Canadian Internet

[Hondo]

I hear you guys in Canada are going to get hit with a huge rate increase in March for internet time or usage. What's the deal?

[Hondo]

Lotta looks, no information. Guess I'll have to ferret it out myself.

[Hondo]

Ok, I found it. I think.

http://www.suite101.com/content/canada-to-pay-more-for-internet-with-internet-caps-on-useage-a341540

Don't get in a rush to thank me or anything like that.

[Dave B]

In principal there's nothing wrong with users being charged for the amount they actually consume. We're used to other utilities being charged in this way: you wouldn't expect your electricity company to allow you to leave the lights on 24/7 without charging you.

In the UK, most ISPs advertise "unlimited" usage but in reality apply a fair useage policy which can see you throttled, charged or even disconnected should you exceed it. Mobile data customers in particular are seeing their "unlimited" allowanced squeezed: T-Mobile was recently forced to back down (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/12/t-mobile-data-limit)on a change to their T&Cs which restricted existing users to just 500MB per month.

There are questions whether Bell are implementing it particularly fairly, but at a basic level I don't see anthing wrong with paying for what you use. Why should someone who just sends the occasional email be asked to pay the same as someone (like me!) who streams live video or downloads all their music online?

[Mark]

Part of the reason for the recent 'issues' with the forum was that the server was located in Canada and bandwidth there is expensive. We're located in Paris now, I know that might upset some of our American friends to learn that the forum is physically located in France :p

[MrJan]

the forum is physically located in France :p

Eugh, a French forum? I'm now considering quitting, the motorsport.com forums seem so much more enticing now :p :

[Eki]

The thread title "Canadian Internet" fooled me into thinking it was some kind of a joke thread, like: "The Canadians have invented a wireless internet. They use smoke signals."

[Hondo]

Doesn't bother me at all. I'm pleased they'd take on such a large group of undesirables.

[Daniel]

Part of the reason for the recent 'issues' with the forum was that the server was located in Canada and bandwidth there is expensive. We're located in Paris now, I know that might upset some of our American friends to learn that the forum is physically located in France :p

Bloody cheese eating surrender forum!

[MrJan]

Bloody cheese eating surrender forum!

Evidentally that's what happened to the last forum, Mark surrendered it like the yellow bellied dog he is :D

[BDunnell]

We're located in Paris now, I know that might upset some of our American friends to learn that the forum is physically located in France :p

They will leave and set up their own 'Freedom Forum'.

[Dave B]

If only we were armed - we could rise up against our overlords!

[Hondo]

We may not be armed but we do have the other two key ingredients, loyalty and numbers. Mark and the mods (except for 1, who doesn't mod anymore I think) have always been good with me and have always answered questions quickly. I'll stick with Mark. Plus some of y'all are like family. Maybe a little dysfunctional and inbred, but family all the same.

[schmenke]

^ group hug! :D :p :

[Mark in Oshawa]

Anyhow, while I feel the love, to be on the topic of hand.

The deal is, in Canada, all telecommunications media are regulated through a quasi government body, the CRTC. (quasi because the politicians sort of have them at arms length until they tick the public off, and then they reel them in). The CRTC has the mandate to protect Canadian media companies and regulate the access and pricing of media such as phones, TV and internet. The whole issue goes back to the dark days of PM Trudeau when everything was protected. This notion that Canada is free and open for business falls apart when it comes to media. The reason why of course is media people have power, and while Bell Canada, Bell Aliant and Rogers are big players up here, in a nation of 34 million people, they can be big. If they have to compete with Sprint and AT and T, they are swallowed up. Foreign ownership of media is the worry, so the CRTC was originally mandated to protect us poor Canadians from the rapacious and awful Americans who would so give us what we want, mainly cheaper cable, cheaper phones and cheaper internet! Well, it wasn't QUITE that, but that is how it is turning out. Add in the nature of Canada, a thin line of people stretching 4000 miles and the infrastructure costs to give the internet to people in this vast expanse, and Bell and Rogers both basically said to the CRTC, we will build the "pipe" for all this information, and we will share with other ISP's, but you have to allow us to make money selling off access to it.

Well things were ok for a while...Bell and Rogers were making their money, and everyone was paying a flat fee for as much fun online as they could download with some of the smaller companies renting their place on the "pipe". Now, as technology marches on, two things have happened.

One, people are watching WAY more TV content online, hurting the Cable operation of Rogers and the Satellite TV of Bell. And TWO, the Pipes carrying all that bandwidth are starting to be plugged with subscribers to smaller ISP's giving out flat rate's dirt cheap for all the download you can take. With Netflix on line up here, people are blowing through GB after GB of information for the same price as Bell and Rogers subscribers who have actual limits. So it is a case once again of a regulator not seeing what their real role is, and trying to protect the oligopoly.

The thing is, Bell and Rogers are making money either way, but they saw a chance to sort slip this one under the radar, put the heat on the small ISP's buying bandwidth for their clients, get some people back, to of course push more product in the line of phones and cable. What is more, if they can control the pipe more tightly, they can then start to ratchet down this notion some have that hey, I paid my 40 bucks this month, I am going to download as many GB's of content as I can find. I think it is rather silly the attitude some have up here. Some have it in their heads that access to the net is a human right. They are the same ones who cant grasp you pay based on what you use in almost any other commodity other than TV and internet usage.

Now I can hear Hondo and other Americans saying, you silly socialists, that is what you get when you mess with the free market. I agree...but in Canada, the reality is that our cultural soil is thin, and the idea that Canada is more than an appendage attached to the 49th Parallel and Great Lakes dictates that we do need some sort of control over who controls and owns our media outlets, so it is the devil we dance with.

The Cabinet and Prime Minister basically told the CRTC to re consider, so I guess I can smell an election likely coming for sure. The natives were restless, and that never bodes well if we were all ticked off about losing our unlimited access to download HD porn or something....

[Jag_Warrior]

I don't fully understand the issue. But if one problem is smaller ISP's clogging the pipe and overloading the system, why shouldn't there be a usage cap/Fair Use policy? I can use a certain amount of water and pay the base rate. If I go over that, I pay more. The more electricity I use, the more I pay. I have satellite internet and I've had to live under a Fair Use policy for years. Only between the hours of 2AM and 7AM do I have unlimited usage - very similar to my cell phone plan (only it's 9PM to 7AM).

But IMO, people who use so much bandwidth that it degrades the experience for others should pay more. I mean, there's only so much capacity, right? It sounds like the only other option is to upgrade the entire system, so everybody can keep their "All You Can Eat for $4.99" deal. And to pay for the upgrades they'll have to charge EVERYBODY more to accomplish that.