CRTC Approves Bell's Usage-Based-Billing Ambitions

I'm seriously considering it. I require a technologically forward thinking nation. Not a backwards thinking one. You can't do business in the hi-tech sector from within a nation that simply isn't competitive on the world stage.

Lol, time to move back to the US.

I was thinking a nation somewhere in Europe.

These decisions just prove nobody gives a shit about consumer needs. PROFIT rape.

Guess I will have to cancel my TV cable to cover the costs for my family's current relatively low level of internet usage (200GB/month). People don't have bottomless wallets like the corporations, government and CRTC think.

Countless higher taxes, new municipal taxes, higher costs of everything, HST, bullshit fee rulings for corporations, TV taxes, electricity & water smart meter price hikes, coin operated washrooms, insane level of unemployment among educated youth. And somehow this is considered progress in the right direction???

Canada is officially a lost cause.

Ficticious Person (Corporations) > Actual People & Canadian Families

Thats the simple truth of our reality. We need to stand up and fight for our rights, because reasoning with these corrupt people just doesn't work.

OUR RIGHTS ARE NOT FOR SALE! SO SCREW OFF!

I've been asking people to stand by me in this declaration, but they are so molded to believe the status quo is the only way, they laugh. They complain that corporations with no voting power get more representation than actual voters do, but refuse to accept it is time to redefine corporate structure and rights.

Now wait just a doggone minute. I thought the Canadian health care system has been held in high regard by many Americans wanting the exact same system. How can such a technologically backward thinking nation offer such great health care? Something is fishy here...

Free /= Great.

Canadian Health Care is like a hospital gown - you only THINK you're covered.

If you want a semi-private room in a hospital so you can be more completely ignored, my group plan paid the hospital $273 per day a month ago, on top of the $1100 per day the hospital billed OHIP. And forget choice of food. Lunch/supper, some kind of mystery meat, mashed potatoes, some kind of vegetable that had no taste, and a cup of hot water (guess a packet instant tea/coffee was an optional extra).

I was afraid to ask the additional for private.

The CRTC has proven once again it holds monopolies in the highest regard, and think nothing of kicking, beating and raping the end consumer. The CRTC has GOT to GO, for the sake of all Canadians.

Stop your overly dramatic whining.

Your "relatively low level of internet usage" puts everything else in perspective. If you think that's a low level of usage then there's your problem right there.

You can download 10 seasons of an hour long TV series for 60 gigs. That's 200 episodes. Then you can add 12 blu-ray ripped movies off of Netflix etc at 4.5 gigs each for another 54 gigs. That's three movies every week. And you're still only at half of your supposed usage.

I'm sorry, but you're deluded if you think that you're somehow a "low level of internet usage".

.......... really? Or maybe you are just ignorant of other peoples' circumstances, ways of life and financial situations.

I have 5 people in my family that use the same internet in my household. 60GB is a joke on a lower middle class salary. 200GB is perfectly reasonable on our budget.

Not interested in your Bell support rants, especially if you are some overprivilaged prick with too much money and not enough ideas on how to spend it.

Excuse me? You continue to insist that you have a need for 200GB of usage, but the math says otherwise.

Even if you have five people in your household and two TVs connected to two computers your claims are absolutely ridiculous. You could stream content on both of those computer/TV combos for 8 hours a day EVERY DAY for the entire month and you're still only using 2/3 of what you claim to use.

350 megs for an hour long show, 45 minutes plus commercials, times 8 hours a day is 2.8 gigs per day. Times 30 days is 84 gigs per month. Times two TVs which I assume your family would have with three kids is still only 168 gigs. That's more than enough left for online gaming, email, browsing, or anything else.

Where exactly is all of this content coming from? Do you let your kids watch TV 16 hours a day?

It's a serious question.

monkman, your estimations are entirely innacurate. You're assuming too much about his watching habits, and what hes actually watching. 350mb episodes is a very conservative assumption, when nowadays if you have an HDTV, odds are you're getting HD episodes, which are 1.2GB on average per one hour episode.

Then theres digital distribution, a format that is broadly expanding as we continue on towards the future, and games you download from services like Steam or Direct2Drive range in the tens of gigabytes each. MMO's sometimes have patches that range from a few hundered MB up to a GB (star trek online for example).

Then theres youtube, which in a large family with multiple users is probably seeing a fair amount of use per month, how big do you think those flash videos are exactly? 20mb? You're sorely mistaken, especially with the 720p and 1080p formats that they now offer.

What about movie trailers from apple.com? Again, HD trailers are 400mb+ in size for a mere 2-3 minute video.

Factor in game consoles, which he might have an xbox 360, a ps3, or both in the household, downloading game demos from the marketplace which are several GB as well.

Basically you don't know the circumstances of what a household goes through per month in bandwidth usage, theres still various other things I didn't even factor in here, to keep my post from being just a wall of text.

We have 2TB hard drive options for a reason you know, the hardware of our PC's has evolved to accomodate the larger file sizes of today, but the internet in north america has done everything in its power to hold people back.

Won't get any disagreements from me about future usage and how this stifles potential development on the internet. I'm not going to argue for a second that I think this kind of move is going in the wrong direction, but that's not what I was pointing out to Torobull even though you both seem to think so.

I'm a heavy user. I use Steam for my gaming platform. I use youtube for all my yuk yuks. I download a large amount of HD content every month instead of using a cable subscription, and I stream some of it. A large amount. I have over 20 TBs of storage for myself for what I want to keep.

I am very far outside of the normal bell curve. If you think that this is not a huge outlier and statistical anomaly then you are delusional and what I say is going to have no impact on you. But really it won't matter because no matter how much you scream and yell it won't change the fact that we're outliers.

The comedy point however that you will continue to argue around with Torobull is the amount of usage this generates. I'm on an unmetered connection here in the Western provinces and I average well under 100 gigs per month.

Sure there's a month or two that I'll peak because I have specific content I want to get, but those are the exception and not the rule.

Most online streams in Canada are only coming online now. The American ones are shutting down their access to Canada and they'll soon all be inaccessible. Canadian ones like CTV or CBC are all streaming at sub-SD quality.

Even with extreme piracy of HD content if you're only downloading what you're actually watching (as opposed to trying to archive everything ever created) then you're not even coming close to the 200 gig number that Torobull is throwing out.

Here's another math exercise using your numbers:

3 hours of tv per day, 1 gig per hour, 7 days per week for 30 days: 84 gigs per month

play through 4 full featured (10-40 hour games at 50 bucks a pop) steam available video games per month: 7.5 gigs (dual layer dvd) times 4 = 30 gigs per month

2 full featured movie per week, times 4, ripped from blu-ray at 4.5 gigs on any available torrent tracker: 36 gigs per month

miscellaneous games patches, traffic, email, websites, youtube etc: FIFTY MORE GIGS.

To put that into perspective that's 128 movie trailers on apple.com you have left.

I'm using YOUR numbers and even including piracy in the mix. You cant get most HD streams in Canada because they're US only, but I included them anyway. You still can't justify 200 gigs of usage every month, sir. The claim is ridiculous no matter what your lifestyle or usage.

said by monkman :

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350 megs for an hour long show, 45 minutes plus commercials

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350 Megs for an hour long show? Sorry I have an HDTV try 1.5 to 2.5 Gigs for an hour show sans commercials. I don't want to watch some overly compressed divx one-click compressed download.

"Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong."

Keep inflating your numbers and you'll still be wrong. See above.

And note that an HD copy of any show can be found on any torrent tracker right now, one hour long episodes, for an "industry standard" 1.09 gigs. No commercials. One hour long.

Sadly the American outlets are closing their doors to Canadian consumers and the Canadian TV outlets are slowly getting their content online. At sub-SD quality so this point is invalid regardless if you want to look at legitimate outlets only. But we can even include HD piracy and you're still wrong.

You know the true size of HD content as well as I do and we need not say how we know this, but go ahead and inflate the numbers. You're still wrong.

Thank you so much for your great math skills and grand misinformated assumptions about my families internet usage. You are clearly correct.

If you haven't noticed, there is such a thing as "POVERTY" in Canada.

I've already shown that your usage claims are ridiculous and not even close to "relatively low internet usage". You've been unwilling to disclose your usage patterns but based on all these numbers it's clear that even if you did it would be clear you're not a user but an abuser and a hoarder.

You can keep hiding behind the "poverty" line if you want but it's not going to change the fact that even if you only paid for internet service and you stole/pirated all your tv, movies, games and other media entertainment you still wouldn't be using 200 gigs unless you were actually hoarding content you're not even consuming. Five family members cannot consume that much content unless they're spending over 8 hours a day working at it. I challenge you to show me otherwise, and throwing out random "wah wah a quicktime movie is biiiiig" isn't going to cut it, kiddo.

If you're unwilling to share your break down then that's all there is to be said. Your unwillingness says the rest.

One thing is certain from your comment. You are a pirate and don't see any other legitimate uses of the internet that use up just as many GB each month as your piracy. As a pirate you assume that everyone else is the same, even though they are not.

You realize that your attempt to rationalize your arguments is meaningless to me and everyone else. So just do you self a favor and stop wasting your time. In one ear, out the other.

Want a list, here it is (5 users):
-Xbox Live & Downloads (Full games, Demos & HD Movies)
-PS3 & Downloads (Demos & HD Movies)
-Wii
-PC gaming (and demos)
-Online gaming
-WoW
-2 x VoIP
-International IPTV Subscription (recorded & live tv)
-Direct2Drive, Steam
-Free flash based games
-Runescape
-Eve
-Youtube HD, DailyMotion
-Webcam chat with family and friends
-Chatroulette
-Sharing Family Albums (each album aprox. 4-8GB)
-Free legit online TV streaming (Comedy network, Rogers on Demand online, global tv, ctv, cbc, etc etc)
-Shoutcast Internet Radio
-Upload/Download Large work files daily
-Heavy web browsing
-School project/homework research
-Email
-Blogging
-Facebook
-Gametrailers.com
-Online shopping
-Flickr Pro Photo Uploading
-PC software updates & driver updates
-New releases of Ubuntu.
-Free trial software downloads
-Freeware software downloads
-pr0n (duhh)

Who said I'm a pirate? I said even if you're an extreme pirate downloading HD content where there is no legitimate source you can't go over your limit. As to your list, you still can't meet 200 gigs. Here:

-Xbox, PS3, Wii stores have 2 gig HD movies and an average of 1 gig on the demos. Pay for and download 1 HD movie per week and 3 demos (one for each kid), times 4 weeks: 20 gigs
-Miscellaneous patches just for fun: 150 megs per game, 20 games played per week possibly needing updates: 3 gigs
-PC and console gaming activity via WoW or other online games actively uses about 200 megs per hour, assume 4 hours played per day for all 30 days: 24 gigs
-VoIP uses a 256 kbps stream so that's 32 KB/s times 60 seconds uses 1.9 megs per minute or 112 megs per hour. Assume 4 hours on the phone every day for 30 days and that's 13.5 gigs.
-Direct2Drive/Steam assume one full game download per week at 7.5 gigs per game is 30 gigs on the month
-International IPTV subscriptions are only available in SDTV not HD so you're talking about the 350 megs an hour rule again. 4 hours a day 30 days a month comes to 40 gigs which includes your "free legit online tv streaming"
-Sharing family albums assume someone copies an entire album from you of 8 gigs which is going to take forever to upload on a 1mbps (standard) upstream mind you. Flickr falls under this. It's all photo use and you're not going to be uploading more than 8 gigs because uploading 8 gigs on a 1mbps connection takes 4 full days at full speed. You'd be doing that over a month.
-Internet radio? Yeah, I do that too. It used 15 megs in an hour and a half streaming the hockey game the other day. Do you even want to count this? I'll add a gig for you just cause.
-Webcam chat streams at 128 kbps upstream and 128 kbps downstream. Another 256 kbps so let's say you do that 4 hours a day every day again for another 13.5 gigs of transfer.
-YoutubeHD/Daily motion/College humor/Metcafe/gametrailers and any other short clip site will amount to 1 gig per day for 30 gigs total.
-Everything else falls into one simple category: browsing and searching--. On average a user goes through about 50 megs per day using this. I'll be ridiculous for you and say your five people use 500 megs per day. 15 gigs total.

I've been ridiculously liberal in EVERY category you've listed going well beyond anything even an outlier like you or I would use and I only come to 197 gigs. These numbers would mean you're spending over 12 hours per day on average consuming mass media in the form of tv, movies, and games. TWELVE HOURS every day to get near 200 gigs. Really? Is that accurate?

So are you an idiot who teaches his kids to be idiots, or are you just an idiot on the internet who conflates numbers to try to garner sympathy?

It's clear near the end of that list you're just thinking "I'll add this and this and this and this and that'll show that big fat meanie head!"

Like I just told you. In one ear out the other.

I didn't bother reading your pointless response/grand unjustified assumptions and don't plan to.

With my list, YES I agree 200GB is enough. But the new 60GB limit doesn't even come close. Thats the problem. You clearly missed my point.

Secondly who the heck are you. You think I need your approval. Don't make me laugh.

Well played sir, well played!

/applause

For the Windows folks, last time I used Norton AV a few years ago, the daily d/l was 22M. Don't want to think what it is today.
Not to mention the size of some of the Windows updates (especially Vista & 7), etc.

The only thing the CRTC did was to grant total and unobstructed free license to the telcos (and cablecos) to rape, pillage and screw the customer with impunity.

Usage will only go UP, not down. Nothing more than another cash grab.

Guess even granny is gonna get screwed when she downloads the pictures and videos of the grandkids.

I am upset regarding the 60gb limit and even the 300gb limit on over-usage.

It makes no sense.

I myself run a small webhosting business from home. -- I have a number of big servers based in Texas, were clients are paying me monthly to host their websites, and I do the management and make sure stuff works. -- Backups are made, new content is upload, restore of backups are done on a daily basis.

Currently I running about 120gigs per month, sometimes higher if a big website runs into problems, and I end up restoring a large backup.

I not the normal internet user, but there is alot of small hosting companies doing the same that I do. -- It will eat into my monthly profit, if I end up paying 75cent per gigabyte or worse.

Just my two cents worth on this matter.

Its sad CRTC does not use the internet themselves!

in japan there is a limit of 1tb a day
100mbit connection for a measly 49.99 a month lol
in china 10mbit for 19.99 a month no limit usage
i see that canada and australia is going back to the pay per minute way back in the early 90's who is milking ya canauke???

we only get 60gigs a month, and I myself only get about 20 gigs of that. so yeah, that person's delusional if they think 2 TB is anywhere near low.

$GREED$ its not just for america! $GREED$

$22.50 is not the max overage.There is no max overage.after 300GB it 75¢ per GB

All this is going to do is slow the growth of new technology and put places that do apply this ridiculous stuff into effect at a disadvantage to countries that do not. I really hope it doesnt happen in the US and somehow our friends to the north come to their senses before allowing this.

CRTC commissioner Candice Molnar attached a dissenting opinion to the ruling. She said the requirement on Bell to move all of its customers off unlimited downloading plans was unnecessary because a vast majority are already on usage-based services.


Looks like we know who Bell bought. I really hate the CRTC so much, god damn useless garbage comission that panders to the big two so that we can get ass raped some more.

How?
WTF?
As many have stated, this is SOOOO backwards in logic and humanity. We already get raped in Canada for services others get for far less. The ONLY reason is the CRTC & government either don't give a shit about anything, in which case we MUST shut them down, OR they were paid off and we should shut them down.
It is ABSURD and I am embarrassed to be a Canadian.
In fact, we should find a way to remove the word "CANADA" from "Bell..." because they are the most horrific bunch of wankers Canada has ever seen.
Time to change the rules of what corporations get away with at our expense.
I guess I will have to find a corrupt job for myself where I can get kickbacks, at least enough to cover my internet costs

Ok, so you charge by the byte.

What recognised certified device will be used to measure it? Who will handle disputes between independant ISP customers charged by Bell?

Bah, perfect unacountable money making scheme.

Anyone that thinks health-care is more important than broadband will move north, and anyone that thinks Internet is more important than health-care will move south.

I think the governments just gave us "marching orders".

hmm, who the hell do i have to vote for in the next election to stop this??

i heard that in canada everyone get free health care so there is more benefit heh
as for internet i guess some has to pay more if they use a lot
free health care... only in canada lol.

quote:

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The regulator attached a key caveat to the approval, however, in that Bell must apply usage-based billing to all of its retail customers before it can implement the scheme with its wholesale internet service providers. Bell will therefore need to move any customers it has on unlimited downloading services onto new usage-based plans before it can apply the same scheme on a wholesale basis.

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I still have unlimited. So I'll hold out as long as I can to help wholesellers stay usage-free.

Which actually makes me wonder. Ive been having Bell call a bunch lately. These indian sounding people. The latest guy was like drug-adled sluring his words with indian accent. Couldnt understand a word.

Please for the love of god dont accept any new contracts anything even if they are like lifetime free internet!, cause if even 1 person still has the grandfathered plans they can't do usage based billing on the wholesalers

Either the CRTC doesn't understand the competition issue or there is corruption.

What the hell are they thinking??? Band of f*****g morons!!!!

Why didn't they suggest BHell to establish intelligent throttling like Comcast did in the USA??? It has been proved that intelligent thottling work very well to control congestion, when there is.

The problem is that the CRTC take every "argument" and data from BHell as true. WHY don't they check the facts and calculate the costs themselves instead of following BHell directives??

Stupidity and/or corruption?

when bell throws money at the crtc, and the crtc are ex members of bell or rogers

its no suprise the the public and wholesellers will never get anything done with the crtc

We as Canadian consumers, Canadian Families & Human Beings should take this decision to the supreme court and/or call in an unbiased federal auditor to investigate the entire situation and decision.

Questions:
1) Challenge the decision (possibly as violation of Canadian rights, since communication is an essential feature of our Canadian society & economy)
2) The legitimacy of the CRTC. Biased CRTC members (giant telecom corporate ex-CEOs) with very biased decision ruled almost always against the average consumer.
3) Raise the issue of plausible collusion between all the major telecom giants. As of now (a couple of months from now) there will be ZERO reasonable alternatives in Canada as seen with such companies as Teksavvy Inc. If it looks like a duck, & quacks like duck, its most likely a duck.

I'm kind of glad im on Shaw then.... Bell seems to really be stinking these days... I hear Rogers is no better.

I hope the media gets on this soon so it sparks some contest here.

Plain and simple:

From wikipedia:

"Regulatory capture occurs when a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead acts in favor of the commercial or special interests that dominate in the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. Regulatory capture is a form of government failure, as it can act as an encouragement for large firms to produce negative externalities. The agencies are called Captured Agencies."

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re ··· _capture

Is it any wonder these kinds of things go through when Konrad von Finckelstein is at the helm. Here are some of his notable accomplishments:

- Negotiated dispute mechanisms for NAFTA (still waiting for the softwood lumber money to come in)
- Head of the competition bureau from 1997-2003 (during the time of the disastrous Air Canada merger)
- Head of the international competition network

Supposedly he is an expert on trade and competition law, yet nothing in his profile suggests he negotiated a good deal for anyone, except big business. I just hope Konrad actually reads one of the international competition networks, the role of competition in the telecommunications service sector.

Especially this one
- set access charges in such a way as to minimize anticompetitive results

»www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/about ··· tein.htm
»www.internationalcompeti ··· c320.pdf

So when does all of this come into effect? How much longer do teksavvy customers have to enjoy unlimited downloading before Bell starts charging them ?

Time to stock up on ink and paper seeems like we're going back to that for future communications enmasse. One less expense for me.

Even the FCC seems to go in the right direction:

»online.wsj.com/article/S ··· 758.html

I'm definitely not the only one who hates the CRTC with a f!@#ing passion eh