Cornwall ON – I’m very very confused as I write this. The battle to fight the ridiculous decision by the CRTC to allow the big internet providers to charge excess and abusive amounts for band widths are on hold for 60 days.
Hurrah! Methinks, or methinks not. Tony Clement? Stephen Harper? Defenders of Free Speech? Freedom to communicate on the net freely and in an unlimited fashion? I’m thinking not.
To me this smells like a fat hustle. “….let’s charge them 100 times the real cost and then look like heroes by only charging them 10 times the amount….”
Finland, yes Finland, has decreed high speed internet a right. It makes sense.
In the 50’s the US broke up the Studio system. The Studios not only owned the studios that produced the movies; they also owned the theatres and the fledgling TV stations. They in essence owned a Monopoly.
Today Bell owns CTV, Rogers owns Rogers, Shaw owns ….Shaw, many of the same people that sell us Internet service own the content we view on one medium or another. In other words they essentially are trying to catch us coming or going. Why? Because our government, the one we elect, gives them the “permission” to.
So maybe this is the Harper government reacting to gross public response close to election time or maybe this is all just another big hustle, but at least it has a few people talking about the Internet and things like Net Neutrality; maybe not enough, but probably a few more than before this hit the fan.
It’s time for the Harper government to stop turning this great country into a technological back water. Do we really want to fall further behind India and China, and Korea, and ….Finland?
Jamie Gilcig – Editor
The Cornwall Free News
(Comments and opinions of Editorials, Letters to the Editor, and comments from readers are purely their own and don’t necessarily reflect those of the owners of the Cornwall Free News, their staff, or sponsors.)
“To me this smells like a fat hustle.” Exactly, they might as well tell the CRTC to pass a law charging $100 to anyone who uses the internet, and then swoop in to “Save the day.”
If the conservatives JUST prevent UBB, and do not 1. disband the CRTC 2. Use this moment to create laws that protect consumers in the future. THEN IT WILL BE AN OBVIOUS PLOY
From what I read in the Ottawa Citizen, they reported that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have told the CRTC to reverse their decision or THE GOVERNMENT WILL DO IT FOR THEM! What could be plainer to understand?
The cap is not for there own customers. The cap is for the internet they sell to wholesalers (resellers who sell there interent under a different name)
You really think Bell and Rogers have to apply to the crtc to apply a cap? They already have caps on bandwith.
If you want to blame someone blame the people who download 50 movies a month. The folks who use over 300 gig and kill the bandwith and network capacity for the rest of us. This stuff comes with a network that needs to be maintained and if we keep abusing it it will come with a price. These are busimess guys…not a public service.
Too often governments react to a situation and then find they need to create more laws because of it.
I do not think the internet is a right, like driving it is a privilege that one has to pay for. Costs of the servers that run the information highway to and from your computer or wireless device have to be paid for afterall.
As more is being done via the internet, phones and streaming video for example, I can see a couple of different rates. Large users and people just checking their mail should pay different amounts but at a fair system.
I can not see Tony Clement calling up the CRTC boss and saying you do this and then we will do that, to improve our ratings with the voters. That does not make me naive, expecting officials to stay within the laws might.
Eric studies have shown that the technology is making delivery of net services cheaper faster than the growth. The cost per gig is going down, not up. Capping makes no sense. Say a gig costs even 3 cents to support and that includes infrastructure how do the big corps charge $1-3 per??
I don’t think Canadians are looking for a free ride; just a little bit of honesty and perhaps even fair play. This is what our government is for; to protect us from gouging; not to perpetuate it.
Look at services as they’re evolving; Netflicks being an example. This isn’t about kids downloading movies. It’s about Big Corporations using the government to protect their monopolies.
I smell a massive setup here.. After these last few days reviewing what is going on, and reviewing the reaction of the government, I believe it could be a bit of a conspiracy theory. I mean suddenly the Harper government, who we all know want an election, have something to strike down and win the hearts of the people..
Maybe the government secretly told the CRTC to implement this in the first place, along with Bell and Rogers who we all know don’t want to be competitive, they just want a monopoly and free reign on charging us all out the wazoo!
Current users of Bell, like myself, already pay usage fees based on how much they download above their monthly maximum. I think this is fair. Internet groups that live off the Bell and Telus infrastructure should also pay based on their usage. If you go to the movies once a week you pay 4x the entry fee. If you go to the movies twice a week then you pay 8x the entry fee. It should be the same for the internet. If not the Bells will not supply the internet to the local companies. No one has a right to the internet. If Bell and others can’t make a profit on the internet, then they will raise their fees for TV viewing.
I think Jerry works at Bell
Here in Canada, we pay the most for the least.. Its the same for data, text messaging, airtime on phones, etc.. Its a disturbing trend, and these phone companies/ISPs (especially the 2 majors, Bell and Rogers) are trying to take it too far. You cannot continue to squeeze blood out of stones, we have enough with all the taxes, etc, that we have to pay for and then on top of it all for a company to come on and try to gauge us for 1-5 dollars per gigabyte when its been proven that it costs 13 cents, that is ludicrous..
Jerry, you need to wake up. We already get throttled enough, regardless of application being used, by these companies.. they also throttle the little companies they rent out the packagebytes to.. And enough is enough..
When we can start getting services such as those offered by foreign wireless and data companies, unthrottled, fairly priced, etc, then we can talk..
Enough of the Bell rhetoric Jerry.. All they want is to have a monopoly where they can charge us out the wazoos, and they want to unfairly push out all the other companies.. They already leased the packages to those companies, they can shut up, they were paid fair and square for what they leased out.. why be bullies and then try to force out the competition which they helped to set up by leasing to them in the first place? That’s what doesn’t make sense to me… And I used to work for them both, trust me, I know how they download as much services as they can to outsourced centers, etc, around the world, so that they can save and give you your 3 minutes of time that you are worth to them… for shame…
To Cojones Kid and Grimalot. I believe that all users should be treated the same. The reality is that we live in Canada and whinning about how high our taxes are is a red herring to this discussion. Why should some people who download tons of movies and not pay extra but I, as a Bell user, already have to pay extra. If you say that I should switch to a local supplier to reduce my costs that is Ok if only I do it. If everyone does it, then there would be no internet. I would like everything to be free but am responsible enough to believe that there is no free lunch … or internet. It is the CRTC that reached the conclusion that everyone should be billed based on their usage. The more gas you buy, the more you pay … the more times you go to the movies, the more you pay … the more beers you drink, the more you pay. Why should the internet be any different?
Every time the goverment sticks its nose in the bussiness world we the people will pay even a bigger price.
So obviously, according to Jerry, if my wife and I go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, I need to pay more than my wife because I eat more.
EVERYONE.
There is a big difference between UBB, which they are trying to implement, and caps. My friend explained it pretty well:
“here’s how it works with TekSavvy (a bell reseller who gets charged UBB by Bell now I believe)
Their High Speed Internet Premium package is $31.95 and has a cap of 200gb
Under UBB, the cap has been lowered to 25GB, and they will charge $1.90 per GB over that.
So, if you have TekSaavy’s High Speed Internet Premium in February and you download your allotted 200GB it would cost you $31.95, in march, with the same package, downloading 200GB on your same plan will suddenly cost you $364.45lets go over that again, with TekSaavy:before UBB: $31.95after UBB: $364.45. That’s a 1140% increase in cost from one month to the next, for the exact same product delivered!”
Here is a website dedicated to informing you and aiding the voice to stop UBB: http://stopthemeter.ca/ Sign the petition to stop UBB!
Here is an image that illustrates what the CRTC is trying to do, remember, at the urging of BELL. http://i.imgur.com/M3G7f.png
Great post Kikila. That’s exactly it. An extra $300+ for about $2 worth of service? Is this what our governments are there to do to us? Are they representing Canadians or just a couple of Canadian Corporations?
I believe in fair business. Big telecom is not doing this. They are not only going to gouge the everyday consumer, but also stifle freedom of information and speech, and are essentially going to kill off all competition. Everyone that is concerned about the prices skyrocketing for a cheap service such as this should let their voice be heard. Absolutely no company should have a monopoly; we need the freedom to choose. We need the freedom of fair pricing. The net has opened up a whole new world of information exchanging, you bet that it will be stifled by this implementation.
To the Watcher – you got me.
Okay, I never claimed to be good at Math, but Kikila you just spelled it out for me. Thanks for that. I signed the petition. I’m going to encourage everyone else I know to do it as well. What else can we do about this?