Metered internet is just a matter of fairness - Polidicks

[quote=Ars Technica] For several months, we've been reporting on Canadian consumer reaction to the government's decision to allow Bell Canada to charge smaller, competitive ISPs for network access on a metered or Usage Based Billing (UBB) basis. The Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission withdrew the decision in response to consumer outrage over the move, and is now considering new rules. But what about Bell Canada's perspective? A transcript of a Canadian Parliament hearing on the UBB question is now available, and according to Bell Canada Senior Vice President Mirco Bibic, metered billing is just about being fair. "What is at issue and what we do not believe has been fully addressed as part of your meetings thus far are several fundamental questions related to fairness," Bibic told the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. What are these fundamental questions? Here goes: Heavy users First, Bibic noted that the cable industry gets to charge smaller ISPs on a metered basis. "All that Bell is asking from the CRTC," he explained, "is an opportunity to set, on the same basis as the cable companies—who are our biggest competitors—the prices billed to the wholesale Internet service providers who share the network with Bell's retail Internet clients." Second, since Bell can already charge its own retail subscribers on a UBB basis, it's not right that they can't do the same with smaller ISPs. "We believe there should be no discrimination between retail and wholesale customers," Bibic insisted. "All customers should be treated in the same way, and usage-based billing is the fair way to price Internet use. Simply put, the heaviest users should pay more than those who use less." What do the "heaviest users" (in terms of broadband consumption, not girth) have to do with this? Bell Canada contended that that your typical wholesale ISP subscriber uses double the bandwidth of Bell retail subscribers. "These heavy users, on the same network as our users, clearly affect everyone's Internet experience." Plainly wrong Then came a variety of specific assertions. Wholesale ISPs get a "50 percent to 60 percent [discount] reduction relative to our own retail offers," Bibic noted. True, but the CRTC's ruling put the discount for metered billing at 15 percent. The CRTC's decision affects "only about 1 percent of Canadian Internet subscribers," he added. Maybe, but the Commission recently estimated the total number of buyers of broadband from smaller ISPs at around six percent of the market. Three-quarters of these are residential subscribers. And the move "does not require these ISPs to charge their own customers on a usage basis." Maybe not, but it certainly would put pressure on them to do so. One indie ISP (TekSavvy) was on the verge of implementing tough data caps when the UBB rules were scheduled to go into effect. But the suggestion that UBB will make the Internet "unaffordable" is "plainly wrong," Bell Canada insisted. With Bell, customers can purchase blocks of Internet time that provide three times the average monthly usage for only $5. A block of Internet time that provides eight times the average usage can be purchased for $15. With that, a customer can watch nearly 600 hours of additional online video each month. That's over and above the hundreds of hours of online time included as part of our monthly plans. The disparity is striking No question about it, Bell Canada customers are buying those blocks. In fact, as Ottawa telecom law professor Michael Geist observes, UBB is delivering a hefty chunk of the telco's revenue growth. But to us, the question isn't so much whether metered billing will make the Internet "unaffordable," as whether it will make non-ISP affiliated streaming video (e.g., Netflix) less competitive, as consumers worry about going over data limits. But to Bell, the whole debate is a simple one. "We're certainly not trying to penalize anybody," said Bibic. "We just want to make sure there is fairness in our billing system, so that the vast majority of users don't subsidize the heavy users... The difficulty is that those allegations [of being punitive] wish away the billions that need to be spent to build the networks—the engineering costs, the construction costs, the equipment costs, the employee costs. You can't just wish away those costs, and we have to recover all those sunk and fixed costs over a long period of time." This basic answer, repeated over and over, sounds so reasonable, and the major ISPs at the hearing insisted that raising their paltry bandwidth caps (25GB and 40GB are common in Canada) and building out more service might result in a doubling of prices to senior citizens, something no one wants to see. Infrastructure is expensive! Reading the hearing transcript is like stepping into a bubble where low data caps are absolutely necessary, where virtuous ISPs invest heavily, and where they all care about "fairness." It's a bubble where the outside world vanishes... and where the big ISPs ignore the obvious point that every major Internet provider in America somehow manages to make huge profits with much higher—or no—data caps at all.[quote][url=http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/bell-canada-metered-billing-all-about-being-fair.ars]source[/url][/quote][/quote] Bell Canada, you so funny.

In other news, Bell Canada stocks plummet.

Bell is fucking retarded.

This is why I'm switching. Hope you're happy Bell.

oh god i have to use the internet but i better do it fucking FAST to save money! I bet it'll still be slow as fuck, and really costly just to get the most money out of it.

My Uncle used 2 terrabytes of data one month. Cox called him asking what was up. He told the it was all porn and they never called back or cut back his internet :v:

Yeah, Cox is a good ISP, except for nights when my internet speed drops.

[QUOTE=Dolton;28756263]My Uncle used 2 terrabytes of data one month. Cox called him asking what was up. He told the it was all porn and they never called back or cut back his internet :v:[/QUOTE] That's a lot of porn my man. I'm jealous.

[QUOTE=MuTAnT;28756473]That's a lot of porn my man. I'm jealous.[/QUOTE] I'm inclined to believe it actually was. There was a mysterious "Boring stuff" folder with a terrabyte and a half of of space on the hard drive.

[quote]Simply put, the heaviest users should pay more than those who use less.[/quote] This is reasonable, the problem is Bell implements a 20,000% markup on what it actually costs them.

[QUOTE=M2k3;28756670]This is reasonable, the problem is Bell implements a 20,000% markup on what it actually costs them.[/QUOTE] And without using any of it for infrastructure improvements.

[QUOTE=Zeke129;28757445]And without using any of it for infrastructure improvements.[/QUOTE] Sounds like AT&T. Looks like canada is equally screwed on this internet thing.

Good God, I hate these fucking assholes. I'd write my opinion out, but I can't be bothered to spend that much time for a hugeass Tl;dr.

[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;28757520]Sounds like AT&T. Looks like canada is equally screwed on this internet thing.[/QUOTE] America already has much better infrastructure

[QUOTE=M2k3;28756670]This is reasonable, the problem is Bell implements a 20,000% markup on what it actually costs them.[/QUOTE] This pretty much.

[QUOTE=Fatman55;28756456]Yeah, Cox is a good ISP, except for nights when my internet speed drops.[/QUOTE] I wish Cox was still around in my town.

I love cox

[QUOTE=Zeke129;28757657]America already has much better infrastructure[/QUOTE] Our average advertised connection is under 4Mbps.

[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;28766860]Our average advertised connection is under 4Mbps.[/QUOTE] I don't think we have one under 25Mbps.

I have 56k internet... They promised me 7.2mbps. It takes 5 minutes to open a new page. [editline]23rd March 2011[/editline] Oh, and after I use my 1gb data allowance a month, I can no longer watch videos, and images are auto cached to ultra-shitty quality. [editline]23rd March 2011[/editline] Oh, and after I use my 1gb data allowance a month, I can no longer watch videos, and images are auto cached to ultra-shitty quality.

1GB data allowance a month? What the fuck are you using? 3G? [editline]23rd March 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=Miskav;28767629]I don't think we have one under 25Mbps.[/QUOTE] Where would that be? I think I need to find a new home.

Hahahahahaha Hahaha I'm not laughing because I have it any better just because it's funny I get 80 gigs a month (40 on and 40 offpeak, with offpeak being from 4am-9am every day) of 1.5mbps for $50 a month, and I've shopped around enough to know this is the best deal in my area. I laugh at your complaints.

BellAliant still hasn't limited my Internet yet. If they do, I'm going to complain to no end. My family lives on our data. My father, brother and I are usually online gaming, or using the Internet, and we use Netflix. Plus with the downloading of all my Linux distributions, and 1080p YouTube, our Internet bill would be through the roof.

[QUOTE=Weiss;28773352]Hahahahahaha Hahaha I'm not laughing because I have it any better just because it's funny I get 80 gigs a month (40 on and 40 offpeak, with offpeak being from 4am-9am every day) of 1.5mbps for $50 a month, and I've shopped around enough to know this is the best deal in my area. I laugh at your complaints.[/QUOTE] Your laughing because you got it worse. at 1536Kb/s, your max download pipe (in bytes/sec) is only 192KB. and I'm sure you complain when it takes you an hour to download a 100MB file. Then you get that shitty 80GB limit, 40/40? and a 5 hour "offpeak". I laugh at your complaint. I assume the reason you wrote that its because it was a complaint. At $50 a month too... oh boy aren't you kicking yourself in the ass. You're dishing out cash, and getting shit. Go find a WISP or something.

[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;28773602]Your laughing because you got it worse. at 1536Kb/s, your max download pipe (in bytes/sec) is only 192KB. and I'm sure you complain when it takes you an hour to download a 100MB file. Then you get that shitty 80GB limit, 40/40? and a 5 hour "offpeak". I laugh at your complaint. I assume the reason you wrote that its because it was a complaint. At $50 a month too... oh boy aren't you kicking yourself in the ass. You're dishing out cash, and getting shit. Go find a WISP or something.[/QUOTE] I sure hope you're sarcastic pointing out [quote]Your laughing because you got it worse.[/quote] on account of I actually wrote that in my post. I know my download speed. I know I have a small limit. I am pointing this out that I am laughing at the complaints of people who think it's bad that they're being "downgraded" to something still considerably better than what some of us have to deal with. And I'm sure I'll find a wireless provider that goes right out to Australia, yes. Those sure sound commonplace as we [i]totally[/i] have their towers here. But no. My post isn't a complaint about my own situation; in fact before this I was stuck with 512kbps and seriously, I'm quite happy with my measly 150KB/s. It's a case of relative quality and the fact that you literally cannot get better than this throughout the majority of my area means it doesn't bother me. It's a complaint about all the people complaining about their situation. (Mostly out of frustration about all the people who've bugged me about it on Steam and MSN, thinking that somehow it's terrible even to someone who's stuck in the technological fucking backwater of the world)

Wow, I live in Australia and even I have unlimited data.

i get 40 gb a month for like $80 NZD but apparently NZ and aus have the worst internet out of all first world countries.

i get 200 on and off peak varies between where i download from speed wise average on steam 200-300 kb/s [editline]24th March 2011[/editline] [img]http://www.speedtest.net/result/1217341927.png[/img] [editline]24th March 2011[/editline] yes i dont give a fuck if its slow but as long as i get steam fine im ok

[img]http://www.speedtest.net/result/1217728483.png[/img] :smug: [editline]24th March 2011[/editline] Oh man does my internet suck.