Topic: Bend over Canada

[tpl]

I'm loving this whole socialism thing!

Even in a capitalist system, monopolies should either by highly regulated or run under the public service.

You kind of have to. Regulation of utilities is like chapter 3 in any 1st year microeconomics textbook.

regulated with either no unions or no right to strike.

[tpl]

Municipalities are having difficulty in keeping up with decaying infrastructure thanks to federal and provincial governments downloading their budget problems.  We've watched our property taxes go from $160/month to $450/month in 10 years, but our city is still very cash strapped.  The problem is the reduction in grants from other levels for major projects.  We don't want to pay taxes, but we want free flowing roads, great water and sewage systems, good schools, health care and on and on.

There is no reason why internet can't function as regulated electrical utilities did for nearly forever.  The structure was built by private firms that were given a guaranteed rate of return and the specs called for large capacity and incredible reliability.

I agree that the internet could function well as Hydro used to if carefully regulated by a group that knew what they were doing.

As for the rest... well I'd be inclined to get rid of the provinces except as names on a map.   Then we could have one set of laws, one set of health care and as a great side effect, have many ex-politicians sitting on the  sidewalk with begging bowls.   The main thing being less layers of bureaucrats between the tax money and the people/projects that need it... note that I am NOT suggesting any less taxes.

[Sival]

There is so much wrong with these ridiculous caps I don't know where to start.

I think maybe we should look to Australia as an example, they have launched a vast public program to give 100 mbps internet access to almost every Australian. That way, they can make sure Australia is ready for the future economy without having to rely on private quasi-monopolies that screw over the consumers.

The thing is that the internet has become an infrastructure vital to the economy almost like the highways and the rails. We can't tolerate that we are offered crappy internet access and that the rest of the developed world is leaving us behind.

The argument is that charging for the size of downloads is a way to avoid blocking the bandwidth... then why aren't Gigs downloaded outside peak hours not counted? Why does a large file downloaded at 3 AM costs the same as one downloaded at 8 PM? Why would you try to punish the user for downloading outside the peak hours just the same as if he'd chosen to download it while the internet was overloaded? In many places in the world, the electricity used at night is cheaper than that used during the peak hours, since often it would be wasted since they can't shut down generating stations which must at least produce some electricity all the time. Why couldn't you do it for bandwidth too? Why not also just give lower priority to huge downloaders when the system is used a lot instead? At least let the consumer choose: "Do you want to be charged for every gig over a limit and to have a constant download speed or do you prefer to have a lower priority when you have busted the limit?". Why, why, why?

Oh wait, I know. Because the providers love charging their consumers more. They love advertising low prices and then surprising you with a bloated bill at the end of the month. It gives them a fuzzy feeling that follows them all the way to the bank.

Time for the government to step up (oh and the idea of municipalities doing it is absurd, municipal governments are very often incompetent and corrupt in a way provincial and federal governments aren't, because the sums involved are smaller, most people don't notice, but it's true).

[Triple Bob]

A good article:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/gadgets-and-gear/hugh-thompson/what-is-a-fair-price-for-internet-service/article1890596/

I hope everyone has signed the petition.

http://openmedia.ca/meter

 

[tpl]

Sival lets not forget that regardless of the limits on individual use they are tiny numbers compared to the bandwidth required for the trunks around the country/continent/world.  That stuff and the routers that route the packets cost some serious money.

IIRC it was Vint Cerf who held up a piece of cable ( fibre optic with all the shielding and armour required to lay it in a trench) about 4" or so in diameter and said  something like ' this is a Petabyte ( 10^15 ) per second cable and its this big. An Exabyte ( 10^18) cable fills a subway tunnel'    I think that is a bit out of date now... you'd probably get a Zettabyte ( 10^21)  into a subway tunnel but the point remains...

A 2009 statistic I found is that the whole internet * stores* about 500 Exabytes. Whatever *stores* means in that context.

[Triple Bob]

Yeah but read the article I posted above about reducing costs.

[Sival]

Very interesting articles...

Quite frankly, I'm going one step farther than this petition. Not only do I want the CRTC to reverse its ruling to protect small ISP from having to enforce these gouging punishing fees, but I want the CRTC to rule a maximum allowable fee for every additional gigabyte that the big providers are presently charging. Since the cost is around 6 cents, I'm guessing that forcing these punishing fees down to 15 or 20 cents per gig would be reasonable (a nearly 90% decrease), for consumers and the providers (because they need to make profits to encourage further investments in the network).

In other words, if Bell, Videotron, Rogers or whatever want to charge their consumers by gigabyte downloaded after a certain cap... fine, but only 15 or 20 cents per gig instead of 1 to 5 dollars. And make sure they don't raise base prices of their plans to compensate or lower those caps.

[ktm525]

Municipalities are having difficulty in keeping up with decaying infrastructure thanks to federal and provincial governments downloading their budget problems.  We've watched our property taxes go from $160/month to $450/month in 10 years, but our city is still very cash strapped.  The problem is the reduction in grants from other levels for major projects.  We don't want to pay taxes, but we want free flowing roads, great water and sewage systems, good schools, health care and on and on.

There is no reason why internet can't function as regulated electrical utilities did for nearly forever.  The structure was built by private firms that were given a guaranteed rate of return and the specs called for large capacity and incredible reliability.

Remember when you had to rent your home phone from Alberta Government Telephones?  The other option was to buy a simple rotary phone for $100+ Yeah please back those days....

[johngenx]

Remember when you had to rent your home phone from Alberta Government Telephones?  The other option was to buy a simple rotary phone for $100+ Yeah please back those days....

I do, and I also recall when long distance rates massively subsidized local phone service so that we ensure that pretty much everyone could at least have a phone with unlimited local calling ability.  The internet is in some ways not unlike telephony in it's infancy, and I believe we need to intervene as much as needed to ensure that we build a large and capable infrastructure that allows our knowledge economy and society to flourish.

[ktm525]

Remember when you had to rent your home phone from Alberta Government Telephones?  The other option was to buy a simple rotary phone for $100+ Yeah please back those days....

I do, and I also recall when long distance rates massively subsidized local phone service so that we ensure that pretty much everyone could at least have a phone with unlimited local calling ability.  The internet is in some ways not unlike telephony in it's infancy, and I believe we need to intervene as much as needed to ensure that we build a large and capable infrastructure that allows our knowledge economy and society to flourish.

So heavy bandwidth users should pay extra to subsidize the rest  to ensure that they have cheap access to the internets?


O

[Zombie]

What about off peak hours?
At 3 AM I want the internet to be like an unpoliced  highway, as fast as you can go with no penalties. 
The funny thing is unused bandwidth isn't like energy it doesn't need to be conserved, unused bandwidth is just being wasted and you'll never get it back. It is actually very sad.

[safristi]

..Blame Konrad Von Finkelstein & Cap'n Klink.......No kidding...........he is to appear before a Gov Committee to be tortured wif verbosity.............. .......Konrad is the CTC go to guy.....

[EV Dan]

Some good news, Clement got tired of spam in his Inbox:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/932571--ottawa-threatens-to-reverse-crtc-decision-on-internet-billing

[Mike]

Well, looks like a petition may have actually worked for once.....thank you election year!

[Sival]

You know, most places I've heard from about this issue have tended to go against the CRTC's decision and against the exorbitant charges put in place by the big internet providers, except in one newspaper. That newspaper is the Journal de Montréal, which has ignored the ruling except in an editorial that supported the CRTC's decision and whined about the hysterical people who spoke out against it. Curious... until you realize that the Journal de Montréal is owned by Quebecor, which also owns Videotron, the main cable internet provider in Québec. It's fun when big companies use their media as mouthpieces to defend their own interests, right?

That being said, an example of how Videotron is using absurd fees. Let's imagine two friends like in an apartment, both have a computer and are big internet users. They use Videotron's 15 Mbps service, at 56 $ per month, a 70-gig download cap and a 1,50 $ fee for every additional gig downloaded, no limit on these additional fees (even Bell is better, it caps those fees at 60 $, at least up to 300 gigs).

Anyway, let's say they both use 70 gigs, for a total of 140 gigs, 70 over the limit. The total bill comes to 161 $ per month.

Now let's say instead that each one had a different line (not sure if it's possible in an apartment but no matter) with the same plan. They both would have 15 Mbps for a combined maximum speed of 30 Mbps. But since their own personal use of the internet do not go above the cap, they pay only the base price, 56 $ each, for a total of 112 $.

Notice the problem here? Having two lines instead of one results in a lower cost, but this option is actually WORSE for the network. If you really cared about the bandwidth and not just, you know, inflating bills, you should encourage these people to share one line, because that way in peak hours they'd still use only a maximum of 15 Mbps instead of up to 30 Mbps. There is no logic.

[vdk]

You know, most places I've heard from about this issue have tended to go against the CRTC's decision and against the exorbitant charges put in place by the big internet providers, except in one newspaper. That newspaper is the Journal de Montréal, which has ignored the ruling except in an editorial that supported the CRTC's decision and whined about the hysterical people who spoke out against it. Curious... until you realize that the Journal de Montréal is owned by Quebecor, which also owns Videotron, the main cable internet provider in Québec. It's fun when big companies use their media as mouthpieces to defend their own interests, right?

That being said, an example of how Videotron is using absurd fees. Let's imagine two friends like in an apartment, both have a computer and are big internet users. They use Videotron's 15 Mbps service, at 56 $ per month, a 70-gig download cap and a 1,50 $ fee for every additional gig downloaded, no limit on these additional fees (even Bell is better, it caps those fees at 60 $, at least up to 300 gigs).

Anyway, let's say they both use 70 gigs, for a total of 140 gigs, 70 over the limit. The total bill comes to 161 $ per month.

Now let's say instead that each one had a different line (not sure if it's possible in an apartment but no matter) with the same plan. They both would have 15 Mbps for a combined maximum speed of 30 Mbps. But since their own personal use of the internet do not go above the cap, they pay only the base price, 56 $ each, for a total of 112 $.

Notice the problem here? Having two lines instead of one results in a lower cost, but this option is actually WORSE for the network. If you really cared about the bandwidth and not just, you know, inflating bills, you should encourage these people to share one line, because that way in peak hours they'd still use only a maximum of 15 Mbps instead of up to 30 Mbps. There is no logic.

Good point. The logic here is profits. That's it.

[ktm525]

So does that mean that most here are against water meters? You know, pay for what you use?

Just trying to understand the uproar..

[quadzilla]

So does that mean that most here are against water meters? You know, pay for what you use?

Just trying to understand the uproar..

In simple terms.

You use to get 200L of water a month for only $50/month.
Now you will only get 25L of water for $50/month.

Would you be upset?

[wing]

Yeah I'll pay for use but at fair prices.

IMO drop the standard price to $10 a month for basic service, people that don't use much will be happy and more people will have access to it. 

Then make me pay extra for more, that's cool.  But to charge 50 a month for 25 gig is ridiculous.

[ktm525]

So does that mean that most here are against water meters? You know, pay for what you use?

Just trying to understand the uproar..

In simple terms.

You use to get 200L of water a month for only $50/month.
Now you will only get 25L of water for $50/month.

Would you be upset?

Sure, but in those terms I am probably only using 2L/month that is why I havn't paid attention. Open it up and let some more competitors in?  OR a simple strategy would to just buy stock in the companies that are making obscene money.  This strategy works beautifully with oil and gas companies with rising pump prices.

Hedge H.