

UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser. - ashchristopher
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/932571--ottawa-to-reverse-crtc-decision-on-internet-billing?bn=1

======
gamble
The second half of this article reads like it was written by Bell or Rogers.

The problem with UBB is not caps, per se, but the fact that the caps were
absurdly small and overage fees grossly exceeded the cost of bandwidth. Not to
mention that they were introduced at the same time as Netflix launched in
Canada, and the providers' own TV-over-IP services were exempt.

I dumped my $120/mo Bell Expressvu subscription last month in favor of Netflix
and AppleTV. Why should I pay over a thousand dollars a year when I don't
watch 98% of what it provides? UBB is just Bell saying 'screw you, we'll get
that pound of flesh one way or another.'

~~~
AgentConundrum
_The second half of this article reads like it was written by Bell or Rogers._

Indeed. There were a few lines which particularly stood out to me as having
been written by someone who doesn't really get the situation:

> To encourage competition, major telecom operators that have spent heavily on
> infrastructure are required to lease bandwidth on their networks to small
> providers.

I get that the system is maintained by these large companies, and I'm sure
they have spent a lot on the infrastructure, but (and correct me if I'm wrong)
I believe the system was built largely with taxpayer dollars, and it continues
to be heavily subsidized by same.

> Although critics say the CRTC ruling will lead to lower download limits and
> higher rates, major Internet service providers say usage-based billing based
> is fair because it means heavy users pay more than those who just surf the
> web and use email.

There are two problems with this. First, internet isn't like electricity.
Electricity must be generated at a cost, and those who consume more cost the
generating company more (perhaps not directly, since unused electricity is
simply lost, but at least indirectly by requiring higher generation to
accommodate peak usage). With the internet, however, the lines are already
laid and it's merely a matter of sending the information down the wire. There
is almost no additional cost associated with higher usage (see next point).

Second, the 'incremental cost" of bandwidth appears, from what I've read
recently, to be somewhere around a penny per gigabyte, if any exists at all.
Let's give the companies the benefit of the doubt and say that it's actually
2.5 cents per GB. Now let's give them a 100% markup to be nice. So now we're
calling a "reasonable markup" on this service to have a price of 5 cents per
GB. Bell wanted $2 per GB for folks who go over their limit. They wanted _40
times_ what I just gave as a reasonable number. Even if you want to use the
most conservative estimate I found, which was the CEO of TekSavvy who said
maybe it could get as high as 30 cents per GB, then Bell would still be asking
us to pay 666% (<obvious joke here>) of the actual cost. That's one hell of a
markup.

Also, and again using the 30c/GB estimate, Bell's offer in Ontario of a 25GB
limit would equate to a $7.50 cost? Anyone want to take a guess at how much
the service actually is actually priced at? I'll give you a hint: it's not
$7.50.

Sorry for the rant, but I've been worried about this decision and I have a lot
of pent up anger about it. It's nice that the government has actually stepped
up to support the small, reasonable ISPs and the consumer.

~~~
apenwarr
A random nitpick that you might find interesting: in fact unused electricity
is not "simply lost." Where would it go? Because of the law of conservation of
energy, it would have to go somewhere, and we're talking about what might be a
_lot_ of energy.

Electrical systems actually must generate exactly the required amount of
electricity at all times. One particularly interesting tidbit I learned in one
of my engineering classes: hydro dams are like giant capacitors. If you can't
"push" more energy into the power grid, then you also can't push more water
through the turbines; it gets harder to turn the turbines due to
electromagnetism. And so the dam starts to fill up, more or less
automatically, because of the laws of physics.

~~~
AgentConundrum
Well, now I feel like an idiot. That comment was based on a poorly recalled
statement regarding the ineffectiveness of Earth Hour. If you don't use
electricity, it'll flow to the next guy, so your lack of use doesn't really
have any effect. Still, you need to generate enough electricity to cover
everyone's potential needs. Whether that electricity is used or not (where not
means that unused electricity dissipates as heat or.. whatever happens to
unused electicity?), it still needs to be available, and at a cost. Unused
bandwidth doesn't need to be generated. It's simply a quiet line.

Thanks for reintroducing logic to my brain. The rest of my argument mostly
holds up though, right?

~~~
Nick_C
> whatever happens to unused electicity?

Re-orient your thinking a little and it will make sense. We're talking AC
systems (not a SWER) so it is a closed-loop as far as the electricity is
concerned. The electricity doesn't go anywhere, it constantly oscillates. What
you are actually generating in a meta sense is ability to do _work_. You are
overcoming the electrical resistance from all those users' machines doing
work.

Does that analogy help?

~~~
AgentConundrum
I understand the closed loop. I did a bit of research when I wrote my last
comment and when I read that line is when I realized how dumb I was.

So.. electricity gets pumped into the grid from some power station, and then
[a given unit of electricity] loops repeatedly around the loop until it's
either consumed by an appliance or is converted to heat by the resistance
inherent to the transmission lines themselves?

------
Joakal
Unfortunately for Canadians, I believe it's far from over. Business/Politics
are known to make ambit claims [0] that are hard to fully remove as there's a
tendency of the well-meaning of compromising is exploited. Examples can easily
be seen with Obama administration with the Republicans [1] .

Canadians would have to ask for more than a reversal. It might be an overhaul
of the organisation due to widespread assumptions of regulatory capture [2]
that's serving the needs of monopolistic industries over the public interest.

As long the department continues to exist even though they had the sheer
audacity to implement it despite public submissions; this issue is not going
away.

Well done. To me, it's a small step however.

[0] <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ambit_claim>

[1] <http://i.imgur.com/1ULKE.png>

[2]
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Regulatory_ca...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Regulatory_capture)

~~~
AgentConundrum
Believe me, many Canadians are well aware that Bell's move was an ambit claim
(a term I've just now learned because of you, so thank you for that).

I've read a number of claims on reddit, even before Minister Clement made his
comments, from people who were fearful that the government would smack down
this decision only for Bell to come back with a slightly less bad offer.

It remains to be seen what we'll eventually get out of this deal. At this
point, however, we have the three largest political parties in the country
against this, and I've heard (but haven't seen citations) that the other two
major parties have stated their opposition. The Prime Minister has personally
come out against the issue[1] as well, so it looks like there is a fair amount
of political resistance to UBB in general.

The CRTC needs to be disbanded. This will be the second government overruling
of their decisions in as many months[2], so perhaps it will make them a little
more measured in their approach should they again approach the UBB issue. If
the CRTC constantly needs to be kept in check by the government, then perhaps
it will incentivize the government to disband the CRTC as the government will
already be doing their job for them anyway.

[1] <http://twitter.com/pmharper/status/32526091855863808> [2]
[http://news.gc.ca/web/article-
eng.do?crtr.sj1D=&mthd=tp&...](http://news.gc.ca/web/article-
eng.do?crtr.sj1D=&mthd=tp&crtr.mnthndVl=&nid=501719&crtr.dpt1D=&crtr.tp1D=1&crtr.lc1D=&crtr.yrStrtVl=&crtr.kw=&crtr.dyStrtVl=&crtr.aud1D=&crtr.mnthStrtVl=&crtr.yrndVl=&crtr.dyndVl=)

------
jeffreyrusso
In some ways, I'm envious of Canada's swift reversal of this horrible idea. In
the US, we wouldn't have the populist outcry to force action, and even if we
did, it would be met with only a token change to the legislation that would
succeed at shutting most people up.

~~~
reedF211
No need to be envious, threat of an election is a powerful motivator. Liberals
are itching to bring the government down and have a new election, there are
rumors that the opposition is gonna bring the government down in late-
march/early April. Conservatives don't want to be on the wrong side of the
public opinion on a populist issue like this going into a potential election.
This is pure politics at work. I hate to be cynical but if an election did not
look imminent I doubt the government would have acted so quickly.

------
zachallaun
_Thank God._

Seriously, this restores some of my faith in bureaucrats.

[edit] Interesting information from replies. I'll not be so quick to restore
faith in the future.

~~~
9oliYQjP
The bureaucrats (CRTC) were the ones who tried to force this on the
population. Elected officials decided to reverse the decision. The
Conservatives first said they would send the decision back for
"reconsideration" and then Harper chimed in with a more definitive reversal
stance. The Liberals came out earlier saying they were against UBB. The New
Democrats have always been fairly progressive about the web and are also
against UBB. Even the separatist Bloc Quebecois and Green Party were both
voicing concern with the decision. There was no major political party in
favour of the decision.

We get into these kinds of messes because the CRTC is a bunch of unelected
bureaucrats playing musical chairs in and out of executive positions at
Rogers, Bell, Telus, etc.. It is most perplexing because if you've dealt with
other bureaucrats in Canada, most of them at least care about their jobs and
try to look out for the public good. We can joke at their expense about how
they have all these perks and what not. But most do uphold the laws and
regulations they're sworn to. And since they tend to outlast elected
governments, these are the people that actually keep programs that we depend
on, like health care, running. But the CRTC? It's the lone hold out of the
bunch. I pretty much have nothing good to say about that organization. I would
not be sad in the least if they were dissolved.

~~~
cal5k
I think it's safe to say that, with two major reversals in a year, the CRTC
has lost any credibility it may have had (although it did not have much to
lose).

My vote would be for dissolution - maybe then they can create a regulator that
actually employs people who understand what they're regulating.

~~~
gamble
They know what they're doing. The problem is that they're biased.

It's fundamentally the same issue that plagues financial regulation. The
people who are the most qualified to understand the technological and
regulatory issues are the most biased, because almost by necessity they're
products of the same industry they're supposed to regulate.

~~~
rfugger
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture>

~~~
noibl
On reading more about this I was depressed to see very little in the way of
proposals to avoid the phenomenon, except (surprise! it's Stigler) don't
regulate.

But I did find some interesting ideas at the end of this paper:
[http://www.icgg.org/downloads/Boehm%20-%20Regulatory%20Captu...](http://www.icgg.org/downloads/Boehm%20-%20Regulatory%20Capture%20Revisited.pdf)
(pp. 23-24)

------
memetichazard
I'm annoyed that I didn't even know about UBB until earlier today, when I
stumbled across Reddit Montreal and saw something about the organization of a
protest.

Then again I'm getting all my news from here and Slashdot these days - haven't
watched any TV in ages.

My ISP already posted up new rates conforming to UBB - if it does get
overturned, I hope they'll return to the old rates: $29 a month for unlimited
bandwidth (soft capped at 100GB). I'm due for renewal at the end of this
month, so there's not much time to figure out if I need to be switching to
TekSavvy.

Somewhat offtopic - I never visited Reddit except when it was linked via posts
on Hacker News, and I'd always heard complaints that HN was becoming Reddit,
but finding out today that they have forums for my city and other interesting
things like a fitness subforum - why did I never go there earlier?

~~~
redthrowaway
HN is fairly anti-reddit because a lot of the people on here were early reddit
adopters who left when it ceased to be programming and tech-centric, and when
the site got big enough that the quality of the average comment dropped. That
said, there are some great subreddits on there, you just have to cut out most
of the main ones. I dropped r/pics, r/atheism, r/worldnews, r/gaming, and
r/reddit.com. I added r/humor, r/netsec, r/python, r/java, r/math, r/depthub,
r/truereddit, and a few others. It's a much improved experience, now.

~~~
dhughes
> HN is fairly anti-reddit

I don't get that impression here at all, quite often you'll see Reddit
articles on HN linked back to Reddit. I agree HN is more industry focused and
professional and Reddit a lot more laid back but still can be professional at
times.

HN and Reddit are similar but also quite different, I go to both and sometimes
even digg (I know!) and whatever else I can find, I don't get this mentality
that you're only allowed get to choose one social news website to view.

~~~
redthrowaway
Any discussion of reddit here usually ends up being people complaining about
it. Yes, there are often reddit links posted here, but whenever reddit is
brought up, people will usually complain about how it's full of /b/tards, it's
all just memes and pun threads, there's no useful comments there, etc. While
this may be true for the larger subreddits, my point is simply that there are
some great small ones where the quality of discussion is _much_ higher.

------
jedsmith
At the risk of being pedantic (and maybe too American), isn't this a _promise_
from politicians that it will be overturned? The title might be masking that a
little bit...

(The important words in my question being "promise" and "politicians," for
hopefully self-evident reasons)

~~~
3pt14159
In Canada you would never come out and say that a highly disliked legislation
piece is going to be overturned and then not overturn it. You would be
incinerated at election time.

~~~
danudey
If it were a big enough issue you'd just get recalled by your constituents and
then you've got to justify it to try to get re-elected.

------
DanLar75
Well if that isn't a ray of sunshine in a turd-sea of announcements regarding
the state of the Internet.

------
Caligula
This is wonderful news. I was planning to attend my first 'rally' on saturday
to protest UBB. I was shocked at how even non techies cared so much about this
issue.

I hope the monopolies(rogers&bell) don't try less subtle ways to achieve their
goals.

~~~
cal5k
Non-techies cared, in this case, because it was pretty easy to see how this
would affect you personally - you would have to pay more. Period.

If you asked the average person who is opposed to UBB (read: practically
everyone), very few could actually present a nuanced argument as to why it's
bad for a number of reasons. Instead, they can simply equate UBB to paying
more, which it turns out is good enough for collective action.

So democracy wins, but only because this can be framed as a pretty black-and-
white issue in the eyes of most Canadians.

~~~
yuhong
To be more precise, it would actually be paying more if you are on an _indie
ISP_ , by reducing competition.

------
warrenwilkinson
I don't understand what happened. Why was the government able to set internet
rates at all? Is there a monopoly here or not? Why weren't we (I'm Canadian)
paying per usage before -- was it a law or did a flat rate grow from
convienience?

~~~
pyre
You can reference the diagram in my post here (and the more detailed one in
the response to my post): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158888>

This was mostly about Bell's ability to bring UBB to bear on the 3rd party
ISPs that are leasing their lines (and thereby forcing all of those ISPs'
customers onto a usage-based-billing model). Thought if you read that full
thread you'll see that there's was a bit of debate over exactly _what_ part of
the infrastructure most of the 3rd party ISPs are leasing from Bell.

I'm of the mind that so long as the ISPs aren't going over Bell's peering
connections to the wider internet (meaning that they have their own), then
Bell shouldn't be able to force usage-based billing onto those ISPs. If any of
those ISPs want to use Bell's peering connections to the internet.... then I
don't know.

Of note is that Bell is the only one allowed to lay new last-mile phone lines.
So if a 3rd party ISP wants to hook-up customers with their DSL, they _have_
to go over Bell's last-mile lines (to the DSLAM at least).

~~~
rfugger
Right, so this decision changes nothing for Bell's own customers, who will
still face UBB, unless competition from 3rd party ISPs forces Bell to change
its billing structure.

~~~
pyre
Right. But by allowing Bell to force UBB on 3rd party ISPs, it is effectively
forcing UBB on _everyone_ , not just Bell customers. Now it's just limited to
Bell customers.

------
mrcharles
Dear Hacker News Canadians:

Please continue to write your MPs. This is far from over, and we need to keep
on top of it. We can't stop now that it looks like it will be overturned,
because Bell will fight back. I urge every one of you to write a letter to
your MP (or another one if you already have).

If we show any slowing in activity against Bell et al, they will just swoop in
and come up with something just as bad.

------
tcwd
After an Egyptian protest in internet petition form, I'm glad the Canadian
government had some sense in them to hold on to a future in tech innovation in
Canada.

I can only imagine what kind of immediate effect this would have had on tech
startups.

------
crjvice
Sometimes you have to ask yourself who are those people in charge? How did
they get the job?

~~~
brk
Depending on which people-in-charge you're referring to, generally by false-
promises, cooperative back-scratching, and a proven ability to squeeze dollars
from sand.

It really shouldn't be so surprising, all things considered.

------
MikeCapone
I'm very happy, and I hope that a lesson has been learned and that people will
not only be more vigilant about caps, but also realize that Canada is far
behind when it comes to broadband (speed, prices, competition, etc).

------
DannoHung
I wish there was UBB that was remotely based on the transfer cost as opposed
to some number that a C-Suite jackass picked out to make their profits
SOOOOAAAAAAAR.

------
nomad_man
This has not been overturned yet! I hate misleading titles.

------
dstein
I have to wonder if the whole thing was just a big political maneuver to make
the Conservative Party look good right before calling an election.

------
tjmc
Woohoo - Australia's back on top!

~~~
veb
You mean New Zealand, right?

~~~
iwwr
New Zealand is rather isolated geographically, it's expensive to build
infrastructure on the periphery of the network. This is true for the South
Pacific islands in general.

This is a snapshot of the current undersea infrastructure in the Australia-New
Zealand area: <http://i.imgur.com/K1t4y.png>

~~~
goatforce5
Right. And the expense is(/was?) typically picked up by the isolated edge node
rather than shared between the two end points.

ie: There's a lot more value to New Zealand in connecting to the rest of the
internet, than for the internet to connect to New Zealand.

------
bane
Considering how bone headed the original caps were, I have a feeling this
isn't over.

