UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

It's fundamentally the same issue that plagues financial regulation. The people who are the most qualified to understand the technological and regulatory issues are the most biased, because almost by necessity they're products of the same industry they're supposed to regulate.

The big telcos wanted the ability to enforce the same rules they put on their own clients onto the wholesalers, which meant restrictive caps and lower speed packages. That would have effectively pinched off what little competition there was already...

This was mostly about Bell's ability to bring UBB to bear on the 3rd party ISPs that are leasing their lines (and thereby forcing all of those ISPs' customers onto a usage-based-billing model). Thought if you read that full thread you'll see that there's was a bit of debate over exactly what part of the infrastructure most of the 3rd party ISPs are leasing from Bell.

I'm of the mind that so long as the ISPs aren't going over Bell's peering connections to the wider internet (meaning that they have their own), then Bell shouldn't be able to force usage-based billing onto those ISPs. If any of those ISPs want to use Bell's peering connections to the internet.... then I don't know.

Of note is that Bell is the only one allowed to lay new last-mile phone lines. So if a 3rd party ISP wants to hook-up customers with their DSL, they have to go over Bell's last-mile lines (to the DSLAM at least).

Indeed. There were a few lines which particularly stood out to me as having been written by someone who doesn't really get the situation:

> To encourage competition, major telecom operators that have spent heavily on infrastructure are required to lease bandwidth on their networks to small providers.

I get that the system is maintained by these large companies, and I'm sure they have spent a lot on the infrastructure, but (and correct me if I'm wrong) I believe the system was built largely with taxpayer dollars, and it continues to be heavily subsidized by same.

> Although critics say the CRTC ruling will lead to lower download limits and higher rates, major Internet service providers say usage-based billing based is fair because it means heavy users pay more than those who just surf the web and use email.

There are two problems with this. First, internet isn't like electricity. Electricity must be generated at a cost, and those who consume more cost the generating company more (perhaps not directly, since unused electricity is simply lost, but at least indirectly by requiring higher generation to accommodate peak usage). With the internet, however, the lines are already laid and it's merely a matter of sending the information down the wire. There is almost no additional cost associated with higher usage (see next point).

Second, the 'incremental cost" of bandwidth appears, from what I've read recently, to be somewhere around a penny per gigabyte, if any exists at all. Let's give the companies the benefit of the doubt and say that it's actually 2.5 cents per GB. Now let's give them a 100% markup to be nice. So now we're calling a "reasonable markup" on this service to have a price of 5 cents per GB. Bell wanted $2 per GB for folks who go over their limit. They wanted 40 times what I just gave as a reasonable number. Even if you want to use the most conservative estimate I found, which was the CEO of TekSavvy who said maybe it could get as high as 30 cents per GB, then Bell would still be asking us to pay 666% () of the actual cost. That's one hell of a markup.

Also, and again using the 30c/GB estimate, Bell's offer in Ontario of a 25GB limit would equate to a $7.50 cost? Anyone want to take a guess at how much the service actually is actually priced at? I'll give you a hint: it's not $7.50.

Sorry for the rant, but I've been worried about this decision and I have a lot of pent up anger about it. It's nice that the government has actually stepped up to support the small, reasonable ISPs and the consumer.