The CRTC has made a decision this week that could change the way we use the Internet forever. They have approved Canadian Internet Service Providers to implement Usage-Based Billing (UBB), which puts an end to unlimited Internet plans. Now, you will be charged on what you use and what providers want you to “over use”.
What perfect timing especially when services like Netflix Canada have started to take off. In today’s world, video and streaming multimedia rule our lives.
Netflix Says ISPs that Charge Per GB are Ridiculous
Via Arstechnica:
Wired ISPs have large fixed costs of building and maintaining their last mile network of residential cable and fiber. The ISPs’ costs, however, to deliver a marginal gigabyte, which is about an hour of viewing, from one of our regional interchange points over their last mile wired network to the consumer is less than a penny, and falling, so there is no reason that pay-per-gigabyte is economically necessary. Moreover, at $1 per gigabyte over wired networks, it would be grossly overpriced.
From the Globe and Mail:
NDP digital affairs critic Charlie Angus gets what’s at stake. “We’ve seen this all before with cellphones,†he said last week. “Allowing the Internet Service Providers to ding you every time you download is a rip-off. Canada is already falling behind other countries in terms of choice, accessibility and pricing for the Internet. We need clear rules that put consumers first.â€
We need to stop this blatant cash grab. Fight back and join over 75,500 people that have already decided to say enough is enough.Visit StoptheMeter.ca and sign the petition. Our Internet future depends on it!
Do you agree with Usage-Based Billing for Internet in Canada?
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Absolute bulls**t
I don’t understand the protest. Why sould I have to pay the same for my 8 Mb usage as the person who uses 3 terabytes.
I dropped Rogers for Bell because they hit me for going over my 60 gb cap after I got my xbox and played a few games and watched a couple of Netflix movies. Bell (so far) does not have a bandwidth cap with their DSL connection.
How about because all of the physical infrastructure that supports your 8 Mb usage costs the exact same as the infrastructure that supports the person who uses 3 Tb?
Your property taxes don’t fluctuate based on how much you drive on city-maintained roads.
I signed that and everyone else should too!
I do not agree with usage based billing. Total cash grab and right in the face of the ‘new’ competition from Netflix and other services.
Well, I will have to check my Telus/Shaw bill. I just started with Netflix.. my grandson lives with us and his Wii etc is always on… This is extremely disappointing. I am getting really fed up.
Great analogy.
if your using 8mb’s a month do you even NEED the internet?
it doesn’t matter what I think nor any of you. This IS going to happen and we cant do anything about it being the cockroaches we are as the general public. we are no more then walking dollar signs.
Its the same as BCs HST tax everyone fought, we clearly had more then enough to cut it, but big companies want money, government too so we just have to bend over and allow them to take what they want…. lol
We need to abolish this ruling immediately or we will be paying the highest rates in the world very soon.
This is like backwards “per second billing”. Instead of saving us money they’re charging us more by the second.
With Rogers at 56$ for 85GB thats about 0.65$/GB. Someone using less than a GB would save a lot. Someone who downloads huge amounts would pay for what they’re getting.
Im on TekSavvy. I pay $35 for 200 GB. That’s $0.175/GB. Im definitely willing to pay that. 😛
If they are going to charge $1/GB then they’re obviously over charging if third party ISPs like TekSaavy can sell for 17 cents. If the per GB charge is regulated to a reasonable level this will be ok but charging $1+ per GB doesn’t make any sense at all.
But you do pay based on usage for water, hydro and gas.
But you do pay based on usage for water, hydro and gas.
Actually, this is a good analogy to explain why the 8 Mb should not pay as much as the 3 Tb guy. If half the people drove, I would only need a 2 lane highway, not a 4 lane highway. the cost to build and run a 2 lane highway is much less. ISPs need to buy big routers and expensive connections because of the high usage people, not because of the low usage one. I welcome usage based billing. It is all about paying for what you are using.
Stupid analogy. A large portion of your fuel cost is down to tax. The more you drive, the more you fund the government through the fuel tax.
A more accurate analogy would be the pay as you go mobile phone market. My mother has a pay as you go phone and barely uses it. She therefore pays something like $10/month. Should she be paying the same $60 I do when I use somewhere in the range of 5 GB of data along with a fair bit of voice calling and more text messages than I care to count? She’s using the same physical infrastructure that supports my heavy usage after all.
of course you should not have to pay as the same as the high usage people. you should be offered a cheaper option instead of changing the billing method back to 10 years ago!
as the contract of carriers in the rest of the world, canadian carriers have lost their mind and have been pathetic of robbing your pocket! Usage based billing is so 1990s thing since at that time, internet wasn’t a common thing and the cost was relatively high. But, it’s 2011 now!! Usage-based billing sounds like a joke of being charging of fresh air.
I always wonder if CRTC is a toy of ISP of this country. They are not only not being helpful but also making it worst. Well played!
Hi Mike, unless you have a grandfathered Bell DSL plan then Bell’s DSL essential starts at 2GB/month cap.. next level up has a 12GB/month cap. I dropped Bell because they switched my plan without my knowledge and then told me it was to late to get the unlimited plan.
I hate to be unsympathetic, but I find it hard to think of this as anything other than “OH NOES I CAN HAZ 1ST WURLD PROBLEMZ!!!”. My wife and I have to survive on 5GB a month, and I’m yet to keel over and die.
I think what I think.
not everyone will agree with me, but thats the beauty of online forums. ^_~
Wrong. Yes your two lane highway is cheaper than a 4 lane highway, but this is based on an assumption that the number of cars (data), is halved. This analogy therefore would mean Bell/Rogers would lose half of their clients as a result of UBB. Seems pretty stupid on their part.
The fact is, the infrastructure supports 4 lanes TODAY. The government does not build a 4 lane highway, waits 5 years and then decides to build a toll booth for select vehicles only to justify paying for the construction of that already paid-for highway.
The roads cost the same for everyone, no matter how much or how little of them each person drives on. The same is true for the internet and its infrastructure.
If you use 8MB and I use 8 GB we should pay the same price because we are paying for the infrastructure/speed of the service. We are NOT paying for the data!
UBB means paying for the DATA AND THE SERVICE rather than for the service alone. Here is my analogy:
UBB is equal to a person (user) paying for bus fare (internet service) and then for every kilometer (megabyte) ridden on the bus ride (internet use) until that person disembarks (disconnects). Each passenger therefore pays a different rate, depending on the distance between their place of bording (going online) and destination (going offline), despite the fact that the bus (internet lines) would run even if no one rode (used) it.
UBB therefore is taking public transportation and privatizing it into a taxi service.
Now do you understand why everyone is pissed off?
Water = NOPE. Tp water is free for everyone in Quebec. No metering whatsoever.
Hydro = YES.
GAS = YES BUT… the price of gas doesn’t fluctuate based on how much is used, but on how much is supplied. You buy more gas because you use more gas, but that gas doesn’t cost more because of how much you use, but because of how much is left. There’s a big difference.
We need to dissolve the CRTC
This has nothing to do with paying for usage, and everything to do with the bigger picture.
Big business ruling over the masses, choking the innovation of one of the most important tools in our time (the Internet).
The last time I checked, all of these telecom companies have SERIOUS conflict of interest (owning dwindling TV, radio, music divisions). Pathetic.
most likey some scumbag high up got paid, so they don’t give a F@%$ people. we really should do something its getting ridicules! they make billions in profit but they still want more and more! no one is protecting us from those robbers. its a shame that we have to go backward as technology progresses because of such rip offs and robberies! i’m personally so sick of those internet/cell providers! we trial behind almost every country in the world! we pay the highest prices and have longest contracts in the world! its just DISGUSTING!
I work for an internet/cable company and what people don’t realize is this new UBB will only affect less than 9% of the population. You are given a certain amount of bandwidth usage based on the internet package you subscribe to. Use more, get a higher package and get a higher bandwidth limit.
People who only use the internet for email and light browsing should not have to pay as much as people who download 1 TB per month is movies, music and games.
It really isn’t going to be expensive to purchase extra bandwidth to be able to download all the things you want. Literally an extra $10-30 per month for a higher bandwidth package. Peanuts! If you would rather save money on internet usage, how about seeing how much it would cost you to BUY all the movies, music and games people are able to download. Bet you wouldn’t mind paying an extra $30 for more bandwidth then.
Drive your car more, pay for more gas. Use more heat, pay for more hydro. Eat more food, pay for more food to eat. This really isn’t a big change from what happens in day to day live with SO many other things.
But seriously, 91% of internet users don’t even come close to going over their allotted bandwidth limit. Call up your provider and ask your average usage. I bet you would be surprised.
You’re just making the argument because it relates to your employment.
Why is anyone surprised at this? The middle class is slowly becoming extinct and only the wealthy will be able to afford (and dictate) to the rest of us! Which by the way is exactly how they want it!
I am not making an argument for or against it. I am just trying to pass along some facts that people might not realize. People get so worked up over here something like this coming into place when it probably won’t affect you. And if it does, I think paying an extra $20 per month to continue getting unlimited movies, music and games is a LOT cheaper than paying for all that in a store.
Another thing you don’t realize is that when your neighbour sits there downloading terabytes worth of data all day and all night, it affects YOUR connection. Research a little bit about how an internet company provides 20Mb/s 0r higher download speed to you 24/7. There is only enough bandwidth to go around and increasing the amount available to each neighbourhood to accommodate more people and more usage costs billions of dollars. Those who use 10x the bandwidth they are supposed to obviously can affect others.
All I am saying is check out your usage with your provider. It’s probably lower than you think and you probably have nothing to worry about.
I dare someone to count up each music album, movie and video game you have download for free. Calculate the cost at about $15 or more per CD, $20 or more per movie and $80 per video game and THEN tell everyone if you would rather pay a few extra dollars a month to continue downloading them all or whether you would like to actually buy them all for thousands of dollars.
Bet you would choose UBB over losing your access to Torrents in that case.
The problem with usage based Internet billing is that it pushes users not to use Internet.
I’m pretty sure 100GB/month is not enough to watch Netflix, rent movies and TV shows on iTunes, watch podcasts…
What you need to understand is that ISPs in Canada have huge economic interests to make Internet content distribution fail and not replace the cable/satellite content distribution… as it’s happening in every other developed country.
The Internet is great as long as it’s unlimited. Even if the limits is 100 TB/month, it’s still a limit.
The Internet simply shouldn’t even be measured.
How does 3D live streaming of hockey games is ever gonna come to Canada if people have to check their bandwidth usage before going to the Internet?
Canada is already far behind other developed countries in Internet services.
Just as a reminder, in Europe people can get UNLIMITED Internet+Phone+TV for as less as 30 EUR and yes, ISPs are private companies and are making money.
The main reason in fact is that even if you use only 8 MB/month today, you may want to be able to use more in the future.
For example, when you discover that you don’t need to pay for cable or satellite TV because every thing you watch is (or should be) available on the Internet (for free or not).
For example, Netflix is a great service for watching TV content all day long for 8$/month but it requires unlimited Internet.
The point is that limited Internet limits innovations and competitions and keep the prices high.
You just keep going about people downloading music, movie or video game for free on the Internet.
People don’t buy CDs, DVDs or even BluRay in 2011 (… well, at least, they wouldn’t if the Internet was unlimited). People pay for services like music or video streaming services. They either pay a monthly fee or they watching ads. Either way they’re generating revenues for content providers.
People don’t want to own an music CD, a movie DVD, they want to listen to music, they want to watch a movie right now and they don’t want to own it forever.
One more time, UBB is not against people pirating stuff on the Internet. It’s against services that compete with current content distribution model (cable tv, satellite tv, DVD rental…).
I’m paying 10$/month to stream all the music I want, I’m buying games on Steam/AppleAppStore/AndroidMarket/…, I’m paying 8$/month to stream movies and TV shows from Netflix, I’m renting movie and Tv shows on iTunes Store, I’m watching ads on YouTube, CTV.ca, thecomedynetwork.ca … only because I currently have UNLIMITED Internet.
ok but now your comparing apples to oranges. what montyman said was 100% about this issue it doesnt cost any more or anyless for high INTERNET usage the low INTERNET usage. When all these people who are saying yeah I dont use the internet much i shouldnt pay. Your likey not the 8% that is affected. Your price is the same. The 8% affected is high usage users. It all boils down to the fact that these compuanies are already making billions of dollars. We pay dollars for what cost them pennies to provide. Too many canadian companies get away with over charging Canadians compared with US and other countries. Look at the price of a new car in Canada vs States.
Something that you said is really disturbing. If we will have to pay for what we use, we will be paying for people to send us advertisments. That really SUX !!
I agree with you that 100Gb per month is not enough to use Netflix and stream all the stuff that is available these days. And you’re right, these things have a huge part of why UBB is being introduced but not for the reasons you think.
BUT It’s not being done as a petty cash grab or to try and prevent people from using these things.
Usage on the Internet has changed immensely over the last decade. It’s much, much heavier for obvious reasons. It takes a pretty intense infrastructure to give millions of people fast and reliable Internet. With things like streaming live feeds and Netflix becoming more and more popular, it’s causing more strain on the current infrastructure than ever before and this causes problems for your connection and for everyone elses. It cost billions upon billions of dollars to upgrade everything from the backbone to the lines that feed your house with service to keep everyone getting the speeds and reliability they want. I know that saying that sounds like a cash grab, but it’s not being done to screw the man just for fun. It’s being done (for one reason anyway) because companies need to be able to keep up with the always increasing demand for faster speeds and more bandwidth and doing that is hella expensive. You may think that Cable Companies already get enough profit and they should just be able to upgrade whatever, but it costs more than you think when everythint comes into play with product development (new PVRs and features), new channels (More and more new HD and 3D programming coming out) and SO many other things related to making sure your Cable, Internet and Phone works and continues to work.
I will mention it again. I have seen the prices that (at least my company) will be charging for extra bandwidth packages and it’s literally an extra $10-$30 per month. I still think that’s peanuts to continue getting all your unlimited content.
But I know people hate change and inflation. Happened with gas prices, happened with HST. I am not trying to make UBB sound like a great thing. Just trying to give a little perspective of why it’s happening as something other that a “fun” thing the CRTC felt like doing to screw everyone. I know a little to much about how Internet service works behind the scenes and how much it takes to continue giving everyone the speeds and bandwidth they want.
poeple dont realize that after this cap billing is in place they will decrease it slowly to the point that it will effect 50% of the users and make a killing , GET IT ,, it is very sneaky ,,,,, to start making money of all the content that other poeple have created ….because you consume it ….
If it will only affect less than 9% of the population then again I pose the question: Why implement it at all? Why place restrictions on it? I’ll tell you why…..because it’s all about CONTROL! And the problem with this is once it’s in place it WILL NEVER BE REVOKED! & I have a MAJOR problem with that! As a society we’re regulated to DEATH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Are you serious???????????? You are joking right? Stop sleeping with the Bell CEO.
Its not “being done as a cash grab”? you mean a $1.90 /gb at say 40gb overage isn’t a cash grab? What is it then? An $80 “bonus” for Bell?
There has actually always been restrictions on the amount of bandwidth included in your internet package. The company I am with used to inforce this until about a year ago and things kind of slipped and it’s been an open buffet up until now. Not sure what company you are with, but likely they have always had a limit too. Check your terms of service. If you have never been contacted before now about abusing it, you are probably not even close to the limit. So quit worrying so much about it.
But I am done with my attempts at educating everyone. I wish you luck in your protests! If it does come into play, it won’t be as bad as everyone is expecting. Probably won’t notice. 🙂
UBB reminds me the totalitarian government in Cuba doing whatever they want always affecting lower/middle class people…
In the Big Picture I include the bandwidth that is pushed over the internet by advertisers. It is like having the individual subscriber pay for junk mail and flyers delivered to the home. Unless they filter out all the unwanted material and bill the sender for that bandwidth they should not have the subscriber paying for all the content coming over the network!!
This is ridiculous.I always though canada was a liberal free progressif society but since 2001,canada began a descent from it’s oldvalues.
We let the mighty, republican U.S and A telling us what to do.Canada had became a police society even worst that U.S.A.
The reason companies like Rogers/fido provider in order to ask the CRTC to allow them to limit Data,have to do with copyright and music downloading.
But their true reason is to making more money but CRTC find it hard to refuse to them now after making Rogers loosing 2 billions dollars because of new CRTC rules allowing new wireles competitors .
They want to be friend again with the Rogers Telus Bell etc..
It is no use comparing us to Europe as they have a lot more people there! My friends in Holland live in a country the size of vancouver island which has 700,000 people while they have close to 17 million!
Lots of people paying a little or a few people paying a lot.
Gary is that you ?
Its a good analogy – In Vancouver property taxes pay for roads , fuel taxes go to transit and general revenue for the province. So all property taxpayers (including renters) pay for road maintenance whether they drive, bike or ride the bus
ya and that why it took Bell four bloody years to dig up a section of cable under the sidewalk near my home while I was still paying full price for the package I had and paying for the constant rate increases during this time. Great infrastructure. I kept getting slick fiber offerings for 12+ megabytes a second in the mail at least once every month when they couldn’t even get a solid 3 megs into the house! The fiber ends at the Slams…Who are they and you kidding? My bill is almost doubling and before you jump on the UBB thing…. I’m paying for it and always was. It was called a “Premium Package” The new offerings you’re alluding to here like HD shouldn’t be touted until they’ve got the infrastruture in place to handle it. A buck a gig… get real! totally out of porportion.Next they’ll want cell phone rates for the internet.
Today’s use of the internet isn’t the same as tomorrow’s. Things will change for the majority of the public as devices like the Apple TV, Xbox 360, the Boxee Box, etc. grow in use. Yes, right now, 90% of the public hasn’t tried it. But they will, and when they do they’ll not be too happy that their bills will shoot up.
Even Rogers is promoting watching TV on demand on your PC. From their FAQ: “Rogers On Demand Online is available to everyone in Canada for FREE!”
Unfortunately, they go on to say: “Much like any other video streaming site, customers are responsible for any bandwidth usage beyond their monthly limit. Rogers offers a variety of Hi-Speed Internet packages to choose from.”
So, one hand, they promote video over IP. But like any business, they see it as an additional revenue stream. If Usage-based billing stays entrenched, it will take away the motivation for people to stop watch (and paying) for cable and watch video over IP. They are just trying to keep those monthly bills high, no matter what advantages technology may provide.