Cornwall ON – UBB. The CRTC is being lobbied by the Internet Carriers to have caps on your bandwidth and charge exorbinant amounts of money over and above.
Where it might cost less than 1 cent to deliver a gigabyte of data some carriers like Bell or Cogeco want to charge as much as $4.00!
Libraries, Internet Cafes, Hospitals, our whole society would be forced to pay huge amounts of money to use a system our dollars finance via the monopolies granted to these companies.
It’s all pretty dispicable. Where countries like Finland declare High Speed Internet a right and others embrace the reality that more high speed is good for society, Canada and the US are behind ways of essentially creating a class system where the poor will have their access limited by their wallets while the rich can while away reading Egotastic or Perez Hilton.
Many across this country are fighting it and having sent in an email myself this arrived from our Minister responsible, Tony Clement.
Dear Sir or Madam:
Thank you for expressing your concerns regarding usage-based billing (UBB)
for Internet services. It is essential that I hear the views of Canadians
on the issues that matter. Prime Minister Harper and I have been clear
that we cannot support imposing a UBB business model on wholesale Internet
service providers.Our government recognizes that the Internet and digital technologies are
an increasingly important part of everyday life—including driving
innovation, commerce and social interaction. As the government develops
Canada’s first comprehensive Digital Economy Strategy, we need to look
carefully at how issues like UBB affect the big picture. We will be
guided by our long-standing policies of encouraging competition and
investment, increasing consumer choice, minimizing regulation and allowing
market forces to prevail.The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has
chosen to examine these concerns that the government shares with a large
number of Canadians. Details of the CRTC consultation are available at
www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com100/2011/r110208.htm.When the CRTC reaches a final decision following its consultations, the
government will carefully assess the CRTC position to ensure that it is in
line with the best interests of Canadian consumers and encourages
competition among internet service providers. I will be recommending that
any decision counter to these foundational principles be reversed.
You can find the latest news on the government’s Digital Economy Strategy
and related issues at www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ic1.nsf/eng/h_00008.html.Once again, thank you for writing. I trust that this information is
helpful.Yours sincerely,
Tony Clement
Call your MP. Writer your MP. Visit your MP’s office. This Federal election is a perfect time to ask those asking for your vote to take a position and make sure than instead of capping internet usage, the government invest in making sure Canadians have more access to the internet to practice Democracy in ways that they currently are spending millions if not billions of dollars trying to bring to other countries like Libya by dropping bombs on them.
You may post your comments below.
E-mailed Tony 4 times now and the CRTC 4 times now, and my MP also. Told Tony that this was a major election issue and if his Government wanted a majority to erase or reverse UBB from the corrupt CRTC instead of talking about it. Acts not words I said. I told him if he did nothing before the election I would vote NDP. I also suggested that while my one vote wasn’t important, he could rely on the fact that I wasn’t alone in my thinking, and did he want to take that chance. I also was not bluffing.
High-speed Internet should be declared a Right in this country. Let Canada be the first country in the Western Hemisphere to show we really care for our citizens. High-speed Internet for everyone!
There are about 500,000 supporters of Anti UBB legislation. Bell claims that only 5% of users exceed cap are grossly exaggerated, and are based on their data metering system that was taken offline due to incorrectly calculating usage data. Actual questionnaire said that about 45% of people were charged for exceeding data limits. Bell should operate based on 10-20% of markup based on the bandwidth delivered – or 10-20% of 1 cent 😉