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CRTC Finalizes ISP Usage-Based Billing / Canada Bandwidth Cap Thread: News in OP/p275

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  • SzechuanSzechuan Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Tubular, who is the provider with the 250GB cap? I'm in New Brunswick and I'm hoping against hope it's not a regional thing like Eastlink.

    Szechuan on
  • TubularLuggageTubularLuggage Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Szechuan wrote: »
    Tubular, who is the provider with the 250GB cap? I'm in New Brunswick and I'm hoping against hope it's not a regional thing like Eastlink.

    It's Eastlink. Obviously, that 250GB cap may not stay where it is come March 1st.

    TubularLuggage on
  • FiggyFiggy Fighter of the night man Champion of the sunRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    In Ontario, TechSavvy has a similar plan and a small price increase if you want true unlimited. That, I'm sure, will be gone March 1st if UBB goes through.

    So, on the slim chance that this decision gets overturned, then what? Bell has been charging for overages for over a year for me, so I don't see how this changes anything.

    Figgy on
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  • TubularLuggageTubularLuggage Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Figgy wrote: »
    In Ontario, TechSavvy has a similar plan and a small price increase if you want true unlimited. That, I'm sure, will be gone March 1st if UBB goes through.

    So, on the slim chance that this decision gets overturned, then what? Bell has been charging for overages for over a year for me, so I don't see how this changes anything.

    One of the biggest changes is that it will force many smaller ISPs to put low caps on their plans whether they want to or not. This eliminates competition, which removes incentive for Bell and Rogers to offer non-terrible plans.

    TubularLuggage on
  • FiggyFiggy Fighter of the night man Champion of the sunRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Figgy wrote: »
    In Ontario, TechSavvy has a similar plan and a small price increase if you want true unlimited. That, I'm sure, will be gone March 1st if UBB goes through.

    So, on the slim chance that this decision gets overturned, then what? Bell has been charging for overages for over a year for me, so I don't see how this changes anything.

    One of the biggest changes is that it will force many smaller ISPs to put low caps on their plans whether they want to or not. This eliminates competition, which removes incentive for Bell and Rogers to offer non-terrible plans.

    So, if the UBB change is reversed, the status quo today will not change, right? Bell will continue to offer their shitty package, charge per extra GB, etc?

    In my case, it matters because I can't just switch to a smaller ISP. Teksavvy told me straight up that for my area their service is not worth it. Shitty deal.

    Figgy on
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  • TubularLuggageTubularLuggage Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Figgy wrote: »
    So, if the UBB change is reversed, the status quo today will not change, right?

    That is my understanding. If I'm wrong, someone feel free to correct me.

    TubularLuggage on
  • CadeCade Eppur si muove.Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Global comparison time folks

    Only two out of 30 countries surveyed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) offer their citizens no Internet subscriptions with unlimited downloads.

    Canada is one of them.

    The other is Australia, but that is beside the point. The point, rather, is simply to broaden the context of the usage-based billing (UBB) debate beyond just the Canadian market; to consider just how common it is for every Internet service provider (ISP) in a given country to impose limits on the amount of data their customers can consume each much.

    Quite far from common, the vast majority of OECD countries appear to offer some form of Internet service that is free of any preset limit. Yet based on the offers of 22 ISPs in Canada and 38 in Australia, not one of them had an unlimited package advertised on their respective websites.

    New Zealand, Iceland and Belgium each provide only a handful of unlimited data packages for their consumers. However, among the other 24 countries surveyed, less than half of their ISPs charged customers extra for exceeding their monthly limits.

    oecddatacaps.jpg?w=524&h=561

    Now, why is all this relevant to the Canadian UBB debate, which this week found itself in the spotlight on the national political stage? Simple.

    The Prime Minister said late Tuesday that his government will spend February reviewing a decision made last week by the CRTC, Canada’s national telecom regulator. Effectively imposing a usage-based billing (UBB) regime for all Canadian ISPs both large and small, last week’s ruling was the commission’s fourth and final decision on the matter.

    As the Harper government considers whether or not to overturn that decision, it is important to know where the rest of the world stands.

    Cade on
  • CouscousCouscous Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/gadgets-and-gear/hugh-thompson/what-is-a-fair-price-for-internet-service/article1890596/
    To find out what is a fair price, I contacted several industry insiders. They informed me that approximately four years ago, the cost for a certain large Telco to transmit one gigabyte of data was around 12 cents. That’s after all of its operational and fixed costs were accounted for. Thanks to improved technology and more powerful machines, that number dropped to around 6 cents two years ago and is about 3 cents per gigabyte today.

    Are these valid numbers? After the recent CRTC decision regarding UBB, it was announced that effective March 1st, Bell will be charging Third Party Internet Access (TPIA) providers $4.25 for a 40 GB block of additional data transfer.

    The fact that Bell is able to sell 40 GB of data to wholesalers for $4.25 and still make a profit demonstrates that the true cost of data transfer is well below the 10.5 cents per gigabyte they are charging wholesalers. One TPIA provider agreed the 3 cents per gigabyte figure is probably close to the true cost.

    So why are Internet service providers charging consumers $1 or more per gigabyte of data used beyond their respective data caps? That’s a good question.

    Bell will charge you an additional $2 per gigabyte to a maximum of $60 a month up to 300GB. After 300 GB, you'll pay a $1 a gigabyte. Shaw is charging $2.00 per GB on its popular high-speed package while Rogers is charging a whopping $5 per gigabyte on its Ultra Lite plan and $2 per GB on its popular 10 Megabits per second service.

    Assuming an inflated cost of 10 cents per gigabyte, it means that Bell, Shaw and Rogers are charging consumers between 10 and 50 times what it costs them to deliver data. This on top of their regular monthly Internet pricing! While I agree that heavy users should be prepared to pay more once they have reached their bandwidth caps, a fair price would be much closer to 10 cents per GB than the inflated $1-to-$5-per-gigabyte charge sanctioned by the CRTC.

    The vast mark-up granted to cable and telecommunications under UBB by the CRTC demonstrates that the federal regulator has failed to deliver a competitive Internet services business in Canada. Rather than ensuring consumers receive fair Internet pricing, the CRTC seems content to line the pockets of Cable and telecommunications companies by forcing Canadian consumers to pay Internet data rates that have no basis in reality.

    Couscous on
  • CadeCade Eppur si muove.Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
  • CadeCade Eppur si muove.Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Cade on
  • MarikirMarikir Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Cade wrote: »

    Wow.

    That is great news. Congrats and I hope it holds, Canadians.

    Marikir on
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  • ArrathArrath Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Wow, I honestly didn't expect anything in favor of the public.

    Congrats, Canucks. Hope it stays this way.

    Arrath on
  • SirUltimosSirUltimos Don't talk, Rusty. Just paint. Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Well that just made my day.

    SirUltimos on
  • The Cow KingThe Cow King a island Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Yay!

    That made a shitty day slightly less shittier

    The Cow King on
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  • elevatureelevature Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    The Harper government actually did something right. I am shocked, but super happy. And my 250 gb cap Teksavvy installation is coming on Saturday. Perfect timing.

    elevature on
  • EvangirEvangir Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    It's really not that shocking. The CRTC picked a horrid time for this, since all three main parties are desperate to score political points (or at least maintain them), nobody is going to side with the CRTC against consumers/voters right now. The fact that this is intensely anti-competitive is another good reason for the Cons to agree to it.

    Evangir on
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  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    I'm sure they would love to side against consumers given the chance, but you can't do it in a manner that so drastically will fuck over every single middle class canadian home with teenagers

    You gotta be more nebulous and sneaky about it, they should ask some american companies for advice

    override367 on
  • surrealitychecksurrealitycheck lonely, but not unloved dreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    AWW YEAH CANADA

    surrealitycheck on
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  • FiggyFiggy Fighter of the night man Champion of the sunRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Large companies that employ usage-based billing say customers who stream movies or games on the Internet use too much extra bandwidth and the billing model helps the companies "manage" this use.

    The implication of this claim is that customers shouldn't be able to stream movies online without paying extra for the bandwidth. Hilarious idea, when every year, average bandwidth use is only going to increase as technology becomes more advanced.

    And "stream games on the Internet?" I don't think anyone interviewed for this article has any idea what OnLive is, so that's just a hilarious line from some douche who knows very little about his own industry. Damn kids, streaming their video games and clogging up all our Internet tubes.

    Edit: And it'll be interesting to see how the big providers respond to this ruling. Will they do nothing? More people are buzzing now about how terrible the value is with large providers, so will they offer anything better? The smaller companies could take this opportunity to ramp up awareness that their service is all the better.

    Figgy on
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  • Hocky27Hocky27 Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    I hate to break it to you guys but we have always had caps in Australia. To us it's a glorious silly world where you pay for internet that doesn't have a cap.

    Hocky27 on
  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Hocky27 wrote: »
    I hate to break it to you guys but we have always had caps in Australia. To us it's a glorious silly world where you pay for internet that doesn't have a cap.

    A huge difference for you guys since you're on your own continent that is sparsely populated and poorly interconnected to the rest of the worlds data lines.

    Canada, being next to the US with a huge land border is a completely different scenario.

    DevoutlyApathetic on
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  • ForarForar #432 Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Any Teksavy users out there want to comment on the quality of the service?

    I'm looking at their page, and their 15down/1up/200gig package for $43 looks like one hell of a deal. After the discount I'm getting it's probably on par with the Rogers package above what I have, but with 2.5x the bandwidth cap.

    I'm locked into my current package until May, but if this deal remains I'll be seriously tempted to finally drop Rogers for my internet service.

    Forar on
    First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
  • SatsumomoSatsumomo Rated PG! Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    It's not about giving unlimited internet access or not, it's that the cap was ridiculously low.

    Satsumomo on
  • JihadJesusJihadJesus Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Figgy wrote: »
    And "stream games on the Internet?" I don't think anyone interviewed for this article has any idea what OnLive is, so that's just a hilarious line from some douche who knows very little about his own industry. Damn kids, streaming their video games and clogging up all our Internet tubes.
    Well, they aren't entirely ignorant. They probably at least know that the internet is not a big truck.

    JihadJesus on
  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    One thing that you have to remember, is that this is only a halfway victory. This doesn't mean that Bell/Rogers/Shaw can no longer cap their retail customers. It's that they cannot cap the wholesale ISPs.

    This means that if you are a customer of the big telco's, you're still going to face a cap.

    Again, I'm not totally against the idea of a cap. But 3 people in my house are expected to share 60 or even 100GB/month, which frankly isn't reasonable.

    Remember that is is a victory, but it is still only one step in actually fixing the problem.

    wunderbar on
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  • FiggyFiggy Fighter of the night man Champion of the sunRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Right, but now the smaller ISPs can continue offering competition and the larger Telcos will be pressured to respond. I'll bet this proposal to the CRTC has been in the works for a long, long time. The caps/prices with Rogers and Bell are the way they are because they fully expected to squash their competitors.

    Figgy on
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  • lowlylowlycooklowlylowlycook Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    wunderbar wrote: »
    One thing that you have to remember, is that this is only a halfway victory. This doesn't mean that Bell/Rogers/Shaw can no longer cap their retail customers. It's that they cannot cap the wholesale ISPs.

    This means that if you are a customer of the big telco's, you're still going to face a cap.

    Again, I'm not totally against the idea of a cap. But 3 people in my house are expected to share 60 or even 100GB/month, which frankly isn't reasonable.

    Remember that is is a victory, but it is still only one step in actually fixing the problem.

    The difference between some companies running with download caps and their being a law that forces all their competitors to have the same caps is pretty huge. It would almost be as dumb for the government to enforce a lack of caps as to enforce caps.

    lowlylowlycook on
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  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    If I ran an ISP in Cannuckstan

    I'd just go around shouting

    "We have no caps, come to us and be happy"

    The big ones are offering such a shitty service that everybody else has a chance to increase subscriptions even with higher monthly costs.

    Stormwatcher on
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  • FiggyFiggy Fighter of the night man Champion of the sunRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Well, no. Don't forget that it's not the average user who is concerned with the current cap. Most people won't go over just browsing and playing games. Those who download or stream heavily will in the first week, though.

    If TekSavvy increased its price, it would never attract customers who aren't necessarily there for the higher cap. They will also tell you what kind of router to buy if you want to bypass Bell's throttling when you are with Tek. Pretty great.

    Figgy on
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  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    What's going to happen with these caps is that you're going to see the same kind of horror stories with bills that you see with cell phones every so often. Someone gets a bill that's a few hundred dollars higher than normal.

    That's what's going to happen to someone who discovers netflix, uses it to watch 4 movies a week for a month along with everything else, and blows by their cap without really realizing it.

    Usage is trending up, where Bell/Rogers/Shaw want you to trend it down, and use only their more expensive cable TV service, and the VOD where you pay $5/movie.

    wunderbar on
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  • CadmusCadmus Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Figgy wrote: »
    Right, but now the smaller ISPs can continue offering competition and the larger Telcos will be pressured to respond. I'll bet this proposal to the CRTC has been in the works for a long, long time. The caps/prices with Rogers and Bell are the way they are because they fully expected to squash their competitors.

    The problem is, all the resellers are straight up garbage. They also rely on shaw/bell/telus to connect their customers so you can expect a very long wait for your hookup or any kind of service if shit is broken.

    The proper solution is to break up all the telcos into 2 companies each, one that is responsible for the infrastructure and one that is responsible for plugging consumers into the internet. The infrastructure company then bills all the ISP's and infrastructure charges are regulated (in my opinion the infrastructure should be maintained by a crown corporation, much like water and power).

    The fact that there is no more than 2 major ISP's in any region and that they all have the same outrageous rates makes it pretty obvious that they aren't competing against each other, over turning the ruling that they are allowed to rape resellers doesn't fix much, but I guess it's better than nothing? At least now we can pray that a decent reseller will spring up and somehow not be reliant on a major ISP for fixing technical problems and installations.

    Cadmus on
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Figgy wrote: »
    Well, no. Don't forget that it's not the average user who is concerned with the current cap. Most people won't go over just browsing and playing games. Those who download or stream heavily will in the first week, though.

    If TekSavvy increased its price, it would never attract customers who aren't necessarily there for the higher cap. They will also tell you what kind of router to buy if you want to bypass Bell's throttling when you are with Tek. Pretty great.

    I'm not saying they should jack up prices, but offering cap-less internets for a bit more would certainly be a major selling point. More service for a bit more cost, so better cost-benefit ratio.

    25GBs for BOTH up and down is really fucking awful, BTW, and even "normal" people can burst that without much trouble. Just watch lots of hi res youtubes and buy some songs on itunes or whatever.

    Stormwatcher on
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  • FiggyFiggy Fighter of the night man Champion of the sunRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Cadmus wrote: »
    Figgy wrote: »
    Right, but now the smaller ISPs can continue offering competition and the larger Telcos will be pressured to respond. I'll bet this proposal to the CRTC has been in the works for a long, long time. The caps/prices with Rogers and Bell are the way they are because they fully expected to squash their competitors.

    The problem is, all the resellers are straight up garbage. They also rely on shaw/bell/telus to connect their customers so you can expect a very long wait for your hookup or any kind of service if shit is broken.

    That's just ignorance on your part. I know plenty of people around here with Teksavvy and their service is fast, reliable, and their customer support is flat out amazing.

    I would be with Teksavvy myself if they hadn't straight up told me that I shouldn't switch to them because the speeds in my area wouldn't be as advertised. So, I'm sorry you had a bad experience or something, but resellers aren't all "straight up garbage."
    wunderbar wrote: »
    What's going to happen with these caps is that you're going to see the same kind of horror stories with bills that you see with cell phones every so often. Someone gets a bill that's a few hundred dollars higher than normal.

    That's what's going to happen to someone who discovers netflix, uses it to watch 4 movies a week for a month along with everything else, and blows by their cap without really realizing it.

    Usage is trending up, where Bell/Rogers/Shaw want you to trend it down, and use only their more expensive cable TV service, and the VOD where you pay $5/movie.

    No, see, these bandwidth caps have been in effect for years. This is nothing new. Also, I don't know about other providers, but I get an email from Bell whenever I'm nearing my cap limit. Any non-retarded person who suddenly gets an email like that would call Bell and see what was up if they didn't know already.

    I'm not defending Bell, but people are suddenly acting like bandwidth caps are new. This announcement about the UBB regulation had nothing to do with Bell and caps. They are there already.
    Figgy wrote: »
    Well, no. Don't forget that it's not the average user who is concerned with the current cap. Most people won't go over just browsing and playing games. Those who download or stream heavily will in the first week, though.

    If TekSavvy increased its price, it would never attract customers who aren't necessarily there for the higher cap. They will also tell you what kind of router to buy if you want to bypass Bell's throttling when you are with Tek. Pretty great.

    I'm not saying they should jack up prices, but offering cap-less internets for a bit more would certainly be a major selling point. More service for a bit more cost, so better cost-benefit ratio.

    They already do. I can't link to any packages at the moment, because it looks like TekSavvy's site hasn't been updated since the reversal. Their current package prices are hilarious because they were anticipating the change.

    Figgy on
    XBL : Figment3 · SteamID : Figment
  • vonPoonBurGervonPoonBurGer Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Figgy wrote: »
    Figgy wrote: »
    Well, no. Don't forget that it's not the average user who is concerned with the current cap. Most people won't go over just browsing and playing games. Those who download or stream heavily will in the first week, though.

    If TekSavvy increased its price, it would never attract customers who aren't necessarily there for the higher cap. They will also tell you what kind of router to buy if you want to bypass Bell's throttling when you are with Tek. Pretty great.

    I'm not saying they should jack up prices, but offering cap-less internets for a bit more would certainly be a major selling point. More service for a bit more cost, so better cost-benefit ratio.

    They already do. I can't link to any packages at the moment, because it looks like TekSavvy's site hasn't been updated since the reversal. Their current package prices are hilarious because they were anticipating the change.
    Prior to UBB, TekSavvy's DSL offerings in my area were $31.95 for 5M with a 200GB cap with overage charges at $0.25/GB, or $39.95 for 5M with no bandwidth cap.

    vonPoonBurGer on
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  • FiggyFiggy Fighter of the night man Champion of the sunRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Figgy wrote: »
    Figgy wrote: »
    Well, no. Don't forget that it's not the average user who is concerned with the current cap. Most people won't go over just browsing and playing games. Those who download or stream heavily will in the first week, though.

    If TekSavvy increased its price, it would never attract customers who aren't necessarily there for the higher cap. They will also tell you what kind of router to buy if you want to bypass Bell's throttling when you are with Tek. Pretty great.

    I'm not saying they should jack up prices, but offering cap-less internets for a bit more would certainly be a major selling point. More service for a bit more cost, so better cost-benefit ratio.

    They already do. I can't link to any packages at the moment, because it looks like TekSavvy's site hasn't been updated since the reversal. Their current package prices are hilarious because they were anticipating the change.
    Prior to UBB, TekSavvy's DSL offerings in my area were $31.95 for 5M with a 200GB cap with overage charges at $0.25/GB, or $39.95 for 5M with no bandwidth cap.

    There we go. I'm sure their prices are back to that now, but their website is out of date. Although 5Megabit is rather slow.

    Figgy on
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  • CadmusCadmus Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Figgy wrote: »
    Cadmus wrote: »
    Figgy wrote: »
    Right, but now the smaller ISPs can continue offering competition and the larger Telcos will be pressured to respond. I'll bet this proposal to the CRTC has been in the works for a long, long time. The caps/prices with Rogers and Bell are the way they are because they fully expected to squash their competitors.

    The problem is, all the resellers are straight up garbage. They also rely on shaw/bell/telus to connect their customers so you can expect a very long wait for your hookup or any kind of service if shit is broken.

    That's just ignorance on your part. I know plenty of people around here with Teksavvy and their service is fast, reliable, and their customer support is flat out amazing.

    I would be with Teksavvy myself if they hadn't straight up told me that I shouldn't switch to them because the speeds in my area wouldn't be as advertised. So, I'm sorry you had a bad experience or something, but resellers aren't all "straight up garbage."

    I guess it's not that ignorant seeing as how your second paragraph supports my point?

    I'm sure there are some people that will be happy with a reseller but saying "hurray, resellers will actually compete with ISP's and have reasonable rates!" is naive.

    The problem isn't UBB, it's a few companies colluding so that they can have a 30,000% markup on their bandwidth rates. (Assuming that bandwidth is about $0.03 per GB and they are charging $1.00/gb, which seems like roughly correct values from what I've read in various sources).

    The ruling helped them do this by making sure that resellers can't interfere, the ruling just means that resellers are able to offer lower rates but that isn't going to stop things. Sure, some people will be able to go to a reseller but in Edmonton that doesn't look very promising. I have several friends who've tried resellers and they all have horror stories. It sounds like a few resellers had their shit together and tried to provide a good service but the major ISP's found ways to screw them. The major ISP's will continue to rip their customers off and will continue to hold a lions share of the market.

    Cadmus on
  • ForarForar #432 Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    For the record, I don't know how Bell or others do it, but Rogers automatically forces a note when I open my browser when I've gone over 75% of my usage for a month, and another when I pass 100%. Unless you intentionally kill those from ever showing up again, it's impossible for me to go over "without knowing".

    Late edit: Well, impossible unless I blow through like 16+ gigs in one shot, which I suppose I'm probably not far from with some steam downloads hitting double digits now.

    Forar on
    First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
  • FiggyFiggy Fighter of the night man Champion of the sunRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Cadmus wrote: »
    Figgy wrote: »
    Cadmus wrote: »
    Figgy wrote: »
    Right, but now the smaller ISPs can continue offering competition and the larger Telcos will be pressured to respond. I'll bet this proposal to the CRTC has been in the works for a long, long time. The caps/prices with Rogers and Bell are the way they are because they fully expected to squash their competitors.

    The problem is, all the resellers are straight up garbage. They also rely on shaw/bell/telus to connect their customers so you can expect a very long wait for your hookup or any kind of service if shit is broken.

    That's just ignorance on your part. I know plenty of people around here with Teksavvy and their service is fast, reliable, and their customer support is flat out amazing.

    I would be with Teksavvy myself if they hadn't straight up told me that I shouldn't switch to them because the speeds in my area wouldn't be as advertised. So, I'm sorry you had a bad experience or something, but resellers aren't all "straight up garbage."

    I guess it's not that ignorant seeing as how your second paragraph supports my point?

    I'm sure there are some people that will be happy with a reseller but saying "hurray, resellers will actually compete with ISP's and have reasonable rates!" is naive.

    The problem isn't UBB, it's a few companies colluding so that they can have a 30,000% markup on their bandwidth rates. (Assuming that bandwidth is about $0.03 per GB and they are charging $1.00/gb, which seems like roughly correct values from what I've read in various sources).

    The ruling helped them do this by making sure that resellers can't interfere, the ruling just means that resellers are able to offer lower rates but that isn't going to stop things. Sure, some people will be able to go to a reseller but in Edmonton that doesn't look very promising. I have several friends who've tried resellers and they all have horror stories. It sounds like a few resellers had their shit together and tried to provide a good service but the major ISP's found ways to screw them. The major ISP's will continue to rip their customers off and will continue to hold a lions share of the market.

    No, I just live on top of a mountain that was only recently developed due to the addition of a new highway branch.

    Figgy on
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  • JihadJesusJihadJesus Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    That seems like the major point - if you have to compete with someone offering 250 or 500 GB caps, it's going to be pretty tough to only offer plans with 25 fucking GB limits, which was the really obscene part. The insane rates were just the icing on the fuck-off flavored cake. While it's true that the majority of people don't care about the overages....they would have, at 25 GB and a buck per afterwards.

    Really, they were targeting people like me who drop cable TV and stream netflix to my TV. It has nothing to do with cost or really even profit on their internet services; it's been about protecting their entire outdated business model as a whole by creating incredible severe dissincentives to consumer behavior they don't like.

    JihadJesus on
  • CadmusCadmus Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    JihadJesus wrote: »
    Really, they were targeting people like me who drop cable TV and stream netflix to my TV. It has nothing to do with cost or really even profit on their internet services; it's been about protecting their entire outdated business model as a whole by creating incredible severe dissincentives to consumer behavior they don't like.

    Agreed. I just don't think resellers are big enough to solve the problem.

    I guess it could be a lot worse, it could be like what's happening with basically any industry that used to need publishers. I guess that's probably a different thread though.

    Cadmus on
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