Get Your Meter Off My Bandwidth
Last week we saw an outpouring of consumer anger over the CRTC’s decision about internet bandwidth metering. Well actually they gave the big players like Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus the right to charge the smaller players wholesale rates about 15% less than what the big guy’s customers pay for bandwidth.
Bandwidth which costs just pennies per gigabyte and their customers are paying $2.50 and up per gigabyte if they go over their monthly allowable limit. The big guys claim that just 10% of customers go over their monthly limit and therefore that 10% should pay the freight.
If they are talking about their own customers, anyone who accepts an internet package which only gives them 25gigs of bandwidth in a month is a very light user, or they don’t realize how easy it is to rack up bandwidth use and they quickly switch to another provider rather than pay their outrageous overage charges.
I spent several years paying what I considered to be an outrageous cost of almost $60 per month for internet by satellite because that was all I could get. The provider, ExplorNet started out good when they first introduced the service into the area, then the throttling started. You’d be on the net maybe half an hour and the speed would drop to slower than dialup. When I’d complain, I’d be told it was their “fair usage policy” being activated by my ‘excessive’ bandwidth use.
How much bandwidth can I use in 30minutes for pete sake? In several online forums, I soon discovered the more likely issue. They regularly oversold their feed and then throttled clients rather than put the money into expanding the network. After all, they have a captive market when you can only get dialup or satellite.
Then the day came, I discovered I could finally get high speed. I looked at the various packages available, especially from Bell. I quickly found I’d be paying almost as much as I was on satellite for the amount of bandwidth I believed I was going to need. A Twitter friend directed me to TekSavvy.
I discovered that not only could I get a monthly 200gig bandwidth package for a very reasonable cost but when I had the need for customer service, I spoke to someone right here in Canada, not overseas somewhere. Imagine that, a reasonably priced service and I’d get to speak to a Canadian when I needed help. I soon learned, I got to speak to a friendly, helpful Canadian!
Now, I don’t use 200gig per month. I don’t even come close. I don’t spend time on YouTube, I don’t download a lot of files. I surf, I play an online game on Facebook, I do have a lot of email coming in and going out, oh and I blog. I happily paid for the package because I knew I’d not go over the limit and would not incur additional costs. Then came the ruling.
I soon received a notice from TekSavvy, my package would shrink to 25gigs a month. They provided me access to my account to see that I’d been using at most 40gigs a month. In order to continue my current activities online, I’d need to pay another $5 a month.
So, thanks to the CRTC, if the ruling goes ahead, in an era where online demand is increasing in an increasingly connected world, instead of using the resoruces as I need or want to, I will have to be constantly concerned about usage and cost. Meanwhile, our neighbours to the south enjoy pretty much unlimited access to the connected world. Only Australia will be more restricted than Canada if the ruling goes ahead.
The CRTC needs to hear loud and clear from Canadians that restricting access through allowing large companies to gouge us directly or through being able to gouge our smaller ISPs who are trying to provide legitimate competition is not in our best interest. Sign the petition and have your say.
So, should we be metering internet usage? Should the big companies be able to charge $2/gb or more for bandwidth which costs just pennies?
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