I was browsing facebook tonight when a friend of mine posted a link to a petition against internet metering here in Canada. Basically, they want to start charging by the byte. Apparently this is how they charge for smartphones (I don't know, I don't have one, but I've heard it's expensive... which is why I don't have one! )
Basically, I was wondering if something of this sort of thing has happened in other places in the world. Mainly, I'd like to compare results with the U.S., since they're closest and probably have the most similar infrastructure and extensive geographic coverage (lots of land, means lots of cable, and essentially less service across the country) but I'd also be interested in seeing what's going on elsewhere.
I'd also like to see if people think this is a good idea and why. Personally, I don't think it is, because I feel that I already pay too much for the service I receive from my ISP, but maybe the story is different elsewhere.
For Canadians, please follow this link and take a moment to fill out the form in order show party leaders that this is an important cause! http://openmedia.ca/meter
Poll: Do you think ISPs should charge per byte?
No, bad idea (884)
95%
Yes, good idea (28)
3%
I'm not entirely sure (15)
2%
927 total votes
Your vote: Do you think ISPs should charge per byte?
(Vote): Yes, good idea (Vote): No, bad idea (Vote): I'm not entirely sure
Canada has such shit third world internet, and a government backed monopoly held by two companies (a biopoly?). I really think the public needs to put some pressure on the government to get a better system in place.
Your comparison with the US is tough though, since there is 10x the people for the companies.
On January 28 2011 14:09 Manifesto7 wrote: Canada has such shit third world internet, and a government backed monopoly held by two companies (a biopoly?). I really think the public needs to put some pressure on the government to get a better system in place.
Your comparison with the US is tough though, since there is 10x the people for the companies.
Anyway, went to the site.
Still, where I live there really still is a biopoly in the US. So my rates (although not metered) are insane.
in australia we choose the speed we want [which is pretty terrible anyway] and then you choose the plan you want, whether than 2gb, 10gb, 200gb and so on, then when you reach that download cap, your internet speed is either capped [usually to dial-up speed] or you can keep your speed and pay the extra downloads per mb/gb, whichever the company chooses to do.
is that the sort of thing you mean? or just straight out "you use 1gb you pay x amount"
I live in southern california and while we don't have the insane "biopoly" that most other places have on high speed internet, we have 6 or 7 major providers that charge within the same $5 range of each other. I don't know the details of other companies plans but the company I get internet from there is no cap monthly, though I have to say the speed isn't the greatest (I generally only get 2mb/s down MAX, usually about 1.2)
pretty much the best speed ur gonna get in aus right now is 1.5mb/s, and thats if ur pretty lucky and u live right next to the telephone exchange [im talking 1.5mBytes/s, not 1.5mbits/s]
In a competitive market, charging by how much you download makes a lot of sense for both consumers and the company. That way "regular" users get a low price and the handful of hardcore users pay for the bandwidth they use. Charging a flat fee causes people to externalize the cost of their extra bandwidth use on other users, which is not a good thing.
On January 28 2011 14:38 domovoi wrote: It's "duopoly."
In a competitive market, charging by how much you download makes a lot of sense for both consumers and the company. That way "regular" users get a low price and the handful of hardcore users pay for the bandwidth they use. Also, charging a flat fee can cause moral hazard.
Yeah, but what exactly is 'hardcore users' - they might set the bar low enough that they'll make more money over-all, which means we have to pay more for the lousy service we get. I checked charts on internet distribution in Canada and it's pretty deficient. A lot of people still don't have service, and even in major city the quality of the internet is medium. I get 6mb/s download and 2mb/s upload and pay around 30$ for 20gb per month.
On January 28 2011 14:15 Pitto wrote: what do you mean charge by the byte?
in australia we choose the speed we want [which is pretty terrible anyway] and then you choose the plan you want, whether than 2gb, 10gb, 200gb and so on, then when you reach that download cap, your internet speed is either capped [usually to dial-up speed] or you can keep your speed and pay the extra downloads per mb/gb, whichever the company chooses to do.
is that the sort of thing you mean? or just straight out "you use 1gb you pay x amount"
That's the type of model we have currently, though some older plans (like my own currently) are unlimited.
However, ISPs want to start charging you by the byte, and from what I understand, the rate will increase as you use more bandwidth. In other words you'd have a rate X$/byte which may or may not increase in between certain total usage every month. I think the best comparison would be to how electricity is sold (at least here). X(Kw/Hr)(Y$)
@Tdelamay What city are you in? Mine is «unlimited» (at least my contract says so, even though the newer service reps at Sympatico tell me my cap is 50GB... though it isn't, I've tested before) and I pay 50$/month. What ISP are you with?
Comcast does this in the states, though not in the region I live. There is no bandwidth cap here but the service is inconsistent. Though they really should make up better excuses then: "This is how consumers want it", how can you even pull that out of your ass and say that to the public?
That would be terrible, and the people who they'd get the most money from is us, the ones watching streams. I'm curious as what the price would be, obviously it wouldn't be as much as the data plans, which are like $20 a month for a gig, but that's ridicolous.
I mean right now for $30 dollars I have unlimited, well pretty much unlimited, I don't think there's a limit, or anything happens if you go over 500GB. It's just so much less user friendly and ugh, I dunno, that really pisses me off... Doing anything similiar to the overpriced phone monopoly is bs.
It's the difference of going to subway, and you pay a price of a sandwich and you can put what you want on it for no extra charge, compared to going to Dairy Queen and them charging you 40cents for cheese, 30 for tomato, 20 for lettuce, and 10 for a glass of water. I'd much prefer a set price that is higher than having to worry about how much I'm allowed to use. Gonna be a lot more profit for the companies too.
Either way, if my internet provider decided to do that, I'm switching to one that has pay x amount, get unlimited (or 100GB etc)... Even if they are less reliable etc. I wont stand for that garbage.
They should charge per byte during peak hours over a certain quantity, but that should come with better speeds and service during those time. I would love it if here in Los Angeles there were an option to pay more for better service, but as of right now I pay a lot anyways for terrible cable service by Time Warner.
From our standpoint, no obviously we like our high quality low cost internet access, but for IPSs its like a license to print money.
It blows my mind that people can believe that the internet isn't important enough to the general public to justify government intervention to protect consumers and small ISPs.
On January 28 2011 14:38 domovoi wrote: In a competitive market, charging by how much you download makes a lot of sense for both consumers and the company. That way "regular" users get a low price and the handful of hardcore users pay for the bandwidth they use. Charging a flat fee causes people to externalize the cost of their extra bandwidth use on other users, which is not a good thing.
Exactly this. I think paying for the amount of bandwidth you use is a good idea. I also think that our Internet here is too expensive. I believe that those are two separate issues. It would certainly be best for us consumers if we only paid for the bandwidth we used, instead of paying for our providers to overcommit their infrastructure.
On January 28 2011 14:38 domovoi wrote: In a competitive market, charging by how much you download makes a lot of sense for both consumers and the company. That way "regular" users get a low price and the handful of hardcore users pay for the bandwidth they use. Charging a flat fee causes people to externalize the cost of their extra bandwidth use on other users, which is not a good thing.
Exactly this. I think paying for the amount of bandwidth you use is a good idea. I also think that our Internet here is too expensive. I believe that those are two separate issues. It would certainly be best for us consumers if we only paid for the bandwidth we used, instead of paying for our providers to overcommit their infrastructure.
I urge you to research about the internet in Romania, if you want from 10 years ago. 100mbps with 10$ / month were the norm even then. ISPs gave everything they could, for as little price as possible, HUGE competition between them, and still got rich. I think Canada's internet is just sad.
I don't see the issue of paying per the byte, it's like everything else electricity, gas, water, phone. As long as it's indiscriminate and based on load demands ie times of day kind of pricing i don't see an issue. Never liked overage charges though, it's the company fault for trying to lure in people by having the people who use the service the least pay for the people who use it the most and then the people who use it the most get the best deal out of it. But the usually outrageous overage charges doesn't help. I mean pay for what you use in principle i have on issue with it, it's a matter of how companies try to maximize profits getting more subscribers then they can handle and swindling people out of money that i have issues with.
I think it's garbage. It's bad enough we have to pay for an internet limit, THEN pay if we go over... now we have to pay by the byte even IF we DON'T go over.
Internet fares in Finland are based on the maximum speed of the line, not the amount of traffic that goes through. As a result, the idea of paying by byte has been almost completely alien here ever since the days of dial-up and early smartphones that had no WiFI capabilities. To a Finn, paying for 40GB of internet traffic/month is like paying a monthly fee that also limits how many hours of television you can watch. It would be like if TV cable companies in the States or Canada limit their customers to 50h of content a month with additional fees if you happen to watch more TV on any given month. We simply view internet access as access to content, not as a quantifyable commodity like electricity or water. Yes, information can be measured through the use of bytes, but the actual bytes that are transfered over the line aren't provided by internet access companies. When you pay for internet, you aren't paying for energy or for water like you do with your electric and water bills, you are paying for access. There's a fundamental difference there.
I can understand the arguments for paying by byte, but I do not agree with them. I would much rather quantify internet usage by time rather than by how much traffic goes through my computer.
On January 28 2011 20:09 FrozenSolid wrote: Internet fares in Finland are based on the maximum speed of the line, not the amount of traffic that goes through. As a result, the idea of paying by byte has been almost completely alien here ever since the days of dial-up and early smartphones that had no WiFI capabilities. To a Finn, paying for 40GB of internet traffic/month is like paying a monthly fee that also limits how many hours of television you can watch. It would be like if TV cable companies in the States or Canada limit their customers to 50h of content a month with additional fees if you happen to watch more TV on any given month. We simply view internet access as access to content, not as a quantifyable commodity like electricity or water. Yes, information can be measured through the use of bytes, but the actual bytes that are transfered over the line aren't provided by internet access companies. When you pay for internet, you aren't paying for energy or for water like you do with your electric and water bills, you are paying for access. There's a fundamental difference there.
Exactly how i watch it. What does it matter if i download 5gig or 50gig? I am paying for access, as long as the ISP keeps thier hardware up to date it should not matter.
The coparison to television is spot on for me, i pay for access to television, not for how many hours i watch.
If water companies suddenly had trouble delivering water to everyone in an area they do not start charging residents by the gallon, they fix thier damn water supply lines. Once sufficent supply lines are in place it should not matter if a resident usus one gallon of 50 gallons a day. Anything else is a joke in my opinion...
My ISP is soon to be enforcing this too, Shaw Communications. I have regularly gone and DL'd 200+ GB a month (We have 6 to 8 people in our household and probably 1.5 computers between all of us, plus many mobile devices itouch iphone etc) I would say our bandwidth has exceeded 300GB quite often. I had respect for my ISP until they announced they would be charging. 15mbit download, 1 up, People in sweden get 100/100 unlimited for the same price. Absolutely atrocious. With a 100GB download limit which can be met in as little as 48 hours of use if using 100% connection I cannot hope to think that people will stand for this.
HD videos from youtube soak up alot of bandwidth, and the only way for me to get more than 1mbit upload is to pay nearly $150 a month, and still get only 175gb a month download.
On January 28 2011 20:27 DND_Enkil wrote: If water companies suddenly had trouble delivering water to everyone in an area they do not start charging residents by the gallon, they fix thier damn water supply lines. Once sufficent supply lines are in place it should not matter if a resident usus one gallon of 50 gallons a day. Anything else is a joke in my opinion...
Where I live water (as in the type you get in your faucet) is metered and paid for according to the number of gallons. Does it not work the same by you?
Yep, it's true. Canada's internet speed is pure garbage. I have way above average priced internet and it's 20mb/s on speedtest.net Average would be around 5-10mb/s where i live which is toronto
In the UK there's a variety of different "solutions". Some of us are stuck with crappy options that only come with download limits of varying amounts and at varying costs. On my line I only have limited options, but they vary from a flat 20GB/50GB etc to my option, which is 60GB per month between 8am and midnight, and unlimited from midnight to 8am. Then there are people who have services which cap speeds at peak times once you hit a certain amount of data transferred (e.g. between 4pm and midnight once you've used 5GB your speed gets halved, but you can download as much as you like at that speed, and it gets uncapped after 4 hours or something) Or there are truly unlimited services where you can download as much as you like whenever.
All depends on where you live and what's available.
On January 28 2011 20:27 DND_Enkil wrote: If water companies suddenly had trouble delivering water to everyone in an area they do not start charging residents by the gallon, they fix thier damn water supply lines. Once sufficent supply lines are in place it should not matter if a resident usus one gallon of 50 gallons a day. Anything else is a joke in my opinion...
Where I live water (as in the type you get in your faucet) is metered and paid for according to the number of gallons. Does it not work the same by you?
It depends on the city. Some city have meters and charge for water, other cities don't. At my house we don't get city water, so obviously we don't pay water charge. We have a well with a lots of water.
I have a question, if you have cable tv and internet from the same company - is there a difference between the two information being transfered in the cable? Why is TV unlimited, but internet is limited?
I really am amazed it took so long for this shitty idea to garner so much steam. Companies know that users can't live without internet, and since these companies typically hold a monopoly or pretty damn close to it in most regions (at least in the states... seems like it's the same by you), you are boned.
I'm pretty sure Time Warner and Comcast were looking at it. They see Australia continues to do it despite everyone bitching, so why not??
On January 28 2011 14:09 Manifesto7 wrote: Canada has such shit third world internet, and a government backed monopoly held by two companies (a biopoly?).
Duopoly, if anything. Biopoly would mean something like 'life trade'.
Yea the internet in Canada (at least in Toronto) blows. Fucking bell throttles p2p from like 4pm-1am so the max speed you get is 25kb/s-50kb/s on torrents. AFAIK, the only way to bypass throttling is to have an ISP which has support for Tomato firmware, and you can imagine there aren't many of those.
i pay ~25$/month for 100/100mbit, i average at around 50-100gb each day. If they somehow started charging per byte i'd tell them to fuck off in a heartbeat.
On January 28 2011 14:31 Pitto wrote: pretty much the best speed ur gonna get in aus right now is 1.5mb/s, and thats if ur pretty lucky and u live right next to the telephone exchange [im talking 1.5mBytes/s, not 1.5mbits/s]
You can get heaps faster in Australia. i know people near exchanges getting 12mb/s so 1.5mb/s is def not the best you can get in Aus.
I would be ok with them charging by the byte if it is reasonably priced (it won't be) and since im paying for each byte, the service would have to be consistent throught all hours of the day (it won't be.) If I'm paying the same amount for each byte I need to be able to get it whenever I want, at whatever speed I pay for. For those making comparisons to gas/water etc, that is fine, but you have to realise, you flip a switch that light turns on, its not like with internet where at times, you flip that switch and that light is so dim is doesn't even light the room.
For these reasons I'm against it, ISPs have proven themselves to be extremely unrealiable (in my experience.) Ur internet goes out, you call ur ISP what do they tell you to do? restart the modem, or there must be lots of traffic, try again later. You call your electricity company and tlel them ur power is out, they tell you to check ur fuse box, and check on their system if you should have power or any other issues. If they can't sort it they send out electricians to fix it for you. An ISP would have to provide that level of service for me to be ok with charging per byte.
I have cox, they never told me they would limit it but I found it in the smaller print a few months later while browsing their plans online. Also they never did limit it because it was supposed to be 200gb and I've got 3x that in a week on plenty of occasions. If I wouldn't use all 200gb a month I know someone else will because the plan is shared between 4computers always downloading shit.
On January 28 2011 20:09 FrozenSolid wrote: Internet fares in Finland are based on the maximum speed of the line, not the amount of traffic that goes through. As a result, the idea of paying by byte has been almost completely alien here ever since the days of dial-up and early smartphones that had no WiFI capabilities. To a Finn, paying for 40GB of internet traffic/month is like paying a monthly fee that also limits how many hours of television you can watch. It would be like if TV cable companies in the States or Canada limit their customers to 50h of content a month with additional fees if you happen to watch more TV on any given month. We simply view internet access as access to content, not as a quantifyable commodity like electricity or water. Yes, information can be measured through the use of bytes, but the actual bytes that are transfered over the line aren't provided by internet access companies. When you pay for internet, you aren't paying for energy or for water like you do with your electric and water bills, you are paying for access. There's a fundamental difference there.
Exactly how i watch it. What does it matter if i download 5gig or 50gig? I am paying for access, as long as the ISP keeps thier hardware up to date it should not matter.
The coparison to television is spot on for me, i pay for access to television, not for how many hours i watch.
If water companies suddenly had trouble delivering water to everyone in an area they do not start charging residents by the gallon, they fix thier damn water supply lines. Once sufficent supply lines are in place it should not matter if a resident usus one gallon of 50 gallons a day. Anything else is a joke in my opinion...
In the US we pay by the gallon. Although it is very cheap, about $20 a month with putting water in swimming pool.
Metered internet may lead to hundreds of dollars for a monthly service for most people who may use like 250GB/month, and that would be equal to getting a 100TB/month cap in cost. Seedboxes and such with 1Gbps lines/100TB/month limit costs around that.
On January 28 2011 14:38 domovoi wrote: It's "duopoly."
In a competitive market, charging by how much you download makes a lot of sense for both consumers and the company. That way "regular" users get a low price and the handful of hardcore users pay for the bandwidth they use. Charging a flat fee causes people to externalize the cost of their extra bandwidth use on other users, which is not a good thing.
In a truly competitive market, we would already have 1 Gbps speeds like some areas in Asia and Europe. Somebody mentioned 7 ISPs in Southern California, but in truth, there's really only 2 available in any region. Thus, they have no incentive to improve their service and they just invest their money in bribing politicians instead of improving their service.
On January 28 2011 22:18 Tdelamay wrote: I have a question, if you have cable tv and internet from the same company - is there a difference between the two information being transfered in the cable? Why is TV unlimited, but internet is limited?
Yeah tv isn't customized to your every click... it's just set programming on each channel (for the most part) whereas internet is every byte on demand so they work very differently. It's much easier to provide tv to everyone than internet I believe.
On January 28 2011 22:18 Tdelamay wrote: I have a question, if you have cable tv and internet from the same company - is there a difference between the two information being transfered in the cable? Why is TV unlimited, but internet is limited?
TV is broadcast. All cable boxes have the ability to decode the TV cable frequencies. Internet is point-to-point. For privacy concerns, I would hope your neighbor doesn't have the ability to decode your internet traffic. Every byte of information, both TV and cable, requires bandwidth+time. TV signals are only downstream signals coming from cable center to your home. They reach everyone so one person watching a channel doesn't prevent his neighbor from watching the same channel or different channel. Internet is bidirection. They only reach one person, so one person using up bandwidth can prevent neighbors from using bandwidth.
Cable companies have about 1000 MHz of frequency to carry information over their lines. Any more would require more cable lines and a reorganization of existing lines.
On January 28 2011 14:15 Pitto wrote: what do you mean charge by the byte?
in australia we choose the speed we want [which is pretty terrible anyway] and then you choose the plan you want, whether than 2gb, 10gb, 200gb and so on, then when you reach that download cap, your internet speed is either capped [usually to dial-up speed] or you can keep your speed and pay the extra downloads per mb/gb, whichever the company chooses to do.
is that the sort of thing you mean? or just straight out "you use 1gb you pay x amount"
my internet is 60gb usage month, and $2 per gb after that. The 60gb usage comes with 10mbps download, 512kps upload, and costs $50 per month.
this is really terrible, during the summer I streamed SC2 beta and at the end of the month had to pay over $200 in additional bandwidth usage.
On January 28 2011 20:27 DND_Enkil wrote: If water companies suddenly had trouble delivering water to everyone in an area they do not start charging residents by the gallon, they fix thier damn water supply lines. Once sufficent supply lines are in place it should not matter if a resident usus one gallon of 50 gallons a day. Anything else is a joke in my opinion...
In the US we pay by the gallon. Although it is very cheap, about $20 a month with putting water in swimming pool.
The biggest costs for ISPs is installing the fiber. That's like installing a water main. At first, the 1GB/day vs 50GB/day doesn't matter. There is too much excess capacity.
The problem is when everyone is using a lot and it taxes the throughput of the pipes. If everyone abused the water supply, either the water company may have to install a bigger water main pipe (very expensive) and/or find an additional water supply (might be impossible).
The same is true for the internet. I'm sure if users gave apriori consent to be charged for the capital costs of installing new fiber and equipment, the ISPs wouldn't mind how often you used it.
The elevated high cost of ISP is probably because of limited competition or geographical monopoly.
On January 28 2011 14:15 Pitto wrote: what do you mean charge by the byte?
in australia we choose the speed we want [which is pretty terrible anyway] and then you choose the plan you want, whether than 2gb, 10gb, 200gb and so on, then when you reach that download cap, your internet speed is either capped [usually to dial-up speed] or you can keep your speed and pay the extra downloads per mb/gb, whichever the company chooses to do.
is that the sort of thing you mean? or just straight out "you use 1gb you pay x amount"
my internet is 60gb usage month, and $2 per gb after that. The 60gb usage comes with 10mbps download, 512kps upload, and costs $50 per month.
this is really terrible, during the summer I streamed SC2 beta and at the end of the month had to pay over $200 in additional bandwidth usage.
What abhorred ISP is this...? ultra low speeds/bandwidth...
they would so love to charge people even more if they got their way...
for 250 dollars... that's 50 dollars more than what they charge at 100tb.com for a dedicated servers/seedboxes ... and they have 1Gbps lines...
On January 28 2011 14:15 Pitto wrote: what do you mean charge by the byte?
in australia we choose the speed we want [which is pretty terrible anyway] and then you choose the plan you want, whether than 2gb, 10gb, 200gb and so on, then when you reach that download cap, your internet speed is either capped [usually to dial-up speed] or you can keep your speed and pay the extra downloads per mb/gb, whichever the company chooses to do.
is that the sort of thing you mean? or just straight out "you use 1gb you pay x amount"
my internet is 60gb usage month, and $2 per gb after that. The 60gb usage comes with 10mbps download, 512kps upload, and costs $50 per month.
this is really terrible, during the summer I streamed SC2 beta and at the end of the month had to pay over $200 in additional bandwidth usage.
Let me guess. Rogers? I think this is how mine is set up also- not 100%. Now that I'm in Post-sec it doesn't matter how much I download... I just do it at school.
But seriously, the thing going on in Canada is terrible.
People living in Hong Kong mostly have limitless internet service and we are aware of how the 'great' the western world internet are. I can’t imagine if i ever have a cap for transmission but then it should be very unnecessary. Most likely that is due to lack of competition or abuse of monopoly power.
there is not much competition in Hong Kong but then it is enough to drive down internet cost very low. For instance i am paying 240HKD for 100Mb download/30Mb upload with no limit together with some free cable TV channels and city-wide Wi-Fi access. This is regarded as quite expensive here already but i am paying the premium for a more stable service. But then it’s like 95% improved to 99% so it doesn’t really matter in most people's point of view. The bandwidth is more than necessary already but u may be surprised that Japanese have 1 GB personal internet service plans at even a cheaper price, way way way cheaper.
7.8HKD=1USD
I guess this is one of the few good points of living in highly packed cities in Asia :o
Its duopoly, not biopoly. Gawd, how do people come up with that. Biopoly is nothing, and if it would be something, it would be a ton of bio (marines? :D)
It has nothing to do with how much power is available or how difficult it is. None of those things are significant enough or they would have been accounted for a long time ago.
You people really think ISPs care at all about how fair internet access is? They want your money. Their ideal goal being you pay by the byte and can't access any internet sites, games, or services that don't pay them.
The goal of every company is to get bigger, to make more money, to have more power and political influence so that they can GET more money, get more power. That is their only interest. ISPs have already tried to implement much harsher limits on internet usage, but have not been successful. That's the ONLY reason you are even allowed to post on teamliquid.net without teamliquid paying a hefty sum on top of its domain/server maintenace just to be accessible to users.
On January 30 2011 05:09 ScrubS wrote: Its duopoly, not biopoly. Gawd, how do people come up with that. Biopoly is nothing, and if it would be something, it would be a ton of bio (marines? :D)
Bi- is a prefix for two, and not everyone has a PhD in language like you.
On topic, my family has gone through several internet providers, all of which have sucked. This is just adding insult to injury. Signed the petition.
I think it's a terrible idea since webpages, games, etc don't give you an exact number of what they are loading.
Imagine you picked up the telephone and a random audio ad came up and at then end of the month you got charged for that audio bit.
Also, as a reality ISP maintenance costs are a joke, the only real costs they have are installing the pipes and marketing. They usually oversell their product (like give ridiculous plans for new users or people switching from others ISPs and as a result the service collapses).
I think that it's a good idea. It would impact me hugely since I stream, download, etc. However, I understand that there are costs associated with it. Why should someone that uses less than me be charged the same?
On January 30 2011 05:23 IntoTheWow wrote: Also, as a reality ISP maintenance costs are a joke, the only real costs they have are installing the pipes and marketing. They usually oversell their product (like give ridiculous plans for new users or people switching from others ISPs and as a result the service collapses).
So no, it's a terrible idea.
Installation of telecom technologies and developing those technologies are huge costs. They put out up front capital, then charge for it and make their money back slowly. A bill does come every month for them, in the form of the interest on their investment.
I also appreciate that internet costs are higher in Canada because we have a low population density. It's fair.
On the other hand, I also understand internet is a virtually essential service. I think it should be nationalized, similar to how highways (the backbone of a modern economy) are adminstered by the government.
I think it's a terrible idea, I can barely even pay for it to be honest.. Adding a per-byte usage bill is really going to make me rage. Especially with the amount of unavoidable spyware on the internet.
Thanks to the CRTC, there is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth in Canada anymore. It's really absurd that we pay $60 for 25 down / 7 up with a 75gb monthly cap.
Bell charges you $1 per gb you go over your monthly cap up to a limit of $60 until 300gb. Once you pass 300gb, you pay $1 per gb you go over with no limit. So you can be paying $1000 a month for internet if you are a heavy streamer / downloader / uploader.
On January 30 2011 05:30 sikyon wrote: I think that it's a good idea. It would impact me hugely since I stream, download, etc. However, I understand that there are costs associated with it. Why should someone that uses less than me be charged the same?
On January 30 2011 05:23 IntoTheWow wrote: Also, as a reality ISP maintenance costs are a joke, the only real costs they have are installing the pipes and marketing. They usually oversell their product (like give ridiculous plans for new users or people switching from others ISPs and as a result the service collapses).
So no, it's a terrible idea.
Installation of telecom technologies and developing those technologies are huge costs. They put out up front capital, then charge for it and make their money back slowly. A bill does come every month for them, in the form of the interest on their investment.
I also appreciate that internet costs are higher in Canada because we have a low population density. It's fair.
On the other hand, I also understand internet is a virtually essential service. I think it should be nationalized, similar to how highways (the backbone of a modern economy) are adminstered by the government.
I already mentioned installation (pipes) but developing has been more or less stuck for a long time. It's not like the pipes are capped, in most countries are least. That claim would make sense in some asian countries where the internet possibilities around cellphones are a big market, but for most of the countries (at least the ones i know the situation of) this is not true.
Developing of new technology costs also is subsidized (spelling?) mostly via companies and big users. The same way cellphones, computers, new TVs (LCDs, LED, 3D) start gaining terrain from big users who want the latest in techology, not the average Joe.
Sounds like there might be a big difference from eastern and western Canada. I'm paying 45 dollars for 25mbs DL and 5 up. There is an unofficial cap at like 250gbs in a month but there is no charge afterward I think they just give you a call and ask you to slow up a little. From my online gaming experience my pings are always solid and Internet quite reliable aswell. Torrenting I average 250/kbs download. I always thought my net was better than the majority of people in the US, judging by how many times I've heard people cuss out comcast and timewarner.
As you can see, the offers are quite abusive. They are charging people higher base price, but also charging extra for minimal temporary upgrades. If you read the small print, it also says that after purchasing an 'increased speed', if you exceed your limit for the month, you are charged at a rate of 0,00439$ per Mbyte.
inet per byte ? like limiting traffic wasn't enough ? laughable if it wasn't tragic, hearing stories of 250kb/s torrenting on 30-40$ plans makes the hair at the back of my head stand up
Canadian telecom companies are criminals. Doesn't surprise me in the least that they are trying to do this, and it won't surprise me if they get away with it since they have the CRTC in their back pocket.
I'd take charging by the byte any day if in the end it costs me less than what I'm paying for my flat rate.
That was a subtle way of saying that your poll means nothing until you know the actual prices.
P.S who would've thought you Canadians have such problems with ISPs... I always thought of Canada as a sister country of USA, which means similar standard of living, but more peaceful, safer and laid back. And less people. And colder prolly.
The biggest problem is that the CRTC are trying to force resellers aka those that buy from bell and videotron(in Quebec)/rogers(everywhere else in canada) that pay bandwidth companies themselves to force their customers to pay per bytes too. That's abusive.
The CRTC didn't do shit when Bell imposed limited hours on torrenting even though Bell had no proof at all that it slowed their server which it doesn't.
Anyways I'm not surprised at all so i signed this and I hope the CRTC reverses this stupid decision.
On January 30 2011 05:39 skyR wrote: Thanks to the CRTC, there is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth in Canada anymore. It's really absurd that we pay $60 for 25 down / 7 up with a 75gb monthly cap.
I'm paying $60 for 15 down/1.5 up with a 100gb cap with Shaw. This new bill basically would end my casting. It's bad enough that 1.5 up and the 100gb cap stifles my ability to deliver content to my viewers, but charging per GB (which they already do if you exceed 100gb) would become far too expensive for me to continue producing any kind of video media, modding content, or really anything.
Having said that I disagree with charging by the byte or whatever, I petitioned against it.
Have you checked the full list at the bottom? The view you linked to is america only, in the full list Canada is only at place 33.
anyway, paying by byte has stopped here since 2004, and i do not wish it upon anyone to have to deal with crappy internet. So i hope you guys can get this stopped, it is absolutely ridiculous.
Having said that I disagree with charging by the byte or whatever, I petitioned against it.
He's not talking about speed, he's talking about the price we pay for the service we get. Not to mention ranking it on mbits is pretty dumb when our connections are so manipulated by throttling and packet shaping that it becomes irrelevant. Prices continually rise while service continually gets worse, it's absurd.
Here's a pretty layman's explanation by everyone's favorite Canadian with an absurd last name, George Strombolopolous
Having said that I disagree with charging by the byte or whatever, I petitioned against it.
On January 30 2011 08:17 Qzy wrote: No limit on Internet in Denmark . 20mbit/20mbit is fine for me, and happy with a standard fee each 3rd month. About 110$.
If i don't average 1TB a day, my ISP calls me up and asks what's wrong... No I'm kidding. Not rly.
:O How can you say that Canada doesn't have terrible internet?!?! We are 35th overall, which is terrible! Look at Denmark, they are paying like $35 a month for 20/20. In places like Sweden and the Netherlands it's even better as far as I know. Canada is pretty much a technological back-water compared to other first world countries
It bothers me to no end..canadian internet is so fuckin crap...paying 50$ a month for garbage rates and 60gb bandwidth....and then 2$/gb over the cap...I'm already over the cap for this month...probably going to be paying 10/20$ extra. sigh
On January 30 2011 08:55 emperorchampion wrote: :O How can you say that Canada doesn't have terrible internet?!?! We are 35th overall, which is terrible!
First of all, the thing you're complaining about is based on tests run by individuals on that website. People only really use that website when 1) they are having bandwidth problems, or 2) they want to show off or something. It doesn't represent the true average for any of the countries listed. It's just an average of test results generated by that application.
Second, look a little bit more closely at those rankings.
31 United Kingdom 10.23 Mb/s 32 United States 9.93 Mb/s 33 Canada 9.65 Mb/s
You don't have terrible internet access just because you're not at the top of the list. There are plenty of countries above and below most of the western world.
On January 30 2011 08:55 emperorchampion wrote: :O How can you say that Canada doesn't have terrible internet?!?! We are 35th overall, which is terrible!
First of all, the thing you're complaining about is based on tests run by individuals on that website. People only really use that website when 1) they are having bandwidth problems, or 2) they want to show off or something. It doesn't represent the true average for any of the countries listed. It's just an average of test results generated by that application.
Second, look a little bit more closely at those rankings.
31 United Kingdom 10.23 Mb/s 32 United States 9.93 Mb/s 33 Canada 9.65 Mb/s
You don't have terrible internet access just because you're not at the top of the list. There are plenty of countries above and below most of the western world.
I agree, that the website is not a good way to get data. But my concerns are not just about speed, but service, price, bandwidth caps, ect. Bleh, I think it's just some stupid money grab
On January 30 2011 08:55 emperorchampion wrote: :O How can you say that Canada doesn't have terrible internet?!?! We are 35th overall, which is terrible!
First of all, the thing you're complaining about is based on tests run by individuals on that website. People only really use that website when 1) they are having bandwidth problems, or 2) they want to show off or something. It doesn't represent the true average for any of the countries listed. It's just an average of test results generated by that application.
Second, look a little bit more closely at those rankings.
31 United Kingdom 10.23 Mb/s 32 United States 9.93 Mb/s 33 Canada 9.65 Mb/s
You don't have terrible internet access just because you're not at the top of the list. There are plenty of countries above and below most of the western world.
I agree, that the website is not a good way to get data. But my concerns are not just about speed, but service, price, bandwidth caps, ect. Bleh, I think it's just some stupid money grab
I concur. I'm not concerned by speed. I have 3mb/s average and it's enough for me, but my internet cap is constraining and I would have to pay more than I'm willing to get a higher cap. Especially since it's mainly meant for entertainment purpose, I feel like I should be saving for more important things.
On January 30 2011 05:30 sikyon wrote: I think that it's a good idea. It would impact me hugely since I stream, download, etc. However, I understand that there are costs associated with it. Why should someone that uses less than me be charged the same?
On January 30 2011 05:23 IntoTheWow wrote: Also, as a reality ISP maintenance costs are a joke, the only real costs they have are installing the pipes and marketing. They usually oversell their product (like give ridiculous plans for new users or people switching from others ISPs and as a result the service collapses).
So no, it's a terrible idea.
Installation of telecom technologies and developing those technologies are huge costs. They put out up front capital, then charge for it and make their money back slowly. A bill does come every month for them, in the form of the interest on their investment.
I also appreciate that internet costs are higher in Canada because we have a low population density. It's fair.
On the other hand, I also understand internet is a virtually essential service. I think it should be nationalized, similar to how highways (the backbone of a modern economy) are adminstered by the government.
I already mentioned installation (pipes) but developing has been more or less stuck for a long time. It's not like the pipes are capped, in most countries are least. That claim would make sense in some asian countries where the internet possibilities around cellphones are a big market, but for most of the countries (at least the ones i know the situation of) this is not true.
Developing of new technology costs also is subsidized (spelling?) mostly via companies and big users. The same way cellphones, computers, new TVs (LCDs, LED, 3D) start gaining terrain from big users who want the latest in techology, not the average Joe.
Can you give a specific reason why it should not be capped and people should be charged the same regardless of their usage?
Development costs are "subsidized" by new adopters but they do not pay for said costs. R&D costs are built into the entire product lifecycle. Typically prices for new technologies are high because manufacturing batch sizes are small and the manufacturing knowledge is low. As production continues, learning by doing increases production efficiency allowing costs to drop. R&D costs are not recouped through those users.
I really think that the internet should be treated like the highway systems are. We currently pay a tax based on road usage anyways (built into gasoline prices), why shouldn't the internet fall under a similar model?
high way systems are used and get worn down overtime, and it cost a bit more than changing or simply updating a chip at a central base or switches at a switching station. It actually cost almost nothing for them to update these and you want them to charged based on use? LOL
This is definitely a marketing ploy to force users to rethink their plans to stop using the internet for entertainment and go back to satellite/cable. From an engineering stand point, the thing that cost them the most in recent years was the fiber infrastructure and the 3G networks (NOT 4G...) in canada.
The problem is that the companies that own telephone companies also own cable / satellite and cell phone networks. They probably use the same network for routing but on different frequencies for cable/internet (rogers videotron) and internet/cellphone network for bell. I would have to look into this since I havn't looked at what kind of network each company uses and I'm not 100% sure.
But if what I said is true, they are also trying to make people pay to accommodate for their new 3G networks.
holy crap. I've been getting internet from Teksavvy for 200 Gbytes/month for a couple of years and just a moment ago I got told that we'll be capped at 25 Gbytes. WAT DA FAWK. What can I do with 25 Gigs?? Granted, most of my internet usage (95%) is for entertainment, but it's been such a regular part of my life to watch any movies, youtube videos, and now this.
i played against a guy today who was complaining about lag. I too have been lagging all day so I ask where he's from, and he's also from Toronto and uses Rogers. Big fucking surprise.
On January 30 2011 10:29 buickskylark wrote: holy crap. I've been getting internet from Teksavvy for 200 Gbytes/month for a couple of years and just a moment ago I got told that we'll be capped at 25 Gbytes. WAT DA FAWK. What can I do with 25 Gigs?? Granted, most of my internet usage (95%) is for entertainment, but it's been such a regular part of my life to watch any movies, youtube videos, and now this.
there's something teksavvy sent out to their customers about grandfather plans, if u were with them from 2007, u are ok i believe
17. What is a Grandfathered User? / What are the options for Grandfathered Users?
A Grandfathered User is an end-user that has been a continuous customer since before Feb. 1, 2007, having a continual Residential DSL High Speed Internet service of a particular speed on the same physical phone line, in accordance with a list provided to us by Bell Canada.
As a grandfathered User, you will have the choice to be moved to one of the new UBB service plans or you may pay an additional $5.00 per month and stay with your current package.
If you are a grandfathered user and make a change to your service, you may not revert to a grandfathered plan.
If you are not sure whether you are a grandfathered user, please go to your customer portal at https://myworld.teksavvy.com for verification.
so ya if u were lucky enough to be under that, only cost u $5 more to stay on the same 200GB plan
On January 30 2011 10:09 Freaky[x] wrote: high way systems are used and get worn down overtime, and it cost a bit more than changing or simply updating a chip at a central base or switches at a switching station. It actually cost almost nothing for them to update these and you want them to charged based on use? LOL
It's all about capital costs. It costs a ton to do R&D to create the fiber optics, a ton to put down the cables, a ton to create the stations and centers. This is all capital cost, which comes with interest. In 1990 (for example) prime interest rates were ~13%, at which rate a 3 billion dollar investment would require a return of 390 million/year just to pay down interest.
I bet you're one of those people who complain that drugs cost 30 cents in chemicals and sell for 3 bucks.
Bell and Rogers were already charging by usage after you reach their pitiful cap. The problem is the CRTC gave them the right to charge smaller ISP who uses their network the same thing (although a recent ruling gave them a 15% discount woopidoo), this whole thing is extremly anti competition, essentially killing smaller ISP reseller and services like Netflix, online TV/video and games.
On January 31 2011 03:31 Onisparda wrote: Bell and Rogers were already charging by usage after you reach their pitiful cap. The problem is the CRTC gave them the right to charge smaller ISP who uses their network the same thing (although a recent ruling gave them a 15% discount woopidoo), this whole thing is extremly anti competition, essentially killing smaller ISP reseller and services like Netflix, online TV/video and games.
Except there was a cap of $50 and $60. So you could pay that every month for unlimited bandwidth. However, effective March, you are going to be paying $1 per gb with no limit once you pass 300gb.
People against internet metering are fools. Bandwidth is a limited resource, just like electricity. You understand that you will pay more if you run AC, 15 Space Heaters, 10 Big screens, and a jacuzzi 24/7. Well you should pay more if you Stream on 5 computers while playing SCII and running Bittorrent, than if you check E-mail 5x a day.
Some people will pay more (mostly people who use this website), in fact the people who pay more are likely to pay a lot more because bandwidth use is usually concentrated among a few hoarders. The majority of people would pay less.
On January 31 2011 04:39 cLutZ wrote: People against internet metering are fools. Bandwidth is a limited resource, just like electricity. You understand that you will pay more if you run AC, 15 Space Heaters, 10 Big screens, and a jacuzzi 24/7. Well you should pay more if you Stream on 5 computers while playing SCII and running Bittorrent, than if you check E-mail 5x a day.
Some people will pay more (mostly people who use this website), in fact the people who pay more are likely to pay a lot more because bandwidth use is usually concentrated among a few hoarders. The majority of people would pay less.
pretty sure the prices stayed the same, just with a cap. before u paid for a higher speed, now u pay for speed and usage. so its not like if u only use your internet for email, u'll be paying any less
and really, i dont think 25 GB a month is a reasonable limit, i would like to know how they came up with 25 GB as a limit.
ppl that still didnt get that this is not about bandwith are fools. metering = paying for the quantitiy of data you used for up/dl. ex: 20Mb bandwith = 20Kb used = 10$ 20Mb bandwith = 40Kb used = 20$ its fucked up.
On January 31 2011 04:55 xM(Z wrote: ppl that still didnt get that this is not about bandwith are fools. metering = paying for the quantitiy of data you used for up/dl. ex: 20Mb bandwith = 20Kb used = 10$ 20Mb bandwith = 40Kb used = 20$ its fucked up.
You are talking about the hypothetical maximum bandwith you can use, which is only likely at 4am on a tuesday. The electricity model makes perfect sense. Stop mindlessly streaming and you wont have a problem.
Just charge like cell phone providers. Have the limited plans, but also offer the unlimited plan as an alternative for people who use the internet a lot.
I can't imagine what I'd do if I only had 20 GB a month, especially with four other people in my house. I mean, two or three eps of anime is like one GB already. :x
Not to mention, I already pay for the unlimited internet, and the speed is shit. Shitty speed+cap=armed revolt
On January 31 2011 05:09 Ferrose wrote: Just charge like cell phone providers. Have the limited plans, but also offer the unlimited plan as an alternative for people who use the internet a lot.
I can't imagine what I'd do if I only had 20 GB a month, especially with four other people in my house. I mean, two or three eps of anime is like one GB already. :x
Not to mention, I already pay for the unlimited internet, and the speed is shit. Shitty speed+cap=armed revolt
You're saying do it life phone companies?
You gotta be kidding me, phones are the most overpriced thing with their monopolies. Do you not think it's outragious how a 1GB data plan with like 300 minutes and a couple features is 70 dollars a month?
Yeah, don't do anything like a phone company. Phones are the biggest rip off in the world, but people buy them because they are necessary. Bandwith is much much cheaper, they just overprice it, because omg it's a Dataplan.
On January 31 2011 05:09 Ferrose wrote: Just charge like cell phone providers. Have the limited plans, but also offer the unlimited plan as an alternative for people who use the internet a lot.
I can't imagine what I'd do if I only had 20 GB a month, especially with four other people in my house. I mean, two or three eps of anime is like one GB already. :x
Not to mention, I already pay for the unlimited internet, and the speed is shit. Shitty speed+cap=armed revolt
You're saying do it life phone companies?
You gotta be kidding me, phones are the most overpriced thing with their monopolies. Do you not think it's outragious how a 1GB data plan with like 300 minutes and a couple features is 70 dollars a month?
Yeah, don't do anything like a phone company. Phones are the biggest rip off in the world, but people buy them because they are necessary. Bandwith is much much cheaper, they just overprice it, because omg it's a Dataplan.
No...I'm saying that if they are going to impose a cap, that's fine, since most people don't use the internet all day. But it's only fine if they also offer a plan for unlimited bandwidth with no cap.
On January 31 2011 04:55 xM(Z wrote: ppl that still didnt get that this is not about bandwith are fools. metering = paying for the quantitiy of data you used for up/dl. ex: 20Mb bandwith = 20Kb used = 10$ 20Mb bandwith = 40Kb used = 20$ its fucked up.
You are talking about the hypothetical maximum bandwith you can use, which is only likely at 4am on a tuesday. The electricity model makes perfect sense. Stop mindlessly streaming and you wont have a problem.
that was only 1 totally hypothetical example...has nothing to do with 4AM and you still didnt get it?
you get a satelite dish, you get optic cables, you get man power, you build one internet provider infrastructure. the data streamed through it wont ever ruin the infrastructure. the infrastructure has transfer limits imposed by the materials you used to build it. you know how much you have to pay for the data you get, for the man power you use and for the maintenance you do so you came up with a payup plan and a client number (based on what your network can take) and go in bussines. you dont care about the ammount of data streamed through it because your expenses wont change because of that. there is no reason to charge by the Byte unless...youre a greedy fucker. your infrastructure sucks, it runs at its limit and beeing a corporate bastard to dont want to upgrade it because its cheaper and itll make you richer to just stick it to the people giving them internet by the byte.
A few clarifications are needed! (Some of you think this was well thought out, but I swear I wrote it in 10 minutes after a few drinks without going too deep!):
- When I say tax I don't mean governmental tax, I mean a new law where ISPs have to pay copyright owners a share of the revenue that is generated from broadband subscriptions in acknowledgement of the value that the sharing of copyrighted content online has to those subscriptions and the profitability of the ISPs.
- When I say 'creative industries' I also meant to include all original content creators, including content by people who have no record label or representation of any kind. E.g. If someone decides to make a DIY film or song with no budget which then goes viral to 20m people, there should be some universal method in place (like a bar code) where that person can trace how their film/song etc has been used and potentially claim some money back from the ISPs who will be gaining from such activity. If revenue could be generated (however small) for all content creators, it would be extremely liberating as many people would find not only mass recognition, but also a potential income without needing to sign their rights away to record companies, publishers and Hollywood production companies first. This could also reduce the 'creative bottle neck' that some writers and artists have to go through to impress the boards of directors of corporate companies and encourage a wider range of content and views to be expressed with independent budgets generated (increasing quality) due to the fact that most big investors in creative content (both music and film) tend to avoid anything politically controversial.
- Regarding usage, obviously I didn't factor in that people exchange enormous amounts of legal data through FTPs etc. for work purposes. What I meant to say was that it may be worth devising a method to create a charge for ISPs based on the downloading of digitally labelled data only. Everybody is familiar with paying more or less for things like electricity, heating and telephone based on usage and these are also services associated with modern basic human rights. It cannot be ignored that billions of gigs of copyright owned (and independently created) data are being exchanged, bringing in large gains for ISPs which for some reason the ISPs do not have to pay for. All emails, browsing websites, work etc of course should always be included in a LOWER overall monthly subscription charge. Of course, if ISPs were forced to pay independent collection agencies like PRS (who would trace ONLY labelled or coded files) the result would almost certainly be this cost being passed on to the consumer, but personally, if we were talking pennies per MB usage for music added on to an already lowered ISP subscription (as opposed to 79p per track for every download), I would be all for it, and I am sure the millions of up and coming artists out there who at the moment cannot get a record deal without signing away all of their rights (including merch, publishing and touring) would be interested too.
- Anyway, I just wanted to throw in an alternative view.
Original quote below...
My current opinion is that file sharing is now the norm. This cannot be changed without an attack on perceived civil liberties which will never go down well. The problem is that the ISPs making the extreme profits (due to millions of broadband subscriptions) are not being taxed by the copyright owners correctly and this is a legislation issue. Radio stations and TV stations etc have to pay the copyright owners (both recording and publishing) a fee for using material they do not own. ISPs should have to pay in the same way with a collection agency like PRS doing the monitoring and calculations based on encoded (but freely downloaded) data. Broadband makes the internet essentially the new broadcaster. This is the point which is being missed.
Also, usage should have a value. Someone who just checks email uses minimal bandwidth, but someone who downloads 1 gig per day uses way more, but at the moment they pay the same. It is clear which user is hitting the creative industries and it is clear which user is not, so for this reason, usage should also be priced accordingly. The end result will be a taxed, monitored ISP based on usage which will ensure both the freedom of the consumer and the rights of the artists - the loser will be the ISP who will probably have to increase subscription costs to compensate, but the user will have the freedom to choose between checking a few emails (which will cost far less than a current monthly subscription) and downloading tons of music and film (which will cost probably a bit more than current subscription, but not that much more).
We should set up a meeting with Lord Mandelson as he is on this issue at the moment, I'm sure he would meet us for breakfast!
On January 31 2011 05:09 Ferrose wrote: Just charge like cell phone providers. Have the limited plans, but also offer the unlimited plan as an alternative for people who use the internet a lot.
I can't imagine what I'd do if I only had 20 GB a month, especially with four other people in my house. I mean, two or three eps of anime is like one GB already. :x
Not to mention, I already pay for the unlimited internet, and the speed is shit. Shitty speed+cap=armed revolt
You're saying do it life phone companies?
You gotta be kidding me, phones are the most overpriced thing with their monopolies. Do you not think it's outragious how a 1GB data plan with like 300 minutes and a couple features is 70 dollars a month?
Yeah, don't do anything like a phone company. Phones are the biggest rip off in the world, but people buy them because they are necessary. Bandwith is much much cheaper, they just overprice it, because omg it's a Dataplan.
20 GB = 8 TV episodes for M2TS at 10000 - 14000 kilobits/sec video / AC3 audio /
20 GB = ~2-3 episodes for M2TS at 40000 - 44000 kilobits/sec video / Linear Pulse-Code Modulation audio /
Can be like ~150 GB for one Season...
There's already a maximum limit...
100 Mbit/sec line = max of 66 TB in one month ( only if it's run continuously ) and that's only if you're also uploading at that rate though... 100/100
btw, bit ( 8x smaller than Byte ) 12.5 MB = 100 Mb
On January 31 2011 05:32 Blisse wrote: The end result will be a taxed, monitored ISP based on usage which will ensure both the freedom of the consumer and the rights of the artists
Radio stations and TV stations etc have to pay the copyright owners (both recording and publishing) a fee for using material they do not own. ISPs should have to pay in the same way
thats just wrong IPS DO NOT 'use' the data. their clients do. its like asking TV viewers to pay the copyright rights...are you kidding me?
It's dependent I guess. If you use the internet a lot like I do then no chance in hell. But if you barely touch it then it should be an option.
It's pathetic how archaic our internet is in comparison to countries like South Korea and Japan though. For what they're proposing it would absolutely not be worth it. If it was at 100 MBs CONSISTENTLY with an absolute minimal ping, then yeah I'd do it. But it won't be. It will be the same shitty internet with the same shitty service and the same shitty customer support, but now for moar money. No matter who your ISP is.
On January 28 2011 14:15 Pitto wrote: what do you mean charge by the byte?
in australia we choose the speed we want [which is pretty terrible anyway] and then you choose the plan you want, whether than 2gb, 10gb, 200gb and so on, then when you reach that download cap, your internet speed is either capped [usually to dial-up speed] or you can keep your speed and pay the extra downloads per mb/gb, whichever the company chooses to do.
is that the sort of thing you mean? or just straight out "you use 1gb you pay x amount"
my internet is 60gb usage month, and $2 per gb after that. The 60gb usage comes with 10mbps download, 512kps upload, and costs $50 per month.
this is really terrible, during the summer I streamed SC2 beta and at the end of the month had to pay over $200 in additional bandwidth usage.
Not to mention that when they say 10mbit/s download, they mean UP TO 10mb/s, so you'll find that you never get the speed that was advertised.
On January 31 2011 05:53 Sceptor87 wrote: It's dependent I guess. If you use the internet a lot like I do then no chance in hell. But if you barely touch it then it should be an option.
you can get a smaller bandwith...?
i swear to god ppl forgot how to think akhboabgvoiawenrvearv
On January 31 2011 04:55 xM(Z wrote: ppl that still didnt get that this is not about bandwith are fools. metering = paying for the quantitiy of data you used for up/dl. ex: 20Mb bandwith = 20Kb used = 10$ 20Mb bandwith = 40Kb used = 20$ its fucked up.
You are talking about the hypothetical maximum bandwith you can use, which is only likely at 4am on a tuesday. The electricity model makes perfect sense. Stop mindlessly streaming and you wont have a problem.
that was only 1 totally hypothetical example...has nothing to do with 4AM and you still didnt get it?
you get a satelite dish, you get optic cables, you get man power, you build one internet provider infrastructure. the data streamed through it wont ever ruin the infrastructure. the infrastructure has transfer limits imposed by the materials you used to build it. you know how much you have to pay for the data you get, for the man power you use and for the maintenance you do so you came up with a payup plan and a client number (based on what your network can take) and go in bussines. you dont care about the ammount of data streamed through it because your expenses wont change because of that. there is no reason to charge by the Byte unless...youre a greedy fucker. your infrastructure sucks, it runs at its limit and beeing a corporate bastard to dont want to upgrade it because its cheaper and itll make you richer to just stick it to the people giving them internet by the byte.
So your model is: People who use a small amount of internet subsidize those who use a lot. Good system for YOU because YOU probably use 100 Gigs a month. Your grandma doesn't like it though.
It is impossible to linearly increase bandwidth over a grid, it increases in jumps based on your capital investment. So yes you COULD simply invest more to accommodate the 1% of users who are streaming 250 gigs of information based on a price model of ~10gigs of usage per customer, OR you can simply make those who place a larger burden on the system pay their fair share.
Its called internalizing an externality (like making a garbage dump pay to clean up the pollution it causes) look it up.
On January 31 2011 04:55 xM(Z wrote: ppl that still didnt get that this is not about bandwith are fools. metering = paying for the quantitiy of data you used for up/dl. ex: 20Mb bandwith = 20Kb used = 10$ 20Mb bandwith = 40Kb used = 20$ its fucked up.
You are talking about the hypothetical maximum bandwith you can use, which is only likely at 4am on a tuesday. The electricity model makes perfect sense. Stop mindlessly streaming and you wont have a problem.
that was only 1 totally hypothetical example...has nothing to do with 4AM and you still didnt get it?
you get a satelite dish, you get optic cables, you get man power, you build one internet provider infrastructure. the data streamed through it wont ever ruin the infrastructure. the infrastructure has transfer limits imposed by the materials you used to build it. you know how much you have to pay for the data you get, for the man power you use and for the maintenance you do so you came up with a payup plan and a client number (based on what your network can take) and go in bussines. you dont care about the ammount of data streamed through it because your expenses wont change because of that. there is no reason to charge by the Byte unless...youre a greedy fucker. your infrastructure sucks, it runs at its limit and beeing a corporate bastard to dont want to upgrade it because its cheaper and itll make you richer to just stick it to the people giving them internet by the byte.
So your model is: People who use a small amount of internet subsidize those who use a lot. Good system for YOU because YOU probably use 100 Gigs a month. Your grandma doesn't like it though.
It is impossible to linearly increase bandwidth over a grid, it increases in jumps based on your capital investment. So yes you COULD simply invest more to accommodate the 1% of users who are streaming 250 gigs of information based on a price model of ~10gigs of usage per customer, OR you can simply make those who place a larger burden on the system pay their fair share.
Its called internalizing an externality (like making a garbage dump pay to clean up the pollution it causes) look it up.
On January 31 2011 04:39 cLutZ wrote: People against internet metering are fools. Bandwidth is a limited resource, just like electricity.
What? Bandwidth is not finite. There is no point in the future where we could just run out of bandwidth and not be able to create more. To increase the amount of bandwidth you can sustain, you just need to upgrade your infrastructure. That's it; magically more bandwidth now exists.
The problem is that isp's don't actually sell plans based on what the local bandwidth limit is, they sell based on whatever sounds good. People only trip over each others bandwidth usages because service providers absolutely refuse to upgrade their service if they don't have to. Having a dozen users all maxing out their 100mbps connections wouldn't be a problem if that was what the provider could actually provide but doing that would actually tell customers how insufficient the local infrastructure actually is, which is something ips's really want to avoid. Instead, they hope for the best and blame overload on "bandwidth hogs" who are actually using the service amount they pay for.
Paying per byte is only a terrible idea because isp's have shown time and again that they will sacrifice service in favor of not having to keep up with growing bandwidth demand. They really shouldn't be able to do things like this while also not being under government oversight like other utilities.
rofl, of course everything bell and rogers does is a money grab
competition isn't in the interest of bell/rogers. here's a simple example: say you want to stream movies. you could go to netflix/equivalent or you could use rogers on-demand online or whatever the bell equivalent is of course, the bell/rogers one won't contribute to your bandwidth usage with a metered plan, which one you gonna pick?
don't even get me started on cellphone plans. how it's legal to name a fee "government regulated recovery fee" that has nothing to do with the government is beyond me. I'd like to see anyone argue how that's anything but simple lying to the consumer
by the way, for those with rogers, look up how to deal with retentions on redflagdeals.com. you'll be surprised how much less you can pay just by telling rogers to fuck off with their bullshit. i am a total beginner at negotiating, yet i still managed to roll in $20 in discounts on a $50 plan on my first try. people that are good at this make decent money selling the plans they negotiate.
Korea and Japan have great internet in the 1Gbps range... and very low costing too...
There's plenty of people who can max out their 1Gbps line in Japan... ( Uncompressed data/Source files from PD )? Several complete shows in 1920x1080 MT2S/Source video files would already be a 1 TB...
Trying to get that in Canada and the US would be equivalent to paying several hundred/month...
Thats insanity... 100Mbit cost us well over $150+, 1GBPS will never happen not even for commercial purposes.
We would be long gone before America gets anywhere near Korea/China/Japan, paying $30USD for a 50D+ line? In my dreams, the only thing keeping the ISPs here decent is the fact that they havent implemented bandwidth caps as a standard. The infrastructure here is terrible, you must pay an absurd amount each month to get consistent service if you live in dense urban areas like NYC.
edit: For the record I live in NYC... The way our local government set up the ISP system makes you wonder.
On January 31 2011 04:55 xM(Z wrote: ppl that still didnt get that this is not about bandwith are fools. metering = paying for the quantitiy of data you used for up/dl. ex: 20Mb bandwith = 20Kb used = 10$ 20Mb bandwith = 40Kb used = 20$ its fucked up.
You are talking about the hypothetical maximum bandwith you can use, which is only likely at 4am on a tuesday. The electricity model makes perfect sense. Stop mindlessly streaming and you wont have a problem.
that was only 1 totally hypothetical example...has nothing to do with 4AM and you still didnt get it?
you get a satelite dish, you get optic cables, you get man power, you build one internet provider infrastructure. the data streamed through it wont ever ruin the infrastructure. the infrastructure has transfer limits imposed by the materials you used to build it. you know how much you have to pay for the data you get, for the man power you use and for the maintenance you do so you came up with a payup plan and a client number (based on what your network can take) and go in bussines. you dont care about the ammount of data streamed through it because your expenses wont change because of that. there is no reason to charge by the Byte unless...youre a greedy fucker. your infrastructure sucks, it runs at its limit and beeing a corporate bastard to dont want to upgrade it because its cheaper and itll make you richer to just stick it to the people giving them internet by the byte.
So your model is: People who use a small amount of internet subsidize those who use a lot. Good system for YOU because YOU probably use 100 Gigs a month. Your grandma doesn't like it though.
It is impossible to linearly increase bandwidth over a grid, it increases in jumps based on your capital investment. So yes you COULD simply invest more to accommodate the 1% of users who are streaming 250 gigs of information based on a price model of ~10gigs of usage per customer, OR you can simply make those who place a larger burden on the system pay their fair share.
Its called internalizing an externality (like making a garbage dump pay to clean up the pollution it causes) look it up.
You're thinking about this issue the wrong way. The cost of system comes from the installation and the maintenance. Having little usage or a large amount of usage makes little no difference if the system isn't over-loaded. You pay for the hardware that was built to reach your house - if you don't use it much, well, it doesn't matter, because they still had to install the material.
See it this way; why should those that use the system and pay for their share of the hardware installation pay for the hardware of other clients?
I say everyone in Canada we go live somewhere in Europe because of this until they change it
It really suck....
it would mean the grandma would pay like 1 bucks a month for internet even tho she use the same wire and same hardware as me.... ist not like Bell was fucking making internet... they just put wire so we san use "internet".....
On January 30 2011 10:29 buickskylark wrote: holy crap. I've been getting internet from Teksavvy for 200 Gbytes/month for a couple of years and just a moment ago I got told that we'll be capped at 25 Gbytes. WAT DA FAWK. What can I do with 25 Gigs?? Granted, most of my internet usage (95%) is for entertainment, but it's been such a regular part of my life to watch any movies, youtube videos, and now this.
there's something teksavvy sent out to their customers about grandfather plans, if u were with them from 2007, u are ok i believe
17. What is a Grandfathered User? / What are the options for Grandfathered Users?
A Grandfathered User is an end-user that has been a continuous customer since before Feb. 1, 2007, having a continual Residential DSL High Speed Internet service of a particular speed on the same physical phone line, in accordance with a list provided to us by Bell Canada.
As a grandfathered User, you will have the choice to be moved to one of the new UBB service plans or you may pay an additional $5.00 per month and stay with your current package.
If you are a grandfathered user and make a change to your service, you may not revert to a grandfathered plan.
If you are not sure whether you are a grandfathered user, please go to your customer portal at https://myworld.teksavvy.com for verification.
so ya if u were lucky enough to be under that, only cost u $5 more to stay on the same 200GB plan
btw, FUCK YOU bell.
Yup, this is us. However, I'm thinking that once I start grad school, I should move out... meaning this is going to affect me soon.
I hate this bullshit being peddled by telecoms and politicians that the internet is all stored in a big 'ole tank, like oil, and when people use more than they pay for, the internet will run out quicker than it can be replaced, so of course charging people for using more bandwidth than your arbitrary limits set is the way to go.
People actually think internet congestion is caused by people downloading all the time? It happens during peak hours because that's when the majority of people use their connections. If they wanted to help solve it they could implement a system to dissuade people from using their connections during peak hours, not just limit everyone's ability to use the service they paid for all the time. Or ideally not over-sell their service, which seems to be a perfectly acceptable practice for some reason.
They don't do anything like that because this has nothing to do with making anyone elses connection better, it's about making more money off you. That's it. They pay virtually nothing for bandwidth. In many cases, thanks to peering contracts data transfer literally costs them nothing. That means whether you use 1gb or 100gb it costs nothing.
It's the equivalent of saying "telephone hogs" are having an effect on your phone calls, or TV hogs who watch TV 24/7 are making your channels look worse. It's an absurd notion and it's sad how much traction it has got.
On January 31 2011 07:47 maneatingshoe wrote: I live in Canada and im actually very happy with my internet service. I have fibreop 40M for 100$ a month with digital cable and phone in the package.
You arent in Ontario then are you? Manitoba? Alberta? Those 2 provinces have the best internet prices and qualities in Canada
If that were to happen wouldn't they lose a ton of money on the people that barely use their net? I can only relate to Sweden but here everyone has a internet connection but far from anyone actually uses it on a regular basis. But then again we have a ton of providers so our prices are allready pretty cheap. Paying 45 dollars a month (roughly translated) for 100 Mb/s
On January 31 2011 08:22 Hynda wrote: If that were to happen wouldn't they lose a ton of money on the people that barely use their net? I can only relate to Sweden but here everyone has a internet connection but far from anyone actually uses it on a regular basis. But then again we have a ton of providers so our prices are allready pretty cheap. Paying 45 dollars a month (roughly translated) for 100 Mb/s
oh i'm pretty sure they'll figure out something like a $20/mo internet access fee, and then the actual bits will be metered. no way is someone who only checks their email twice a week will pay like $2/mo for internet, they want money hun.
On January 31 2011 08:54 Romantic wrote: I don't see how charging by volume is bad unless all of you are massive downloaders and it will hurt you personally
For one, yes, it will impact us negatively.
Now, before you say "well you use more, you should pay more" you have to accept that the internet is not a finite commodity like oil, where if you use more, you consume an actual physical commodity, and therefor you pay more, to keep from easily depleting supply.
Pay-per-use for the internet legitimizes the false idea that there is finite internet for everyone. It's false rationing, and it's bullshit.
On January 31 2011 04:55 xM(Z wrote: ppl that still didnt get that this is not about bandwith are fools. metering = paying for the quantitiy of data you used for up/dl. ex: 20Mb bandwith = 20Kb used = 10$ 20Mb bandwith = 40Kb used = 20$ its fucked up.
You are talking about the hypothetical maximum bandwith you can use, which is only likely at 4am on a tuesday. The electricity model makes perfect sense. Stop mindlessly streaming and you wont have a problem.
that was only 1 totally hypothetical example...has nothing to do with 4AM and you still didnt get it?
you get a satelite dish, you get optic cables, you get man power, you build one internet provider infrastructure. the data streamed through it wont ever ruin the infrastructure. the infrastructure has transfer limits imposed by the materials you used to build it. you know how much you have to pay for the data you get, for the man power you use and for the maintenance you do so you came up with a payup plan and a client number (based on what your network can take) and go in bussines. you dont care about the ammount of data streamed through it because your expenses wont change because of that. there is no reason to charge by the Byte unless...youre a greedy fucker. your infrastructure sucks, it runs at its limit and beeing a corporate bastard to dont want to upgrade it because its cheaper and itll make you richer to just stick it to the people giving them internet by the byte.
So your model is: People who use a small amount of internet subsidize those who use a lot. Good system for YOU because YOU probably use 100 Gigs a month. Your grandma doesn't like it though.
It is impossible to linearly increase bandwidth over a grid, it increases in jumps based on your capital investment. So yes you COULD simply invest more to accommodate the 1% of users who are streaming 250 gigs of information based on a price model of ~10gigs of usage per customer, OR you can simply make those who place a larger burden on the system pay their fair share.
Its called internalizing an externality (like making a garbage dump pay to clean up the pollution it causes) look it up.
You're thinking about this issue the wrong way. The cost of system comes from the installation and the maintenance. Having little usage or a large amount of usage makes little no difference if the system isn't over-loaded. You pay for the hardware that was built to reach your house - if you don't use it much, well, it doesn't matter, because they still had to install the material.
See it this way; why should those that use the system and pay for their share of the hardware installation pay for the hardware of other clients?
#1. The hardware to connect to each individual house is so cheap it is essentially free. The real cost is the servers and fiber optic lines that service the entire grid not the $10 of copper that connects you to the main line. #2. The system is overloaded, the line that connects your house to the main grid isn't, but the expensive part is overloaded. This leads to two solutions: Increase the marginal cost of using more bandwidth or installing more bandwidth. Both have merits, and most companies are doing both.
The problem lies in the fact that a small minority of internet users are creating the scarcity of resources. I assure you that the median MB/Month is lower than the mean. So if you everyone besides the few megausers you really don't need the expanded bandwidth, and if they install it you will get charged extra. BUT if you charge based on usage the people who are driving the need for additional bandwidth are also the people who are paying for its installation and maintenance.
On January 31 2011 08:54 Romantic wrote: I don't see how charging by volume is bad unless all of you are massive downloaders and it will hurt you personally
For one, yes, it will impact us negatively.
Now, before you say "well you use more, you should pay more" you have to accept that the internet is not a finite commodity like oil, where if you use more, you consume an actual physical commodity, and therefor you pay more, to keep from easily depleting supply.
Pay-per-use for the internet legitimizes the false idea that there is finite internet for everyone. It's false rationing, and it's bullshit.
The internet is still finite. There are costs to operating it.
Water might even be a better argument for a somewhat infinite resource, but you still pay by volume.
On January 31 2011 08:54 Romantic wrote: I don't see how charging by volume is bad unless all of you are massive downloaders and it will hurt you personally
For one, yes, it will impact us negatively.
Now, before you say "well you use more, you should pay more" you have to accept that the internet is not a finite commodity like oil, where if you use more, you consume an actual physical commodity, and therefor you pay more, to keep from easily depleting supply.
Pay-per-use for the internet legitimizes the false idea that there is finite internet for everyone. It's false rationing, and it's bullshit.
The internet is still finite. There are costs to operating it.
Water might even be a better argument for a somewhat infinite resource, but you still pay by volume.
The costs of running it do not go up or down if I decide to download fisting firemen 9.
On January 31 2011 08:54 Romantic wrote: I don't see how charging by volume is bad unless all of you are massive downloaders and it will hurt you personally
For one, yes, it will impact us negatively.
Now, before you say "well you use more, you should pay more" you have to accept that the internet is not a finite commodity like oil, where if you use more, you consume an actual physical commodity, and therefor you pay more, to keep from easily depleting supply.
Pay-per-use for the internet legitimizes the false idea that there is finite internet for everyone. It's false rationing, and it's bullshit.
The internet is still finite. There are costs to operating it.
Water might even be a better argument for a somewhat infinite resource, but you still pay by volume.
Pretending water is infinite, there is still an actual cost attributed to collecting, treating/purifying, and distributing it. There is no actual per bit cost to the process of data transfer. It's not the same thing. The longer I run my tap, the more money I am costing the city. As much as ISPs like to pretend for the sake of taking more money from their customers, the same isn't actually true with an internet connection.
On January 31 2011 08:54 Romantic wrote: I don't see how charging by volume is bad unless all of you are massive downloaders and it will hurt you personally
For one, yes, it will impact us negatively.
Now, before you say "well you use more, you should pay more" you have to accept that the internet is not a finite commodity like oil, where if you use more, you consume an actual physical commodity, and therefor you pay more, to keep from easily depleting supply.
Pay-per-use for the internet legitimizes the false idea that there is finite internet for everyone. It's false rationing, and it's bullshit.
The internet is still finite. There are costs to operating it.
Water might even be a better argument for a somewhat infinite resource, but you still pay by volume.
Pretending water is infinite, there is still an actual cost attributed to collecting, treating/purifying, and distributing it. There is no actual per bit cost to the process of data transfer. It's not the same thing. The longer I run my tap, the more money I am costing the city. As much as ISPs like to pretend for the sake of taking more money from their customers, the same isn't actually true with an internet connection.
No you aren't costing the ISP more money you are costing the ISP's other customer's time and money. Its like a road, if you put 300 Semi trailers on the road you would slow down traffic much more than a Honda Civic.
On January 31 2011 08:54 Romantic wrote: I don't see how charging by volume is bad unless all of you are massive downloaders and it will hurt you personally
For one, yes, it will impact us negatively.
Now, before you say "well you use more, you should pay more" you have to accept that the internet is not a finite commodity like oil, where if you use more, you consume an actual physical commodity, and therefor you pay more, to keep from easily depleting supply.
Pay-per-use for the internet legitimizes the false idea that there is finite internet for everyone. It's false rationing, and it's bullshit.
The internet is still finite. There are costs to operating it.
Water might even be a better argument for a somewhat infinite resource, but you still pay by volume.
Pretending water is infinite, there is still an actual cost attributed to collecting, treating/purifying, and distributing it. There is no actual per bit cost to the process of data transfer. It's not the same thing. The longer I run my tap, the more money I am costing the city. As much as ISPs like to pretend for the sake of taking more money from their customers, the same isn't actually true with an internet connection.
No you aren't costing the ISP more money you are costing the ISP's other customer's time and money. Its like a road, if you put 300 Semi trailers on the road you would slow down traffic much more than a Honda Civic.
Can we please stop using awful analogies to compare how the internet works?
It's not a road. It's not water pipes. It's not a series of tubes.
No, My bandwidth use is not costing anyone money. The ISPs servers run with the same capacity, regardless of how much I use it. I also am not costing their other customers money, unless some how my downloading of hot college sluts 3 DDOSs the ISP, which is incredibly unlikely.
On January 31 2011 08:54 Romantic wrote: I don't see how charging by volume is bad unless all of you are massive downloaders and it will hurt you personally
For one, yes, it will impact us negatively.
Now, before you say "well you use more, you should pay more" you have to accept that the internet is not a finite commodity like oil, where if you use more, you consume an actual physical commodity, and therefor you pay more, to keep from easily depleting supply.
Pay-per-use for the internet legitimizes the false idea that there is finite internet for everyone. It's false rationing, and it's bullshit.
The internet is still finite. There are costs to operating it.
Water might even be a better argument for a somewhat infinite resource, but you still pay by volume.
Pretending water is infinite, there is still an actual cost attributed to collecting, treating/purifying, and distributing it. There is no actual per bit cost to the process of data transfer. It's not the same thing. The longer I run my tap, the more money I am costing the city. As much as ISPs like to pretend for the sake of taking more money from their customers, the same isn't actually true with an internet connection.
No you aren't costing the ISP more money you are costing the ISP's other customer's time and money. Its like a road, if you put 300 Semi trailers on the road you would slow down traffic much more than a Honda Civic.
If we absolutely have to keep using analogies, we all have the same download speed, so we're all the same kind of car for starters.
Second highways get congested all the time, it's called rush hour. The internet has its own rush hour, it's called peak hours, when the majority of people who purchased internet access use it. It has nothing to do with what they download or how much of it. It is no single user or group of users fault that our imaginary internet highway gets bogged down at certain hours of the day. It's the people who decided to let too many people through the internet toll booth onto the internet highway in their internet cars.
According to Cisco, the majority of traffic during this time comes from video streaming (youtube) and social networking. Do those things sound like the type of things internet truckers use while they haul ass down the internet highway in their semis?
Finally, for these people to reach such huge download amounts, they have to run their relatively small pipes through all hours of the day. The hours no one else is on our imaginary highway.
The fact is the people you think are causing problems truly aren't. And the caps are getting so low that the people who you think are downloading obscene amounts are actually pretty average users who buy games off steam that can be 15-20gb or any other of the numerous legitimate uses for bandwidth in this day and age
On January 31 2011 08:22 Hynda wrote: If that were to happen wouldn't they lose a ton of money on the people that barely use their net? I can only relate to Sweden but here everyone has a internet connection but far from anyone actually uses it on a regular basis. But then again we have a ton of providers so our prices are allready pretty cheap. Paying 45 dollars a month (roughly translated) for 100 Mb/s
i can only speak for teksavvy, but even if u use no internet u still have to pay the basic fee, which doesnt even go down under this cap shit.
before: unlimited cap, up to 5mb/s = 60$ after: 25Gb cap, up to 5mb/s = 60$ + overage charges
On January 31 2011 09:49 Romantic wrote: Alright, lets try this. Why should everyone pay the same amount despite disparities of use that are easily calculated?
Because there is no difference in cost to the company.
On January 31 2011 09:49 Romantic wrote: Alright, lets try this. Why should everyone pay the same amount despite disparities of use that are easily calculated?
Because there is no difference in cost to the company.
Congestion does not hurt a service?
Edit: this strongly reminds me of people whining about carry-on luggage fees.
"Wah, they are going to take the bag on the plane with me anyway, so why can't I pile all of my luggage in the middle of the aisle rather than in the cargo hold?"
On January 31 2011 09:49 Romantic wrote: Alright, lets try this. Why should everyone pay the same amount despite disparities of use that are easily calculated?
Because there is no difference in cost to the company.
Congestion does not hurt a service?
As stated by a thousand people already, congestion is a result of number of users.
And it doesn't cost the company anything. To levy fees against customers for something that doesn't cost the company something is just greed.
On January 31 2011 09:49 Romantic wrote: Alright, lets try this. Why should everyone pay the same amount despite disparities of use that are easily calculated?
Because there is no difference in cost to the company.
Congestion does not hurt a service?
As stated by a thousand people already, congestion is a result of number of users.
And it doesn't cost the company anything. To levy fees against customers for something that doesn't cost the company something is just greed.
A service losing quality does not financially hurt a company?
On January 31 2011 08:54 Romantic wrote: I don't see how charging by volume is bad unless all of you are massive downloaders and it will hurt you personally
Yes it will affect me personally and anyone else who watches TV shows online.
On January 31 2011 09:49 Romantic wrote: Alright, lets try this. Why should everyone pay the same amount despite disparities of use that are easily calculated?
Because there is no difference in cost to the company.
Congestion does not hurt a service?
Edit: this strongly reminds me of people whining about carry-on luggage fees.
"Wah, they are going to take the bag on the plane with me anyway, so why can't I pile all of my luggage in the middle of the aisle rather than in the cargo hold?"
Now we're onto plane analogies.
It's more like overselling a flight and then blaming those with the most frequent flier points. There is no logic to it. The reason why there's no seat for you on the plane has nothing to do with the other passengers. The airline however claims it's the users so that they can pass on more fees in turn making more money.
Can we get baller in here? He is the true master of analogies
A person who wants to use netflix ( a streaming service people have to pay to use to watch movies that are not giving the full quality of the actual video ), would have to pay obscene amounts...
That site doesn't even stream it in M2TS, they cap it at like 5000-6000 kilobits/sec ( they re-encode the video at a lower quality for a DVD video and they give you AC3 audio instead of lossless audio or in LPCM form or any other lossless format )
They're also limited by the horrendous services of the user's internet provider...
They would not be able to stream a Blu Ray movie( 45 GB for Transformers II ) in M2TS ( ( full quality, untouched video/audio ) and it'd be 40000 kilobits/sec and occasionally slightly above 44000
45 GB of data in 150 minutes for a movie...
Unless the minimum plan for ISPS were 50mbit/sec, it would be possible to get that streamed...
a lot of ISPs give out terrible plans... some of them even get funding from the gov't, but none of them have upped the speeds close to Korea/Japan
On January 31 2011 09:49 Romantic wrote: Alright, lets try this. Why should everyone pay the same amount despite disparities of use that are easily calculated?
Because there is no difference in cost to the company.
Congestion does not hurt a service?
Edit: this strongly reminds me of people whining about carry-on luggage fees.
"Wah, they are going to take the bag on the plane with me anyway, so why can't I pile all of my luggage in the middle of the aisle rather than in the cargo hold?"
Now we're onto plane analogies.
It's more like overselling a flight and then blaming those with the most frequent flier points. There is no logic to it. The reason why there's no seat for you on the plane has nothing to do with the other passengers. The airline however claims it's the users so that they can pass on more fees in turn making more money.
Completely misread the analogy.
You two are trying to say that congestion does not financially hurt a company. Nonsense. They can either:
A. Let the service stay shitty and lose customers
B. Collect revenue to improve service.
If A, they are financially hurt by congestion.
If B, they should levy the cost of improving the service on those who cause the most congestion.
Edit: and your contract is probably monthly, so it isn't proper to say they oversold. They, in the past, advertised a monthly renewable contract that allowed for unlimited access. They can change that next month if they want.
On January 31 2011 09:49 Romantic wrote: Alright, lets try this. Why should everyone pay the same amount despite disparities of use that are easily calculated?
Because there is no difference in cost to the company.
Congestion does not hurt a service?
As stated by a thousand people already, congestion is a result of number of users.
And it doesn't cost the company anything. To levy fees against customers for something that doesn't cost the company something is just greed.
A service losing quality does not financially hurt a company?
We're closing in now.
You keep going on this false idea that people on the internet in general != slow speeds. This is only true for very small networks, like college campuses.
NUMBER OF PEOPLE not AMOUNT PER PERSON slows down speeds.
So, does a consumer using a service he/she pays for that directly contributes to the slowing down of said service hurt a company? The answer is no, it doesn't. Especially considering the amount your internet is slowed is so gradual it's probably not noticeable to the majority of people who use it. Unless, as stated earlier, you shut down the ISP, which as far as I know, has never happened.
Will you please argue from the facts that have already been established, instead of making up you own?
On January 31 2011 09:49 Romantic wrote: Alright, lets try this. Why should everyone pay the same amount despite disparities of use that are easily calculated?
Because there is no difference in cost to the company.
Congestion does not hurt a service?
As stated by a thousand people already, congestion is a result of number of users.
And it doesn't cost the company anything. To levy fees against customers for something that doesn't cost the company something is just greed.
A service losing quality does not financially hurt a company?
We're closing in now.
You keep going on this false idea that people on the internet in general != slow speeds. This is only true for very small networks, like college campuses.
NUMBER OF PEOPLE not AMOUNT PER PERSON slows down speeds.
So, does a consumer using a service he/she pays for that directly contributes to the slowing down of said service hurt a company? The answer is no, it doesn't. Especially considering the amount your internet is slowed is so gradual it's probably not noticeable to the majority of people who use it. Unless, as stated earlier, you shut down the ISP, which as far as I know, has never happened.
Will you please argue from the facts that have already been established, instead of making up you own?
NUMBER OF PEOPLE not AMOUNT PER PERSON slows down speeds
Demonstrably false. Someone downloading high res video at peak hours leaves a larger footprint than someone using Google Docs for homework.
So, does a consumer using a service he/she pays for that directly contributes to the slowing down of said service hurt a company? The answer is no, it doesn't.
Your contract is probably monthly and at a new month they can change the contract. If the contract includes a cap, they can levy a cap. Simple simple. In that case, you're paying for a service that includes a cap. You seem to think a company is bound by expired contracts.
On January 31 2011 09:49 Romantic wrote: Alright, lets try this. Why should everyone pay the same amount despite disparities of use that are easily calculated?
Because there is no difference in cost to the company.
Congestion does not hurt a service?
As stated by a thousand people already, congestion is a result of number of users.
And it doesn't cost the company anything. To levy fees against customers for something that doesn't cost the company something is just greed.
A service losing quality does not financially hurt a company?
We're closing in now.
You keep going on this false idea that people on the internet in general != slow speeds. This is only true for very small networks, like college campuses.
NUMBER OF PEOPLE not AMOUNT PER PERSON slows down speeds.
So, does a consumer using a service he/she pays for that directly contributes to the slowing down of said service hurt a company? The answer is no, it doesn't. Especially considering the amount your internet is slowed is so gradual it's probably not noticeable to the majority of people who use it. Unless, as stated earlier, you shut down the ISP, which as far as I know, has never happened.
Will you please argue from the facts that have already been established, instead of making up you own?
NUMBER OF PEOPLE not AMOUNT PER PERSON slows down speeds
Demonstrably false. Someone downloading high res video at peak hours leaves a larger footprint than someone using Google Docs for homework.
So, does a consumer using a service he/she pays for that directly contributes to the slowing down of said service hurt a company? The answer is no, it doesn't.
Your contract is probably monthly and at a new month they can change the contract. If the contract includes a cap, they can levy a cap. Simple simple. In that case, you're paying for a service that includes a cap. You seem to think a company is bound by expired contracts.
You are honestly debating this from the standpoint of someone from 1994. The whole fallacy behind this is that there isn't a serious issue to begin with, but you keep acting like my stream viewing is just shutting down modems across the network.
Your contract is probably monthly and at a new month they can change the contract. If the contract includes a cap, they can levy a cap. Simple simple. In that case, you're paying for a service that includes a cap. You seem to think a company is bound by expired contracts
Really pointless to what's being discuss right now.
Your contract is probably monthly and at a new month they can change the contract. If the contract includes a cap, they can levy a cap. Simple simple. In that case, you're paying for a service that includes a cap. You seem to think a company is bound by expired contracts.
Not legally, but if you suddenly make a huge change like dropping monthly usage caps from 200gig to 25 gig, then you will end up having a large number of customers dropping your services, resulting in a loss of revenue. So, unless you want to piss of a lot of customers, internet providers are to some extent bound to the contract.
On January 31 2011 09:49 Romantic wrote: Alright, lets try this. Why should everyone pay the same amount despite disparities of use that are easily calculated?
Because there is no difference in cost to the company.
Congestion does not hurt a service?
Edit: this strongly reminds me of people whining about carry-on luggage fees.
"Wah, they are going to take the bag on the plane with me anyway, so why can't I pile all of my luggage in the middle of the aisle rather than in the cargo hold?"
Now we're onto plane analogies.
It's more like overselling a flight and then blaming those with the most frequent flier points. There is no logic to it. The reason why there's no seat for you on the plane has nothing to do with the other passengers. The airline however claims it's the users so that they can pass on more fees in turn making more money.
Completely misread the analogy.
You two are trying to say that congestion does not financially hurt a company. Nonsense. They can either:
A. Let the service stay shitty and lose customers
B. Collect revenue to improve service.
If A, they are financially hurt by congestion.
If B, they should levy the cost of improving the service on those who cause the most congestion.
Edit: and your contract is probably monthly, so it isn't proper to say they oversold. They, in the past, advertised a monthly renewable contract that allowed for unlimited access. They can change that next month if they want.
A - Considering there is no competition in the Canadian broadband market congestion doesn't really hurt them through losing customers
B - Why should they over sell a service and then tax us because of it? That is illogical
You honestly don't seem to understand anything that is being said by me or others.
Let's use another analogy. A semi related, but different service
Let's say from 8 to 10 pm your TV channels are all blurry and impossible to watch like you are trying to jerk off to scrambled porn.
Your cable provider claims it's "TV congestion" from too many people watching TV. Who's fault is that? The people watching TV or the people who are selling their service to too many households when it can't handle them? They come up with some absurd claim like habitual TV watchers, who leave their TVs on all day, are the cause for your TV going out from 8-10 pm. How do their TVs being on outside of 8-10 have anything to do with your service between 8-10?
They devise a plan to limit the amount of hours of TV you can watch. 60 hours a month. if you go over you pay $2 an hour. This doesn't stop the fact that everyone comes home from work, eats dinner, and turns on the TV at the same time. It doesn't solve the problem at all. All it does is limit your service while increasing the cost, and unfortunately thanks to the anti competitive protectionist nature of the CRTC you don't have any other options for cable providers.
In the world of internet providers somehow that lie becomes absolutely believable. It is the fault of the consumer that the service doesn't work right. For some reason, we should be charged extra for that like we've done something wrong for using the service.
At the end of the day here's what happens:
The consumer gets fucked The provider gets more money for a worse service The congestion problem remains the exact same
If installing the cables from one house to another is anything like installing electric cable over a couple of hundred of meters, then it is expensive. From the hydro Quebec cost chart, electric pole and wire cost $60~ per meter and $1000~ for each pole. It's an important concern because the population is very spread out. So I have to assume that most of the cost of providing internet service in Canada comes from installation and not congestions upgrade and whatnot.
These changes won't lower the cost of internet for the small consumer either. If you look at website I posted a couple of page ago, you'll notice the lowest internet is over $20~ a month (for 3gb total per month), and it's increasing by 1$ next month.
the suggestion that we are being charged so they can upgrade their infrastructure and people are ok with it is kinda funny. most businesses invest before they see a return, like car companies make the car first and sell it to make profit. what they're doing is, we'll take ur money first, then we'll take however long we want to make your car cause of course no consumer knows what the fuck the money is going to. and then they'll continue to charge u for the car after its finished, cause let's face it, they wont bring back the unlimited plans cause by that time charging for overages will be the norm.
I think it's a bad idea. From my own experience companies tend to overprice when they switch systems. The chance that will happen will be even bigger concidering there are only 2 companies.
Looks like you can only download 1 game off Steam per month or watch streams on TL. You can't do both. It makes no sense that the internet over here is getting worse and worse as time goes by.
Five years ago I had unlimited access. Now I'm at this 60 Gb cap.
The average broadband connection generates 14.9 GB of Internet traffic per month, up from 11.4 GB per month last year, an increase of 31 percent
"Busy hour" traffic grew at a faster pace than average traffic, growing 41 percent since last year. Peak-hour Internet traffic is 72 percent higher than Internet traffic during an average hour. The ratio of the busy hour to the average hour increased from 1.59 to 1.72, globally.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing is now 25 percent of global broadband traffic, down from 38 percent last year, a decrease of 34 percent. While still growing in absolute terms, P2P is growing more slowly than visual networking and other advanced applications.
Peer-to-peer has been surpassed by online video as the largest category. The subset of video that includes streaming video, flash, and Internet TV represents 26 percent, compared to 25 percent for P2P
The top 1 percent of broadband connections is responsible for more than 20 percent of total Internet traffic. The top 10 percent of connections is responsible for over 60 percent of broadband Internet traffic, worldwide.
Some interesting stuff. Our bandwidth consumption is going up incredibly fast, 31% more than last year, but our caps are shrinking. Do you still think they are trying to protect you from the extreme user? What happens next year if average usage continues to go up another 31% and the lite package offered still has a 20gb cap? Even Granny who checks her email risks going over her cap, even though there was never any actual cost associated with her increase in usage.
Peak hour traffic is growing, P2P is shrinking, video streaming is growing. Again the fault does not lie with these scapegoat extreme users and pirates. The most bandwidth consumed comes from things like videos average people are watching. The problem lies in how many concurrent users there are at peak hours.
The 1% and 10% using bandwidth sounds shocking at first. You have to keep in mind a few things. First, there is no real per bit cost to large amounts of data being transferred, it's a made up cost by the ISPs to maximize their profits. These people aren't costing you or the ISP money. Second, these people only download as fast as their internet connections allow them. The consumption numbers are a result of constant downloading, not some burst downloading in peak hours that is slowing your or my connection down, that is simply impossible. They habitually download, at no significant cost to anyone for probably all hours of the day. Should the people who download like 1TB of data a month be dealt with by ISPs? Maybe. I won't argue they shouldn't.
What I will argue until I am blue in the face however, is that these caps are currently designed to deal with those fringe users. They simply aren't, else they'd be 4-5 times higher and simply cut them off. They are designed to nab the average user who on any given month accidentally buys one too many steam games or streams one too many movies from a legitimate source. They are money grubbing schemes.
This is hopefully my last post of the subject, because if you can't grasp why the implementation of such a billing system is horrible for everyone there isn't much I can do to change your mind. It really speaks for itself how dangerous this road is.
I don't understand how people can believe after all these years that telecom companies in Canada have our best interests at heart.
Time and time again it has been shown to us by their actions that they simply want to maximize profit and not utility for consumers.
Obviously its a business and I don't mind them trying to make an extra buck here or there or cutting corners. That is part of the game we play as consumers, we try to find the best deal while they attempt to rip us off(cynical, I know).
Where I draw the line is when the government agency that is supposed to protect me(CRTC), gets in bed with these scumbags and allows them to make absolutely ridiculous rules to punish the average users. Internet service in Canada, specifically Ontario is actually ridiculously poor. When I say that I want you guys to understand I mean that: A. We pay too much for the service B. We get slow speeds compared to other 1st world nations C. Speeds have not improved substantially in years(stagnation) D. Caps and limitations are now in place limiting users
I think big business is finally realizing the only way they can make internet users pay for content is to make them pay through the nose for the internet itself. I signed the petition but I have little hope it will do any good.
On January 31 2011 11:07 floor exercise wrote: What happens next year if average usage continues to go up another 31% and the lite package offered still has a 20gb cap? Even Granny who checks her email risks going over her cap, even though there was never any actual cost associated with her increase in usage.
If all Gran does is still just check her email, why would she go over the cap?
Screw Canadian Internet. Population density can't be that bad in Canada to warrant the prices we have to pay for such low bandwith limits. Speed is shit too. Iirc, the Canadian government had Bell put down their individual telephone lines long ago, so now everyone uses these lines. Then with a lack of competition, Bell was allowed to charge ridiculous amounts of money for transferring data packets. The cost of transferring data packets is relatively cheap, most of the cost of financing the company has to come from paying workers, so the companies are just either really greedy or really inefficient.
It's not like the population density of Southern Canada is that much worse than it is in most of the states so one can't make the argument that Canada has a lower population than the states.
Canada has a fucked up Telecomm industry, and I it sucks every week when I go over my bandwith limit using the school internet to work on my server, browse TL, and download engineering programs. I have a 2gb/week limit! Wtf is this shit?
I'm rather uneducated about the subject, but I think the Telecomm companies are just charging more, not because they need to, but because they make more money doing it. If there are only two major companies, and they both charge 80$ a month, they'd both make a lot more money than they would if either one tried to outcompete the other by lowering prices/increasing bandwith.
On January 31 2011 11:07 floor exercise wrote: What happens next year if average usage continues to go up another 31% and the lite package offered still has a 20gb cap? Even Granny who checks her email risks going over her cap, even though there was never any actual cost associated with her increase in usage.
If all Gran does is still just check her email, why would she go over the cap?
cause she has more email? or maybe she finally figures out internet is more than just mail. or the more likely scenario, the companies decide to lower the cap even more cause they havent upgraded their infrastructure while getting more customers.
I'm pretty ticked about how the CRTC is enabling for Bell/Rogers/etc (Shaw over here in Calgary) to basically gouge the consumers for even more money.
Sure there's the group of power users who probably torrent upwards of 1TB+ each month, but then charge them specifically rather than screwing over every damn person who uses internet in this country.
The biggest part for me is that five years ago I may have cared less, but now-a-days things like Stream, Netflix, and online user streams have become fairly mainstream and I can hit the cap (60GB here) pretty easily without torrenting.
On January 30 2011 10:18 Shana wrote: You should be grateful. I'm paying like $25 a month for shitty 2mbps internet here.
LOL I'm paying $40/mo here for 3mbps/0.7mbps in a city with 1million+ pop.
Per price our internet is shit. All I can say is at least my plan is unlimited and will be getting 25mbps/5mbps for $90/mo soon.
It's ridiculous that ISPs would even be allowed to charge per byte, if they are concerned about usage what they can do is make it so because of the speed it is impossible to go over your cap, with degrading speed. Where you have a multiple barrier system, so the first 100GB is 25mbps and then the next 50GB is only 20mpbs and so o until you reach dial up speed. That is IF internet usage actually costs them anything, I know someone who works at a specialized business class ISP, where they deliver speeds over 3Gbps and the installation for the optic cables to the business place is something like $4000 and then they are charged $200/mo there after no cap. And they are still making a profit. While this is going on in the background how can larger ISPs even justify charging people upwards of $70/mo for capped 25mbps?
I'm currently living in canada, and I'm from a 3rd world country with a population ~1 million. Back home we have better internet service (5 mbit unlimited line and NO throttling) for about ~$ 30 CAD. There is no population density issue, its just the monopoly fucking all canadians over. The world is moving towards the internet as the major source of all information, and canada is going to be left behind if they implement this. It's embarrassing to think that my home country is more tech savvy than canada... WTF. Canada should be encouraging its citizens to use the internet more... not less!
Also, bell etc; are calling this internet metering, but they already had caps in place before. What they are doing with this new "metering" bill is basically cutting your bandwith cap to 25 gb no matter what your plan is. Extreme price gouging. In a 1st world country, EVERYONE should be entitled to unlimited internet access at ~$30. Even the bandwidth caps before this was implemented were archaic.
On January 31 2011 11:33 Graham wrote: The biggest part for me is that five years ago I may have cared less, but now-a-days things like Stream, Netflix, and online user streams have become fairly mainstream and I can hit the cap (60GB here) pretty easily without torrenting.
The reason they want to have metered bandwidth is _because_ of stuff like streaming and netflix. They don't want you to drop their equally overpriced cable/satellite TV subscriptions. Worst part of all this is things are still going downhill. Even in a city like Montreal there are no good options ISP wise, sigh.
Well this thread certianly opens my eyes to other people's intenet plans. Canada doens't have it that bad, I'm paying $40/month for a 512k connection with a 10Gb onpeak/25Gb off peak cap. My off peak times are 4am-9am which makes it incredibly hard to download somethings overnight.
I'm really suprised by some of the plans in US and I wouldn't mind moving there just for the net :p
On January 31 2011 21:24 Kar98 wrote: Well this thread certianly opens my eyes to other people's intenet plans. Canada doens't have it that bad, I'm paying $40/month for a 512k connection with a 10Gb onpeak/25Gb off peak cap. My off peak times are 4am-9am which makes it incredibly hard to download somethings overnight.
I'm really suprised by some of the plans in US and I wouldn't mind moving there just for the net :p
Australia also pays outrageous prices for games. I think it's safe to say your government hates technology <.<
On January 31 2011 11:33 Graham wrote: I'm pretty ticked about how the CRTC is enabling for Bell/Rogers/etc (Shaw over here in Calgary) to basically gouge the consumers for even more money.
You do realize that the CRTC has gone on record NUMEROUS times saying that they do not have the power to actually stop ISPs from doing anything due to legislation that limits what they can do.
Basically... the CRTC has said that they want to stop ISPs from price gouging but there is no legislation that lets them do this. SO stop blaming the CRTC and look at the government for your answer as to why this can happen... Mr.Harper's, Mr. Ignatiefs, Mr. Layton, and Mr. Ducepe's parties are letting this happen, not the CRTC.
17. Accordingly, the Commission directs the Bell companies, as well as cable carriers with tariffed UBB rates for TPIA services, to implement discounted wholesale UBB rates on the basis set out in this decision, by 1 March 2011. The Commission further directs carriers whose wholesale tariffs contain UBB rates to issue revised tariffs reflecting the determinations in this decision, by 1 March 2011.
17. Accordingly, the Commission directs the Bell companies, as well as cable carriers with tariffed UBB rates for TPIA services, to implement discounted wholesale UBB rates on the basis set out in this decision, by 1 March 2011. The Commission further directs carriers whose wholesale tariffs contain UBB rates to issue revised tariffs reflecting the determinations in this decision, by 1 March 2011.
Just checked out Telus and they arn't going to be adopting these policies since the internet I'm using is technically not a Telecommunication since it is Optic.
17. Accordingly, the Commission directs the Bell companies, as well as cable carriers with tariffed UBB rates for TPIA services, to implement discounted wholesale UBB rates on the basis set out in this decision, by 1 March 2011. The Commission further directs carriers whose wholesale tariffs contain UBB rates to issue revised tariffs reflecting the determinations in this decision, by 1 March 2011.
Just checked out Telus and they arn't going to be adopting these policies since the internet I'm using is technically not a Telecommunication since it is Optic.
On January 30 2011 10:09 Freaky[x] wrote: high way systems are used and get worn down overtime, and it cost a bit more than changing or simply updating a chip at a central base or switches at a switching station. It actually cost almost nothing for them to update these and you want them to charged based on use? LOL
It's all about capital costs. It costs a ton to do R&D to create the fiber optics, a ton to put down the cables, a ton to create the stations and centers. This is all capital cost, which comes with interest. In 1990 (for example) prime interest rates were ~13%, at which rate a 3 billion dollar investment would require a return of 390 million/year just to pay down interest.
I bet you're one of those people who complain that drugs cost 30 cents in chemicals and sell for 3 bucks.
In America, drugs cost 30 cents in chemicals and sell for $150
As some of you know, the CRTC recently rendered a decision forcing all independent DSL and Cable Internet providers to substantially match incumbent (like Bell) usage rate caps. This will influence all of our internet service packages across Canada eventually, but DSL residential customers in Ontario and Quebec first, as of March 1. Along with you, we are not pleased with this, and our view is more fully expressed in our press release which you can find here: http://www.teksavvynews.com/
From March 1 on, users of the up to 5 Mbps packages in Ontario can expect a usage cap of 25GB (60GB in Quebec), substantially down from the 200GB or unlimited deals TekSavvy was able to offer before the CRTC’s decision to impose usage based billing. Future cap changes across the remaining provinces and cable services are expected soon.
Content and data like Netflix, YouTube, IPTV, large file downloads or other streaming services can consume large amounts of bandwidth and place your cap limits in jeopardy very quickly at such low caps so we econstruct everyone to monitoeat their usage carefully in the coming months to prepare, as the CRTC has imposed a very high overage rate, which will be on average over $2 per gig over the assigned cap!
To view your usage please visit https://myworld.teksavvy.com You will be able to register using the account information found at the end of this email.
Unhappy With the UBB Decision? So Are We!-Join Us!
The CRTC decision to impose UBB on the whole market is a big win for Bell and other major carriers, but a big hit to everyone else in Canada. To view the CRTC decision, go to: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2011/2011-44.htm
Like our customers, and Canadian internet users everywhere, we are not happy with this new development. We will continue our efforts to fight the imposition of exorbitant bandwidth charges on usage with virtually no incremental cost to Bell and other UBB carriers, and we will develop strategies to restore the usage levels and costs our customers have come to expect. But we need your support to succeed, and get back to the cost structure we have a right to expect.
If like us you are disappointed with the CRTC’s decision, make your views known on UBB and what it means to you (and Canada frankly) by going to www.stopthemeter.ca, where you will find a petition against UBB. Sign it, get involved, and together we will make a difference! Let everyone you know understand that Canada is about to become the most expensive internet market in the industrialized world!
We will keep you informed of our efforts, and look to you for your help.
If you watched the youtube link posted earlier with Strombolopolous describing the situation, Rogers/Bell will be basically enforcing 2000% profits on every GB you download over the laughable limit.
The government forces the giants to lease their lines to the smaller companies for the sake of competition (since they own pretty much all the lines in CND), and that same government just allowed them to cripple their service beyond recognition. If you guys didn't know, Bell is given the rights to waive the extra fees for their own customers.
If anyone even argues against the fact that this is a blatant cash grab, I seriously wouldn't know what to tell you.
Just an FYI I recently found out that tekksavvy still offers unlimited I would say prices but I don't think TL allows that kind of thing. I am gonna ditch rogers and swap. OFC there is always the danger that they change their prices after I switch. They have that catch all BS fine print:"all prices are subject to change without notice".
Oh well still miles better than bell/rogers imo cheers.
From March 1 on, users of the up to 5 Mbps packages in Ontario can expect a usage cap of 25GB (60GB in Quebec), substantially down from the 200GB or unlimited deals TekSavvy was able to offer before the CRTC’s decision to impose usage based billing. Future cap changes across the remaining provinces and cable services are expected soon.
On February 01 2011 13:31 Almin wrote: Write to your congressmen and women...this law can't last long, it shouldn't, it's a travisty.
Damn, people from Mexico coming to America, now those filthy Canadians are going to come to America for our fabulous unlimited internet, oh hell naw.
Just did
And if by chance my provider get lowered to 25go (I'm at 100 right now with Videotron and my brother said we would be upped to 125 this month). Not likely to happen since videotron has his own cables.
I'm gonna call 'em and throw a fit and I'm gonna call *option consomation* (protects buyers) and point them to this hypocrisy that we call free market.
Just think about it, all those damn site with video publicity. You're gonna PAY to get pub shoved in your face...
Just to illustrate to the people who don't understand why this is a problem I will illustrate a situation that shows how absurd this is. Lets say I'm watching a stream of my favorite SC2 players and watching in a high quality. From what I can tell from my tests high quality streaming is around 200-250 kb/s but lets be generous and say 100 kb/s, which on Justin.tv i get when i watch the stream at 480p.
Now how much SC2 can I watch on a $40/month 5mbit connection (note this stream only uses 1/5th of my allowed speed)? Well at a 25gig cap (26214400 kilobytes) it gives me 70hours (25gig/100kb = 252144 seconds at 100kb/s = 70.04 hours ) a month of watching time which in a 30day month is 2.3 hours per day. Anything more then that I am paying overages for something that is 1/5th my allotted speed I pay for.
For the people who use the "extreme users" argument how is watching 480p video for more then 2.3 hours a day "extreme" when the average american watches 3 hours of web video a day and over 5 hours of television in 2009(source).
So what is the point I am getting at. This is not targeting "extreme users" if it was it would have much higher caps. No this is greedy companies who feel threatened by new media replacing their outdated and overpriced TV/Satellite services. This is to stop people from getting Netflix and get Bell on demand.
This is big companies who instead of improving there service to adapt to a changing media want to make a ton of money on existing services and punish those who search for alternatives.
i wonder where they get the idea for 25gig/month? That is such an absurdly low cap, especially as the number of computer users in a family goes up. If I were to choose a random number I'd place it at around 40, at the very least.
Charging by the amount you use is stupid, but limits work just fine here in Australia. I know we're not Sweden or anything but I get a 500gb cap for a reasonable price and I imagine 99.9999% of internet users are never going to use up 500gb.
Here in Australia there are a few ISPs who charge for extra gigs of downloads for once you reach your download limit for the month but they're not necessary, they just stop your internet from being capped until you use up the bandwidth you just purchased. I think doing that is perfectly fine but per byte seems ridiculous since you can easily use up a large amount of bandwidth without really knowing.
Even day9 daily is like a 300mb show so if you're an avid fan that uses up around 6-7gb per month just for one thing..
This is a horrible development, i really hope you protest and can get this overturned. Doing some research and it is clear that countries with low population density struggles with "fair" internet deals, however if you only look at the south 1/3rd of Canada i see no reason why this should be an issue in thoose areas.
Sounds like another fake argument the companies are using in order to make more money for themself...
The new internet metering planning to be implemented is at it's best a misguided and horribly flawed solution to a non-existent problem. At it's worst it is a blatant cash-grab and evidence of the duopoly between the Government of Canada and cable companies.
To start, the limits being placed on GB usage are in no way targetted towards "extreme users". A 25GB limit per month, something that's slated to become a norm, is not even enough to watch 2.5 hours of low-quality video a day. The average american watches 3 hours of online video and 5 hours of television a day. The data caps are just not realistic reflections of what an average person uses. My household in particular, with 2 children who use the internet often, will be paying $200 per month just to use basic high speed internet if we do not change our plan and pay more to our ISP for the same service.
It stifles the internet as a meaningful way to deliver content. Netflix, which is just making headway in Canada, is no longer even considerable. A typical movie would cost me $8 worth of GB just to be downloaded, something completely ridiculous. The cost being placed on the GB is completely artificial, charging $2 per GB when it costs the ISP only $0.02 to deliver it. Other media, such as video games, will also become ridiculous to try and deliver online. Steam, a content delivery system used for video game delivery and marketting by major developers such as Valve, is no longer a realistic option.
Australia has internet metering, yes, but the data caps in Australia are very realistic.
Do you agree with such outrageous markups? Are you the type of person who buys $200 sneakers because they have a Nike logo on them, even though it cost Nike pennies to make them? What if a taxi cost $300 for a 5 minute ride home?
Please understand that internet metering like this has no place in a 1st-world country like Canada. It is purely in the financial interest of major telecommunications companies that do not need it and it is directly in the disinterest of every Canadian that does.
That it hinders the growth of other businesses ( Netflix only goes to less than DVD quality ( 5000 kbit/sec video )), and the quality is lower because the majority of the users don't have good internet. Even if they could offer those services, it's not possible unless the users had better internet.
It will now be hundreds of times cheaper to buy hard drives to fill with content and mail cross-continent than pay the overage fees of 2$ for transmitting that same amount of data.
A small amount of headway is being made but overall the ISP/telecom landscape is still just incredibly bad for the consumer. For every person who gets it there's still as many writing moronic articles equating data transfer to shipping packages via couriers to justify UBB and ridiculous comparisons like that. Or they are still perpetuating the lie that it's extreme users and internet hogs on behalf of the ISPs
And this is really only to stop them from billing independent ISPs, they are likely still going to enforce their caps that get lower and lower because these ISPs don't service most of Canada. I don't see them ever stopping in their intent to fuck us at every turn until the monopoly/duopoly is completely broken up somehow.
Here's a funny comment from that cbc article
"I am a Canadian living in the Philippines, I can make a call to Canada for less than 5 cents a minute, my internet with unlimited download is $20.00 a month. This is a 3rd world country, like most countries here in Asia, and they have the best and fastest internet compared to Canada and its cheap. Yes, the wages here are very low, so how do we compare??? The hardware costs almost the same here as it does in Canada. If they charged the same rates as in Canada the whole system would collapse in a matter of days as no body could afford it. Obviously there is no competition in Canada. You people are getting SCREWED!!!"
On February 01 2011 23:28 CCK wrote: This is hilarious.
It will now be hundreds of times cheaper to buy hard drives to fill with content and mail cross-continent than pay the overage fees of 2$ for transmitting that same amount of data.
On February 02 2011 00:58 buickskylark wrote: i'm hearing a lot about how third world countries are getting faster internet, higher cap, for much cheaper prices. How is that economically possible?
Less population density + cheaper labor. Cheaper labor is a big part of it. Products from China for example cost pennies to make even though we may pay a hundred dollars for it once imported. Not that China is third world or has cheap internet, but it's just an example of how cheap labor can greatly impact the prices of things.
"One certain result though, is that Bell will make much more profit on its Internet service, and discourage Canadians from watching TV and movies on the internet instead of CTV, which Bell now owns."
and this is from a spokesperson for a high-speed internet provider.
A small amount of headway is being made but overall the ISP/telecom landscape is still just incredibly bad for the consumer. For every person who gets it there's still as many writing moronic articles equating data transfer to shipping packages via couriers to justify UBB and ridiculous comparisons like that. Or they are still perpetuating the lie that it's extreme users and internet hogs on behalf of the ISPs
And this is really only to stop them from billing independent ISPs, they are likely still going to enforce their caps that get lower and lower because these ISPs don't service most of Canada. I don't see them ever stopping in their intent to fuck us at every turn until the monopoly/duopoly is completely broken up somehow.
Here's a funny comment from that cbc article
"I am a Canadian living in the Philippines, I can make a call to Canada for less than 5 cents a minute, my internet with unlimited download is $20.00 a month. This is a 3rd world country, like most countries here in Asia, and they have the best and fastest internet compared to Canada and its cheap. Yes, the wages here are very low, so how do we compare??? The hardware costs almost the same here as it does in Canada. If they charged the same rates as in Canada the whole system would collapse in a matter of days as no body could afford it. Obviously there is no competition in Canada. You people are getting SCREWED!!!"
This is actually true.
A basic plan for Internet in the Philippines at home starts at 22.50 USD, nets you a landline AND a DSL with a guaranteed floor speed of 384kbps. On unsaturated lines, normal speeds are at 1-1.5 mbps; my personal line since I use this for "work" is rated at a floor of 768kbps and a speed ceiling of 3-4mbps when not shared (i.e. I'm directly cabled to the modem). For that speed that I have, you'd pay something like 40-50 USD. DSL Internet for 100-150 USD a month is already business-level bandwidth, and can vary on location and provider from a 3mbps floor to 15mbps peak. T1 lines are a bit more expensive and available for businesses only, but they're already at Korea-level speeds (20mbps-ish in the CBDs).
Wireless connectivity based on USB sticks here are provided by cellphone towers (some of the most saturated and high-capacity providers in the world).
All of these connections are NOT bandwidth capped in any way whatsoever; and most low-end connections actually are not on fixed IPs.
ugh... we get screwed every which way in Canada...
This has a lot to do with the television/movie ratings dropping off the planet.... Everyones downloading/streaming stuff online and they want us back in on the couch/in the theatre watching their garbage.
I've signed this with every e-mail account i have.... It's a shame but I dont think theres any way of stopping it...
You can't compare this to electrical billing because no one pays a flat fee of $xx per month for xx KWh or whatever for electricity. It's based on usage just like water.
As far as I'm concerned, if I'm paying $50 a month for 10Mbps down (I actually get around 8 with Rogers), I should be able to download at that rate 24/7 for the whole month. 10Mpbs comes out to 1.25 MBps which means if I download for 14 hours straight at my cap, I've passed my 60 GB limit. How is that even reasonable? Seriously, < 30 minutes of max downloading per day and that's it. I check daily to see where I stand in terms of used bandwidth to make sure the next day I don't watch a stream for too long or if I need to download something on campus instead of at home.
Someone said it isn't the amount being used but the amount of people using bandwidth that causes the problem. Is that correct? Seems off to me.
I'd much rather have an option to do 120GB a month with 5Mbps down (56 hours of max download a month). That would make more sense to have as an option if the issue is too much bandwidth usage at peak time.
Modem rental prices going up again with Rogers this year. It's a small bump but combined with all their various $/gb overages and reduced caps, it really starts to add up. And yeah, anyone siding with Rogers/Bell on this is pretty dumb if they can't see the real motives behind all of this. Sorry.
Personal issues aside, the growing trend online is to higher bandwidth applications, web sites, videos, etc. It's a joke how relatively bad off we are and it doesn't seem like it's getting any better.
The over charge cap is going to screw my roommates and I. We're with Bell. We pay about $80/month. We get some kind fo discount from my roommate somehow. That 80/$ is on the cheapest plan, and we simply jsut go over and pay it. Since there is a max then can charge you for going over we end up using about 300 gigs a month. But they cant charge us for more then 30. I know we are not the only ones who do this.
sign the petition!
Ive heard basically every party is against the motion except the conservative party. Hopefully is get shut down.
On February 02 2011 03:57 DarkGeneral wrote: Just to give more data:
I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
ISP: Rogers Service: High Speed Cable Internet Cost: 60 $/month Uptime: 99.9% DL: 10 MBs UL: 1 MBs Allowance: 60 GB/month Overage penalty: 2$ a GB, maxing out at 20$ extra
Costly, but decent service at least.
The cost would come down if there was some competition...
Really? Is this a retentions or grandfathered plan? Rogers overcharge cap is $50... if it was $20, i would instantly switch over ><
You maybe right, it actually maybe because of a grandfathered contract, hadnt thought of that! Because for 7 months we had UNLIMITED download (because of the old days contract when there was no limit in DLing.
They sent us a mail saying that in 7 months, the unlimited DL will end... ...so during that time I downloaded 1.2TBs of movies take that Greedy Rogers!
It's really funny that I am allowed to leave my HDTV on 24/7 for a month straight which consumes bandwidth at a constant rate of about 20mbps (twice my internet connection) but if I did the same for two days on my internet connection I'd be paying overage fees.
The data is the same. But I get cable and internet through the same company and they don't want me to cancel one and just use the other. Unfortunately for them that's exactly what I am doing once Teksavvy expands to my area if this thing gets overturned.
You guys are getting ripped off, I pay $30 in canada for 25mb/3mb from telus, 250gb limit. They haven't reduced the cap yet but I'm just keeping my fingers crossed.
On February 02 2011 07:10 politik wrote: You guys are getting ripped off, I pay $30 in canada for 25mb/3mb from telus, 250gb limit. They haven't reduced the cap yet but I'm just keeping my fingers crossed.
Telus will be changing their GB limits, this is relevant to you and you should be signing the petition and sending an email to your local MP.
On February 02 2011 06:23 floor exercise wrote: It's really funny that I am allowed to leave my HDTV on 24/7 for a month straight which consumes bandwidth at a constant rate of about 20mbps (twice my internet connection) but if I did the same for two days on my internet connection I'd be paying overage fees.
The data is the same. But I get cable and internet through the same company and they don't want me to cancel one and just use the other. Unfortunately for them that's exactly what I am doing once Teksavvy expands to my area if this thing gets overturned.
Can't believe I totally missed this point. Thanks for bringing it up.
It's a very 1990 idea. They need to get with the times, and start charging a flat rate for internet speed regardless of how much a person uses the bandwidth they're already paying for.
At one point, TF2 was only 2.50 USD... ( and it only costs them 8cents to send ~8 GB of data ), but with this cap it'll hinder the growth of businesses that rely on sending data to their customers...
for us here in New Zealand, the only type of internet plans for households are paid by amount of byte used. there used to be an unlimited plan but the speed was incredibly slow.
sad sad developments, I'm scared, and hurray for a george stroumboulopoulos link earlier in the thread.
reasonable happy with my current isp acanac (though they are just a reseller on bell's lines).Aside from my modem is probably dieing on me recently,short few second disconnects that are enough to kick me from bnet,a 2-wire from bell had for a few years. Sadly looks like things are going to get worse.
I received an add from Videotron this morning advertising their new internet movie renting feature - you can stream a movie for 4.99 for 24 hours of access... That is an absurd price compared to Netflix and other online company.
It wasn't so long ago that Canada was a leader in providing fast internet to the public at reasonable prices for unlimited access. As a result, Canadians were early and savvy users.
Since then, all we've seen is the increasing escalation of prices coupled with a complete disregard for network upgrading and expansion. Now we pay some of the highest rates in the world for some of the shittiest internet. Awesome.
And now this.
I'm tired of the ridiculous arguments equating internet use to a public utility. Yeah, you use more power your bill goes up. Yes, you consume more water your bill goes up. Unlike these utilities, internet usage does not represent a direct, measurable, incremental cost to the provider - it's just bandwidth. The cost is in the infrastructure. Once that's in place, the rest is maintenance and profit.
So we have our two major telecom companies enjoying record profits without upgrading said infrastructure. And will these extra costs we pay go into upgrading the networks - i.e. actually put towards the physical entity that the telecom companies are selling us? Of course not.
There are conspiracy theorists who believe that this has more to do with TV than it does actual internet usage. Both of our major internet providers are, at heart, cable companies. They have a vested interest in getting people back in front of the TV watching ad-heavy programming. If it's all of a sudden more cost-effective to watch that HD show on CTV than it is to stream it online then they've accomplished just that. The timing of this decision with the arrival of Netflix in Canada is somewhat telling.
Considering there are several pages of disapproval towards the CRTC and UBB already, I'll just say what I think is important, and hopefully nobody has brought it up already...
On Facebook, look up the group "Rally Against UBB / Rassemblement Contre La FEFU - Montreal" or Event, whatever it is called on Facebook. (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=174967459212532http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=174967459212532) There you can find information on a protest that's taking place in Montreal. It will be on Saturday. Don't worry about the weather it shouldn't be as bad as today's according to what I've heard.
I think that UBB is something that definitely needs to be protested, I need to have the right to watch my TV shows, it's just ridiculous that the CRTC could let something like that pass. They were already bad, but this is just way too much.
On February 03 2011 01:27 Flaccid wrote: What a joke.
It wasn't so long ago that Canada was a leader in providing fast internet to the public at reasonable prices for unlimited access. As a result, Canadians were early and savvy users.
Since then, all we've seen is the increasing escalation of prices coupled with a complete disregard for network upgrading and expansion. Now we pay some of the highest rates in the world for some of the shittiest internet. Awesome.
And now this.
I'm tired of the ridiculous arguments equating internet use to a public utility. Yeah, you use more power your bill goes up. Yes, you consume more water your bill goes up. Unlike these utilities, internet usage does not represent a direct, measurable, incremental cost to the provider - it's just bandwidth. The cost is in the infrastructure. Once that's in place, the rest is maintenance and profit.
So we have our two major telecom companies enjoying record profits without upgrading said infrastructure. And will these extra costs we pay go into upgrading the networks - i.e. actually put towards the physical entity that the telecom companies are selling us? Of course not.
There are conspiracy theorists who believe that this has more to do with TV than it does actual internet usage. Both of our major internet providers are, at heart, cable companies. They have a vested interest in getting people back in front of the TV watching ad-heavy programming. If it's all of a sudden more cost-effective to watch that HD show on CTV than it is to stream it online then they've accomplished just that. The timing of this decision with the arrival of Netflix in Canada is somewhat telling.
They received a lot of money at one point... but nothing went to upgrading anything...
Leader? Asia ( Korea/Japan all have far superior internet access with way more bandwidth at lower cost ) ~as low as 60 dollars for 1Gbps... ( 1024 mbit line )
~100 dollars CAN for 50mbit/3 line...a heavily capped... ~47 dollars CAN for a mere 15mbit/ 0.50 line... 100GB cap... ( first 6 months is cheaper )
The other guy said something about ~30 dollars from is actually ~50 dollars/month ( fine print says the ~28 dollars/month is for the first three months... http://www.telus.com/content/internet/
Whaaaaaaaa? I just got this email from the site that hosted the petition
blah blah blah... And more than 330,000 signed the petition to stop metered Internet use.
The result? Stephen Harper has ordered a review of the CRTC’s decision, and the Liberals are so impressed they say they’re “committed to oppose” usage-based billing. It’s what we hoped for, but we didn’t think it would happen so fast! You moved politics! blah blah blah...
Videotron just this month upped their download limit on all their internet services so hopefully they won't try to fuck me over like I first imagined they would. I'm already paying a ridiculous amount every month for their service and would definitely cancel all my services if it cost me more than it already does.
On January 28 2011 14:38 domovoi wrote: It's "duopoly."
In a competitive market, charging by how much you download makes a lot of sense for both consumers and the company. That way "regular" users get a low price and the handful of hardcore users pay for the bandwidth they use. Charging a flat fee causes people to externalize the cost of their extra bandwidth use on other users, which is not a good thing.
First, let me say i understand the economics behind this argument. However, I think there are two problems with this: 1) its not a competitive market, so even with regulation they can get away with charging higher rates than the socially optimal value (i think thats the term?). Personally, i think it would be more likely that the average person will pay the same amount (so no benefit) and the "hardcore" users will end up paying more.
2) Information & Freedom: the internet is becoming more and more important for both of these, and while charging per byte wont =fascism, it will restrict some more than others.
Also, people do pay more for high-speed internet already
blah blah blah... And more than 330,000 signed the petition to stop metered Internet use.
The result? Stephen Harper has ordered a review of the CRTC’s decision, and the Liberals are so impressed they say they’re “committed to oppose” usage-based billing. It’s what we hoped for, but we didn’t think it would happen so fast! You moved politics! blah blah blah...
Still hope?
It's Harper. Unless baby blood is transfered through cable networks and he can no longer bathe in the heat of the still-born this isn't going anywhere.
I just received this email - apparently from Ignatief's office.
It’s another step towards an open and competitive internet in Canada, and it's thanks to you.
Late last night, news broke that Tony Clement will ask the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to reverse their decision on usage-based internet billing – a decision that allows internet service providers to impose download limits and new fees.
Our work is not yet done. We need to keep up the pressure until the CRTC’s decision is reversed once and for all.
Canadian families and businesses need open, affordable, unlimited internet access. The future of our economy depends on it. The Conservative government should have known that from the start.
When messages like yours reached us this past weekend – on Twitter and Facebook, by email, phone and fax – my Liberal colleagues and I knew what we had to do.
On Tuesday morning, we sided with you against the CRTC’s decision. By the end of the day, Liberal MPs on the Industry Committee had already begun an investigation. Then, yesterday, we kept the pressure on the Conservative government during Question Period in the House of Commons. At tonight’s meeting of the Industry Committee, Liberal MPs will tell CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein to reverse course.
This isn't the first time that you’ve stared down the Conservatives over an open internet — and that's why tens of thousands of you visited our action page at http://www.liberal.ca/ubb/, to join our digital policy email list and help carry the fight into Parliament.
This is your movement. You rallied on Twitter. You wrote emails and called Tony Clement’s office. You made the difference.
We all know that there are wider issues at stake here. After five years of Stephen Harper, Canada still has no digital plan. The Conservatives’ proposed copyright bill contains unfair digital lock provisions. Canadians are less connected and face higher internet costs than citizens of other OECD countries. And don’t even get me started on the long-form census.
Liberals have been engaged on these issues. In 2009, we worked with the Openmedia.ca / Save Our Net Coalition on Net Neutrality, a position that we support wholeheartedly. Last fall, we announced our Open Government Initiative, which will make government data accessible to all Canadians.
At the heart of our digital policy is a core Liberal value: we must make Canada more competitive and more innovative. That means expanding high-speed internet access to every region of the country, fair and equitable wholesale access, and transparent pricing.
We must build a digital strategy for Canada that embraces the energy, entrepreneurial spirit, and innovative creativity of consumers, businesses and digital influencers like you.
We'll keep the pressure on the Conservatives in Parliament to make sure they follow through and reverse the CRTC’s decision on usage-based billing. This victory is just a taste of what we can accomplish, if we continue this fight together.
I hope you’ll join the Liberal Party's digital policy email list at http://www.liberal.ca/ubb/. Let’s build a more open, more competitive future for Canada.
This is going all over the place. CRTC comparing bandwidth to oil, whining about games consuming bandwidth, so on so forth. I wish I had an article but apparently UBB only got delayed by 60 days and not outright thrown out yet.
Looks like by march we will know. Seems like with everything that is happening in Egypt however unrelated the causes are it might scare the gov't into not dealing with the issue for at least the time being.
Jack Layton scares me and I don't agree with many of the NDP policies but I'm seriously voting for them in the next election based entirely on the fact that they're the only people who really seem to give a shit.
watching some of their reasoning just makes me rage GUSY WE ARE GONNA RUN OUT OF INTERNETS AT THE RATE WERE CONSUMING IT or just suck it up, build a bigger fking pipe and get on par with 3rd world countries please
My cousin just told me that teksavvy, my isp, just raised their cap to 300 GB in March. That's weird considering we got an email a few weeks ago that they were going to go through with UBB and lower the cap to 25 GB, but instead, now they are even raising it.
Anywhere use Teksavvy or know what's going on in Canada?
Rogers and Bell are evil corporations and metering does kind of suck for users (I'm sure most of us would agree that 25GB cap is ridiculously low) but I think the metering/caps make sense from an environmental perspective, which of course is not the perspective behind internet metering/caps (the Bottom Line is). Internet usage is just one example of excessive energy use which has obvious implications unless you're part of the "global warming is a lie" camp.
What really needs to be done is introducing overage charges (which would require caps) for things like water usage in Canada. The per capita water consumption here is shameful (second only to the US). It might get people to stop watering driveways or doing other wasteful activities. Higher water prices in Europe and other developed regions deter people from wasting as much. I don't mean to derail the thread with potentially naive, idealistic environmentalism but I think it's worth contemplating nonetheless.
On February 12 2011 09:59 buickskylark wrote: My cousin just told me that teksavvy, my isp, just raised their cap to 300 GB in March. That's weird considering we got an email a few weeks ago that they were going to go through with UBB and lower the cap to 25 GB, but instead, now they are even raising it.
Anywhere use Teksavvy or know what's going on in Canada?
I was trying to convince my family to switch Teksavvy, as it is one of the best providers that still have an unlimited option. However, even though it has similar price to Bell, the fact that you can bundle everything with Bell is very enticing.
On February 12 2011 09:59 buickskylark wrote: My cousin just told me that teksavvy, my isp, just raised their cap to 300 GB in March. That's weird considering we got an email a few weeks ago that they were going to go through with UBB and lower the cap to 25 GB, but instead, now they are even raising it.
Anywhere use Teksavvy or know what's going on in Canada?
I was trying to convince my family to switch Teksavvy, as it is one of the best providers that still have an unlimited option. However, even though it has similar price to Bell, the fact that you can bundle everything with Bell is very enticing.
Meh, stop screwing around with my internet
yes I agree , I've been also trying to convince people to switch to teksavvy (because of its unlimited usage option). Question: Are there other ISPs that provide this service atm in Canada? and more specifically Ontario (just wondering)
edit: just read that letter posted from Ignatief's office. This is awesome, I just want to share my love for Canada.
Man, my internet is so slow, i was talking to my friend in victoria and hes lagging too. We both use shaw, have they capped it? Is shaw just terrible, or whats going on. Can't even google shit, cause its going like 500 ping for a server in my city. -_- Its ridiculous, and im not downloading or anything.
like $20/month for 10mb with unlimited downloads. I once got sent an email notifying me of unusually high downloading when i pulled down 600gb in a 2 week period, but no charges or any weird shit like that.
I kinda presumed unlimited net was standard? it's been this way here since like 2006.
I can't even watch the GSL properly without insane buffering times. I guess i would have to wait for vods which take forever to load cause of this lag. -_-
If the companies want to charge per byte, then they know by proven fact they will make more money that way. If the companies disagree with charging per byte, then that means per byte is in favor of us.
If they do charge per byte, you can forget any 'deals'. They will still have them, but the deals will not favor the customers. Think cell phone companies people... You really think charging per usage is any good, or just a flat fee?
I would pick a flat fee in a million years. Even if it is expensive, that means you can go to the nines with everything.
Hello everyone, just updating this thread as there's some news that has come to my attention. Apparently we now have a Canadian Gamers' Organization that takes care of pressuring ISPs who are monitoring gaming traffic which « supposedly » (i.e. they don't according to the CGO's research) use too much bandwidth. Basically, the ISPs are literally throttling back gamer traffic. What the hell kind of country do we live in?
As long as the rates are reasonable, I see no reason why internet should be billed in such a different way than other utilities such as electricity and water. I think it's logical to have the people who use the internet the most pay the most to support it. Ideally, it would be something like $1/2GB and also have the option of purchasing data in bulk such as $40/100GB at a lower rate. If the system was like this, then it would just be straightforward rates without any stupid absolute bandwidth caps.
I live in Bulgaria and our internet is fixed (you pay X money a month and you get Y speed).
For me personally I don't think charging by the byte is a good idea because I am absolutely sure that I'll be paying more money that way. I assume though. that if you are only checking your e-mail, social networks and news websites you will be paying less money if charged per byte.
In france we don't have cap but our upload bandwidth is complete shit uploading a video takes hours and you can't really stream. however our download is usually pretty good
The problem with charging by the byte or download cap is with the rise of things such as HD streaming, HD youtube video or steam, it would be incredibly easy to go over the cap and get charged thousands (think about the MLG stream that would open several quality at once because of a bug, you wouldnt want a bug like that : p)
Personally it would kill the way i use steam. Today a game is easily 7-15go and updates can go up for more than 500mb
Some video games used to charge by the time, then realized that charging a flat fee was better for everyone. They moved onto that model, and never looked back. Why are other companies ignoring these examples?
On October 21 2011 01:43 J_D wrote: As long as the rates are reasonable, I see no reason why internet should be billed in such a different way than other utilities such as electricity and water. I think it's logical to have the people who use the internet the most pay the most to support it. Ideally, it would be something like $1/2GB and also have the option of purchasing data in bulk such as $40/100GB at a lower rate. If the system was like this, then it would just be straightforward rates without any stupid absolute bandwidth caps.
There is a difference in how electricity and water works compared to Internet. If an appliance is switched on, the voltage in the power grid sinks. To hold the voltage in the grid constant means the energy supplier has to put the same amount of power into the grid as is used by that appliance. Using water and maintaining water pressure in the grid works the same.
The running costs for Internet access is different. The costs are constant and do not change depending on how much traffic there is. What is true is, if suddenly more customers start to use video streams or BitTorrent, the provider eventually has new costs for upgrading its network. But after upgrading, the costs for maintenance will again be constant.
I am guessing, what is most costly about providing Internet access are actually all the lines that go to the customers' homes. This part of the network is the same for all customers, no matter how much traffic they produce.
On October 21 2011 01:43 J_D wrote: As long as the rates are reasonable, I see no reason why internet should be billed in such a different way than other utilities such as electricity and water. I think it's logical to have the people who use the internet the most pay the most to support it. Ideally, it would be something like $1/2GB and also have the option of purchasing data in bulk such as $40/100GB at a lower rate. If the system was like this, then it would just be straightforward rates without any stupid absolute bandwidth caps.
The issue is they are trying to charge a variable cost to something that has a fixed cost to operate.
It doesn't cost them more if I download a 1gb file, or chose not to. They still supply the capability.
It would be like charging people pay-per-view on every channel. You watch 1 TV show, $5... 2 TV shows? $10!...etc. Does that sound like a good idea?
The second issue is we don't even have a choice if we dont like their pricing. Bell and Rogers have a monopoly. And even if we could get Cogeco internet or Shaw to compete... They wont!... Rogers and cogeco (the 2 cable internet providers in Ontario) split up the land area and are not competing with each other... allowing them to charge what they want.
Bell essentially follows Roger's lead to get the pricing they want, and to cater to fiber and DSL die-hards.
The indie internet providers MUST BUY FROM THE BIG 2..... It's rediculous.
The only way to fix it is to have the infrastructure be publicly owned (which just cant happen now).
So we're basically screwed if the industry isn't regulated.
Its so sad that the Gov't just fails to see that the whole world is moving more and more to digital, and that having these pricing schemes is only going to hold Canada back and cause us to lose out on quality of life and multiple business opportunities.
no internet metering here in Denmark, i got fiber 60/60mbit and i have unlitmited download all i want . Why is there even such a heavy internet metering in canada, it's like the only country i know with huge restriction on internet, which is nonsense in 2011 and almost back to stone age of internet like. I think australia and new zealand might have some too, not sure anymore.
The real problem is that Bell and Rogers, the two major ISPs, are vertically integrated into the information media infrastructure in Canada; the same two companies provide internet, cable, wireless, home phone, etc. They are also heavily invested into content production and have a large stake in virtually all of the Canadian TV channels and shows (which are subsequently mandated by government legislation to make up a base percentage of what is shown on TV). Faster, uncapped internet would enable people to properly take advantage of Youtube, Netflix, and other internet-based media, therein decreasing the viewership for Rogers and Bell cable and associated Canadian content. Its all ridiculous, of course; people are watching internet media because they are not interested in watching (or paying for) shitty Canadian TV.
+1 for more government regulation, hopefully a regulatory board that is not funded almost exclusively by licensing and application fees from.. you guessed it, Rogers and Bell. Every year we get further behind the rest of the world in a number of hugely profitable and competitive digital industries. We need this discussion to get away from videogames and p2p sharing and move towards the fact that Canada's economy is suffering because of this.
EPT
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. 20mbit/20mbit is fine for me, and happy with a standard fee each 3rd month. About 110$.![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/BDOJf)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/M3G7f.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.pingtest.net/result/35645319.png)
