The Usage Based Billing Issue is not over in Canada
The CRTC has recently ruled that they will take 60 days to review the usage based billing decision. According to Konrad Von Finckenstein's speech to MPs - Feb. 3, 2011, he is trying to balance what heavy users pay vs light or low use users. In this respect Usage based billing is the way to go; however we do not have a fair and competitive environment in Canada. We have a an oligopoly; that is why there is no innovation or deals such as price cutting, no heavy use bandwidth plans, nothing. You can argue you get the occasional 4GB XBox by switching but I'm talking about things that matter, like bandwidth caps, reliability, fair pricing on internet use. My situation is unique, If the CRTC wants to treat the internet like water or electricity; as a utility then there should be a way for me to get just a dumb fast pipe to my house, not 3 plans with caps.
Let's say the maintenance cost of running the network is $0.03 / gigabyte, that's what the ISP's need to break even and maintain the network. I would be totally up for paying $0.06 or $0.09 per gigabyte, it would reduce my internet bill to $30 or $45 per month assuming I used 500 GB! Not only that I'm paying 2 to 3 times more then their cost! CRAZY! (They are really making a killing since I have a cap of 125GB and they charge me $70 a month that is $2.10 per gigabyte and an additional $1.00 / GB after I go over the cap)
As a consumer I'm tired of being screwed by the big telcos and cable companies, who are making tones of money hand over fist off the internet. We have no consumer protection here, and as the internet overtakes TV, Radio, and other mediums, It will cost us even more especially with the low bandwidth caps. The best example of this is Telus and their optik tv is tv over the internet, Shaw and their digital phone is simply a type of skype with a phone; which by the way you can do with a Magic Jack and it cost you nothing; (Shaw is making a killing on there phone and they don't have to do real 911 service)What is_enhanced_911 | Toddler Dies because of Glitch in enhanced 911 Services | Skype VOIP Prices
So in my opinion if your going to have caps then you account for what a family of 4 spending say 3-5 hours at home would use. Assuming there is say 4 people spend at least an hour each on youtube, or watch a movie from netflix, that is 4-6 Gigabytes a day for video, on the minimum, plus any online gaming, surfing and email; I'd say average about 10 GB a day multiply that by 30 days and you have 300GB! It adds up fast. I'm assuming your only spending 3-5 hours a day doing that, imagine if you spent all day watching movies or a marathon on netflix. You will pay and pay big time.Konrad Von Finckenstein's obviously doesn't understand the technology and Bell, Telus, Shaw and Rogers are trying to protect their old dieing business practices by making the new one unaffordable. So to this I say the CRTC should either get people that understand the technology and are not puppets of these companies or be disbanded. The CRTC has been put on record saying IPTV and VOIP services are NOT internet related. Um? Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure they use the internet, um... yep pretty sure that's why IP stands for INTERNET PROTOCOL!!!!What is IPTV | What is VOIPSo we can't stop, if we want affordable internet access here in Canada we have to keep up the pressure, I for one don't want our internet access to be like our cell phone access "The MOST EXPENSIVE in the world" I do everything on the net, I don't have cable, or subscribe to anything like that, I have a lan line phone that goes to an answering machine, but that's it. Pretty soon in the future everyone will just have a internet line coming into their house for everything, you won't have 3 times anymore you will just have one and you'll either rent or buy the hardware straight out if you want to have TV or Phone in the "Traditional Sense".What has to happen, is there needs to be 6 tiers of service. Low/Medium/High Speed with support and Low/Medium/High Speed with no support for people like me who want just a dumb pipe with lots of bandwidth.Let's make Canada a leader in the world, and encourage other companies to come to Canada for true competition, because as it is right now there are 4 companies and they are more then happy to screw us for as long as possible; and will do anything to make sure the status quo doesn't change.Donate to OpenMedia.ca
Stop The Meter
Read the CRTC Speech by Konrad Von Finckenstein's yourself.
