Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

I don't mind limits, unlimited is impossible, but when the limit is the same for everyone regardless of how the service is used and then tout it as unlimited... it's ridiculous.

Twisted-pair sucks, actually, and Bell's monopoly is on dead technology. We only use it as a backup line in a worst case situation. We actually had a number of options, which is what we used for our primary line.

Though I'm not even sure what your point is.

If that were really true don't you think these ISPs would switch to those competitors with their 'competitive options' instead of waging silly lawsuits?

IT IS TRUE. Accept that as a reality, because it is reality. If bandwidth is as cheap as you claim, they WOULD use those alternatives, now wouldn't they? They have an economic model based upon basically an agreement that was punitively pushed onto Bell because of their monopoly, back when being the big telco made them the top dog.

I'm not cheering on anything but reality. You have ignored or sidestepped every reality I have presented, and keep up with this ridiculous illusion that Bell has any ounce of a provider monopoly in Canada.

If you don't care to skim the whole thing, the bottom line is that Bell is now able to force usage-based billing onto third-party ISPs, but must offer them a discount of 15% under the retail price at which Bell sells those services directly to customers.

Some other interesting tidbits found in there:

Unsurprisingly, Bell was against the idea of any discount, saying that even without a discount it would still be possible for independent ISPs to differentiate their services on price and "other methods". It's not clear how they'd actually do this, however. Oh, and PS there's way to determine an acceptable discount rate even if those assertions weren't true, so we shouldn't have one.

There's a nice note in there that "[the] Commission also received a large number of comments, mostly from individuals, that almost unanimously opposed the Bell companies' applications [to force usage-based billing]" - thanks for pointing that out, CRTC.

Bell is only required to provide third-party access to their legacy ATM networks, and not their new fiber-optic networks. This makes sense - as I've never seen the service advertised - but I hadn't seen that in writing anywhere.

If Bell ever does some form of promotion where they let people sign up on unlimited plans, they have to let third-party ISPs do this as well - although the mechanics are unstated ("[The] Commission finds that...to the extent that each company chooses not to charge UBB rates to any existing or new retail customer, it is required to treat GAS ISPs on an equivalent basis.").

Bell was about ambitious as you can get in the list of things they requested from the CRTC in these decisions. I'm not saying that I like this decision (as of March 1st I'll be paying TekSavvy more for less), but the CRTC did OK for the little guy when you see what else Bell wanted.

No one - not Bell, not the CRTC - says this is a technical issue. It's not that Bell can't handle all the bandwidth people use (which require a technical ITMP, in CRTC-ese), but that they see this as a way to increase profits by charging people who use more bandwidth more money (hence it's an economic ITMP).

No, not a conspiracy theory. If you're a publicly traded company capable of creating more wealth for your shareholders by creating an agreeable political environment it would be practically unethical to your shareholders not to take advantage of it... Regardless of the long term impact to your customers. After all, it's pretty hard to convince your board that you shouldn't do something that may negatively impact your customer base in 20 years, and should instead settle for less profit today.

So pretty much the same game as the states.