A horrible thing may happen to the internet in canada

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Dear Valued Customer,

We are writing to you today as many activities are underway to shape/reshape Internet use as you all know it. Over the last year some of you have been made aware and/or have seen activities on throttling in the news or in your daily lives. Another proceeding relating to the Internet in Canada required Telecom providers (Bell/Telus/etc.) to provide ISPs with wholesale service speeds that match those that they offer to their own retail customers.
Specifically, Bell has been directed by the CRTC to provide matching speeds which would allow us all to have more flexibility in our day to day online requirements. Instead of adhering to these directives, Bell decided to take this issue to the federal Cabinet and at the same time file a tariff application with the CRTC proposing to introduce Usage Based Billing (UBB) on its wholesale customer accounts.

What does this mean for you, the consumer?

Bell provides TekSavvy with last mile, wholesale DSL access services, which TekSavvy uses to provide you with your Internet access. If Bell were to be allowed to introduce UBB on this service, a cap of 60GB would be imposed on all of its users, with very heavy penalties per Gigabyte afterwards (multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on overages). This would inherently all but remove Unlimited internet services in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs from month to month.

If you'd like to make your comments/concerns known about what Bell is attempting to do, please do so here:

http://support.crtc.gc.ca/crtcsubmissionmu/forms/Telecom.aspx?lang=e

Select the word "Tariff" from the drop down list.

Add the following in Subject Line "File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 - Bell Canada - TN 7181" and make your thoughts known!

The deadline for filing your comments is today at midnight, so hurry!

Regards,

Rocky

 

Wow. This is ridiculous. As if they don't charge us enough for internet already(mobile is ridiculous), and now this?

Honest I'm leaving this country anyways the first chance I get to move to Washington for my work, but this is still ridiculously dumb.. And I feel for the country I live in.

 

Companies in the US want to do this crap too. (see http://broadbandreports.com)

 

Boo fucking hoo. This has been in affect in the UK for at least a year on usage limits way stricter than that.

 

leaving the counrty because of high internet and mobile phone bills? :lol:

 

The big internet squeeze of '09.

I think some of the stuff that private groups are doing with mesh networking in places like South Africa is really cool. It's interesting to read about. I can see it becoming more popular in places like the US and Canada as the internet gets restricted more and more. We just need some affordable longer range wifi hardware.

 

I agree with Twimfy. So you're being capped and throttled? Big deal. We've been capped for YEARS and they've been throttling for ages, too. And it doesn't really affect us.

Who is it that complains the most? Pirates who download films.

 

Well... You know technically if your tech-savy you could just steal other peoples Internet by decrypting WEP networks in your area (if you have any). Then any overages go to them and not you.

 

Hurray for the free "EAST"???? At least we're still unlimited with stupidly fast downloads. last night I downloaded all 3 of the new Red Dwarf back to earth shows plus making in 7 minutes!! All in HD as well! It's not only the pirates that need unlimited internet access but those of use who download media for personal entertainment because it's not available in the user's country. I don't download movies, I rent them from the rental store or go to the cinema.

yakumo

 

Yeah well, I feel bad for you. But I ain't payin for no metered internet shit. My ISP is planning on doing this also (AOL Time Warner,) and if they do I'm switching to Verizon, becasue fuck that.

Sucks that a lot of people don't have that option though. Vote with your wallets and send those emails if you don't like it.

 

My ISP has a 10 GB a month limit, and if it goes over they charge fucking $40.

I don't download that much though.

 

Its not just pirates who will be affected. Lots of things are moving towards digital distribution. Like downloading games on services such as Steam? Boom, there goes your monthly allowance. What about folks who use services such as Netflix or Apple TV to watch streamed movies legally? Or PS3 or X360 owners who like downloading game demos.

The ISPs say that "normal" users use less than 1GB per month. Sure, if you only check email and look at social sites. The rest of us who make use of technology are going to suffer. I'm glad I live in Japan these days.

 

This reminds me of the olden days of the 56k. They're trying to make us stream movies legally these days, but how can you if your connection is cut after a few GB's worth of movies?

Is anyone else here using Spotify? I use Spotify as my main music player, and I don't have an MP3 on my computer, Spotify streams all music to me. I listen to alot of music, Lordi knows how many GB's a month.

 

1GB per month?? What year are these people living in? 1990?

Yakumo

 

Yeah, it's crazy here. My bandwidth just got upped to 160Mbps... it's not even fiber. I downloaded a 40Mb patch from Microsoft in 7 seconds. O_O

 

Yeah in foreign country circumstances uncapped downloading is a great thing, I couldn't have survived SK without it but even with a 60GB cap I could have got by I think.

At the moment my house is capped at generous 40GB but as a family we pushed it over one month by about 5GB and christ did we regret it, added an extra £50 to the bill (that's nearly $100 CAD, complainers). I've put bandwidth monitors on all of the house computers now, and our router holds a bandwidth tally as long as it doesn't reset after a power cut or anything.

 

160Mbps and it's not even fibre? \man, that's crazy! I'm on 100Mbps hikari fibre but don't actually get that. The most I've had out of it was around 45Mbps so far with a shit load of multiple downloads. The poor PC took a fit mind you.

Yakumo

 

yeah.. 160Mb/s i didn't have yet as well but over 75. but i have no hikari yet as well. but will change soon.

anyway i can DL several tv shows parallel in few minutes (if there are good trackers). thats so much of nuffness.

japan is probably the most hihgend country when it comes to internet connection. and quite cheap as well.

 

yes, but we were pretty much last to get decent internet. Well, apart from the UK but the poor UK gets screwed on everything electrical based.

Yakumo

 

1 gig a month!? Download an Ubuntu distribution + Updates and your almost at your max already. And thats if you get the CD version!