CRTC green lights usage-based internet billing

[redforever]

The federal regulator on Thursday gave Bell Canada the approval to implement so-called usage-based billing to wholesale customers - usually smaller internet service providers that rent portions of its network - within 90 days. Under the plan, Bell will charge wholesale service providers a flat monthly fee to connect to its network, and for a set monthly usage limit per each ISP customer the ISP has.



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 GB, 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.

http://sync.sympatico.ca/news/crtc_green_lights_usage-based_internet_billing/f05d7443

[dissentowner]

Bell sucks.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Well great, this will open the doors for other providers to do the same. Hopefully Shaw isn't one of them.

[Esoteric]

I really hope Shaw doesn't follow Bell on this.

Capping internet use is a bad idea. With everything shifting from a physical distribution to that of a digital distribution capping internet will hurt consumers and companies that provide goods digitally. If I buy a couple of games on steam that can use up anywhere between 10 - 30 gigs. It won't be hard to exceed the limits.

[Azure]

Question is, is Bell or anyone else for that matter running into congestion on their 'network' because of high bandwidth usage?

[HeartsOfFire]

And with this ruling, owning the fibre and cable in the ground just became a lot more profitable.

The big telco's and cable companies are able to provide their services to the customer because they own not only the equipment, but the cabling linking them as well. Using them for said services is equal to paying tolls on a highway.

If they all decide to use a usage-billing platform, then the dynamic of network usage will change drastically.

Considering this is a system that's virtually limitless and non-stop, I am gravely concerned for the future of internet usage. It's not like we're going to run out of bandwidth like we are oil.

I fear this will become the telco's new cash cow.

Originally Posted by Azure

Question is, is Bell or anyone else for that matter running into congestion on their 'network' because of high bandwidth usage?

I highly, highly doubt it. But there will never be a way to prove it.

[ken0042]

I persoanlly like this idea if it saves me money. I don't do much downloading, so my monthly bill is based on an average of what everybody uses. I am below that point.

I guess I know a lot of people who download gigs and gigs of movies but don't end up watching them. If it's unlimited- why not? I don't have a problem with them doing it; I just don't want theior useage to be part of my bill.

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by ken0042

I persoanlly like this idea if it saves me money. I don't do much downloading, so my monthly bill is based on an average of what everybody uses. I am below that point.

I guess I know a lot of people who download gigs and gigs of movies but don't end up watching them. If it's unlimited- why not? I don't have a problem with them doing it; I just don't want theior useage to be part of my bill.

Except what is far more likely is your bill will stay the same and theirs will get higher.

[HeartsOfFire]

I just checked my monthly bandwidth limit usage. It's been increased from 60 GB per month to 75 GB. I wasn't aware the change took place.

Not that it matters... it shows that I've used 0% of said bandwidth ever since the service was installed. Lucky me, I suppose. That's something I don't ever intend to inform them about.

[Nuje]

This is a bad idea. The only thing I figure may happen, is if it comes with increasingly frugal use of the internet, they're going to realize they have all this infrastructure, and it's not being used to even part of its full potential. I imagine everyone that makes money off of internet advertising will be pissed off...also, I never even come CLOSE to my data limit on my phone. I can just use that more. Hopefully once everyone feels trapped by this sudden usage based billing, someone comes up and goes flat rate again. They will steal MANY customers that way.

[Azure]

I don't see how this could be a good thing in any way.

Used to be that the people who used a lot of bandwidth were those that illegally downloaded, but now with 'streaming' options starting to come to Canada, all this will change.

[bradster57]

This sucks. Shaw has been pretty good with me in the past and some months I go WAY high! Hopefully they stay the same.

[BlackArcher101]

Up until this week, Shaw had their policy here: http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsSer...ernetdatausage

Unfortunately, it's now a blank page as it looks like they are revising it. However, before it was removed, it listed the charges for going over and the limits, as well as additional GB packages.

Looks like Shaw will be following suit.

[Rathji]

Shaw has apparently been testing charging for bandwidth overages in Edmonton. http://forums.beyond.ca/st/318782/sh...width-overage/

The lady I know who works for Shaw says it isn't likely to go through in its current form. I also recall her saying that she was pretty sure they only ever harassed people who had not upgraded to extreme or higher in the past.

When I read that thread, I called a tech at Shaw and they set it up so I could see my usage, since apparently it is not enabled by default. It wasn't a simple procedure though.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Azure

Question is, is Bell or anyone else for that matter running into congestion on their 'network' because of high bandwidth usage?

Probably - the entire premise of the existing networks is to over-subscribe bandwidth. If you want to see the true cost of a dedicated broadband connection, take a look at what business class line costs some time. Take your existing broadband bill and multiply it by about a factor of about 30x, and you are getting into the right ballpark.

Of course, business class connections come with guarantees about performance and SLA's on availability. And that's what needs to happen here too - if I'm paying for a 15 megabit pipe, and paying by the bit, I expect to get what I'm paying for, not some highly variable, horrendously over-subscribed connection. That would be fair.

But I don't see the CRTC talking about that side of the equation.

[theonlywhiteout]

shaws pricing going up twice a year has been really pissing me off. and the only real alternative is ADSL. give us de regulation or regulate these s. the pricing for internet in canada compared to the speeds is outrageous; especially considering 90% of our population lives in condensed urban areas

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by ken0042

I persoanlly like this idea if it saves me money. I don't do much downloading, so my monthly bill is based on an average of what everybody uses. I am below that point.

I guess I know a lot of people who download gigs and gigs of movies but don't end up watching them. If it's unlimited- why not? I don't have a problem with them doing it; I just don't want theior useage to be part of my bill.

Do you honestly think you're going to somehow pay less for your internet than you do now?

This is about making the heavy users pay more than the light users... not making the light users pay less than the heavy users.

[HotHotHeat]

It's so backwards trending for Bell to do this. Since when did a market that used to be unlimited move to a limited usage structure? I actually can't think of anything...

[Bob]

Edit: Wow, Shaw now offers more bandwidth with their higher-end connections, making them actually useful. Warp actually sounds reasonable (250 GB/month, 50 mbps down, 3 mbps up). How long has Shaw had Docsis 3.0?

It would be like Bell only offering voice plans with 100 minutes per months (because "that's all a reasonable customer could *possibly* use"), then charging 50c/minute for overages. Pathetic.

It's clearly nothing more than a cash grab and a way of intimidating users because they're threatened by streaming video and other online content.

[Bob]

It's so backwards trending for Bell to do this. Since when did a market that used to be unlimited move to a limited usage structure? I actually can't think of anything...

Good article from Ars a few months back: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...ics-say-no.ars

TWC's revenues from Internet access have soared in the last few years, surging from $2.7 billion in 2006 to $4.5 billion in 2009. Customer numbers have grown, too, from 7.6 million in 2007 to 8.9 million in 2009.

But this growth doesn't translate into higher bandwidth costs for the company; in fact, bandwidth costs have dropped. TWC spent $164 million on data contracts in 2007, but only $132 million in 2009.

What about investing in its infrastructure? That's down too as a percentage of revenue. TWC does spend billions each year building and improving its network ($3.2 billion in 2009), but the raw number alone is meaningless; what matters is relative investment, and it has declined even as subscribers increased and revenues surged. "Total CapEx [capital expenses] as a percentage of revenues for the year [2009] was 18.1 percent versus 20.5 percent in 2008," said the company a few months ago.

In fact, CapEx has declined for the industry as a whole. As the National Broadband Plan noted, the big ISPs invested $48 billion in their networks in 2008 and $40 billion in 2009. (About half of this money can be chalked up to broadband; the rest of the improvements were done to aid cable or phone service.)

To recap: subscribers up, revenues up, bandwidth costs down, infrastructure costs down. This might seem like a textbook case of "viability"; what were execs like Britt and Hobbs talking about last year when data caps were held up as a necessary safeguard against doom?