I really dislike the idea of the CRTC becoming involved in the Usage Based Billing policy.
I don’t, in the least, disagree with UBB. If the large communications companies weren’t under the purview of the CRTC, they would have been doing it years ago because it makes sense; use more, buy more. There is a lot of dark fibre in the urban rings, but that doesn’t string regions together. A couple of key technological improvements in fibre have expanded bandwidth by a factor of ten or more, but that has allowed the backbones to keep up rather than future-proofing.
In about ten years, given no more improvements, there is going to be a big infrastructure charge to supply the bandwidth that will be required. Without the ability to charge users for what they are using where is that money going to come from?
It would be ridiculous to think that any company will invest in that kind of expense from the goodness of their hearts so it will come down on the users instead, UBB ensures that it comes down on those demanding the bandwidth the most.
Currently the arguments I’ve heard from the tin-foil hatted types is that the successful communications companies were pushing this because of businesses like Netflix or Skype cutting into their market. That argument may be valid, but a person really should look at both sides of the coin. Netflix, Skype and similar are basing their businesses on not having to pay for the road they run on. They are taking advantage of the broadband that was put in place without them or their customers contributing to the pot.
Instead the average and below average user subsidizes the Torrent fiend and those same lower bandwidth users will be paying for the future requirements because the Netflix user can’t have jitter in their HD. How many garage start-ups are developing Internet provided rich media applications? How much more bandwidth is going to be required in the next few years for the next YouTube?
Making everyone pay the same price regardless of usage isn’t “fair”, it’s socialism.
Cheers,
lance
Updated: The CRTC decision.
Phantom
Rental figures are virtually insignificant, it hasn’t hurt Shaw’s expansion.
Besides, if you want to play UBB, it has to work both ways. If I have to pay $2 per extra GB, then why should I not be refunded $0.83 cents for every GB I don’t use?
If you are going to charge us for every extra GB we use, then refund us for the ones we dont. Simple as.
~thinker at February 6, 2011 12:06 PM
I made this argument last week.
If they can measure how much we use and overcharge above a certain useage per month, they can damn well refund us for underuse too.
Why should they charge me for gigs I don’t use and then charge some “Bandwidth Hog” again for the same bandwidth that I didn’t use?
Why are so few people addressing this?
And Phantom, buddy….don’t set your hair on fire, c’mon, now you are going over the top!
Joe
Again, from the ‘inside’, the Telcos would declare a national holiday if the CRTC WAS DISSOLVED!
It would result in less competition than there is today.
The CRTC ensures competition, or at least a government entitled and directed one (that’s not really competition, by the way, but shall we say, the ‘Canadian’ definition of competition)
Life isn’t fair, GET USED TO IT! Both arguments have merit on the surface and both are flawed in their core. Should there be UBB? Yes! Should there be a wide choice of providers and rates on that usage? Absolutely! What’s wrong with this picture is the same problem we always have, too much regulation creating too little competition. There are two solutions, fire the wholly owned Bell pricing arm, the CRTC, and replace it with what years ago we had in Alberta called a Utilities Board that regulated the rates the utility companies could charge. Thus a board of consumers and suppliers would sit down and come up with a compromise rate that allowed the provider to make money without Gramma freezing in the dark. The other solution is to break up the monopoly and allow every man or woman with a bit of fibre optic and a backhoe to provide ‘internet’.
Ok then, why is my mailbox not full of FIBER TO YOUR HOUSE for $29.95 A MONTH!!! offers from 123Fiber Inc. of Cayuga Ontario? Where’s the stumbling block?
Its of personal interest because I can’t even get cable here. But, Mountain Cable has a co-ax line running down the main road a mile away, and there’s a Bell trunk fiber in the same hole. Meanwhile Bell Satellite costs $100/month for three hundred channels of nothing on, pay-per-view way extra.
Needless to say I canceled Bell Sat and so live blessedly propaganda-free, but that’s a whole ‘nother discussion. If I was Jonesing for TV I could get HiDef broadcast off the antenna for nothing, but no TV is better than free TV IMHO.
Phantom, I’ve updated the post w/ the URL to the decision. Paragraph 17 is quite illuminating. The meat of the competition issue though is here:
26. Based on the full record of this proceeding, the Commission considers that the Bell companies’ proposed economic ITMP is inconsistent with subsection 27(2) of the Act because it would significantly limit the ability of GAS ISPs to attract retail customers that the Bell companies have chosen not to charge UBB rates. In the Commission’s view, the Bell companies’ proposed economic ITMP does not provide for equivalent treatment.
27. In light of the above, the Commission concludes that each Bell company may implement its economic ITMP only once it charges UBB rates to all its retail Internet service customers.
George Gilder on bandwidth-
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gilder.html
DanBC said: “The CRTC ensures competition…”
Well, no. That’s the point here, the CRTC just crushed the competition for reasons that make no sense unless you admit they’re carrying water for Bell et al.
Because really, how can an ISP beat Bell’s price using Bell’s own wire and Bell’s own trunk if Bell isn’t gouging? And really, of what interest is it to anyone other than the ISP if guy A downloads ten to a hundred times what guy B does for the same flat fee?
I’ll tell you why, again. Its because Bell ain’t going to get $100/month for satellite if The Phantom can watch Discovery Channel on Netflix for $7.99/month. Commercial free, too! And Rogers ain’t going to get $5.99 plus late fees for renting “Ben 10 Alien Force Volume 6” if The Phantom can show it to his little visitors on Netflix for that same $7.99/month.
And Telus ain’t going to get $65/month for three years plus whatever-per-minute plus long distance plus roaming plus $0.50 per text plus whatever per email plus ghodknowswhat per gig for mobile browsing… if JoeSixpack Corp can put up some 4G towers around here and sell me a flat data package, because its all just data…
Remember what I said above about Canadians being the most propagandized nation ever? This discussion is what that looks like in every day life. CRTC is the lamprey that sucks the freakin’ life out of all of us, and half of us think that’s a good thing to have. Nobody other than KevinB has the hands-on knowledge that puts the lie to the BS we’ve all been told, I’m only guessing from inference, general knowledge and an evil suspicious mind.
That’s why I asked about the pole costs for fiber. I have no way to find that out but I suspect I’m getting freakin’ ripped off out the wazoo by like fifty scumbag rent seeking outfits. That’s how business gets done here, special deal buddy buddy backroom, snow the suckers out front.
Please understand that I’m not ticked at anyone who has commented here, I’m incandescently p1ssed off at the -@ssh0le$- with their hands in my pockets up to the shoulder, telling me its all for my own good and without them we’d all come to tears.
Jeeze.
Lance posted: “…each Bell company may implement its economic ITMP only once it charges UBB rates to all its retail Internet service customers.”
Yep. So Bell just goes to all UBB all the time, and Joe ISP is forced to as well. Result, I’m screwed.
Hence the uproar, yes?
The companies are in business to make profits. They will,and should,use any means to do so.If that takes getting into bed with the CRTC,they’ll do it.
Case in point,about 20 years ago I was one of the few Canadians (that didn’t have a dog in the fight) to speak to the CTRC about the long-distance monopoly. I was invited to speak by one of the bigwigs at Rogers.
The CRTC is a regulatory body,therefore they will regulate.
Status quo will not solve the problem of massive bandwidth needs during prime time Phantom.
Look at it from a power generation argument. You have a ‘base load’, it has to be available at all times regardless of actual usage because it is needed at some times. This is the backbones across the country.
Windmills are your local ISP. Good local generation, non-existent base load.
Where we stand is a degrading backbone and really good metro-nets, but getting content to and from that area is beginning to suck.
This is an attempt to ameliorate the problems beginning to show on the base load.
I have both TV and Internet coming into my home with Shaw, through the same cable wiring.
So answer me this: How is it that I can watch unlimited Video On Demand on the TV side of the cable coming into my home for a flat rate but if I now try to do the same through the Internet side of the cable coming into my home I suddenly have a capped amount?
To Archie and Rose and IanB:
I’m guessing (without having read) that there’s a nice, teensy little clause in the contract to the effect of: “The Terms and Conditions described herein may be modified unilaterally at any time, but with 30 days’ notice to the customer.” It’s also entirely possible that first-born children were also promised.
Never trust what a contract says on its face. Contract lawyers are the weaselliest lawyers out there, IMO, and can parse a clause to within an inch of its life. They could use plain language, but legalese is what keeps them in business.
Phantom
One last time
The Telcos would celebrate the end the CRTC
“Phantom
One last time
The Telcos would celebrate the end the CRTC”
Well, duh.
They’re like Russian oligarchs. They flourished under government control that prevented meaningful competition until it’s too late in the game to compete.
Russtovich, that’s really an apples and oranges comparison.
First, you don’t have pure Video on Demand, you have available video.
Second, you pay for each one you watch so it isn’t unlimited at a flat rate.
Third, the technology is _vastly_ different, that’s why you have a cable modem vs. just connecting to your set top box.
Fourth, you don’t have the same pricing for your television. You have tiers of available channels; each costing more. If you have HD, you also pay more.
Yes it’s “unlimited” as in always on, but it isn’t unlimited services offered.
I currently have 2 pipes available in the house, Telus and Delta Cable. Shaw is busy stringing lines in my neighborhood now … I expect to have another pipe at the curb within the next couple of months.
Telus was visibly busy doing “something” at the local junction boxes (don’t know what they are called) over the last couple of months … I suspect it had something to do with a new offering – Optik TV.
In a near future nutshell, I will have 3 hard pipes to my house (I don’t know how many wireless options … at least Telus, Bell and Rogers).
If the infrastructure is so expensive, does it really make sense to build three toll highways?
DanBC: “They have been forced, in the past, by government decree, to provide POTS service to potential customers, if they lived ‘off the grid’ with the customer paying a nominal charge. If someone lived 10km off the grid, the company was on the hook for a new lead, with all the poles and associated cable/strand and such. That’s not a subsidy.”
Nonsense. The Telcos, when they made their rate cases to the CRTC, included these costs (plus) for jacking POTS rates for those “on the grid”.
BTW: I completely for UBB – but, if I don’t use … I don’t want to pay. Please don’t tell me that I have to pay for infrastructure to the door, I have been paying for that for the last 16 years.
I can’t wait for my internet bill to drop in price. That’s what will happen, right? Seeing as how all the major firms pretty much offer the same packages for the same price, that must mean the casual users will see smaller bills, right?
Right?
Right?
@TJ “What other service on the planet is the same price no matter how much you use it.”
You pay as much for a month’s worth of cable television service as someone who watches twice as many programs.
You pay as much for a month’s phone service as someone who calls twice as many people.
Your membership at a gym that you never go to costs just as much per month as someone who actually works out every day.
You pay as much for your car loan as people who drive twice as far.
A person who spends eight hours a day at work pays as much rent on his apartment as someone who’s unemployed and stays home all day.
If you go to Disneyland, you pay the same price to get in as someone who doesn’t go on any rides. And while you’re there, your hotel costs as much as the honeymoon couple in the next room who spend their whole vacation in bed.
See? There are PLENTY of services where a contract sets a set price for all of a customer’s enjoyment thereof. Just because one such service promised more than it can deliver doesn’t mean the customers who relied on that promise in choosing to do business with that business.
nut’s to all of it …i am past the point of caring about this crap …i just want to know will my internet bill be going up or down or staying where it is at , i do not subscribe to netflix , i don’t download sh!t , so what is the verdict for a guy like me?
Lance said: “Status quo will not solve the problem of massive bandwidth needs during prime time Phantom.”
I can’t find the link, but there was an -amazing- lecture about this on youtube or Google a couple years ago. Google Fellow speech about networks from original telephone to the future of the web. Basically he covered the original hard wired phone net that focussed on reliable connection, to the packet switched network that focussed on throughput. Maybe somebody here has a better memory than I do.
According to the speech, the coming loads on the web cannot be solved by increased throughput. Example, today’s Superbowl. Given unrestricted access, there’s no web server in the world that wouldn’t get crushed streaming that video. The whole trunk would be full of Super Bowl video packets, each viewer getting their own stream. The only way it can work is with non-local cache, where copies are streamed from one source to many nodes, then re-streamed to more and more and ultimately to the viewers.
CRTC and the whole telecom structure is maintaining investment and locking in users to this single server, trunk-and-branch topology which -in principle- cannot expand to meet the load we know is coming. Its the same endlessly repeated central planning model that never ever works.
Imagine 200 gigabit per second fiber end users, passing data to and from the cloud Lance. Even running processes on the cloud using on the fly created non-local processing clusters. That is what is coming down the pipe. You think you’re going to manage that with throttling and user caps? Is a trunk based central server topology going to even touch a load like that? There no way in the world.
We can’t imagine what the answer to that problem is going to be yet, but some guy out there is going to figure it out and then sell it. How society needs to manage that level of change, and rate of change, is by getting the hell out of the way and let the innovators innovate.
lance:
How much of the gas tax is actually used to maintain roadways?
You know better than to suggest that’s what it’s used for. In Saskatoon, for instance, the city is using it for water utility projects and debt servicing.
Some the opinion on this issue might motivated by the idea that in some people there is an inherent and childish notion that because some people are getting a lot more use out of a service (the Internet) than they are …. whilst paying the same fee is just (wait for it) UNFAIR.
On the other hand those big users will think it’s selfish and oh-so conservative to make them pay for their extra use when they (claim) they can’t afford it.
It is an interesting debate and I am enjoying all the commentary.
I wasn’t ever going to get into the who paid what to lay the original infrastructure. It’s a moot point that means nothing. For the most part, the original infrastructure has been completely replaced at least once. The ‘investment’ has long since been paid back.
The free, in perpetuity, right of ways have never been paid for. That’s an ongoing cost to the landowner. At least oil companies pay for their right of ways, what’s so special about these leeches? And that’s not the only ongoing cost.
In a dispute with Shaw now over my connection speed which tops out at 8.5 Mbits/sec whereas it should be 15. While testing connection speeds found out that Canada has some of the lowest internet speeds in the world. Check out:
http://speedtest.net/
for a comparison of speeds around the world.
If S. Korea can have a 39 Mbit/sec download speed and 29 Mbit/sec upload speed then surely there is something fishy going on in Canada. Canada is #34 in the world for download speeds and #42 for upload speeds.
I have both Shaw and Telus so I have backup but am thinking of dropping Telus which has a 2 Mbit/sec download speed and 0.5 Mbit/sec upload speed. They can go faster on ADSL and had a very annoying phonecall from them where they were trying to give me free TV over ADSL and the person on the line couldn’t seem to understand when I said “I don’t watch TV”. The bandwidth required to stream TV programs over ADSL is a lot more that 2 Mbit/sec.
I’ve been cut off by Telus for exceedingly my bandwidth limits when I was uploading 100 GB/month on a webcam as well as downloading more than than. For what I pay for my internet I consider that I get inferior service and when Canada’s upload speeds are below those of Kazakstan and Macedonia, something is seriously wrong with the communications infrastructure.
I’m not that informed on all the issues here although I’ve always believed that the consumer always wins where there is free market competition, even when a competitor seems to have a market locked up. By keeping the government out of it (through regulation) market forces will provide better value over time.
Russtovich, that’s really an apples and oranges comparison.
First, you don’t have pure Video on Demand, you have available video.
Second, you pay for each one you watch so it isn’t unlimited at a flat rate.,/i>
Third, the technology is _vastly_ different, that’s why you have a cable modem vs. just connecting to your set top box.
Fourth, you don’t have the same pricing for your television. You have tiers of available channels; each costing more. If you have HD, you also pay more.
Yes it’s “unlimited” as in always on, but it isn’t unlimited services offered.
Lance,
There is a large amount of Video on Demand that is free: TV shows; HBO; Movie Central and more. They can be accessed through VoD without paying a penny more than what you already have paid for depending on your tier or choice of services.
I won’t argue that the technology is different but how can it be that I can watch American Dad at any time streamed to my TV through my cable but have to pay extra to do the same thing watching it streamed through the Internet to my TV?
You don’t have the same pricing for Internet either. You can pay for Lite, Regular, Extreme and Nitro (or whatever the equivalent is). What they have done is put a very low cap on these services.
As many have said, you can spend every waking moment talking long distance on the phone to the US and Canada. I pay the same auto insurance if I drive 5km or 500,000km a year. If they want to put a cap on the download limit why make is so bloody low?
Lance really hasn’t thought this through very well. He doesn’t want the smaller companies riding on the “trunks” for free but hasn’t stopped to realize the large companies are riding for free on those same “trunks”. Free easements is riding for free.
You want usage based billing, start there.
Turning the Information Superhypeway into a toll road adds infrastructure costs (building meters, reading them, billing from them, proving they’re accurate in billing disputes, governmental Weights And Measures intervention). And we’ve all heard the horror stories from someone getting an unexpected several-thousand-dollar bill for phone or cellular service or such; I’m sure many many more get hit with bills for more than their budget wanted. Being able to sell flat-rate packages that won’t bankrupt the provider even if you suck hard at the bandwidth lets people budget their costs and avoid unpleasant surprises.
There was a poster from the Dawn of Internet, showing a flock of sheep crossing a bridge; there was a big crowd of sheep before the start of the bridge, a big crowd after the end of the bridge, and a few slowly crossing the very narrow bridge. “The Internet Defined” was the title.
Still true today. It will always be true.
One aspect of this that has not been discussed is that bells usage tools are not up to speed.
Their current internet usage tool can be as much as 2 days out of date. Who would accept that on their hydro meter?
Another aspect of the rules that they proposed is that it is not based on usage at all.
If you use 5 gig you will be charged the same as someone who uses 25.
If you pay 5 dollars for insurance you can use 65 gig and pay less than someone without insurance who uses 28 gig.
The cost of a gig of data to bell is about 3 cents but thay are charging their customers as much as 3 dollars for it.
A true UBB would have a flat fee connection charge and a much smaller charge for the data used — maybe 5-10 cents per GB.
Infinity SQ
You can doubt all you want, but that was one of many things the Telcos have been forced (and still are in some circumstances) to provide. Fact.
Phantom, if there was a ‘better way’ as you have surmised, then would you not think a beneficial company would swoop in, perform those miracles, at a cheap cost, and do it, putting the incumbents to pasture? That’s a nice place to end up mind you, but, the costs of doing what you say are staggering, to say the least.
Fiddle
The companies still pay. All that infrastructure has a cost associated to it, whether it be depreciation, or, maintenance costs for replacement, or millions of dollars in annual municipal taxes for their -permitted- structure, it is not RW. Those costs do not end, that is short term thinking. In the end, the consumer pays those as well.
Be assured of one thing, without the CRTC, there would not be a Shaw cable (for example), at least not in its current form, nowhere close. Competition would be a foreign concept. Renting space in another company’s structure would not happen. Period.
Loki
Yes, I’ve seen those numbers and lists, but, as posted previous, Canada is a huge country with costs that cannot be compared with tiny countries. Plus, I doubt those speeds are achieved widely throughout their countries, just in their main cities. What Canadian companies can deliver in dense urban metro centers vs the boonies are apples and oranges, admittedly. Its what the company deems as a good investment and where to invest. They are not government and are not obligated to provide the ultimate service in the most remote areas.
I would like to say more regarding speed you have vs the future, but some of us are bound to confidentiality clauses. All I can say is the companies are not standing still, but the change is expensive and covers very large geographical areas and is a huge investment that is time consuming. Things are improving, not nearly as fast as consumers want, but they are moving along.
The companies still pay. All that infrastructure has a cost associated to it, whether it be depreciation, or, maintenance costs for replacement, or millions of dollars in annual municipal taxes for their -permitted- structure, it is not RW. Those costs do not end, that is short term thinking. In the end, the consumer pays those as well.
The infrastructure resides on land, free land. And I could care less who pays for it, as long as somebody does. Who else gets free land to put their property on?
“Making everyone pay the same price regardless of usage isn’t “fair”, it’s socialism.”
What a bunch of BS! There is almost no extra cost for an ISP to deliver 1GB or 1000GB into a home. If some people are using their service more than others, it’s call GROWTH, it’s what businesses WANT.
Socialism is limiting the right of others to pay whatever they want to use a service as much as they want.
This is just ideological BS shilling for corporations that have refused to innovate with the rest of the world.
The comparison of Internet services to electricity or gas is false. Electricity and gas are consumed, that is they disappear. Bandwidth does not disappear when used.
“…ISPs claim that such large amounts of data transfer places a strain on their networks. Experts have argued that this is not a valid reason to implement a pay-as-you-go style system to cover costs as each ISP has enough network infrastructure to handle each customer maximzing their bandwidth rate per second simultaneously, and each gigabyte of bandwidth used per customer has a cost as low as $0.03 CAD according to Teksavvy, a third party ISP.” Konrad von Finckenstein – Wikipedia
“Canadians should be very uncomfortable with the CRTC’s notion of “heavy users” and the reports that 15.4 GB represents an average user. If we are to set the standard of heavy users based on 2009 data, the majority of users will be classified as heavy users (and find themselves paying for overages) before long. As MP Peter Braid noted during the hearing, policies should be forward looking and it feels like the CRTC’s reference point for Internet usage is stuck looking back in the rear view mirror. Numbers like 15 GB, 25 GB, or even 60 GB should not be viewed by anyone as constituting heavy usage.”
There is another UBB issue that has not been touched on – PRIVACY.
“There is also a privacy dimension that may warrant investigation by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, given the need for monitoring usage in order to levy UBB. This raises privacy questions about possible collection of personal information of independent ISP customers who have no direct relationship with Bell.”
http://openmedia.ca/news?page=1
BS says “Socialism is limiting the right of others to pay whatever they want to use a service as much as they want.”
Socialism is also limiting the right of others to charge whatever they want for their products and services.
There is a cost to continuous investment in upgrading equipment and ongoing training costs for those that deliver service and it is not a sin to make a profit on this as long as there is fair competition amongst as many providers as want to enter the game.
The problem we have with the CRTC and other regulators is that they want to restrict competition so that only their Canadian cronies deliver the service. As posted above, now we might be losing a wireless competitor because the CRTC ruled that Globalive, backed by Egyptian telecom giant Orascom, had failed to meet Canadian ownership and control requirements in the telecom sector.
Why would we care who delivers the gigabytes? The only issue is price and service. If the CRTC is allowed to keep regulating the price then they will simply discourage new entrants and lack of competition will negatively impact pricing and service levels.
“Netflix, Skype and similar are basing their businesses on not having to pay for the road they run on”
One might also take the stance that these services add value to the ISP’s product. Nowadays, consumers want an Internet that can access these services without hangups and/or excessive cost.
DanBC – I am not doubting the Telcos were told to provide POTS to everyone – I know they were. But you make it sound like it was some charitable donation to mankind – it was not. BCTel, AGT, etc made rate cases for POTS that included these costs+ … they didn’t lose money, they made money.
CRTC did not make the Telcos string lines without getting the money from their then current customers. Fact.
“Yes, I’ve seen those numbers and lists, but, as posted previous, Canada is a huge country with costs that cannot be compared with tiny countries.”
This is an old outdated argument that is costing our economy hundreds of millions, if not billions, in inefficiencies.
Courtesy of this argument, we have outdated regulatory mechanisms that ensure that we pay above the odds for things such as milk. Not only do we do it, but we do it happily, acting as though it is a privilige to pay above the odds. And it applies across the board – banking, aviation, telecoms etc.
Consider the bigger picture. We now live in a globalised world. We rely heavily on exports and one of our main markets is still recovering. Our businesses are fighting to gain footholds in other parts of the world. They’re fighting for access to markets such as India and China. And they are competing with companies from across the developed and developing world.
And what is our attitude?
Well, we’re a big country, and a special one at that, so lets make our companies pay some of the highest cellphone fees, banking fees, airfare fees etc, while also forcing them to inflate salaries to cover the artifically inflated prices of foodstuffs.
Might have worked with a weaker dollar, but now its screwing us over.
This isn’t just about Telecom companies maintaining infrastructure or bandwidth hogs taking advantage of the system. This is also about the cost of living and the cost of doing business in this country.
If we were isolated from the global economy, I wouldn’t be concerned by the REALITY that the Canadian trend is to PAY more for LESS internet, while the rest of the world PAYS LESS for MORE.
At the end of the day, the rest of the world is not interested in how big or small we are. They want to know what we can offer. And at what price.
We cannot remove ourselves from that reality by focusing on the fate of the profit margins of a couple of telecoms companies that, incidentally, have a conflict of interest going on because they’re concerned that unlimited internet will dent their television broadcasting system. They can smarten up (like letting viewers choose their channels instead of forcing Home and Gardening TV on everyone), or they can continue like this – forcing Canadians to pay for products they dont use, effectively contributing to the inefficiencies that are now saddling our companies that want to do business abroad.
Yes, we’re a big country. But so what? How does that change the fact that a small business in the UK can get a 10mbp unlimited connection for CDN$25. And how are our businesses, burdened by these inefficiencies, supposed to compete globally?
““Netflix, Skype and similar are basing their businesses on not having to pay for the road they run on””
Look at the flip side.
Its easier to connect to the rest of the world at a cheaper rate. In a globalised world, that can’t possibly be a bad thing for companies.
As for netflix, as much as its treated as bandwidth hogging mechanism, look at the bigger picture. Its also a revenue generator that tackles piracy. I suspect Rogers and Bell are less concerned about its impact on bandwidth and more concerned about its impact on their television packages.
That little conflict of interest thing again.
Everyone does realize that this CRTC ruling has NO EFFECT on end consumers, right? That before the ruling, the ISPs could implement UBB, right? That the ruling only affects the smaller ISPs purchasing in bulk from the big boys, right?
I didn’t think so…
“Everyone does realize that this CRTC ruling has NO EFFECT on end consumers, right? That before the ruling, the ISPs could implement UBB, right? That the ruling only affects the smaller ISPs purchasing in bulk from the big boys, right?”
What are you getting at?
I m not sure who constitutes “end consumers” but a significant portion of the outcry has come from SMEs who fear that these UBB charges will contribute to their overhead.
djb,
Do you understand that increases will be passed onto the end consumers of the bulk buyers, right?
I didn’t think so…
As a result do you think the prices for all end consumers will – go up/go down/stay the same?
Dumbass, this and your retarded G20 coverage is why I am cutting you off and sticking with fivefeetoffury for my Canadian coverage. Soooo STUPID! “Having an unlimited plan as an option is obviously socialism” —> idiot. You are almost worst than the CRTC
Some important issues are being overlooked in the to-and-fro here.
First, let’s remember that both the telcos and the cablecos were granted local monopolies, since long ago it was decided that it was a better use of society resources to have one set of poles on the street rather than 20. The incumbent telcos (ILECs in the vernacular) were given their monopolies in return for certain concessions – such as having their rates regulated by the CRTC in Canada and Public Utility Commissions in the US. Any of the arguments above based on the idea of a “free market” necessarily founder here. It is manifestly not a free market – it is one where some players have a huge advantage based on their control of facilities, and some form of regulation is necessary to keep the playing field even remotely close to level.
DIGRESSION: While working as a college intern at the Ontario Ministry of Communications over 30 years ago, I stumbled across a big collection of the Bell System Journal of Economics. This quarterly magazine was devoted to the economics of regulated public utilities – phone, electricity, cable, etc. One issue contained an article by Richard Posner, then with the University of Chicago, now a Superior Court judge in the US, in which he formulated the “capture theory of regulation”. Put succinctly, the theory is the regulated industry (e.g. Bell) has the most: informed technological experts; money to pay for lawyers, lobbyists, and consultants; and gain from favourable rulings from the regulator, compared to opposing consumer groups, which are poorly funded, not nearly as expert, and whose “gains” will be in the form of a few dollars per month per consumer, compared to Bell, which would make millions each month if the regulator went their way. The CRTC has been completely captured by Bell, which is why I want it changed, not because I believe Bell can be trusted to deal with fairly with anyone in the absence of an overseer, as Lance seems to believe.
Now, if the government were to expropriate all the poles and wires from telcos and cablecos, and create a local company that offered access to all comers on equal terms, then we might see a free market, and in fact, that’s what happened with long distance (which, Lance, is not “historical blather” but absolutely germane to this argument). The ILECs now provide the last mile on an equal footing to all LD providers, and the result has been an explosion in long distance services, and huge reductions in price. Since for the Internet, the telcos/cablecos still control the last mile, they have been told to provide access to resellers at reasonable rates. Their attempt to impose UBB is an attempt to recontrol the market.
Now a few miscellaneous points:
DWDM fibre can offer speeds of over 1 Terabit/s. But let’s say you have standard DWDM at 200 Gb/s. How much of that 200,000,000,000 b/s does a user downloading 300 GB/month use? Averaging to a 30-day month, that’s 10 GB/day, which works out to 80 Gs/day. Divide by 24 x 3600, and you get less than 1 Mbit/s. For those not quick with arithmetic, 200 Gb/s divided by 1 Mb/s = 200,000 simultaneous users downloading at 1 Mb/s (~= 125 kB/s) ALL THE TIME, EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY. Sorry, the “congested road” analogy breaks down here.
For those who think they should get a rebate because they use less than their cap – sorry, I don’t agree. When you go to the “all you can eat” Chinese buffet (my fave is China Buffet King, though I’ve heard good things about Dragon Pearl. Mandarin is horrid) do you ask for a refund because you only had two plates of food while the glutton next to you had six? It doesn’t matter if you ask for it, anyway – you won’t get it. The deal was a fixed price for all you cared to eat on the premises. Similarly, you don’t get a refund on your Metropass in Toronto if you only use the TTC to commute to and from work (42 trips/month) vs. someone who uses the TTC for all their traveling – work, shopping, entertainment, etc – sometimes over 200 trips per month.
And why do companies offer flat rate services? Again, from personal experience, the cost of creating and maintaining a usage-based billing system can be enormous. CanTel was handicapped in its early years because it rented its billing system from Cincinnati Bell Info Systems, and had an eight week turnaround on the simplest billing change. Sprint nearly went bankrupt in the US because its billing system failed massively, sending some users multi-million dollar monthly bills while other large corporations were never billed at all. Flat rate pricing is dramatically easier to create, price, and maintain, which is why some firms opt to offer it.
“For those who think they should get a rebate because they use less than their cap – sorry, I don’t agree. When you go to the “all you can eat” Chinese buffet (my fave is China Buffet King, though I’ve heard good things about Dragon Pearl. Mandarin is horrid) do you ask for a refund because you only had two plates of food while the glutton next to you had six?”
Oh I agree with you.
However, if the Chinese restaurant were to claim that food is limited, therefore it has to charge the person eating 6 plates more than the person eating 4 plates, surely the person eating three plates has a case?
After all, under the current system, the person eating one plate is subsidizing the person eating 4 or 6 plates. The Telcos are saying that this is unfair to the person eating one plate – which it is – but he isn’t rewarded for eating one plate and “reducing the burden on infrastructure”. Instead the people using more are penalized for their excess usage.
As a result, I don’t buy the current campaign of vilifying people who use it heavily. It fails to take into account all the money that companies are generating from clients who are underusing the service. Unless you compensate them for underusing, the UBB pretty much amounts to a cash grab.
As an aside, there are many chinese buffets to choose from. Not to many telecom companies, sadly.
Kevin, 1Mb/s is crawling now-a-days. Look up in the thread for Loki’s numbers. He’s complaining about his speed that is 8.5 times faster.
So based on Loki’s numbers, you number of users just dropped from 200k to 23,539 and they’re complaining because everything is slow.
How again is the bottleneck invalid?
So Lance … does that mean that my 50,000 gbytes of service that I don’t use each month will be credited by Shaw? Not likely.
First, let’s remember that both the telcos and the cablecos were granted local monopolies, since long ago it was decided that it was a better use of society resources to have one set of poles on the street rather than 20.
The land the telcos use for free would have had worth had there been allowed competition for it’s use. As it stands, now, that land has decreased worth.
And some idiots, who pretend to be for free enterprise, argue over the poor telcos “trunks” being used for free. Sheesh
DanBC, I don’t buy the “Canada is a big country” argument. I know that Telus can provide dramatically higher bandwidth and the hospital internet connections are damn fast as they’re streaming imaging data from hospital to hospital in the interior health region and I don’t often look at patient CT scans at home as the hospital is about 10-100x faster.
Where I live has quite good internet connectivity and, before something happened with my Shaw connection, I was getting up to 22 Mbits/sec at 04:00. Telus seems to throttle their ADSL at 2 Mbits/sec as every place I check (unless it happens to be slower that 2 Mbits/sec) comes in exactly at 2 Mbits/sec. Similarly, upload speeds are always 0.5 Mbits/sec.
I thought 1.5 Mbits/sec was fast 10 years ago as this was faster than my first Mac hard drive 20 years ago but now it is agonizingy slow. A lot of the files I download are big; an abdominal and pelvic high-res CT scan can have 400 images and the total size is 100 Mb or larger. I want to be able to scroll through this quickly, not wait minutes for the thing to download. I check peoples xrays and other medical images multiple times daily in the clinic and we use Shaw as it provides far higher bandwidth than Telus.
The low upload speeds are incredibly frustrating. I use VNC to control all of my computers from wherever I am and get spoiled on my 100 Mbit/sec home network whenever I connect to my home machines from somewhere else. I run private webservers on multiple machines as this is the simplest way of making data I need available anywhere, but downloading a 20 Mb pdf at .5 Mbits/sec is incredibly aggravating. I don’t mind paying for high download, and especially high upload speeds but the $110 month I pay for Shaw and Telus combined is just not good value for money.
KevinB, didn’t realize that fiber was that fast now and it must be hairy designing a router to switch packets at that speed.