Canadians Get To Pay More Money For The Same Broadband
from the abuse-by-the-byte dept
In 2008 we noted how Canadian incumbent phone company Bell Canada began throttling smaller wholesale ISP traffic before delivery -- without bothering to tell anyone. In short, Bell wanted to make sure that smaller, independent ISPs that were reselling Bell's bandwidth weren't able to offer services that were superior to their own throttled and capped DSL service. Independent ISPs complained, and Canadian regulators (CRTC) largely ignored them. Now reader Slatemass writes in to direct our attention to the fact that the CRTC has also approved another Bell plan to begin charging all (wholesale and retail) customers per-byte overages up to $1.13 per gigabyte. Needless to say, operators of smaller ISPs are rather angry:
"The rates are absolutely atrocious. How the hell are we doing above one dollar for extra usage?" said Rocky Gaudrault, president of Chatham, Ont.-based Teksavvy. "It's in the thousands of multiples beyond what the costs are." Gaudrault said Bell also continues to have an advantage over smaller ISPs in that it is able to offer superior speeds. The CRTC issued an order in December 2008 that gave wholesale ISPs access to the faster networks of phone companies such as Bell and Telus, but the federal government last year ordered the regulator to reconsider the decision."
To be clear: this shouldn't be confused with pure "billing by the byte." The low cap and high overage model (which Time Warner Cable tried -- and failed -- to impose in the U.S. last year) simply jacks up prices "thousands of multiples beyond what the costs are" on top of the already high flat rate price -- ensuring that consumers wind up paying significantly more money for the same service. Bell also wants to ensure resellers can't offer a flat-rate pricing model that could better compete with their expensive capped DSL services. Of course Bell couldn't get away with this kind of obnoxious pricing were there more competition -- but just like in the States, most Canadian customers lack the option to be able to vote with their wallets.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: broadband, canada, competition
Companies: bell canada, crtc
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That is amazing
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: That is amazing
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Vote with their what?
No, Dave Isenberg called it right over 15 years ago. Build-outs to homes should be owned and managed by your town/ county/ state. The central office, however, is just an empty data center. Verizon installs their switches, AT&T install theirs, Joe's County Mile installs theirs, and everyone competes on services.
There's nothing magical about a fiber connection, or copper wire. The magic happens at the end points. Bid out the maintenance of the fiber and be done with it.
-C
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Vote with their what?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Vote with their what?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Vote with their what?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
News
According to what I've read on some forums it would seem that Techsavvy, however, decided to "freak out" early and put in the pricing that Bell Canada was trying to force but that wasn't yet mandated by CRTC. I will try reaching CRTC again and see what they have to say and will write back on this.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: News
They were wrong, and this proposal that just passed is the very proposal they told you was "going nowhere."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
But the Canadian market is hypercompetitive
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: But the Canadian market is hypercompetitive
Outside of that, for now, you're probably hooped.
I'll have to check again to see about the official 60GB limit blessed by the CRTC cause there are so many problems with that as well as with policy that I can't quite swallow that the CRTC has moved it beyond application stage. (Mind you, Bell was arrogant enough to apply so anything seems possible)
The policy problem is that the CRTC is mandated by law to allow all players access to the "last mile" of copper telcos own etc to provide services to end customers that can be no worse that what they offer their own. Too bad similar regimes don't exist for cable.
One thing to keep in mind. though, is that the CRTC, like the FCC, doesn't exist to make life easy or fair to the end customer no matter who they may be but to ensure that telcos and cablecos make money and lots of it. Particularly if the companies in question are the huge, by Canadian standards, incumbents like Telus, Bell, Shaw and Rogers.
(MTV = Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That isn't all that's affected
I think I'll be looking for an alternative and dumping Bell on principle (of course I'll dump all Bell 'services' I've using)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]