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Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

thetyee.ca

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Re: Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

#181

Post by sjs »

jacquesm wrote: post #105
sjs wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This situation really sucks, but remember that those of us with Telus or Shaw don't have anything to complain about at the moment so you aren't hearing about all of us on 10-25 mbps lines, with 50-200 GB soft caps that aren't enforced. I'm torrenting up a storm 24/7, and regularly download shows and movies on iTunes and Netflix, stream Grooveshark at home and on my phone. I don't even hear anything if I use 2x my mon…

Shaw is cable right?

It may be just a matter of time before they follow suit. Who knows, it surely would not be a surprise.

Re: Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

#182

Post by jarek »

falldowngoboom wrote: post #163
jacquesm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Canadian government has a long history of propping up the monopolies operating inside its borders, especially when it has a stake in them. For additional entertainment read up on the LCBO and the Egg Board (no, that's not a joke).

And the dairy board. And the turkey board. And the beer store.

Don't forget Tim Hortons.

Re: Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

#183

Post by vacri »

jarek wrote: post #178
vacri wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the case of DSL, the vast majority of the cost is the cost of maintaining the copper pair to your house, and that cost largely doesn't change, regardless of usage." Pure nonsense. ISPs have to pay data by volume to upstream providers.

Which absolutely does not rule out the possibility that the data cost is much smaller than the cost of maintaining the copper. Do you have the numbers?

I do not at the moment - I perhaps phrased it poorly - but the cost of the in-ground copper wire is but one part of the costs of an ISP - datacenters, call centres, exchanges + dslams, specialist staff, CEO's bonus pay, so on and so forth. To paint the cost of DSL as almost entirely maintenance of the in-ground copper is nonsense.

Re: Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

#184

Post by ergo98 »

mustpax wrote: post #48
JeffJenkins wrote: post #5

This doesn't explaining what's going on very clearly. Small Canadian ISPs are allowed to use the infrastructure of Bell Canada at wholesale rates in order to foster competition. This has been reasonably successful. What has happened now is that the CRTC ruled that Bell is allowed to impose the same per-user bandwidth caps on its wholesale customers as it does on its own users. Since the smaller ISPs should simply be…

The situation is much more complicated than that. Smaller ISPs only piggy back on Bell's telephone lines only in the so-called last mile of the connection. The resellers have their own DSLAM equipment at the switchboards and they have to make their own peering arrangements to the rest of the internet. Bell's telephone lines have been (still are) heavily subsidized by the government, which is why the government is req…

The parent sits at 38 points while being almost entirely wrong.

I want endless bandwidth as well, but this is absolutely the decline of this site, with "what I want" and "the way I present the world to support my bias" crowding out "what is real" and "actual fact".

Isn't that sort of tactic best left on reddit?

Re: Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

#185

Post by jarek »

hekar wrote: post #91

I'm really lucky to live in Waterloo, Ontario. There's a provider called Yak that offers unlimited bandwidth, non-throttled DSL up to 10MB for $60 a month (comes with non-voip phone line and 5 calling features). They have their own DSL centers and hence aren't going to be affected by this new proposition. I think we might see more companies starting their own DSL centers.

To confirm - does Yak own their own last mile? I'm under the impression this is the crux of the issue.

Re: Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

#186

Post by jarek »

nikster wrote: post #177
vacri wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a bargain. There's a business opportunity for you!

I think this hits on the real, underlying issue: There is no free market competition in internet access. In the case of Canada it appears one state-owned company owns all the physical lines, and that company is starting to meter access. So, a sensible approach by the government would be to review the actual access costs - whether it's $2 / 100GB or some other figure - then fix the price at that level. Review it every…

The really stinging part is that Bell isn't state owned, even though it certainly acts the part.

Re: Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

#187

Post by thebigredjay »

acangiano wrote: post #24

I'll provide one data point of how this affects Canadian internet users. I currently have no caps with TekSavvy and pay $39 a month. Starting from March 1st, I will pay $31.95/mo with a 25 GB cap. Any gigabyte over the limit will cost about 2 bucks. Now, you can buy a block at discounted prices. According to TekSavvy, based on my internet usage, I will need to buy at least a 275 GB extra block. Believe it or not, I d…

Where do you live? I've lived in Quebec for three years and before that Alberta. In both places my internet service had a bandwidth cap and above a certain amount you paid an extra fee per GB. This is absolutely not new!

What really sticks out to me here is that the various ISP's have much less to compete with. The only real motivation for me in Montreal to switch to one of the smaller ISPs was the unlimited bandwidth option.

Re: Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

#189

Post by cscheid »

zacharycohn wrote: post #176
petsos wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking the two extremes does not prove your point. A lot of people are pissed with ads right now. Imagine if they would have to pay for them too (even pennies).

I wasn't picking extremes, simply pointing out how little ads would effect you. Besides, doesn't Adblock work client-side? You'd still download and pay for the ads, you just wouldn't see them.

Not when the ads come from different domains (which is the case for 99% of the annoying flash ads). Adblock stops all requests to these domains. Incidentally, this is also why Adblock is a hit with privacy-conscious people - it mitigates tracking through log file analysis.

Re: Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

#190

Post by jacquesm »

xxpor wrote: post #46
jacquesm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do they have a approved monopoly over all phone service, ala AT&T way back when (by this I mean do they carry all calls at some point, even if its only as a wholesale co)? Not any more, as far as I know. But because there are plenty of restrictions on infrastructure installations and because Bell simply owns all the infrastructure that was invested in in the past Bell effectively has a finger in every pie and as a…

Hmm. I can't imagine what advantage there is to having tight restrictions on building out infrastructure. It seems like it could only help.

Classical short-term thinking. Making more money of the consumers in the short term instead of making an infrastructure that supports richer applications in the future which will lift up the whole system and hence will provide more value for everybody.
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