Some perspective on exactly how badly ISPs in Canada are overcharging for data

Is it me or is the ISP business getting steadily more anti-customer? Between trying to double charge for bandwidth (charge me a monthly fee and then charge company X for access to me) and attempting to push through lower and lower caps. I understand the increasing costs of infrastructure to provide for users streaming content but would this not be part of their business plans and budgeted for? Or did they expect everybody to continue using the internet like it was 2000? I know the service was always sold on the assumption that the majority of people are low bandwidth users but can ISPs really get this defensive when people start trying to get what they pay for?<p>Also SMS still takes the cake for most crazily overpriced communication medium, over $1000 per Mb.

Shipping data is common, both to save money and for greater speed.<p>AWS has their import/export tool that does just this: <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/" rel="nofollow">http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/</a><p>There's also the story of the carrier pigeon which was faster than broadband in South Africa <a href="http://www.physorg.com/news171883994.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.physorg.com/news171883994.html</a><p>Fill a 737 with bluray, fly it from NY to LA, and you'll reach 37,000 Gbit/s.<p>It's called Sneakernet: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet</a>

In the old days of computing people used to talk about "tackie" or "sneaker" networks. Meaning put the data onto a disk and physically move it to another machine. Looks like we are back to that again!

"never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes"

Somewhat OT. What does a Netflix streamed movie consume, these days? I recall looking some months ago on their site, but I couldn't find any hard numbers (leaving the impression on me that this was on purpose).<p>I guess next time I watch one, I can fire up a monitor.<p>--<p>EDIT: Answering myself, partially. My Google-fu is apparently a bit better, today.<p>This is a bit dated, but provides some figures (bless dslreports):<p><a href="http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22164481-Netflix-bandwidth-Is-1GBhr-at-HD-accurate" rel="nofollow">http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22164481-Netflix-bandwidth-...</a><p>It also cites this link:<p><a href="http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html</a><p>There's probably better information, but this seems to provide enough of a ballpark for my current interest, the one caveat being any changes in the year or two since.

This is Bell.<p>While I'm not claiming Canadian rates are cheap, this is what Videotron charges:<p>Download speed: 60 Mbps Upload speed: 3 Mbps Total data transfer combined: 150 GB $82.95*<p>Which is 0.55$<p>You can also get additional data in 30 Gig blocks for 12.50$ (up to 3 a month), which is 0.44$, if you need it. And there are additional services as well.<p>I've been a subscriber to Videotron since 2002, and while they aren't the cheapest, I've found their support fairly good, never having a major problems.<p>Edit: I should note, I'm just providing these prices as a perspective to what's being presented other places. My wife and I also never go over the cap, so we haven't worried about overage charges. However, if we did exceed the cap, apparently it's $4.50/G!

Daniel Rutter did some similar math, using MicroSD cards, since they're smaller and lighter per gigabyte.<p><a href="http://dansdata.com/gz105.htm" rel="nofollow">http://dansdata.com/gz105.htm</a><p>If you fill a station wagon with them, and drive for 5 days, you'll do about 477 gibibytes per second, using 19.4 million cards, costing something like 750 million dollars.<p>In the real world, (he said, laughing uproariously) you'd only use a couple dozen three terabyte drives, or something, but still. For certain applications, sneakernetting can be much cheaper than internet transit.

I still find the price per text message (my cell carrier still charges 5 cents per) enormous. To send 160GB via 160 char text messages would cost 50 million dollars.

FYI, Teksavvy's cable plans still offer 200GB and unlimited options, since they're running on Rogers' lines (I'm a cable customer and have confirmed this with them). This may change, but in the meantime it's the best thing going if you can get it!

Why is this being upvoted? Who does not overcharge based on this idiotic logic? It may have made for a humorous joke on reddit, but I expect better here.