DampierPhillip M Dampier
join:2003-03-23
Rochester, NY | reply to espaeth
Re: Love this site. Australia's ABC-TV, the nation's public broadcaster, has also loudly complained about Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps, and has begged to be made exempt from them so it can provide online video to Australians. Most providers have said no, and the service suffers for it.
Other providers have never gotten beyond the planning stages because the business model doesn't work in usage capped broadband. Canadian video services are a great example.
Asian broadband costs less and is faster than what we have in North America. It's also untrue that regulation and taxation is the cause of Internet Overcharging. In Canada, the CRTC has rubber stamped provider positions on broadband issues for years, and the result has been usage capped -and- speed throttled service, despite dramatic profits.
Competition, and the relative lack of it, is a much better explanation for getting away with these overcharging schemes. That was one of the big reasons Time Warner chose Rochester for its little experiment in April. We're the only city of size in New York where Verizon isn't constructing or preparing to upgrade to FiOS. When the incumbent telco ISP has 5GB of usage in their Acceptable Use Policy, there isn't much downside to overcharging consumers who have nowhere else to go.
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Phillip M. Dampier
Editor, Stop the Cap!
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