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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.

#81

Post by Swannie »

natrius wrote: post #78
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…

How many alternative providers do you have access to? If providers can actually make a decent profit from charging you $39 for that bandwidth, TekSavvy's competitors should be knocking down your door to split the difference. In theory. EDIT: I just read in another comment that it's Bell Canada metering charges for bandwidth resellers. That's a bit more complicated. Hm.

Not really, from the other comments it appears that Bell Ca is not the only back-haul provider.

But as I said in another comment, ISPs got a whole 90 days to deal with this, which runs out about today. That's a pathetic amount of time to tender for alternative suppliers, especially over the holiday season, in Canada. (I hear it gets cold there???)

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

#82

Post by axod »

Swannie wrote: post #80
axod wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the US really much better? As we saw earlier in the week from Netflix, slower average bandwidth than Canada... hardly any competition and so on. If you want decent internet connectivity, move to Europe or Japan or something. They're rolling out 100mbps broadband in the UK.

"They're rolling out 100mbps broadband in the UK." Not quite yet. http://www.eclipse.net.uk/fibre-broadband/what-is-fttc-

http://shop.virginmedia.com/broadband/up-to-100mb.html

Some already have it. (My brother for one)

Schedule of when areas will get it from Virgin: (Other providers may be different).

http://shop.virginmedia.com/content/dam/allyours/pdf/100Mb-r...

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

#83

Post by jellicle »

natrius wrote: post #78
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…

How many alternative providers do you have access to? If providers can actually make a decent profit from charging you $39 for that bandwidth, TekSavvy's competitors should be knocking down your door to split the difference. In theory. EDIT: I just read in another comment that it's Bell Canada metering charges for bandwidth resellers. That's a bit more complicated. Hm.

The overage charges go directly to the line owner, what you would call an ILEC in the U.S.

Thus there won't be any competition on the bandwidth side, and in fact the line owner has an incentive to maximize charges, which is exactly what we're seeing.

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

#84

Post by mthoms »

transition wrote: post #62

Would be interesting to see if companies like Google, who have a significant stake in a "free and open internet", could establish operations in Canada. Google wants users online as much as possible so they can continue to serve ads. It's too bad all that dark fiber they own doesn't extend into Canada.

Canadian telecom providers must (by law) be majority Canadian owned. So sadly no, Google could not do this.

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

#85

Post by Swannie »

cal5k wrote: post #79
Swannie wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But FibeTV is bits over their private infrastructure... they can choose how to charge that, no? The other bits that they are charging for are ones that go "outside" of their network. Usage based charging will become the norm, just like with electricity, water, oil/natural gas, food. Some supermarkets carry loss leaders, why should Bell.ca not be allowed to too?

First, you could not possibly have picked a worse analogy than a supermarket. The grocery business in Canada is one of the most brutally competitive anywhere, with low margins and a large number of players. But back to the issue at hand: it should not be allowed because it's anticompetitive and flies in the face of the entire idea of net neutrality. Can Netflix get around the caps? iTunes? No. But because Bell is bot…

Anti-competitive, agreed, mostly (see next point). Net Neutrality, whole other debate. Should Bell be forced to allow equivalent pricing to a competitor to operate the same level of service? Maybe (probably).

The pivotal argument in terms of anti-competition, to my view, is: Could someone else build out the infrastructure to allow them to compete? Yes, they could install a CDN close to the DSLAMs, and create their own backhaul. Are Bell making the cost of doing this prohibitively expensive? I don't know the answer to that.

EDIT: OK, it appears they are, by not allowing 3rd parties to their fibre backhaul. That really stinks.

Bell being allowed to set it's own pricing on the backhaul - exchange to ISP PoP? It's reasonable, the way the regulator let it be implemented? Despicable.

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

#86

Post by sjs »

jacquesm wrote: post #34
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…

There is a reason why lots of technical people from Canada seek to find their fortune in the United States.

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 monthly data transfer. Our upstream bandwidth is still terrible though :/

I don't envy the US at all, I envy Sweden, Japan, South Korea. No offence but I'd sooner move to many places before the USA.

Don't get me wrong, the CRTC is worse than useless actively harming the tech landscape. We have zero competition with Internet and phone pricing at all, the big guys basically just fix prices because it's more profitable for them to collude than compete. We have a lot of major problems.

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

#87

Post by fooandbarify »

samatman wrote: post #56
wildmXranat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Most online services that have a presence in Canadian market will start to see cuts in their revenue. I was using NetFlix, but no longer. Many of my friends and co-workers are not using Dropbox for backup anymore. It makes no sense. Many went back to good old fashioned portable drives. In addition to purchasing less of online services, many people that I know refuse to buy anything from Bell and Rogers. No cable…

A total OT, but is "pardon my French" at all PC in Canada? Serious question!

I'm French Canadian (well, half) and I've often heard other French Canadians use the same expression in French - "excuse mon français". I consider myself relatively plugged in to French politics here and I've never heard of it being an issue.

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

#88

Post by blntechie »

aristus wrote: post #75
goombastic wrote: post #37

Ok, here is what is happening in India. It's even more sinister. The ISPs have made some sites free and everything else paid. So, facebook for instance is free while your "littlesite dot com" is charged. The regulators are sleeping.

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 don't agree with this setup.

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

#90

Post by Swannie »

axod wrote: post #82
Swannie wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They're rolling out 100mbps broadband in the UK." Not quite yet. http://www.eclipse.net.uk/fibre-broadband/what-is-fttc-

http://shop.virginmedia.com/broadband/up-to-100mb.html Some already have it. (My brother for one) Schedule of when areas will get it from Virgin: (Other providers may be different). http://shop.virginmedia.com/content/dam/allyours/pdf/100Mb-r...

Thanks, I'd not heard about this (only been back here for just over a month).

This is excellent news, most places covered by the end of this year. Sadly Bristol is lacking!

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