Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Yeller
good post and all with a lot of good reading material... but really, has an internet petition ever worked?
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Hi Old Yeller,
I believe that a well-written petition, with 40,000 signatures (and growing at a rate of 1,000 per day) will certainly help to spread the word. And at this point, "spreading the word" is what we need to do. The ISPs are doing their best to keep this quiet, until it's fully in-place and operational.
When Shaw reduced our caps by 30% last month, they didn't announce it.
Shaw spreads mistruths, telling people: "If your neighbor is a heavy Netflix user, do YOU want to pay for his high usage if all you do is read emails?" This appeals to their frugal side, and then people repeat that misinformation as if it were fact. The truth is, you do NOT pay for your neighbors heavy usage of the internet. You will NOT save money with UBB. They lowered the caps on all of their plans, so it affects even the low-usage customers. "Shaw High Speed" was reduced from 75GB/mo to 60GB/mo.
In fact, with a flat rate of $50.00/mo, you could download a terabyte of data per month, and the ISP would still make a profit. The problem is, the ISPs do not want to re-invest that profit into their infrastructure. They even called UBB "a new source of revenue", during their latest shareholder meeting.
My apologies if I'm ranting a bit; but our internet service will go from $50/mo to $100/mo, so I'll have to pay Shaw an extra $600 this year, and I'll have LESS service than I did in 2010! This will create a tiered internet, where only the privileged will be able to use services like web-TV, Netflix, etc.
Most people don't realize, that if they used their connection at full speed for approximately one full day, they would already be OVER their cap, and now paying $2 per GB for overages. Shaw claims their caps are "generous" - Perhaps for the year 2003, these caps would be "generous". Selling an internet connection based on speed is pointless if you reach your caps in a matter of a few hours.
The point I'm trying to make, is that misinformation, and slowing the rate at which customers find out about UBB, are all tools being used by our ISPs. They want to take control of the internet, and ensure that we do not use their competitors, ie: Netflix/Hulu.
The best way to accomplish this is to keep it quiet. A petition with 40,000 signatures, growing daily, is poison to Shaw, because it spreads the word. And that may be more important than the petition itself.
Thanks for the reply!