200GB to 25GB: Canada gets first, bitter dose of metered Internet

[katty]

more:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/canada-gets-first-bitter-dose-of-metered-internet-billing.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

200GB to 25GB: Canada gets first, bitter dose of metered Internet
By Matthew Lasar | Last updated about 7 hours ago

Metered Internet usage (also called "Usage-Based Billing") is coming to Canada, and it's going to cost Internet users. While an advance guard of Canadians are expressing creative outrage at the prospect of having to pay inflated prices for Internet use charged by the gigabyte, the consequences probably haven't set in for most consumers. Now, however, independent Canadian ISPs are publishing their revised data plans, and they aren't pretty.

"Like our customers, and Canadian internet users everywhere, we are not happy with this new development," wrote the Ontario-based indie ISP TekSavvy in a recent e-mail message to its subscribers.

But like it or not, the Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved UBB for the incumbent carrier Bell Canada in September. Competitive ISPs, which connect to Canada's top telco for last-mile copper connections to customers, will also be metered by Bell. Even though the CRTC gave these ISPs a 15 percent discount this month (TekSavvy asked for 50 percent), it's still going to mean a real adjustment for consumers.

This is going to hurt

[Wilber_Stool]

1. Imagine what would happen

to any other corp that sold more product than they actually had. Hell, they should be charged with breach of contract.

[saras]

2. There's nothing about 'metered internet' that requires higher prices

The choice to either raise prices or set quotas far below what people currently have for the same price is an entirely different decision than the one to meter the stuff in the first place.

So let's keep it straight that this isn't about metered internet so much as it is about price gouging.

[no limit]

3. 200GB isn't horrible (6.6GB /day). But 25GB? I'd rather live in nazi germany.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[no limit]

5. Lets put you on a 25GB cap and see how you feel afterwards.

[JoeyT]

11. It is teh suck.

First time your OS, virus scanner, or a game updates you're shit out of luck for 2 or 3 days. It's around 0.5 kbps when throttled, so your connection will time out before anything can be transferred. Rural internet is full of fail.

It looks like this:



Edited to add: That's the 24 hour allowance. Witness the future, I guess.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Netflix streaming is in the middle of this.

ISP's claim Netflix is getting the last mile FREE.
Netflix claims the cost to the ISPs for that last mile is about 5 cents.

More importantly, how soon before ISP's HERE get this greedy?
It will be the internet for only the rich, soon?

[thelordofhell]

8. Where have you been?

ISP's here have been trying to tier service the internet for years.

[Recursion]

7. This is one of the few ways to make net neutrality work (nt)

[mwooldri]

9. And the first company in Canada who can offer unmetered service will clean up.

Once the genie is out of the bottle, it's hard to put back in.

Wimax links across the border to circumvent Bell Canada's network monopoly, and a 3rd party infrastructure rolls this out. Those companies who can do this will get the business.

There is a reason for metered Internet - 1) for the Tier 1 & 2 companies to duke it out with over traffic, and 2) for the end consumer who doesn't want much Internet, want a high speed but not a lot of it.

For the rest of us, we should pay by the pipesize and the provider at the end that is going to pump the data in should figure out we're going to use XYZ amount of data and price accordingly. For people who use "too much data", speed throttling is the answer.

[Jed28]

10. More info here

"YouTube rankings of a recent video where George Stromobolopolous explains usage-based billing, demonstrate that the world is watching these developments. There’s a reason for that: Canada is a petri dish for big telecom companies to experiment in their efforts to take back control of communications. They tried to do this by discriminating against online services through “traffic management” but we successfully pushed back.

Usage-based billing is another example of the ongoing attempts by telecoms to reclaim control of communications."

http://openmedia.ca/blog/world-watching