Whos your ISP?

As a former employee of a Canadian ISP company that has been doing this for years, I can tell you, that there was a limit to an over charge fee. The bandwidth amounts were pretty reasonable too.

From what i'm seeing its only the little ISP companies that are being heavily afflicted.

Awesome .

Just checked Shaw's homepage.

I pay $50 for 100gb/month and 15/Mbps download speeds.

Don't really see a difference but I did see the $150 350Gb plan. Holy [censored].

Yea, don't see a difference now. Remember cell phones and how they were oh so gloriously simple and you would never have to worry about hitting past your limit. Then there's the fact that this leads in to charging for other web services. Bell might not like google and wants to push its own search engine. So it decides to make its own which is free, but using google is 1$ a month. Youtube 10$ a month ect. Then there's the long term [censored] up waiting to happen. We are finding ways to increase bandwidth usage, literally this is the turning point where we see a major increase in its use. Later down the line they might have to pay more to set the limits back to what they were do in part to HD formats become more popular and accessible. Steam, Netflix, and Youtube use tons of bandwidth. Think long term here people. This is a quick cash grab scheme that's going to result in nothing good for anyone but the ISP.

Also Mike your forgetting that wasn't a problem with a 200-250 GB allotment. There currently looking to shrink it down to 25GB as a minimum, and with a range from 25-60GB for the average user. Meaning that your going to hit the cap all that faster and get hit with over time fees. Then the companies hidden policies to scam every last little dollar from your pocket. Who knows? Phantom data traffic anyone to boost peoples bills? There's numerous other schemes they can implement.

I had this discussion with a New Zealander the other day... The company I worked for actually has packages that started at 10GB bandwidth...(download speed at 3mbps) and went to 60GB (14mbps)...thats ranging from 24$ - 41$. I thought its pretty reasonable.. :shrug:

Mind you, like that person in New Zealand, thats what we're made to know.

Hmm I wonder if my internet has a cap. I most likely run over it though.

10GB? How the hell do you do anything with that? [censored] travesty is what that is. How can people stand such pathetic internet, go and kick some ass, and some sense into those people provided the means are there for improved internet.

Edit
Then again you have to look at it from the prospective of the US and Canada. We both have high bandwidth usage utilities. Netflix is 7$ a month in Canada for unlimited movie streams. A HD movie can be around 4GB in size, a standard definition around 1GB or so. Steam games can run the gamut, but tend to be 10-20GB in size. Then all the emails, text messages, web pages, photos, youtube videos, and other things on top of those. It adds up incredibly quick, and more services will become available to use that bandwidth. Already the messily 25GB a month doesn't cut it. I would say 60GB doesn't even cut it.

In Quebec, we have a website called Tout.tv where someone can watch his favourite TV shows after the airing date. Some shows are 22 minutes, others are 44 minutes.

If you watch them at high quality, they take a good chunk of bandwidth. Especially if you watch a whole season in a month. Add to this HD videos watched from other websites and downloadable purchases over websites like iTunes and Steam, and you get a whole lot of GB for a month.

The average user is using more GB for a month than a couple of years ago, yet the ISPs lower their bandwidth limit, which is ironic in an age where digital purchases are increasingly popular and HD content is more common.

People don't seem to realize this is going to practically kill off lots of services in Canada. I know of small time websites that are going to suffer through this increased pay crunch. Not to mention they would have a complete and total monopolization of the market and could demand anything if this succeeds.

Well, we had a department solely for monitoring peoples bandwidth. Our sales reps would get some names of people exceeding their bandwidths and people would be phoned in order to go over their package.

I often had older customers (age 65+) come in and say they received a phone call about their internet and how they were paying TOO MUCH.

People who don't use the internet that much tend to suffer in terms of pricing because they overbuy, so its good that they're being compensated, and it made me feel good that they were being compensated.

It doesn't matter if they use a lot of it, or a little bit of it. 24/7 or for 5 seconds a year. It's supposed to be there for people to use for whatever they need, you just gain access to it. I'm surprised its degraded this far already, I'll concede that 200-250GB a month would be plenty, and probably for a good long while to come. I know on average in the USA they get 250GB a month for home internet services. Canadians would only be getting 25GB a month with the basic plan. That's ludicrous, more so given our close proximity to the US both in real life and online.

Sorry for the double post, but this is an interesting global look at the problem. I know there was a poster from NZ in here, and it's apparent our countries are far from the norm. http://business.financialpost.com/2011/02/02/usage-based-internet-billing-a-global-comparison/

I don't, yet, but I still signed the petition in protest, based on principle.

Canadians get screwed when it comes to bandwidth when comparing other countries. Poor American expats come up here and damn near drop dead from shock when they see the plans offered here. (Cell and internet.)

Really? Obviously someone hasn't downloaded any demos from PSN or Xbox Live. Also, NetFlix in HD is insanely huge. Just last month I used up 27gb.. That's from VoIP, downloading demos, HD NetFlix movies.. It's only going to get worse with full games via digital download.

Best quote of the day I have seen. Scary thing is, I hope Harper does something about this, because once the Liberals are in power, we know they will not enact on what they promise, that is for sure. But non the less, I think this is so true.



Funny how the younglings are getting upset over this eh?

Not really no. In this digital age it's incredibly important, as far as humanity can see the internet is going to be a major part of our lives for a very long time to come. No matter what shape or form it takes, perhaps someday only being replaced by the ability to instantly communicate between everyone all at once. Even then it would just be an advanced form of internet. But that's a whole other... thing, bordering on the fantastical.

That graph of there's needs updating. http://www.tpg.com.au/ (as linked earlier) has an unlimited plan which is clearly advertised on their website. And on loads of billboards . And given that they also sell an ADSL2+ plan with a 200GiB limit for AU$50, which gets shaped to 1Mbps (once you go over that limit, the download speed drops to this until the next billing period), we're still better off than you guys (since that's reasonable close to the norm), even disregarding the few unlimited plans we have.

I say again, for those who think they must have misread the above: Australia has better internet options than Canada .

It's understandable that gamers would be upset, but the average person checking his facebook and emails isn't going to come anywhere close to reaching that cap. I honestly think it's a great idea since bandwith and data usage is limited and you still have to factor in the costs needed to maintain a network. If people are really upset about this then they will rebel with their wallets allowing competitors to fill the void.

wtf are you talking about

the internet is fine son

Ouch... this makes Canada look even more primitive and backwards in this aspect. Also penta did you even read the thread? How much times do I have to show my evidence to people? Why... do I have to walk through why this is bad with each and every one of the 33,739,900 Canadians? Good god. I already posted why it's a sham and a lie that they are claiming network costs. They are overcharging us by up to 50x! Network costs my ass, go look at the data. It costs them 3c to send 1GB of data. They will be charging us anywhere from 1-2$/GB. I have also explained so many times that bandwidth usage is on a sharp rise in Canada with no sign of stopping. We have access to Steam, Netflix, and HD youtube easily tearing through the measly 25GB a month plan that most companies will be offering. There's also more services that we can't anticipate now that would use a lot of bandwidth, crippling our options in the future unless we fork over a ton of cash. Finally the fact that if they have a monopoly on this it means less jobs, services, and choices for everyone. I know netflix is already gulping at Bell's attempt to kill their service by strangling the internet.

But if I absolutely have to explain this to every last Canadian. I will.

Edit
Good god the jokes have already begun. "http://i.imgur.com/wvUTg.png"

Why are they picking on Canada? It's simple really Greed. Pure and simple GREED. I can't rememeber where I read this, but I thought Canada Is or is in the top 3 of internet usage in the world right now. With so many people using the Intertnet, it's a perfect place to start and nickle and dime everyone to death over it's usage, because we can't stop using it now even if we wanted to. We are so dependent on it like crack cocaine. We will pay and do what ever we can to have internet now, so they have us by the balls sort to speak. There is nothing we can do.

We can't drop Bell or Rogers as our providor because if we go to the lesser know ones, they are still using Bell and Roger's infanstructure for the internet to give us. So Bell and Rogers charges them, which of course gets passed down to us.

So basically trying to go else were, or let the "free market" come in, will not work. Why do you think Bell and Rogers were so PISSED when Virgin came to Canada? Alot of the rules were changed because of Virgin and showed how all of us were being hosed by Bell and Rogers. Now instead of the cell phones, it's now the Internet.

So it's either, we rebell now, or just end up paying it with no other options. Hopefully the Canadian Goverment will step in and put a stop to this. I know NetFlix will be fighting this, if people will be watching what they stream from them now. Quite funny now, Netflix comes in, and people will not be using it's survices as much pretty soon now.

I'll repeat it again: the only one raising a stink about it are people like you who would use that much. If it's really a bad business decision then they will drop it and go back to their old business model.

Guys please remember to keep this discussion politics free, if you can't the discussion will be locked down.

I'm pushing it if I use 25GB of my 125GB /month allotment but I'm still outraged, you should be to. I guess you just don't see the bigger picture. We are being ripped off plain and simple considering the true cost /GB. I for one do not take kindly to being bent over and.......

:shrug:

edit: slight rewording.

Sorry for the double post but.....



http://www.canada.com/news/Harper+Conservatives+quash+CRTC+decision+killing+unlimited+Internet/4214166/story.html


Take that CRTC! The people have spoken.