
Canada still wants to "discipline the use of the Internet" - solipsist
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/metered-internet-in-canada-isnt-quite-dead.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
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naner
_Companies like Netflix are "putting a great stress on the Internet and
there's no incentive for companies to invest in maintaining the Internet."
Usage-based billing would encourage people to adopt more bandwidth-efficient
technologies_

Charging more for less won't provide incentive for companies to "invest in
maintaining the internet", though.

~~~
Charuru
Actually, yes it will. It'll set a low standard for cheap internet, thus
making it economically viable for new boutique entrants to the ISP market,
bringing with them new technologies and strategies. Google? Wireless?

I don't believe in government interference.

Giving more incentive for better encoding is also a valid point. Netflix
offered 10 million for better recommendations. I'd like to see them offer the
same thing for better encoding.

~~~
mschwar99
I'd have more sympathy for this argument if government interference didn't
play a large part in the construction of the status quo.

In Canada, government regulation and taxpayer money played a significant role
in building the infrastructure. In the US, government granted monopolies built
the infrastructure and still serve to squeeze out competition.

Government interference isn't a shiny new monster imposing itself on private
sector infrastructure. Rather it has been a key player since the beginning and
shaped the market in ways that need to be accounted for.

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awakeasleep
I couldn't believe the gall behind the claim that the Internet is as limited a
resource as electricity.

The whole article seems ludicrous. "Discipline" internet usage? As if it's
inherently bad or something?

~~~
rfugger
Well, obviously everyone can't download at full speed at once and expect any
kind of performance from the shared network, so some kind of sharing
arrangement is needed. The usual method is to price the scarce resource
somehow. The spectre of usage-based billing was already motivating third-party
ISPs to investigate building their own routing infrastructure. Seems like the
market will sort it out, no?

~~~
MichaelGG
Billing by total bytes transferred over the month has got to be the worst way
to get a "sharing arrangement". Given the prices for exceeding the limit (a
couple dollars per GB), we can sort of rule this out as just an idea to help
avoid congestion.

The issue, AFAIK, with the market "sorting things out", is that there are few
companies that have gotten government permission to build out end networks.
I'd guess it's near impossible for a new company to get access to actually lay
out copper everywhere.

~~~
rfugger
Bell will sell you extra usage for $0.125/GB if you buy it in advance.

~~~
pyre
But there's nothing to prevent everyone from using the bandwidth they've
purchased at the same time.

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drdaeman
Unmetered costs more. I don't know about Canada or US, but in Russia it's
certain that your ISP pays for their uplink channels several times more than
you would for the same bandwidth. Partially, that's because there are
completely different SLAs, but that's also because a good share of users are
consuming moderately (like web browsing) with only accidental high-traffic
spikes. If every customer online will try to get their promised bandwidth at
the same time - ISP will literally choke - and nobody would get even remotely
satisfying connection. That's why ISPs have to impose bandwidth limits. Here,
they're commonly shaping down the line after the traffic cap's hit.

In fact, I believe almost every ISP - unless they're monopoly - would be happy
to drop the prices while keeping the satisfable service quality.
Unfortunately, most of time they just can't (and when they can, they surely
do).

Also, while it's certainly none of my business, I sometimes wonder why some
individuals download _terabytes_ of information per month. Considering the
most heavy application I know of - downloading raw BD rips - they have to
watch a movie every single evening. Must be quite a bad taste for a
videophile, to say the least. For less traffic-heavy content, they just won't
be able to consume it in time. I'm not saying that terabytes are not needed -
sure there're cases where even petabytes might be necessary - but there're too
many users who download whole day and night every month. Well, at least the
Internets are backed up...

~~~
cal5k
Counterpoint: Free.fr in France. While the incumbent telecoms were charging
out the nose, Free.fr charges a moderate price for unlimited access and all
sorts of awesome features. Clearly it's working for them.

Canadian telecoms are some of the most profitable companies in the country.
The "no incentive to invest" has been because they can charge whatever they
want for their service, milking the aging infrastructure they "own" that
taxpayers heavily subsidized.

Why invest early and often if you can just crank up your rates when things
eventually break down?

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bryanlarsen
UBB would make a lot more sense if the rates reflected actual costs rather
than being based on what Bell charged the customer.

For instance, if Bell charged the ISP's $7 for renting that "last mile" + 5
cents for each gigabyte, charging the same for 1st and the 500th gigabyte,
it'd be a lot harder to argue against UBB. But when they charge $2 per
gigabyte but then allow you to pay $5 for 40 gigabytes a block, but only a
maximum of 3 blocks, it's obvious to everybody that those prices are bogus and
pure gravy.

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redthrowaway
And again the true concern of Bell et al is apparent: they want to protect
cable. They don't care about internet, as the incremental costs of adding more
bandwidth are negligible. This is simply more confirmation that they either
want to a) force netflix to pay a tariff, passing the buck on to consumers to
make it less appealing, or b) force consumers to pay extra for the bandwidth
used by streaming video.

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guelo
Actually, in a way, they have better internet in Canada then we do down here
in the US. Most people here have one or at most two monopolists they can turn
to for broadband. At least in Canada the government has tried to add some
competition.

~~~
pyre
There was a similar period in the US when regional phone companies were
required to lease lines out to 3rd parties, but I believe either the policy
was changed or a court case deemed the rule to be invalid.

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InclinedPlane
The internet is not a truck, you can't just dump a crap ton of movies on it
and expect no consequences, you'll clog up the tubes!

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nl
This simply isn't as one sided as many seem to think. See, for example
[http://eaves.ca/2011/02/03/why-the-crtc-was-right-on-user-
ba...](http://eaves.ca/2011/02/03/why-the-crtc-was-right-on-user-based-
billing/) ("Why the CRTC was right on Usage-Based Billing")

~~~
cal5k
I have a lot of respect for David Eaves, but in this particular case it looks
to me like he doesn't understand the nuances of the argument. He's simply
equating internet to electricity as if they were really similar things.

What he utterly fails to account for is the fact that the costs to provide a
certain level of bandwidth have been dropping dramatically. You could simply
be making regular, equal investments every year and that would be enough to
see bandwidth rise in line with consumption. Yes, a 50% year-over-year
increase in consumption is matched be a 50-60% year-over-year cost decrease.

Furthermore, Bell (for example) has little incentive to upgrade early and
often if they can charge whatever they want. They can simply milk their creaky
infrastructure until it breaks down (infrastructure that was heavily
subsidized by the taxpayer), and then simply increase their rates to cover the
costs of investments they should have made a long time ago if they didn't act
according to perverse incentives.

From another angle, fast, ubiquitous, unlimited (for all intents-and-purposes)
internet should be a policy objective for our government. Countries that have
made heavy investment in internet infrastructure, like South Korea and Japan,
are reaping the rewards. This will only become more important.

Canada also has THE most expensive internet access among OECD countries.
Period. Full stop.

Finally, this ruling was about imposing UBB on 3rd-party providers, not about
UBB in general. Teksavvy already had caps at 200GB and a more expensive plan
that offered unlimited access, and as many people don't seem to understand,
they're not using Bell's backhaul. They operate their own - they just need to
access the last mile infrastructure because it's a bloody duopoly.

I could go on and on and on, but suffice it to say that David is just plain
wrong here. It IS as one-sided as we think.

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troels
Could someone explain to me what this is all about? Do the Canadian government
want to prevent its citizens from using the Internet, and why?

~~~
smokinn
Actually every party in the government that was actually elected is against
it.

The _only_ people that want this are Bell and the CRTC whose job it is to
regulate Bell but whose members essentially rotate in and out of the CRTC and
the companies they regulate. It's corrupt to the core.

