

Canadians, fight Internet Usage Based Billing (UBB) - acangiano
http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/04/14/canadians-fight-internet-usage-based-billing-ubb/

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electromagnetic
The simple basis here is that Bell Canada owns huge swathes of the Canadian
network infrastructure. If you live in a city then you're lucky, because Bell
might have at least one competitor operating, usually a Cable company.

If you live in even the least-remote rural area you're likely stuck with the
choice of Bell or one of the ISP's that piggy backs off of Bell's network. The
example here is TekSavvy, their speed on the Bell network is capped at 5mbps
despite (in certain areas) Bell can provide 16mpbs to its own customers,
however TekSavvy provides unlimited bandwidth for a very reasonable price. $30
for 200gb, $40 unlimited with TekSavvy, but Bell offers 100gb for $80 and
thats the best you'll ever get. What Bell is trying to do is make sure all the
smaller providers, like TekSavvy, will have to charge their customers more per
GB than Bell does.

Bell wants you to have to pay $1/GB or _more_ for any other ISP on their
network, or you can choose $0.80/GB with them. When currently you can pay
$0.15/GB or _less_ with their competitors.

Back in the UK BT, who owns almost 100% of the lines, tried to do a similar
thing, but regulators stepped in and now you can get internet access from
dozens of different providers. You can buy it from your grocery store for
god's sake!

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tom_rath
Why?

I used to pay for $30 per month for 20 hours of dial-up access, with an extra
$1 per hour charged after that. Market forces reduced that cost significantly
as new entrants with new technologies emerged to tap into a growing customer
base, and that will happen again if bandwidth caps are imposed by existing
service providers.

The last thing I want is for legislators to decide how much my service
providers can charge and for what services they'll do so. As with any give-
and-take, existing providers will ask for some protectionist advantage in
exchange, and that will block new entrants and slow the adoption of new
communication technologies.

Ten years from now, this argument is going to sound as stupid as if I had
demanded my MP legislate a whopping 100 hours of dial-up access for my $30.

~~~
rms
>The last thing I want is for legislators to decide how much my service
providers can charge and for what services they'll do so.

You can't suddenly impose laissez-faire capitalism on an industry so closely
tied to government regulation. Continued regulation is needed so that
corporations can't take advantage of the infrastructure privileges granted to
them. There's plenty of bandwidth to go around.

No one had a monopoly over dial-up, the difference with broadband is that
there is a legislated monopoly.

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tom_rath
It's not laissez-faire and it's not 'suddenly imposed'

If there's plenty of bandwidth to go around and existing providers impose
caps, then new entrants will lease that bandwidth and provide residential
customers with unlimited bandwidth plans.

Telecom regulations should prevent new entrants from being blocked from doing
just that. If they are blocked (and the Canadian system isn't laissez-faire,
so they shouldn't be), then you'll have an issue to gripe about.

~~~
electromagnetic
They aren't blocked, what Bell is doing is trying to block the system! All
small ISP's are forced to go through Bell's network, and Bell is trying to
charge them higher per gigabyte than they do their own customers, so you have
no choice but to go with Bell if you're stranded on their network.

~~~
rms
Locally to me, Verizon wholesales DSL at retail prices. So it is $30/month to
get it from Verizon and $60/month to get it from anyone else.

~~~
mrtron
The problem being Bell is wanting to cap all the other providers.

Currently here it is the opposite - it is cheaper from other providers than
from Bell directly. Now, it wants to be able to also cap those other providers
to prevent them from offering unlimited services.

Bell wants to do what it does in the mobile space and nail everyone with
massive overage fees after the tiny limits are exceeded. Until mid 2008, the
largest cell phone data plan you could get from Bell or Rogers was 5 MEGS.
They charged by the kilobyte after that.

