Here's what Shaw says about their latest rate hike:
»www.shaw.ca/Customer-Bul ··· ustment/
Effective January 1, 2015, Shaw is increasing regular monthly rates on all Internet plans to support continued investment in building and supporting the Internet experience you need now and in the future.
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What they really meant to say was this:
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Re: CRTC 2011-77 Public Hearings, Day 4, Blow-by-Blow»If telco/cableco's spoke the truth
If telco/cableco's spoke the truth - Shaw's Globe & Mail ad 20090501 (link to .pdf at the link above)
The attached file is a copy of a full page ad, placed by shaw Communications Inc., which appeared in today's Globe & Mail, page A6. The ad is about an issue before the CRTC regarding broadcast television. In it, jim shaw, CEO of shaw, makes what appears to be an argument for what could be considered 'net neutrality' in another context.
I believe that this same ad, with only a very few words changed, could be a really good public service ad for the telco/cableco's in discussing UBB/AVP and other issues regarding internet access in Canada.
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A warning to humourless individuals reading this - what follows constitutes parody and satire.
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AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO 10 MILLION CANADIAN HOUSEHOLDS.Telco's/Cableco's Begging for Bailouts - Again.After being variously being turned down and having some requests granted, Bell and some of the large internet access providers are back in Ottawa lobbying hard for a bailout of hundreds of millions of dollars. We call this bailout UBB or Usage-Based Billing. Without mincing words, this is a tax. It is a direct tax on you and 10 million Canadian families who are internet users.
We telco's & cableco's are threatening to cut your fair access to educational institutions, news, publicly and privately funded entertainment, government services, and business opportunities. We are holding you hostage demanding a tax on subscribers as the ransom. UBB will result in a slowdown of your access speed and/or and increase in your internet access fees. Large numbers of users will see their monthly internet bills double or more - especially those with students or internet gamers in their households. Those of you who now rent movies via the internet will pay $4 to rent the movie and $20+ to Bell or other telco/cableco's in bandwidth charges just to get a single movie onto your computer, taking a day or two to download it - You'd probably be financially better off going to the movie theatre instead, and you'd improve your odds of getting laid too.
Many users will be arbitrarily cut-off once they exceed a certain amount of usage each month. Those who are cutoff will be without access to government services like filing your income taxes, unable to correspond with your lawyer or doctor, or be able to do on-line banking or stock trading, those of you who use VoIP telephone service will be left without access to 911 emergency services - all because we telco/cableco's want to line our greedy pockets.
That Canadian consumers would get nothing in return and the telco/cableco's make no commitments regarding life safety issues, improvements to speed, or net neutrality of access or content, it is baffling why on earth the CRTC is even entertaining these idiotic applications from Bell and many other telco's and cableco's for such nonsense as UBB, throttling, and treating independent ISP's as marketing vassals in an age where Canada and Canadians need to be more competitive at home and in the world on all fronts.
But we want the money and the CRTC seems inclined to give us what we want, so what the hey.
Let's put another tax on Canadians.Canadians are already facing tough times as the global recession deepens. You deserve better from the telco/cableco's - more innovation, faster speeds, more options, more competition and better service - but you aren't going to get that from us - you'll only get that from independent ISP's. Canadians don't need to pay another tax rewarding telco/cableco's poor performance, but we in the telco/cableco industry are going to see if we can get one anyway.
We hold Internet users hostage.To emphasize telco/cableco points in front of the CRTC, we routinely mock the Commission's intelligence with the vacuous claims we file in our submissions. We believe the internet has a bright future - for the telco/cableco's. As to all you little people - well, we pity you, but not enough to do the right thing.
At some telco/cableco's we actively invade users privacy via the use of intrusive technologies such as DPI (deep packet inspection) where we read your mail and store it in vast databases so we can mock you in our spare time and to sell your deepest private thoughts to the highest bidder, insert artificial forced packet resets to slow your surfing down and drive your surfing bill up, and use ad and URL substitution so we can unjustly enrich ourselves and track your every movement on the net - all of which are blatantly illegal under various sections of Canada's Criminal Code. Our collective budgets for these illegal activities is large, and growing larger every year.
We do this 24 hours per day, 7 days per week - and we plan to do lots more of it. We have no morals or ethics, and neither do the weasel lawyers we hire to try to justify and rationalize our illegal activities to the mindless sock puppets at the CRTC.
Remember - all your datas are belong to us.
Telco/cableco's don't need to be held accountable.Canadians should pay for fixing all our problems. We've spent billions of your tax dollars in sweetheart deals with governments at all levels for going on 100 years, and what do we have to show for it - insufficient network infrastructure and competition, that's what. Well it's high time we stamped out all vestiges of competition in this country and let the telco/cable duopoly financially rape you, just as all good oligarchies do. Those crybaby 'independent' ISP's are delusional, thinking that competition is the opiate of the masses. They should spend less time resisting and more time bending to our will - resistance is futile.
So what that many G20 countries offer faster internet access for far less money than we do in Canada. So what that the price performance/ratio in these G20 countries can be 100x better - we aren't going to spend our ill-gotten gains on providing better networks. We know what's good for you, so just sit back and take your chlorpromazine.
The sky is not falling - for us.The Canadian internet access industry faces an exciting future - but not for users. The government has done a remarkable job kick starting our economics, graciously bending over when we come to Ottawa loaded up with lube, helping us eliminate competition & raise prices capriciously, and generally ensuring that your internet access experience ranks near the low end of price/value in the G20. Foregoing this new UBB tax would improve matters for users, but we don't care.
If the telco/cableco's get this bailout, you can be sure we'll will be back for more before the ink is dry on the CRTC ruling.
We think it is time to speak out, you should say yes to this tax. Now where the f!uck are those two new Ferrari's we ordered.
Sincerely,
Your friends in the telco/cableco duopoly.
Copyright (c) 2009, Maynard G. Krebs. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Of course in Shaw's case there is also this reason for hiking rates up dramatically
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And you wonder what UBB is really forAnd you wonder what UBB is really for»www.theglobeandmail.com/report-o···1913638/
.......... At the ripe age of 53, shaw will collect nearly $6 million a year for as long as he lives. The maximum yearly retirement benefit from the Canada Pension Plan is $11,520; shaw will earn that amount in just 17 hours. But at least there will be no family envy: New CEO Brad shaw, jims brother, already has a pension entitlement with a current lump-sum value of $38 million, and hes only in his mid-40s.
For the two boys and father JR shaw, the company faces a future retirement bill of some $147 million, according to its own actuaries. The amount these three men have paid into this plan: zero. The amount the company has set aside for the liability:
zero.
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Some people will tell you this is an example of a medieval attitude to corporate governance at shaw Communications, and it is. But more than that, its a manifestation of the lack of competition in Canadas communications sector. In the end, the shaw family gets away with it only because the other shareholders dont complain about it. Why dont they complain? Because despite all the fat, the company remains ridiculously profitable, just like the rest of the major players in the Canadian cable and phone racket.
...............a decade ago, the cable companies were given the freedom to raise rates without CRTC approval in specified circumstances. Over the next six years, shaw and Rogers jacked up the cost of basic cable packages between 55% and 90% in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary, according to one watchdog that tracks such data.
They keep raising them. Its truly a gilded age for the cable guys. shaw gets about 48 cents in profit (excluding interest, taxes and depreciation) for every dollar it receives from its TV customers, say Dvai Ghose and Sanford Lee, communications analysts at Canaccord Genuity. Rogers gets about 45 cents. Of course, much of this money pays for equipment and other capital expenses, and goes toward debt and taxes. But basic margins are much higher than at big U.S. cablecos like Comcast and Time Warner (40 cents and 36 cents, respectively). The story in the old wireline phone business is the same: Bell and Telus enjoy lush profit margins compared to, say, AT&T and Verizon.