CRTC approves usage-based internet billing

[redforever]

http://sync.sympatico.ca/news/conten...lling-internet

The CRTC attached a key caveat to the approval, however, in that Bell must apply usage-based billing to all of its retail customers before it can implement the scheme with its wholesale internet service providers.
Bell will therefore need to move any customers it has on unlimited downloading services onto new usage-based plans before it can apply the same scheme on a wholesale basis.

[Azure]

Bell has unlimited services?

Provided that they don't charge like crazy to buy 200GB of usage, I think this is a good thing.

Pay for what you use.

[Azure]

Under the plan, Bell will charge wholesale ISPs a flat fee for connecting to its network, and for a set monthly usage limit per customer. Beyond that set limit, users will be charged per gigabyte, depending on the speed of their connections.
Customers using the fastest connections of five-megabits per second, for example, will have a monthly allotment of 60 gigabytes, beyond which Bell will charge $1.12 per GB to a maximum of $22.50.
If a customer uses more than 300 GB a month, Bell will also be able to implement an additional charge of 75 cents per gigabyte.
The CRTC is also requiring Bell to make any "usage insurance plans," which give its own retail customers extra monthly usage for a small fee, available to wholesale ISPs.

From the article...

[Methanolic]

Why would Bell do this?

Are they not going to lose customers over this?

....And does this mean all other ISP's will soon implement the same biiling scenario?

[Prototype]

This makes more sense to me to curb grey area downloading, rather than to say "you can't".

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Prototype

This makes more sense to me to curb grey area downloading, rather than to say "you can't".

You're absolutely correct. The US has strict laws and regulations but there are still tons of people pirating ... this is a much more logical deterrent.

edit: Although what happens to somebody who uses something legitimate like itunes to download their tv? This could hit them pretty hard if they are heavy watchers.

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by Russic

edit: Although what happens to somebody who uses something legitimate like itunes to download their tv? This could hit them pretty hard if they are heavy watchers.

They'd rather have you spend your money buying their own PPV and on-demand shows, so they likely won't shed a tear for you. Tricky situation when the ISP is also the TV company.

[HotHotHeat]

Good to see the CRTC is still concerning themselves with lost causes.

[BlackEleven]

I hope this means Bell drops throttling. They're one of the worst out there -- all torrents are throttled to 30 KB/s. They justify this by saying the high-bandwidth users slow down the casual users.

If their customers are paying directly for the bandwidth they use, then in theory they should be able to build the infrastructure to accommodate the high bandwidth user with the new revenue.