Canadians React With Anger to New Internet Usage Caps

[Canid117]

Sucks for Canadian people.

 

[Wildflowers]

Given that I worked for Shaw for 3 years, I am fairly certain I have a good grasp of what it takes to download things and what is appropriate.

First off - TV DOESNT USE BANDWIDTH YOU TAWT! Jebus. Its an always on stream that is either being decoded by your digital terminal or not. Unless you are streaming it through the internet then to your TV, in which case, sure, you are using a lot.

What the hell are you doing exactly that uses 1TB a month? Honestly. I have a 2TB HDD and I cant imagine filling it any time soon, even if I spend every waking minute watching anime.

Is it really so much to ask that people take the tiniest iota of personal accountability and think for a minute that maybe it might be appropriate to not live in such a narcassistic, self-important 'me-centric' universe where you are entitled to everything you always wanted and so much more, and the hell with other people?

Oh, and for those of you who don't like that we have a burgeoning population on which to use the fibre backbone installed 20 years ago, feel free to make your own, then complain to yourself. Until then, free market states that they can charge whatever they want to, because, lets face it, you are still going to play Blizzard, er, Shaw anyways.

 

[kikon9]

I have to say I feel sorry for Canadian gamers.

 

[mattttherman3]

Just signed the petition, every canadian should.

 

[seditary]

I certainly hope for the sake of Canadian gamers that this doesn't come to pass. Some Steam games weigh in on the wrong side of 15 gigs, you could easily exceed the cap in a week.

I have a 60 gig cap (australian), I went through my cap in 2 days...

One steam game, 5 or 6 hours of youtube videos I'd missed the previous month cause I was capped and the same with various TV shows and watching SC2 streams, it goes damn quick. I now have my traffic on my other screen 24/7 to make sure I don't use too much and have to ration use. Its totally fucked up.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Wow, it has been many years since I have heard of people having their (non mobile) Internet connection being capped. Here no one offers anything besides completely flat fee; you pay your Euro's a month and have unlimited access up and down. Terabyte-level usage isn't even that uncommon.

 

[dex-dex]

crap.

I use bell and live in Ontario. just another way that the man is keeping me from being a hermit!
THAT BASTARD!!!!!!!

Well I hope my MP does not mind reading/hearing a pissed twenty year old's rage

 

[Zing]

Welcome to Australia's world, Canada!

But we 're actually going in the opposite direction, our caps used to be absolutely awful, but people on ADSL2/cable plans can actually get pretty huge caps now, like 1TB or even unlimited.

 

[RanD00M]

Boo-FUCKING-Hoo
I've had to live with limited downloads for some years now. I'm pretty sure that Canadians can handle it if I, a small town lad from Iceland, can.

 

[Diligent]

My friends and I were discussing this last night and we are PISSED.
There is a rally on friday at Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto. There will be simultaneous ones in Ottawa and Montreal too, I believe.
See you there?

 

[Mr.Gompers]

If I live in the states, am I still allowed to yell at the Canadian government over this?

 

[DonTsetsi]

Wow, I live in Eastern Europe and I have unlimited internet!
Edit: 20 bucks a month for 2 IPs and download rates reaching 10 MB/sec.

 

[Raregolddragon]

Sucks to live live in Canada, maybe they should elected better leaders.

 

[dowdpride]

well guys, it is official. bell is trying to stop people going on the site, as i, a bell user, has just had that site blocked after myself voting. is this not illegal?

 

[dowdpride]

Sucks to live live in Canada, maybe they should elected better leaders.

for the record, here in canada in terms of polotics, it is damned if you do damned if you dont

 

[Zer_]

We've lucked out in my house. We have an old contract with Bell that has a grandfathered no cap clause. However, my dad is in the process of starting a business, so we may have to lose that to get a business level connection. So we might be screwed.

Take out the issue of piracy from the entire equation and just look at digital distribution. In the past year or so, I have bought a bunch of games on Steam. Some are 5gb+. With a 60gb connection I am severely limited in what I can download from a 100% legal source. We already have some of the worst prices for internet, cable, satellite and cell phones. It's now just getting worse.

The 15 cent SMS charge was a joke when they introduced it too.


The CRTC is a joke, it is supposed to represent consumers, but it doesn't. It is full of former telcom employees.

You've been lucky so far, but I was in the same boat as you. Then Bell randomly imposed a cap on us. Shit went downhill from there.

 

[thirion1850]

I'm a Rogers user atm, but.. this is quite the crap.

 

[McNinja]

Wow what is this I don't even....

Seriously though, I didn't even know there were Download caps in Canada to begin with, as I have never had to deal with anything like it.

Basically, this sucks.

 

[Baron Von Evil Satan]

You know... if this took root in the US, I think california and new york would probably run red with blood...

 

[Zer_]

I'm a Canadian customer of Bell Canada...and seriously people, it's been this way for a long time - I'm not sure when usage caps were first implemented but about 7 months ago, I was charged extra for internet usage and was told it was because I went over my monthly limit. Since then I've paid an extra few bucks a month to get an extra 60 GB of usage.

If you haven't come across this before, it's probably because you haven't had to worry about it.

There are a lot of smaller ISPs that offer unlimited bandwidth for fairly cheap, though the speeds are typically lower than capped service from the bigger ISPs. What this decision essentially does is tell the smaller ISPs they can't do that anymore and have to offer capped service with overage charges once a rather low bandwidth cap is exceeded. This kinda ruins the competitive market because it means there's less incentive to go with a smaller ISP since they're now stuck offering essentially the same service as the larger ISPs. I could probably go on, but a lot has already been said elsewhere and I'd encourage you to look for it yourself if you're so inclined.

I dunno for me it has always been a choice. Either I go with the companies that have caps (Rogers and Bell) that yeah I have to pay like 15 bucks more to have my cap doubled. Or I go with the company that has unlimited but the internet is so fucking slow I couldn't use much more than the basic limit.

I personally enjoy not having to wait an hour to download a freakin small arcade game on my 360. Or being able to play online with the proper framerate.

It's a matter of preference, honestly. I would rather have unlimited bandwidth and be able to download as much data as I could possibly want, and maybe have to wait a little while longer to get it because of lower download speeds. With the amount of data I've downloaded in a month on numerous occasions, I'd have paid through my nose with low bandwidth caps and excessive overage charges.

I dunno I think that if you use alot that you should be expected to pay a bit more. Sure $2.50 a gb for overages up to 60 bucks is extreme without a doubt (that is my Bell plan). But a simple phone call and I had my bandwidth doubled for $15 bucks. To me it seems like Hydro. I mean you use it you pay for it. You don't use it and you don't. To me it seems like they are just saying use it a bit more responsibly. Make sure you want that movie or music before you download it. Don't leave JTV up when you go for a coffee.

And believe me with the company I had with the unlimited there was no way I could download everything I wanted within a month. It was about as fast as old school dial up. When I complained about the speed and the technician came by he told me my download speed was about 1.5-2mb. I was waiting minutes for an average patch on a 360 game. Not the few seconds it takes it normally.

Out of curiosity how does it work in the States? Do all of your companies have unlimited?

That's why unlimited plans, and plans with high download caps are more expensive. We already did pay more for unlimited. And no not all of our companies have unlimited. Here in Quebec, the big Telecoms don't. Only the small independent providers do.