg up to maximize profits.

 

[Adam Kenway]

I live in Newfoundland, which is in canada. We have a semi-independent Bell here. (It's complicated but Bell bought Aliant and are now Bell Aliant) I currently do NOT have an internet bandwith cap but speed here isn't terribly good. I have the High-Speed ULTRA and I get around 7 Mbs down according to speedtest and 1 up. For this, one would pay around $65 CAD a month. So it's not great and if they do bring in caps here, a buddy and I are seriously considering starting our own ISP. It would probably be cheaper for us.

 

[Gindil]

You know what socialized internet access gets you in Canada?

Unlimited internet. Thank you Sasktel.

Until Bell's tax-dollar built monopoly on the internet backbone infrastructure is removed, this problem will never go away, because Bell can just cut off any competition because it owns all the wires. Which it only owns because the federal government gave them a monopoly in order to "encourage" them to build it in the first place.

Bell is the railway baron of the modern era. Given a leg up by socialist policies, and then whining "oh poor us" when anyone protests their use of said leg up to maximize profits.

Funny... AT&T did the same thing in 2006. Then they lobby our politicians every year to keep legislation favorable to them.

 

[Dethpixie]

Hey guys, move to Atlantic Canada. Eastlink said in December that they have no plans whatsoever on implementing UBB.

Also, we could use the diversity.

Oh, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for this.

Still, the rest of Canada shouldn't have to suffer just because they choose to live somewhere that doesn't smell of shellfish and/or potatoes most of the year.