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Comments on news posted 2008-03-21 13:08:13: Price- and bandwidth fixing? Competition fixing? (link) At the same time we had the Rogers release (Rogers - new caps and fees). ..


Fred Frith
@rogers.com

Fred Frith

Anon

Oligopoly and collusion.

Captive audience is what first comes to mind and the fact that Canadians do what they do on the internet is the reason why these giants are doing what they see as a profit reinstatement.
Yes, their costs are going up, but not a great deal in comparison to the profit margins they currently reap and the ones that they expect to reap with the introduction of metered service. Un-metered service has been the corner stone of the internet until now. These groups now want to remove the idea that you can move as much as you want on your connection and replace it in a smothering way with the metered model.
Technology for mass transit on the internet is now becoming very wide spread and is no longer the domain of an elite few. Common internet users have discovered how they too can utilize the gross bandwidth to pull material that only the elitists could previously do.
With that in mind the oligopoly is now moving to limit and control with any means they can. They also assume they can do this with total impunity but I suspect, given how organized and resourceful the Canadian Internet user is, that this will end with more bitterness towards them and even more mass migrations to the smaller groups. We will of course see an even more combative climate as the giants battle it out with the upstarts.
Of course we, the internet users, will all loose in this fight if we are mostly placid about complaining about this collusion.
We may see the government step in but my belief at this time is that this is highly unlikely.