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story category Indie Canadian ISPs Fight For Their Life
Battle Bell Canada's latest effort to impose wholesale usage billing
(old news - 02:48PM Thursday Apr 16 2009)
tags: prices · competition · business · bandwidth · world · consumers · caps · Bell Sympatico · TekSavvy Solutions Inc.
Last year, Bell Canada started throttling wholesale customers without telling them, ensuring that smaller ISPs couldn't offer an un-throttled connection to consumers that was better than Bell's throttled Sympatico service. As their back up plan against competitors in case regulators stopped them, Bell Canada started devising a usage-based billing (UBB) system smaller Canadian carriers worry could drive them out of business.

While the changes have been cooking for some time, recent filings with regulators suggest that Bell's going to start charging UBB fees on wholesalers starting May 31. One of those carriers leading the charge against Bell Canada is Canadian DSL provider TekSavvy, who's CEO posted an e-mail to his subscribers in our forums, explaining the threat:
Bell provides TekSavvy with last mile, wholesale DSL access services, which TekSavvy uses to provide you with your Internet access. If Bell were to be allowed to introduce UBB on this service, a cap of 60GB would be imposed on all of its users, with very heavy penalties per Gigabyte afterwards (multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on overages). This would inherently all but remove Unlimited internet services in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs from month to month.
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If you think this wholesale debate sounds familiar to the retail debate currently occurring elsewhere, you'd not be mistaken. Be it Bell Canada, Cogeco or Time Warner Cable, the rhetoric being hoisted upon consumers and competitors by massive incumbents eager to embrace metered billing is eerily similar. Bell Canada justifies the move to the CBC:
"The implementation of usage-based billing for this wholesale service represents but a further appropriate step in the evolution of pricing to reflect the realities of the Companies' need to manage capacity on their networks," said Denis Henry, Bell Aliant's vice-president of regulatory and government affairs, and David Palmer, Bell Canada's director of regulatory affairs, in a joint submission.
Of course another thing most of these giant carriers have in common is when pressed for hard, independently verifiable data proving that this shift is necessary (either from a network congestion or financial standpoint), they always come up empty.

Whether Canadian regulatory authority CRTC will ever step to the aid of independent ISPs isn't clear, but remains unlikely. The CRTC's vice-chairman, Leonard Katz, spent 17 years working for Rogers and 11 for Bell. Canada's Telecom Telecommunications Policy Review Panel, tasked with determining regulatory framework, was led by the ex-owner of Inukshuk (sold to Bell/Rogers), an exec that played a huge role in the Bell & Microsoft alliance and a lawyer whose firm represents incumbent operators.

Related:
  1. Product Spotlight - TekSavvy Solutions DSL Service
  2. Cable: Let Us Experiment With Pricing Or The Internet Explodes
  3. Lawmaker Unveils Anti-Metered Billing Law
  4. Cogeco Metered Billing Goes Live, Confuses Customers
  5. Canada Holds Hearings On ISP Throttling
  6. Nobody's Complaining About Comcast's New Throttling
  7. Cogeco Still Struggling With Accurate Meters?
  8. CRTC Blocks Canada's WIND Wireless Network
Forums » Indie Canadian ISPs Fight For Their Life
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otty

join:2008-10-24
Toronto, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·VBUZZER
·voip.ms
·Vonage
·3 Web

Have hope...

It looks like popular opinion has actually had an effect in the Time Warner debacle down south. Time to get something like that uprising going here. Even if politicians are purely self-interested, it is in their self-interest not to alienate their constituents. Spread the word!
XNemesis

join:2002-11-16
Kitchener, ON

Dear Canadian internet customer...please bend over and......

Proud Teksavvy client here and very disheartened watching this unfold, as Bell, Rogers, Time Warner, Cogeco try and drag us back into the dark ages. Sad thing is that up here I don't believe that there are ANY members of parliament taking this cause up and fighting for independents. It has that very sickly feeling of being inevitable when the odds are stacked against you and that it's almost a given that the CRTC will favour, despite all the evidence to the contrary, for the Monopolies.

SIGH x~

adisor19

join:2004-10-11

Re: Dear Canadian internet customer...please bend over and......

The NDP is the only party that has brought up the throttling issue in parliament. I know where my vote is going next election.

Adi

urbanriot

join:2004-10-18
St Catharines, ON
·Cogeco Cable

Re: Dear Canadian internet customer...please bend over and......

said by adisor19 See Profile :

The NDP is the only party that has brought up the throttling issue in parliament. I know where my vote is going next election.
They'll say anything to get the vote from the common man, to the detriment of our country.
metrotitan

join:2008-11-21
·Cogeco Cable

Re: Dear Canadian internet customer...please bend over and......

said by urbanriot See Profile :

They'll say anything to get the vote from the common man, to the detriment of our country.
In your opinion.
hottboiinnc
ME

join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH

Moto Canopy

Just like my Subject says.

mattei
Moderated, now muzzled

join:2001-03-19
Canada

Re: Moto Canopy

Canadian Telecommunications Policy

One of the significant features of the Telecommunications Act that distinguishes it from previous legislation is the inclusion in section 7 of a statement of Canadian telecommunications policy. Section 7 of the Telecommunications Act reads as follows:

"7. It is hereby affirmed that telecommunications performs an essential role in the maintenance of Canada's identity and sovereignty and that the Canadian telecommunications policy has as its objectives

(a) to facilitate the orderly development throughout Canada of a telecommunications system that serves to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the social and economic fabric of Canada and its regions;

(b) to render reliable and affordable telecommunications services of high quality accessible to Canadians in both urban and rural areas in all regions of Canada;

(c) to enhance the efficiency and competitiveness, at the national and international levels, of Canadian telecommunications;

(d) to promote the ownership and control of Canadian carriers by Canadians;

(e) to promote the use of Canadian transmission facilities for telecommunications within Canada and between Canada and points outside Canada;

(f) to foster increased reliance on market forces for the provision of telecommunications services and to ensure that regulation, where required, is efficient and effective;

(g) to stimulate research and development in Canada in the field of telecommunications and to encourage innovation in the provision of telecommunications services;

(h) to respond to the economic and social requirements of users of telecommunications services; and

(i) to contribute to the protection of the privacy of persons."

...

The Telecommunications Act gives the CRTC a broad range of powers, which must be exercised with a view to implementing the policy in section 7 of the Act and any directions issued by the Governor in Council. For example, the CRTC must ensure that rates are just and reasonable and that Canadian carriers do not discriminate unjustly or accord any undue preference with respect to the telecommunications services they offer (s.27). The CRTC may also settle disputes between Canadian carriers and municipalities or other public authorities regarding the use of rights-of-way (s.42-45).
»www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.ns···286.html

El Quintron
Could you spare a consulting gig?

join:2008-04-28
Etobicoke, ON

Re: Moto Canopy

Don't waste your research on the astroturfer...

He's been spouting this garbage disguised as "build your own" for eons.
--
Working to bring you closer to a Bell and Rogers free household.

KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
Premium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
·AT&T Yahoo
·AT&T DSL Service
·Cox HSI
·AT&T Southwest

Re: Moto Canopy

said by El Quintron See Profile :

Don't waste your research on the astroturfer...

He's been spouting this garbage disguised as "build your own" for eons.
Not to mention in Canada "build your own" isn't the rule of law. Independents are required to get last mile from Bell---- even if they build their own backbones.
--
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

Truly Scrod

@bell.ca

Might Obama get it right?

"Dave Burstein, editor of the DSL Prime broadband industry newsletter, said the Obama administration is also likely to be tough on metered billing." >>>>(After Public Response to TWC Plan, Local) Phone company shelves unpopular Internet cap plan »apnews.excite.com/article/200904···H81.html

If pushed on his (cough) 'policy' on the subject, I'm sure that Harper would get one of his wooden wind-up toys like Clement to mumble some empty platitudes about letting the (fictional) free market decide.

El Quintron
Could you spare a consulting gig?

join:2008-04-28
Etobicoke, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Acanac

Re: Might Obama get it right?

said by Truly Scrod :

(fictional) free market decide.
Fictional being the operative word here when describing Free Market in Canada.
--
Working to bring you closer to a Bell and Rogers free household.

kamm

join:2001-02-14
Brooklyn, NY

Re: Might Obama get it right?

Priceless.

I Hate Bell

@bell.ca

If Obama can tax, he will agree to anything. I doubt he will make a decision that will be 100% beneficial for the consumer.

As for Canada...currently (but not for long) I am a bell Sympatico customer and I have noticed my service go down the toilet. I am going to cal my Member of Parliment tomorrow and tell him all about this.

AkFubar
Resistance is Futile

join:2005-02-28
Toronto Can.

Nothing But a Gouge on Canadians for $

.
a1_Andy
Premium
join:2005-12-29
Peterborough, ON

Re: Nothing But a Gouge on Canadians for $

+1
cpsycho

join:2008-06-03
Orangeville, ON

politicians?

We don't have politicians in Canada. We have corporate figure heads that are paid to sit in the house of commons and act like politicians.

Its starting to seem to me that Canada was bought and sold a long time ago.

KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
Premium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
·AT&T Yahoo
·AT&T DSL Service
·Cox HSI
·AT&T Southwest

Re: politicians?

said by cpsycho See Profile :

We don't have politicians in Canada. We have corporate figure heads that are paid to sit in the house of commons and act like politicians.

Its starting to seem to me that Canada was bought and sold a long time ago.
You need to pay royalties to the US Government, as the Canadian representatives are violating the copyright of the US system of Government, which they obviously have COPIED and changed a few of the names
--
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
cpsycho

join:2008-06-03
Orangeville, ON

Re: politicians?

true true. We used to have our own system at one point.

Mashiki
Balking The Enemy's Plans

join:2002-02-04
Woodstock, ON

Continues as it continues

This is how you spell conflict of interest in Canada: Burn little guys burn.
NBomb

join:2007-01-23
Etobicoke, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..

How about some negative PR!

Maybe a publicity campaign is needed. Get some of those cheap 8.5x11 flyers printed out and stapled/taped to signposts and other typical places saying 'Bell wants to take away your right to choose' or something else with a little hyperbole.

Cheap and effective. Especially if it's in high traffic areas like downtown Toronto and near the universities.

Fireblade

join:2008-08-27
St Catharines, ON

Re: How about some negative PR!

What really sucks is... Bell's PR can't get any worse and somehow they're still making money.
Forums » Indie Canadian ISPs Fight For Their Life


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