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Canadians you rdy for 500$ internet bills?
SoulSeeker
Member Posts: 4
The CRTC have oked all isps to start UBB(Usage based billing)
For example my plan is 32$ a month, 25gb cap, 2$ per gb over to 300gb 30$ max.
Now its changed to 32$ a month, 25gb cap, 2$ per gb over max 60$ to 300gb, then 1$ over with no $ cap. So, with most people its gonna get expensive, if you download 500gb expect a 300$ bill.
Petition to the Governor in Council against UBB - http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25387782-Petition-to-the-Governor-in-Council-against-UBB
News article (globe n mail) - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/crtc-issues-small-isps-discount-on-usage-based-billing-fees/article1882339/
Another article - http://openmedia.ca/blog/world-watching
Strombo Talks About The Impending Metered Internet - 
Petition to sign if you are agaisnt ubb - http://openmedia.ca/meter
Openmedia setting up a rally - http://openmedia.ca/team
Please pass this information onto as many canadians as you can, these actions does nothing but give the huge telecoms more money, and control what we can and cant do on the internet.
Email your mp! - http://www2.parl.gc.ca/parlinfo/compilations/houseofcommons/memberbypostalcode.aspx?menu=hoc
Comments
You probably already know there was such an outcry that this decision was repealed today.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/sorry-about-that-canada-rushes-to-reverse-metered-billing-decision.ars
So now you guys up in Canada will probably start getting a taste of how things are done the American way. Through ISP bandwidth throttling. Download for an hour or so, and then your speeds will mysteriously drop to around dialup level or slower. Call your ISP to complain and you will be lied to. And told that you must have hardware problems with your computer. Or that there must be bottlenecks somewhere else on the web.
Welcome to the coming death of the web being used for anything except browsing! Unless, of course, you pay for a premium service your ISP has a financial stake in (and makes an outrageous profit from).
I have a 75GB cap on my $38/month 10Mb connection. I use netflix, itunes and we run 2 computers currently for mmo's. I haven't seen anywhere near the cap yet. If it happens, it will definately effect the smaller companies. But we have to remember that to great a profit margin by these companies just leaves an opening for competition, so the costs shouldn't get out of hand. I definately don't want to see usage caps, but if my neighbor can't download every movie under the sun I'm not overly concerned. I guess thats the thing though, nobody cares until it affects them.
None-the-less, keep up the outcry about it so it doesn't happen to us.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
This was just a attempt to curb the rising number of consumers "Cutting The Cord" to save the dying cable and satellite tv model why pay for those when u can pay one flat rate to do everything online including streaming, playing online games, to broadcasting your own porn. It's a blatant cash grab , plain and simple with no justification for it whatsoever, bandwith is at it's lowest today and cheap, but somehow these companies can't seem to get enough when they are already profitable enough.
Caps have always and will be negative to many people who use the web for more than just browsing, doing so will kill all innovation and creative use plus kill the MMO industry, and other web related business just won't happen without a fight.
It doesnt help piracy, thats for sure.
I wonder when they will realize that.
It might also hurt legal game providing websites like Steam, Direct2Drive and what more.
I feel bad for country's acting that way, so far the Netherlands have been very good atleast for me.
Got a total package of digital tv + HD, radio, phone, internet 120Mb Fiber at the price of €105 and no speed or download limits, could go cheaper and have the same internet speed if we would drop the movie channels aswell HD.
I am actually very concerned about this as we are a household of gamers... and instead of buying box copies of games we frequently digitally purchase via steam etc... we have been told our cap is 60GB a month.... if they charge for going over that we are screwed as there are 4 of us playing mmo's. Combine that with steam purchases and netflix, PS3/Xbox Demo's we will easily go over. This hurts legitamite customers not just piracy.
Example.
Dragon Age: Ultimate - 24GB
Witcher - 14.5 GB
Aion - 17.3 GB
Dawn of War II + Chaos Rising - 4GB
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is just some of the games I've downloaded. and it already totals 59.8GB. This does not include Beta games I get invited to... doesn't include netflix or console demo's. This is rediculous.
EDIT: And it doesn't even include the downloading down by my wife or kids on their computers... that is JUST on mine.
Averros
craptastic videotron has had something similar for years. it's what happens when you allow for monopolized industries to not only exist, but pad the pockets of the corrupt politicians. mind you, i'm a bit bias from living in probably the (currently) most corrupt city in north america these days. videotron also keeps caps low, as they are part of quebecor media who is a content provider, and who loses business to streaming sites like netflix. nothing like having 3.2 mbps speed with 100 gig cap. no warning on cap being hit, no cut-off-point, nothing. a bunch of cases of university kids getting their wireless leeched by downloaders, and then receiving a 10k bill in the mail.
i just got off the phone with them the other day because they switched my plan to a lower tier without my consent or knowledge. then charged me an insane amount for going over my monthly cap, which happened to be lowered when they changed my plan. best part is, they were billing me for the higher tier the whole time. called, argued, spoke to management etc, and was essentially told i could pay it or find another isp. no other isp serves my area (bell still isn't everywhere in qc). love monopolies.
Just get a broadband which doesn't have a bandwidth limit. Internet bills are very low nowadays
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I'm lucky as hell then. I live in LAs Vegas. Cox owns everything here. And because they own the whole damn infrastructure we get unlimited bandwidth UP and DOWN. I've never had any throttling. Ever.
I feel sorry for everyone else :
That is really a step backwards to the modem times.
Sorry, guys but I am glad that I live in sweden for stuff like this. Still, if I would live overseas it would be Canada or Japan.
You got to understand just like in Australia most politicians in Canada beleive The Internet is a large device used for catching fish.
Really here in the Us its a "series of tubes, Not a big truck."
If you aren't redownloading every game once a month, you should be just fine.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Yes my american cable modem has been so throttled that I now have download speeds up to 2.5 mb/s instead of 700 kb/s per second of two years ago. I shudder to think of what future throttling of my internet connection will do another two years from now.
FYI - profit is what allows people to buy groceries, pay for a house mortgage and buy cars etc. The more profit in an industry the more people will get into that industry offering more choices to everyone. Gee capitalism is such an evil thing providing services people want rather than what some beuracrat tells them they should have.
I'm Canadian, and I'm all for reasonablely priced Internet access fees.
However, if you're downloading several hundred gigs of data a month, you're part of the problem, and you should be paying more for the amount of bandwidth you're using.
My friend and I both live in California, but because of his work schedule we had to join an Oceanic Server for wow to be able to raid together. So everyone in our guild was in Austrailia or New Zealand where they would face those internet caps, and I kid you not at least once a month we would have to cancel planned raids because everyone that was in austrailia went over they're cap and were getting horrible, horrible connection problems.
I really do not understand the whole cap buisness. It helps nobody other than the ISP's
Horrible to read, I live in the US and it's pretty bad here also but glad it looks like it got repealed because that is absurd.
What 'problem'? There is no problem. It is simply a matter of the industry moving to capitalize on different tier's of usage. You make it sound as if Bandwidth is a natural resource.
It's not a natural resource, but it does have a finite capacity that's shared between users. If everyone on my portion of my ISPs network were to heavily use their connection, my own connection would suffer drastically. The only way to remedy this is to expand infrastructure to support heavier use, but this costs money to do, hence heaviy users being charged more to facilitate future expansion required due to heavier use.
The problem is when particualr users flood the network with traffic, to the point where it causes other user's connections to suffer, and requires the ISP to enhance it's network. This is where the extra cost comes in, and I have to say, it should be the people bogging down the network that should be doing most of the financing of said expansion.
That's the whole point of data caps, so that ISPs can try to predict usage and try to partition estimated usage between users in order to prevent the network from becoming flooded. Which is why if you're using a 25gig a month data plan, you would pay out the nose if you exceeded it by 100 gig. If you want to download 100gig, then upgrade your data plan.
I'm not by any means trying to justify the Canadian ISPs for trying to gouge all of their customers, which is what they have been trying to (and in many cases doing). But rather trying to say that there are a number of people complaining about being potentially 'mistreated', when in fact they are the ones that are abusing their data plan to begin with. Seriously, if you're using a 25 gig data plan, and downloading 100gig a month, upgrade your data plan.
So charging more will fix the problem? I don't think so. It just makes the these rich companies richer. The profit margins of these companies are in the hundreds of millions of dollars every year. If they want to charge more, I as a consumer will switch to a different company. However, we run into problems when their is no competition, thus in a way we have to stand up for we believe in and protest these changes. Shaw has already stated because of the uproar they will not charge based on the new ruling but nevertheless we need to have the ruling changed so they don't change their mind in the future.
Increasing charges on people who blow past their data plan cap might help prevent regular users from having their connections ruined by people trying to abuse the data plan system by selecting a lower tier option, and then relying on the hard cap "excess" fee to avoid upgrading to a higher tier.
Yes, the data caps on existing plans need to be corrected, but don't try to pretend like downloading 100gigs past yoru data cap, when you're paying for a 25 gig data plan shouldn't incur a penalty. If you want to download more a month, pay for higher tier data plan.
Fair enough - I just wanted to see what you were aiming at.
The profit margins of the companies here in QC (Videotron and now bell) are gigantic as no competitors can get in without absurd leasing agreements that make any monetary strategic advantage impossible. Videotron makes a good chunk of its money from overage charges, which is why the most expensive plan you can pay for is capped at 125gb/month (for something like 70$/month). It's been at about 100gb for many years now, even as downloading for your average user increases due to blue-ray quality movies, bigger size on your average videogame, etc. I think it's absurd that in 2011 I'm still paying $70/month for a 100 gig cap, given how tech has increased, infastructures upgraded, many people work from home via the internet, etc. It feels like it is still 1999, minus the speed. Bit of a rant, but it certaintly is a regression in the sector.
edit: as you replied to someone else, there isn't always an option for a higher tier. they want all their average users to be on a low tier so they can apply the high overage charges.
Data plans sucks. I hope we never get them in the US. Say i can download a gig in 30 minutes, and im on a 25gig data plan. So i can max out my usage in 12 and a half hours at that rate. The whole idea of paying for bandwith is, was, and will always be a bad one. If i pay for access, i shouldnt then also have to pay for how much i access.
Thats like playing a p2p game that has a f2p cash shop, and the only way to reach endgame is thru it. The same logic applys.
I never understood the download caps and stuff, its rediculous.
I pay a little more than the OP and I have a 120Mb DL, 10Mb upload and even if I want to download 24/7 thats no problem.
internet shouldnt save tv!if tv industry want us there they just need to find ways to bring us there.i left tv almost a decade ago ,back then internet was in its infancy and still chose internet instead of tv ,never looked back!tv?3d tv?lol no ty and if i do get a tv it will be hooked to my computer!i was gona go cellphone internet years ago(5 or 6 years ago)but even back then it was too costly
mobile internet just isnt usable .so when i say augmented reality game and some said ok lets do an mmo!i was like sorry no can do mobile bandith is too costly .i ll start to look at mobile internet when everything included plan of 1 $ /gig is released .