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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.

#241

Post by Swannie »

pyre wrote: post #137
Swannie wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Does it matter if they pay for their peering arrangements? (See who they peer with here: http://www.datacentermap.com/as/577_upstreams.html ). They still need to carry this traffic to a peering location. That's not free. They still need to support their peering agreements with staff & seriously expensive routers. Not free. They need to support the ISP's whose traffic they are carrying - arguably they ISP's have pa…

I think the issue with respect to Bell providing IPTV should be framed around whether they should be allowed to enter that market at all seeing as they have an unfair advantage over competitors. If ISPs can enter any market and just under-cut the existing players, then it we're basically stating that any content-provider on the internet needs to also be an ISP just in order to compete with the players that are just w…

I don't follow your logic.

Bell cannot enter the TV market (one it's already in, albeit Satellite TV), because Netflix can't enter the ISP market?

I'll think you'll find that Netflix can enter that market if they so desire.

Bell are abusing a monopoly position? No, they are exploiting efficiencies of scale. Surely Rogers and Shaw, who provide cable TV and Internet are stiff competition in this area?!?

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

#242

Post by snowwindwaves »

DrStalker wrote: post #161

It's not that bad. Really. Australia has had data caps since broadband first came out; for the vast majority of of users a basic plan provides all the data they need, techy users with heavy usage patterns get higher plans, and people with the compulsion to torrent every TV in existence get plans with unmetered periods (a few ISPs don't meter traffic during the quiet periods at night) The usual behavior once you're ov…

it is bad. australians and new zealanders get ripped on their telecommunications.

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

#243

Post by Swannie »

ergo98 wrote: post #135
jacquesm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twisted-pair sucks, actually The reason we're having this debate is because twisted pair easily does 20MBit these days. > and Bell's monopoly is on dead technology. Not quite dead. Maybe not on par with fiber to the home, but not all that bad either. ITU G.992.5 Annex M: 24 Mbit/s down, 3.3 Mbit/s up. > Though I'm not even sure what your point is. I think we can agree on that :) ISPs on metered billing is going abo…

The reason we're having this debate is because twisted pair easily does 20MBit these days. Easily? Hardly. Over an absurdly short distance from the switching station, with perfect copper, as a tech trial sure. In the real world most ADSL users find that their experience is nowhere near that. ADSL sucks. ADSL has always sucked. It is a dead technology that is constantly simply being replaced. We're having this discuss…

Well here in the UK, BT are rolling out FTTC (Fiber to the Cabinet). Third Party ISPs can install their min-DSLAMs into the cabinet, which is usually not very far away in an urban or semi-urban environment. This will be VDSL, delivering 50mbps!

If I were Teksavvy I'd be doing a projection on the costs of rolling out my own DSLAMs, and the value of reselling that on to other customers, really really fast. Probably approaching some UK companies like TalkTalk to buy in their experience for 2 weeks of consultation and costing models. Then contacting Huawei, and getting their army of Chinese engineers to come out and install these DSLAMs, or train Canadian engineers how to do it.

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

#244

Post by Swannie »

blntechie wrote: post #88
aristus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? Users have to pay to visit littlesite.com, but access to facebook is free?

Yes. But it's not happening with fixed line ISPs as i know. It only happens with mobile data usage in EDGE and 3G. Mostly facebook.com and twitter.com can be used unlimited for free or for a very low cost add-on plan. Other sites accessed are charged as per the normal plan. Even though it appears sinister, the mobile operators do this to attract young customers who use these sites the most on the move. Personally, i…

I've seen that in Australia and the UK too. Good idea to attract the younger market.

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

#245

Post by Swannie »

antihero wrote: post #240
jacquesm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A basic 20 Mbit connection goes for about $75 in Europe, that's 1.1 ct / Gigabyte (if my back-of-the-envelope math is correct). 40 Mbit goes for about $100 / month. Metered is out, flat-rate is the future. The only hold-outs will be the mobile carriers and even there I already see flat-rate offerings. $5 or $10 / month would not work due to fixed costs and write-off on equipment higher than that. But once the equipme…

In the UK you can get Virgin 50MB with no caps for about £30~/month.

It's not perfect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Media#Bandwidth_throttli...

But it's a good way of solving some of the challenges. But more and more people will start hitting that throttling soon, as people start using LoveFilm streaming, etc.

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

#246

Post by ergo98 »

snowwindwaves wrote: post #239
nitrogen wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It is within the realm of technology to profitably provide unmetered bandwidth at standard rates, with minimal shaping during peak use hours. To borrow the phrase seen used on here with reference to nuclear power, bandwidth is almost "too cheap to meter." That's what is real. 2. What the ISPs and/or infrastructure owners are charging is orders of magnitude beyond covering costs. Bandwidth is getting cheaper as tec…

a nuclear power plant costs 6-8 billion up front, before you get a dime back and takes 2-8 years to build. Nobody in the US except the government will loan utilities the money to build or upgrade a nuclear power plant. I'm all for nuclear power, but it ain't cheap.

The electric generation system is actually a remarkably apt comparison because in most districts the cost of consumables is marginal. The real cost is in the capital expenditure needed for the system to supply a given load. Many of the same principals apply (e.g. "why do they charge me per kWh when they're overgenerating and they have all these nuclear power plants sitting around....")

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

#247

Post by Swannie »

moultano wrote: post #200
caf wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with "just pay for data" is that mobile voice calls use such a tiny amount of data that either the cost of voice would have to drop by several orders of magnitude, or the price of data would have to be so astronomical as to make web browsing unaffordable. This is the problem that telcos have been struggling with in terms of mobile data for years - they don't want to give up their fat margins on voice, but…

It seems that you are paying for two things with your bill, the ubiquity of the network, and the marginal amount of data you use. It seems reasonable that the capital build out be paid for with a fixed monthly bill, while the marginal amount of data usage be metered on top. They don't necessarily have to lose their margins on voice, just build that into the fixed monthly cost.

It's tricky though, because they have built out, and have to maintain, quite a large infrastructure to cope with voice alone. It extends from billing, through to terminating calls on other networks, running voice mail systems, etc.

There's arguably a lot of room for MVNOs only offering data. (In Australia DoDo offered such for the lowest price per GB).

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

#248

Post by wmoxam »

jarek wrote: post #228
jacquesm wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I'll dig it up and I'll mail it to you, it's on my todo list now. It was made because I was planning on writing a book on immigrating to Canada from the perspective of someone that has gone through the whole process, and this was to become one article (a blog post) and / or a chapter in there. The whole thing had as working title 'movingtoca'. Canada is a fantastic country but some things there are just - how t…

> How do you explain to an American that the same bottle of wine costs 50% more in rural Canada than in New York City :) ? Shipping cost? If anything, I'd have thought the LCBO, keeping prices uniform across the province, helps rural areas at the expense of higher density areas (though perhaps not strict downtowns where store lease cost might be significant).

Alcohol is heavily taxed and the LCBO also enforces a price floor to discourage heavy drinking.

http://www.lcbotrade.com/selling_pricing.htm

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

#249

Post by Swannie »

gregsadetsky wrote: post #124

How expensive would it be to start a number of small independent Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs)? I'm thinking of a decentralized "movement" of geeks organizing what's required to get neighborhoods and villages online: an omnidirectional antenna high enough that Line of Sight can be provided to most residents, a high bandwidth fiber optics connection at the center, and subscriber antennas at the residence…

"How can anyone manage with 25 GB per month?"

Very, very happily thanks. I used to "manage" quite happily on 1.5GB/month (Wireless in Australia).

Now I'm in the UK, I'm doing about 25 (thanks to BBC's streaming, which I could cut out a lot of I was PVRing more). It would only become a pain when I want to download something like a VM image.

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

#250

Post by gregsadetsky »

Swannie wrote: post #249
gregsadetsky wrote: post #124

How expensive would it be to start a number of small independent Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs)? I'm thinking of a decentralized "movement" of geeks organizing what's required to get neighborhoods and villages online: an omnidirectional antenna high enough that Line of Sight can be provided to most residents, a high bandwidth fiber optics connection at the center, and subscriber antennas at the residence…

"How can anyone manage with 25 GB per month?" Very, very happily thanks. I used to "manage" quite happily on 1.5GB/month (Wireless in Australia). Now I'm in the UK, I'm doing about 25 (thanks to BBC's streaming, which I could cut out a lot of I was PVRing more). It would only become a pain when I want to download something like a VM image.

I didn't mean that to be a snark! :-)

It was simply a(n emotional?) reaction (has been said many times, etc.) to the reality of bandwidth being reduced in Canada over the past... 15 years.

I used to have the-nicest-DSL-in-high-school, provided by Bell, in the late 90's -- 74$/month for 2 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up, unlimited traffic.

Today, their "Fibe" offering (it sounds like "Fiber" as in FTTH! but it isn't! %^&^%$#!!) is 55$/month for 25 Mbps down, 7 Mbps up.

The speed is definitely better -- but the 100 GB transfer limit means that your effective average monthly speed is 38 kB/sec (100 Gb / seconds in 30 days...)

Why doesn't signing up for 5 Mbps mean that you get a full constant 5 Mbps, and that you can use up to the full 1.6 TB of transfer per month (5 Mbps * 30 days...)?

Isn't the reason because customers are sold oversubscribed connections?

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