Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

I'll provide one data point of how this affects Canadian internet users.<p>I currently have no caps with TekSavvy and pay $39 a month. Starting from March 1st, I will pay $31.95/mo with a 25 GB cap. Any gigabyte over the limit will cost about 2 bucks.<p>Now, you can buy a block at discounted prices. According to TekSavvy, based on my internet usage, I will need to buy at least a 275 GB extra block. Believe it or not, I don't torrent. I simply like to watch NetFlix, HD movies from iTunes, lots of educational videos online, and backup data in the cloud.<p>That 275 GB block costs $55/mo. So I suddenly go from paying $39 for unlimited data to paying $86.95 per month, and having to be careful about what I download and what not.<p>Oh, and the first thing I need to do is stop backing up my data, videos, and photos in the cloud. That's pretty much out of the question with the risk of paying $2 per extra GB. I'm buying an additional external hard drive instead.<p>How is that for innovation?

This doesn't explaining what's going on very clearly. Small Canadian ISPs are allowed to use the infrastructure of Bell Canada at wholesale rates in order to foster competition. This has been reasonably successful. What has happened now is that the CRTC ruled that Bell is allowed to impose the same per-user bandwidth caps on its wholesale customers as it does on its own users.<p>Since the smaller ISPs should simply be getting bandwidth from Bell, this is totally ridiculous. Their ability to compete with Bell on price or levels of service is almost totally eliminated. When my friends and family in Ontario were explaining this to me I kept having to ask them to repeat themselves because it <i>boggled my mind</i> how ISPs using bell's infrastructure could be subject to those sorts of restrictions.

For those not familiar with Canadian bureaucracies, the CRTC governs telecom issues, similar to the FCC in the US.<p>What may not be so obvious, even to Canadians, is that the members of the CRTC used to work for Bell, Rogers, Telus etc. Much like employees of the Treasury Department in the US, these people go from private sector to public sector and back continuously. A running joke at Rogers used to be that whenever they wanted some sort of legislation changed, the VPs would draw straws to see who had to quit and join the CRTC.

The telecommunications situation in Canada is terrible.<p>Typically, in rural areas the way to get broadband goes something like this:<p>A bunch of people get a deal with a small ISP to <i>finally</i> provide them broadband because Bell says they won't be doing it. Then two weeks after all the gear gets installed and the small ISP starts signing up customers Bell will swoop in with an offer to undercut them and suddenly all the things that made it 'impossible' to get broadband before are mere chalk lines instead of the hurdles they were made out to be before.<p>In Canada it is illegal (or was, this is 4 years ago, it may have changed) to have a satellite receiver that receives FTA programming and so on.

Here's another reason why this is bullshit... this is an excerpt from an article I'm working on:<p>The biggest problem with these caps is that they are, plain and simply, anticompetitive. Probably illegally so.<p>Let’s take Bell’s internet service as an example. Bell recently rolled out their “Fibe” offerings, both for internet and IPTV.<p>Their most accommodating plan, Fibe 25, has a ludicrously low cap of 75GB. It would be pretty easy to exceed that with HD content from iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, etc.<p>Fibe TV, however, delivers TV over the same network. Bell even treats the IPTV traffic preferentially, as you can in this gushing review: <a href="http://www.benlucier.ca/work/tech/bell-entertainment-service-the-results-are-impressive/" rel="nofollow">http://www.benlucier.ca/work/tech/bell-entertainment-service...</a><p>There’s only one minor difference: Fibe TV is not subject to the same usage caps. You can stream as many movies as you like over Fibe TV, watch as much TV as you like, and never get charged extra for the bandwidth.<p>Well now, that’s funny. Didn’t Bell’s regulatory spokesperson say something to the contrary just the other day? Oh yeah!<p>“A bit is a bit is a bit. If you’re a heavy user, regardless of what’s causing the heavy use, you will pay more. That’s the concept,” said Mirko Bibic, Bell Canada’s senior vice-president for regulatory affairs.<p><a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/netflix-confronting-canadian-challenges/article1866312/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/net...</a><p>Yes, Mr. Bibic, it appears that all bits are equal – but some bits are more equal than others.<p>This is a textbook case of anticompetitive behaviour, one of a long litany of recent sleazy undertakings by major Canadian telecoms (e.g. Rogers’ suspiciously well-timed lowering of caps on their most popular plans when Netflix entered the Canadian market). It is also a textbook method for successfully stifling innovation, a problem Canadians are all-too-familiar with.<p>The Internet is now an essential service. While smart countries like South Korea, Australia, and Japan are making (or have made) large public investments in fast, ubiquitous, and unlimited Internet for all citizens, Canada continues to lurch backwards courtesy of myopic regulators, oligopolistic telecoms and a government that is unwilling to intervene for the good of all Canadians.

How expensive would it be to start a number of small independent Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs)?<p>I'm thinking of a decentralized "movement" of geeks organizing what's required to get neighborhoods and villages online: an omnidirectional antenna high enough that Line of Sight can be provided to most residents, a high bandwidth fiber optics connection at the center, and subscriber antennas at the residences.<p>I've tried to find more information on Motorola Canopy technology in the past days -- look at this example deployment in Nova Scotia: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_for_Rural_Nova_Scotia_initiative" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_for_Rural_Nova_Scotia...</a><p>From what I'm gathering, Canopy can be deployed over unlicensed frequencies (2.4 and 5 Ghz), allows for hundreds of subscribers connecting to a single Access Point, can provide up bandwidth in the 5-10 Mbps range, etc.<p>Are there particular advantages to Canopy over 802.11x? Could it become viable, with infrastructure costs spread over some years, to run a small local WISP? I'm thinking of a "Real Internet" designation/"certification" that could be given out to any ISP that follows a basic code of conduct: offers at least one unlimited transfer connection plan and does not throttle traffic.<p>Is starting an ISP, regardless of the physical layer, overly regulated by CRTC? The Wikipedia page says "The CRTC does not regulate rates, quality of service issues, or business practices for Internet service providers" -- is that in effect true?<p>How can anyone manage with 25 GB per month? Are Netflix or the NFB going to do something about this? If not, can "we"?

I'm embarassed to be Canadian.<p>I'm not opposed to usage based billing - users who use more should pay more, but the rate should be commensurate to actual costs. Regulation is meant to protect the public from potentially unfavorable actions by authorized natural monopolies. Perhaps the ISPs should be selling bandwidth on a market, like with electricity.

I'm a Tesksavvy customer and I got a email about this yesterday.<p>Until now I thought it was crazy that Austrlia was getting a censored internet and wondered how such a thing could happen in a pretty modern democracy. But now I feel like something worse has happened here... While new internet applications that use more and more data are coming out all the time and the cost of moving a byte on the net is going down rapidly, caps are getting smaller and smaller here just so the big telecoms can protect their on-demand TV businesses and keep internet service minimal without having to worry about competition.<p>This is so anti-competitive that it sickens me.

This really disturbs me. I just moved to Seattle where I signed up for Comcast internet. A couple of days later, my connection stopped working until I activated my account on comcast.com. I did, and the first thing I saw was<p>High-Speed Internet Data Usage: 17% 43GB of 250GB<p>They sure hide that fact when you signup, not that I have any options, as Comcast is the only provider where I live. This is a horrible direction we are heading. And, if you go over the limit, they call and warn you. If you go over again, they cancel your account.

Canadians can sign a petition that also purports to send email on your behalf to the CRTC:<p><a href="http://openmedia.ca/meter" rel="nofollow">http://openmedia.ca/meter</a><p>I've been considering not getting Internet at my new place when I move (which is coincidentally the end of the month, when this regulation takes effect) for productivity reasons, and this cements the decision. I've been pretty happy as a Teksavvy customer otherwise.

The real kick in the junk is that the infrastructure Bell owns was paid for by the Canadian taxpayers when Bell operated as a crown corporation.<p>Not sure if the Rogers infrastructure was publicly funded (I suspect it was in part).

Ok, here is what is happening in India. It's even more sinister. The ISPs have made some sites free and everything else paid. So, facebook for instance is free while your "littlesite dot com" is charged. The regulators are sleeping.

Iv'e been following this debate, but it's been difficult to find actual facts. Right now with Telus (Canadian dsl ISP) i pay for 125gb transfer a month and $2/gb if I go over. Yes, the overage charge is insane but it's been like that for a long time.<p>As far as I can tell, the issue is that the big ISPs (tells, Rogers, bell) all have caps/overage, but the smaller ISPs that piggyback on their network can offer unlimited data transfer. This new ruling seems to 'even the playing field'.<p>I want the Internet to be free and unlimited as the next guy, but I have yet to understand what the big deal is here.

I'm really lucky to live in Waterloo, Ontario. There's a provider called Yak that offers unlimited bandwidth, non-throttled DSL up to 10MB for $60 a month (comes with non-voip phone line and 5 calling features).<p>They have their own DSL centers and hence aren't going to be affected by this new proposition. I think we might see more companies starting their own DSL centers.

Didn't the Egyptians just have the Internet cut off? I'd say they're the biggest losers.

If you're curious about the regulatory history of this issue - and who isn't, really - then CRTC decisions 2010-255 (<a href="http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2010/2010-255.htm" rel="nofollow">http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2010/2010-255.htm</a>) and (<a href="http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2011/2011-44.htm" rel="nofollow">http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2011/2011-44.htm</a>) 2011-44 may be of interest to you. The former is the final in a series of decisions relating to Bell's request to allow them to move independent ISPs onto usage-based billing, and the latter is the recent decision on (effectively) an appeal of that decision.<p>If you don't care to skim the whole thing, the bottom line is that Bell is now able to force usage-based billing onto third-party ISPs, but must offer them a discount of 15% under the retail price at which Bell sells those services directly to customers.<p>Some other interesting tidbits found in there:<p>Unsurprisingly, Bell was against the idea of any discount, saying that even without a discount it would still be possible for independent ISPs to differentiate their services on price and "other methods". It's not clear how they'd actually do this, however. Oh, and PS there's way to determine an acceptable discount rate even if those assertions weren't true, so we shouldn't have one.<p>There's a nice note in there that "[the] Commission also received a large number of comments, mostly from individuals, that almost unanimously opposed the Bell companies' applications [to force usage-based billing]" - thanks for pointing that out, CRTC.<p>Bell is only required to provide third-party access to their legacy ATM networks, and not their new fiber-optic networks. This makes sense - as I've never seen the service advertised - but I hadn't seen that in writing anywhere.<p>If Bell ever does some form of promotion where they let people sign up on unlimited plans, they have to let third-party ISPs do this as well - although the mechanics are unstated ("[The] Commission finds that...to the extent that each company chooses not to charge UBB rates to any existing or new retail customer, it is required to treat GAS ISPs on an equivalent basis.").<p>Bell was about ambitious as you can get in the list of things they requested from the CRTC in these decisions. I'm not saying that I like this decision (as of March 1st I'll be paying TekSavvy more for less), but the CRTC did OK for the little guy when you see what else Bell wanted.<p>No one - not Bell, not the CRTC - says this is a technical issue. It's not that Bell can't handle all the bandwidth people use (which require a technical ITMP, in CRTC-ese), but that they see this as a way to increase profits by charging people who use more bandwidth more money (hence it's an economic ITMP).

It's not that bad. Really.<p>Australia has had data caps since broadband first came out; for the vast majority of of users a basic plan provides all the data they need, techy users with heavy usage patterns get higher plans, and people with the compulsion to torrent every TV in existence get plans with unmetered periods (a few ISPs don't meter traffic during the quiet periods at night)<p>The usual behavior once you're over your data cap is to drop the internet speed down to ~64kbs for the rest of the month so even if you kill your data cap you can still access email and other low bandwidth services, you're not off completely.

This reminds me of when the Canadian RIAA (CRIA) successfully campaigned the Canadian government for a "levy" on all blank data media in 2002. They wanted to charge an extra $21 per GB on CDs, DVDs and hard drives in digital media player - ostensibly to cover the costs of piracy. Sound silly? Canadian legislators obliged (though it was overturned in court years later.)<p><a href="http://news.dmusic.com/article/4580" rel="nofollow">http://news.dmusic.com/article/4580</a><p>As I recall, this backfired since the levy eventually meant that they couldn't sue people for pirating content - they had already paid for it via the levy. Like double jeopardy.<p>Anyway, it proved that levies like this don't actually change behaviour much. Canadians drove to the US to buy their MP3 players. Telcos benefitted by online media consumption and competed heavily for broadband subscribers. Digital lifestyles in Canada flourished.<p>Ironically, it's now the telcos that are complaining for the same reason. The key difference now is that big telcos can use this decision to squeeze their competitors (who they also supply.) Though I can see ways that this will backfire too.<p>The good thing about the Canadian government is that they have a history of continually watching, listening, adjusting and even backtracking if they feel they made the wrong move. I hope this keeps the telcos from abusing their new rights, and from stifling digital innovation in Canada, which hurts them too in the long run.

This could snowball with a nasty public backlash.<p>Can anyone tell me if this is specific to bell? If so, how would this affect us out west where our wholesale provider might be telus, shaw or allstream?

A much better article explaining the same issue:<p><a href="http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91228/crtc-ruling-could-mean-data-caps-for-all/" rel="nofollow">http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91228/crtc-ruling-could-mean-da...</a> (2010 Nov 3)<p>Sounds like the regulator really dropped the ball on this one, giving small ISP's only 90 days to investigate possible alternatives, plan for them, and implement. 90 days?! That's insanely short. 9-12 months would have been reasonable. 90days? I'm stunned.

I wonder how this will affect companies like Mobilicity who offer unlimited cell phone data usage for an additional $10/month. I have no idea how Mobilicity operates and whether they're dependent on Bell's infrastructure or not, and whether the infrastructure is the same for cell phones as it is for internet.<p>A systematic breakdown on how this affects all ISPs and phone providers across all of Canada would really clarify the issue!

This is going to suck, software gets bloated far faster than network hardware can be developed and certainly faster than network hardware can be installed.<p>New services such as Netflix and who knows what else is coming down the line (3D Netflix movies?) are going to use up your overpriced bandwidth faster than your ISP can evolve, they'll just charge more for the same service.<p>This will be like when video became popular when everyone was still on 56kbps modems, the web developed faster than the hardware meant to use it and it will stall development. Why develop when there isn't anyone using it or able to use it?<p>In the end people will do what they have to when they only have a limited amount of disposable income, ISPs will see people spend $50 for 10Mbps service and when the ISPs increase the monthly bill by a $1 here and a $1 there (to serve us better) consumers will get the 5Mbps service for $50.

The most dangerous problem isn't the markup or extra cost, it's that as soon as UBB is old news, the media companies that are now also the internet companies (comcast/nbc) will offer discounts on "in network" bandwidth, so an NBC show will cost you the regular 1.99, but a movie from another network, or an independent production will cost you extra.<p>I'd be all in favor of this kind of pricing if it was anything resembling an open market, like how the cell phone industry had/has major downward price pressure, but there are far fewer choices when it comes to wires into your house, so the local monopoly effects are very strong.

From the CRTC website (<a href="http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/INFO_SHT/t1003.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/INFO_SHT/t1003.htm</a>): "The CRTC does not regulate rates, quality of service issues or business practices of Internet service providers as they relate to retail customers. This is because there is enough competition in the market that retail customers can shop around for service packages."<p>Yet they've completely paved the way for competition to be swallowed into oblivion. They're standing aside saying "it wasn't us - it's not our fault" and yet snickering behind our backs while they rake in the dough.<p>Disgraceful.

This is really about conflict of interest. Perhaps it is time for regulation mandating the split of telecom from media content ownership.<p>In Canada, the telecoms own most of the major media assets (Shaw, rogers, bell).

We have this in Australia.<p>Here at least the situation isn't too bad, because we have competitive resellers at the ISP level[1].<p>The ISPs compete on service, bandwidth, data limits and inclusions. For example, many (most?) ISPs arrange peering with video providers like Tivo so video streamed on their services don't count towards the data cap.<p>[1] There are laws to ensure that any ISP can install their equipment in the exchanges, or get access to the dominate telco's equipment at close-to-cost. Most of the time, these laws work, if slower than ideal.

You mean that most countries don't pay per gigabyte? I live in New Zealand, and there's only one company with an unlimited broadband package, and that's only with a two-year contract.<p>The norm in New Zealand is to pay for say, 20GB per month, and if you exceed that then you drop down to dial-up speed (or pay for more).<p>With all due respect to the Canadians here, it's not really that bad at all. Life goes on, and it actually seems to be a pretty good life too.

Would be interesting to see if companies like Google, who have a significant stake in a "free and open internet", could establish operations in Canada. Google wants users online as much as possible so they can continue to serve ads. It's too bad all that dark fiber they own doesn't extend into Canada.

Socialism FTW! My province's government run ISP faught against the CRTC and is not implementing UBB. Bravo MTS!

Welcome to Australia

Literally, I think Egyptians just became the world's biggest internet losers.

Doesn't that title still belong to Sierra Leone? Or perhaps Liberia? <a href="http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm</a>

Seems like the CRTC needs to find a way to remain relevant. This is central planning, socialist style. I hope everyone enjoys it.

It's not a matter of regulations, it's a matter of markets. Some companies such as Bell treat their customers like crap and just want to lock them into a long term contract. So what? There are lots of competitors who will not be doing UBB such as Telus / Shaw / Rogers. Customers on Bell just became the world's biggest internet losers. If people don't like UBB they can always switch carriers unless they were dumb enough to take Bell's crappy long term contract.

<p><pre><code> while true; do wget http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/policymonitoring/2010/cmr2010.pdf; rm cmr2010.pdf; done </code></pre> Signed,<p>Japan ($9/month unlimited Internet access)

what an overreaction. I`m in Canada and calling Canadians the biggest Internet losers is nonsense.<p>People who use 300 GB of data per month cost the ISP more than people who use a few GB a month. That`s just a fact of life.<p>Should they have flexibility to charge more - Yes.

If this actually passes, any sentiments I had about moving to Canada would evaporate. Good job guys, you're keeping the techies out.

Working at a Canadian university I hear my boss say that bandwidth doubles every year for the same price. But Bell has been selling the same service (DSL) for less and less bandwidth... for a higher price every year.

Selling Internet access could become something like the next oil. Almost everyone in the US has to buy oil/gas, whether directly or indirectly. Therefore, that's a good business to be in. Internet usage, both in terms of breadth and frequency and data volume, will likely keep increasing. Therefore, getting into the business of selling access to it -- especially if you can sell metered usage -- could be increasingly lucrative. And it's a growing pie.<p>Furthermore, since so many mediums and industries are seeing their traditional cash flow streams go away due to the easy availability of free alternatives on the Internet, it makes sense that if you can't beat em, join em, and then just charge for the pipe to it all. So-called "pirates" can avoid paying for the official e-versions of digitizable media (songs, movies, images, encyclopedic info, sound effects, games, books, news, etc.) but it's much harder for them to avoid paying for the physical connection.

I'm surprised as to how many regular people I've talked to who don't torrent and who have gone over bandwidth (with Bell). The caps are super low, even for regular users and not just the techies.

Well honestly this does kind of make sense.I'll explain 1.Verizon owns the pipes an charges companies or.Facebook or NEtflix a set fee for bundled usage fee. 2.Netflix and Facebook in turn would have to charge customers basic membership or usage fees to recoup the cost of there bundled usage fees they pay Verizon. 3.Customer would pay membership fees for services that we in theory and utilize alot more because there free.<p>In retrospect though based on the amount of members or customers of both these companies would there usage growth take that much of a hit and would those two companies still be able to operate if they were forced to change there business models and chage people just to access there content.<p>In the case of Facebook how many members would thy have if people were required to pay say $9.99 a month to access Facebook.<p>In the case of the Internet as a whole clearly it costs money for companies like Verizon to expand and lay new lines to meet the demands of usage.Why then would it not be right to charge the data hogs for overuse of bandwith?<p>Society has become addicted to free and believe that content in itself should have no cost associated with it.However people don't realize the manpower,creativity and cost associated just to have that content produced. It makes sense now as to why Rupert Murdoch is against the freemium models for news via the web.<p>I mean just think about it on a small scale just for me to write this comment.I'm paying for Internet service,heating bill,electric and other costs also.So why shoudnt I be able to pas that cost to the end user?