Canada regulator OKs metered Internet billing

Canada regulator OKs metered Internet billing

www.reuters.com

TORONTO, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Smaller Canadian Internet service providers, who operate via networks owned by bigger telecom firms such as BCE Inc, will soon have to pass along the bulk of their host's charges for extra bandwidth use, the federal telecom regulator said on Tuesday.

The move limits the independent ISPs' ability to offer unlimited data plans, just months after Netflix (NFLX.O) opened for business in Canada, and gives greater pricing power to large carriers such as BCE's (BCE.TO) Bell unit and Telus (T.TO).

The new usage-based billing policy takes effect March 31. However, t

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Goodbye Internet In Canada! And looks like Smaller ISP Companies will be also hit.

The CRTC just approved bigger Internet Usage Based Billing, the new bill will charge you even for everything your doing on the net.

Including watching youtube, watching free animes,Playing online video games.

And yes even reading your own email.
This is outargues! i am already taxed to death here by rogers

I bet they will even charge me for reading at ATS now.


Canadians Stand Up! its time for action we already been taxed to death, not mention the food prices are going up here.

www.reuters.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Ummm...I don't think it means they will charge you for everything you do. They will have data plans that limit your usage. For example: 20$ a month for 30GB of downloading. If you go over the limit, the ISP will charge extra for every megabyte. My ISP hasn't offered unlimited plans for a few years now. But that's because people would run servers and take advantage.

This isn't that big of a deal.

reply to post by Mertez


Yes it's a big of a deal.

The CRTC has been bought by Bell, Videotron, Rogers and all the big ISP.

When the price of internet goes up, the price of information goes up, meaning less information, meaning a less free society.

And ``would run servers``? Are you kidding? You don't run servers on home connections with the crappy upload rate they give us.

According to all laws of economics, the price of technologies are constantly in deflation due to technological advancement. This ruling just go against everything the laws of economics are.

This is just another scheme to make more money on people and it's kicking off tomorrow. The big ISPs are screwing the whole system... fact is, WE THE PEOPLE, with our taxmoney, helped fund the creation and upgrades of the internet system in Canada.

Now we have to pay again to have a right to use it? This is corporations raping the people once again.

reply to post by Mertez


It is a big deal. The future is Netflix and Hulu. The future is ever-increasing sizes in images and live streaming video and gaming. You don't think it affects you, probably because you don't even understand it.

Just to put it into perspective, Ontario is hit with 25gb/month limit for the same price they're paying now, down from an average of 100gb+ from most ISPs and some had unlimited from TekSavvy. Many people in my generation use upwards of 200-300gb per month. Your generation might still be figuring out how to use email and have finally found facebook, but we have substantially more need than 25gb a month.

What it boils down to is my generation is no longer watching and paying for television. We stream our media directly to our phones and our computers. This has nothing to do with other people ruining it for others by downloading more than their share because quite frankly, the tax payers paid for the internet infrastructure in the first place and it is nowhere near overloaded at present time. This is about an archaic corporation desperately hanging on to 1992 technology in cable tv and bribing, and "monsantoing" the CRTC in an effort to not only force you back on the idiot box, but also to unfairly charge you up the rear for going over an arbitrarily imposed limit ($2/gb) which costs Bell/Rogers AT WORST 30c/gb.

If anyone thinks this isn't a "big deal" or they won't be affected, just wait until you open that next bill. You'd be surprised at what you use. Canada is being sent back to the proverbial internet stone age. I bet the US and UK are next. We need all the support we can get.

Cirkey! my wireless connection costs about 100 per month or more if i watch a movie or download something big.
One month i had the flu for two weeks, and i got watching a few movies and whatnot, the Rogers bill was 450$
thats already too much compared to wired service which is 75 $

reply to post by Mertez

This isn't that big of a deal.

actually it is a big deal, the current billing i am paying rogers is around a 100$ bucks in 2010 Sep i was charged with 230$ dollars, its because i played online, the more or longer i am playing online in a MMO or RTS, FPS Games, they will charge you alot more for that.

With this plan it will get worse for people like me who watch online movies or anime and who play online games.

You don't like the idea of been charged for just watching youtube or Hulu do you?


Look its already bad enough in this recession we are been taxed to everything here.


Edited:Yes i have been charged for just Playing Starcraft II Mixed in with facebook crap and that bill was really big 230$

I think its time for action fellow Canadians and by action i don't think petitions are good enough.

reply to post by Agent_USA_Supporter


I totally agree eh!

Just a few numbers... let's say you have TV from internet, yes they do offer that service.

Guess what? HD TV : 1080i = 7.5GB/hour 720p = 5.5GB/hour.

So... let's say a 30GB limit. You watch FOUR HOURS of 1080i TV and you already reached the limit and beyond.

FOUR HOURS OF TV IN YOUR WHOLE MONTH. And this ain't a scam? ARE YOU KIDDING?

As time goes by, the price of all technologies GO DOWN, NOT UP.

If it were not the case, only millionaires would be able to buy computers.

The CRTC are a bunch of scumbags corrupt traitors.

With that ruling, they don't ``censor`` the internet, they are KILLING IT.

reply to post by Agent_USA_Supporter


I'm on the internet a good 6 hours every day watching Youtube, Justin Tv, e-mailing, browsing, ect ect... And I never go over my data limit (40GB). But when it comes to MMORPGs, FPS...those things use up a ton of bandwidth. Not to mention downloading the games (they can be up to 3-10GB each).

And to the other person, yes you can run a server on 100mb/s.

And to the other person...How many people watch HD TV over their internet? It costs ISPs to transfer data, run servers as well. Say you want to watch 100 hours of HD video. That's 750GB of data a month. Sorry but that's just fricken ridiculous. I can see why they'd want to limit your usage if you are doing that.

But say you want to watch Youtube? Average video size is 2MB - 15MB, depending on size and quality. Average length is about 3 minutes. If you have a 30GB data plan you could easily watch 10,000 videos a month without going over your limit. And that'd be a very cheap data plan.

reply to post by Mertez


Images, ads, webpages, flash, _javascript, idle transfer, gaming, pinging, downloading (Legal) all affect your bandwidth.

All of a sudden you're down to maybe 3-4 hours a month of streaming video.
And no, 30gb is 30,000 MB. That is only 2000 15 mb videos.

And to the other person, yes you can run a server on 100mb/s.

And where in the hell do you get 100mb/s in upload? You certainly don't get this in Canada unless you pay at least a 100+$ a month and if you're in a big city. And still it's not unlimited.

And to the other person...How many people watch HD TV over their internet? It costs ISPs to transfer data, run servers as well. Say you want to watch 100 hours of HD video. That's 750GB of data a month. Sorry but that's just fricken ridiculous. I can see why they'd want to limit your usage if you are doing that.

I'm telling you. This is the future. They are doing this in Europe and certain parts of Canada/US.

The ISP gives you internet/phone/tv on the same package... And it ``costs money`` to transfer data : BS. Do Bell pay money to ``the internet``? No they don't.

The only cost to them are servers and installing broadband and maintaining it. Everything else customers pay for it.

This ain't the 90s. 30 gigs a month is a freaking joke... Let's do some maths.

56K connection : 5ko/sec*60sec*60min*24hours = 4.3GB. That is downloading ONE DAY with a 56K.

If you were downloading 24/7 for a month with a freaking 56K connection, you would still break it.

Fact is, there's dozens of SMALL ISPs in Canada who provide unlimited bandwidth for about 30-40$/month. Many of their customers download 300-400+ gbs/month, EASILY... AND THE ISPs ARE MAKING MONEY!

And yet, the big suckers like Bell cannot afford it? How freaking dumb do you think we are?

Either you're a shill or you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Having already discussed this with my service provider, Shaw will be allowing 60GB before the next 'tier' kicks in. But they will be giving us 2-3 months of warning before they start charging for the overuse..

But since they are allowing a 'tiered' system, it's not an arbitrary $2.00 /GB over the 'limit'. It will be easy to budget based on usage. Some of use are already monitoring our monthly usage so we won't be surprised.

Planning ahead will ensure you are not surprised... 'cause you know nothing will stop it..

The biggest bandwidth hogs are video and voip - Skype.

The biggest players in the Canadian ISP game are Telus, Bell and Rogers.

Yeah, the deck's not stacked at all there.

reply to post by metro


Much of that is stored in the cache, and reused when on revisiting and reloading (like on Youtube).
So, it would not limit your video streaming limit to that amount. There's only so much you can do in a month. Take it from me, I'm already on these limited data plans and if this was the case I'd be way over every month. I don't feel like doing the math to prove my point.

I'm sure the ISPs will be reasonable with their bandwidth limits.

And yes, thats max video size. But are you going to be watching 2000 10 minute videos? That's over 300 hours of Youtube.

reply to post by Vitchilo


Yes, you could get that upload speed if you paid enough, but that's besides the point. It's the unlimited bandwidth usage that would be taken advantage of.

The average internet user will not be affected too much. But if your on ATS all day, downloading movies (legally or illegally), and also managing to play online games at the same time, then...well....

if this goes over in canada it will be here, count on it. cable/internet is becoming the biggest scam ever.

you pay for tv thats terrible and loaded with commercials. you pay for net usage thats the same as the tv damn near now. and then you have to pay your power bill to run this stuff. add the proposed usage limits and then think about the big picture.. soon we all will literally be paying the utillity companies to bend us over.

the more tech advances somehow it's now getting more expensive, and they get away with this, cause this new generation is dumb as S@#*

Fact is, the CRTC is corrupt and needs to go hang themselves for working against the people.

As I said, small ISPs are making money and providing UNLIMITED bandwidth to their customers.

Bell, Rogers and all those supporting this BS are abusing NOT JUST THEIR CUSTOMERS, BUT EVERYONE IN CANADA.

Prime Minister Harper notified of billion-dollar CRTC scandal

Mahar's lawyer, Paul Armarego, notified Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the affair earlier today and provided him with copies of a number of related documents by FedEx courier. It is alleged that the case of corruption has cost Canadians a total of more than $1.2 billion through an illicit accounting scheme for cable television rates.

A copy of Armarego's submission to Prime Minister Harper has been provided to John A. Honderich, Chair of the Board for Torstar Corporation, owner of the Toronto Star.

Totally not corrupt uh?

Teksavvy is now downgraded to 25GB... when it was unlimited before.

the bandwidth game is taking a page from big oil's book. oil companies say supply is down then raise the price, but when they do this they also stop production. sheep eat this crap up. to assume internet bandwidth is at a point that you MUST be cut off at 25-30 gb then charged overage, thats absurd.

I miss the good ol internet circa 90's. most every site was free, few ads, few virus/worms etc.. and the government and large corporate interest was VERY minimal.

I think, more so the point being, rather then "omg you watch 2000 videos in a month, 300 hours" is NOT the point the OP is making..

The point the OP is making is: They are trying to leech more money from you to line their pockets.

As money is tighter, by people not going out to the movies, buying at the malls, etc. Not watching as much tv, and spending time online more then anything else, they are trying to LINE THEIR POCKETS by your data-habits.

It is definitely a ugly move by the corps. Between taxes, and such, it can get rather expensive really quick if you are not careful.

They are putting an increased price on "information" that in most cases, is free.

It's a principal, thats what matters.

So far this month, I have used 246gb of data... yikes.

reply to post by Agent_USA_Supporter


Back in the days of dial-up, everyone's internet access was metered. How you youngun's forget!

At the end of the day though, surely people will go to ISP's that don't meter if it is an issue for them..