UBB hits Canada

[Therac-25]

So, on March 1st we get to bend over and take it up the butt. 25GB caps all around.

Someone just forwarded me this link for London, though. It appears to be a small ISP that has built it's own network here in London, and so doesn't have to obey Bell. Anyone had any experience with ISPs like this?

[Captain]

Even if they co-lo their own equipment, the independent ISPs will soon be forced to follow suit. Teksavvy's already down and they're going to lose tons of customers over this. Bell has essentially crushed their biggest competitors—not by improving its services or customer loyalty—but by forcing everyone to provide the same crippled internet service that Bell has. This is just DSL, there will be a ruling on cable around spring or summer so that's out of the question as well.

Canada's internet just went from the middle ages to the fucking stone age.

[^misantropia^]

You guys got shafted. Metered traffic isn't inherently unfair. But $2 per extra GB? That's $1.93 more than Bell pays for it.

[Therac-25]

Even if they co-lo their own equipment, the independent ISPs will soon be forced to follow suit. Teksavvy's already down and they're going to lose tons of customers over this. Bell has essentially crushed their biggest competitors—not by improving its services or customer loyalty—but by forcing everyone to provide the same crippled internet service that Bell has. This is just DSL, there will be a ruling on cable around spring or summer so that's out of the question as well.

Canada's internet just went from the middle ages to the fucking stone age.

Right, but in this case start.ca has actually built their own infrastructure in downtown London, so they don't lease the copper or cable from Bell or Rogers. Inside of the red zone on that map, you can get real unlimited. Outside of that zone, and you're on Bell or Roger's hardware and have to abide by the UBB decision.

I imagine other urban centres may have similar cases, where ISPs have built out their own infrastructure.

Anyway, I have to find a new place soon (yay for Divorce...), so I'm happy that I found out about this company before the fact.

[GONNAFISTYA]

Stop The Meter

[mrd]

Stop The Meter

Signed, I have my doubts that it will do anything. This country is so fucking ass backwards sometimes (most times).

Do we have to start bombing fuckin' ISPs to get the message across?

[seremtan]

how is a private company able to impose its will over the whole of canadia's tubes infrastructure?

[mrd]

how is a private company able to impose its will over the whole of canadia's tubes infrastructure?

I'm pretty sure the deal is that the CRTC has OK'd the big guys the right to charge either more, or differently than they were before, for the smaller ISP's leasing of their bandwidth/infrastructure. Net result is that the small guys have to start charging more to make up for their costs, so we get fucked.

[Therac-25]

how is a private company able to impose its will over the whole of canadia's tubes infrastructure?

Because almost the entire country's phone or cable infrastructure is owned by a small group of companies.

The small ISPs, unless they build their own (which has been done in some urban centres, see the link I originally put above), have to lease the lines from one of the companies in the oligopoly.

The CRTC basically just said that the oligopoly members can dictate the price structures of the companies that lease their lines.

[Scarface]

Its nothing new. I have cable through Shaw communications. My limit is 175gb/mo. Over is $1/gb. I'll never be able to go over that cap so it's no biggie for now.

[SoM]

rogers here with 10MB down, 60gb/month, over is $1/gb.

[Scarface]

^

Now that is a cause for concern. Signed the petition

[SoM]

i have no probs.

[obsidian]

Teksavvy's already down and they're going to lose tons of customers over this.

Not existing customers anyway, who are they going to switch to? This is UBB across the board on practically all ISPs so there is no greener grass on any side of the fence. We're fucked because the CRTC essentially decided that Canada doesn't need fair competition between providers and the large telecoms can do whatever the fuck they want and bully the small guys out of business. Want to offer better service at cheaper prices? Nope, you're not allowed. Teksavvy no longer has a competitive edge over Bell or Rogers, so yeah they're going to have a hard time finding new customers, which is why they have been quite vocal against this decision by the CRTC.

I've gone from 200GB/month cap to 25GB/month. I'll be over that amount every month, my router reports my monthly normal Internet traffic at about 40-60GB/month (that's just Internet browsing, system updates, Netflix, etc. Not counting actual file downloads). As someone who does a significant amount of work from my home and is dependent on the Internet as a work requirement, this affects me and I'm sure a lot of other small businesses and people in the tech industry. How can you expect broadband services like Netflix to exist in Canada when consumers are getting charged in the ass by usage fees?

SoM, it might not affect you right now, but you can be sure as hell that it will affect you in the future if there is no ISP competition in Canada. Canada already scores really low on Internet services (price vs. speed), worse than even a number of developing countries and you won't see that improve with a monopoly and UBB.

I signed the petition before the CRTC made the decision. Will also write a letter to my MP.

[Captain]

Not existing customers anyway, who are they going to switch to?

Unfortunately, Bell.

[Eraser]

Stream a single HD movie and you're 10GB into your 25GB cap.

Anyone thinking thta is not a problem is
obviously a complete and utter moron.

[plained]

wtf

[o'dium]

I'm on Virgin 20meg, which means using newz servers and the like I pull filesat 2.8meg/second. Which is great for me... But once I hit 5gig download in a 24 hour period, my speed drops and the max I can pull files at is 512kb/sec.

Its a bit daft because 5gig these days is nothing. The problem with these services is that they limit you in a way that would have made sense 5 years ago. These days, 5gig is NOTHING for online use, and I can "legally" pull files of 30gig and over in some cases. Steam games are huge, and games like GTA4 etc are 30 odd gig. The average is anywhere from 10-20 gig.

So speed throatling and caps just don't make sense in todays world, not without some way of companies being able to apple smart check to their servers so they don't hurt download speeds...

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

whatever Gavin

[shaft]

Canada

[GONNAFISTYA]

Canada

I bet $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 you can't find it on a map.

[seremtan]

whatever Gavin

cool story, Bri

[Captain]

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pag ... 8658941991

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-UBB- ... 1937853896

http://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments ... is_friday/

[dubz]

we dont have any caps and this are our prices

10/10 Megabitov / sek. 22 €
100 Mbps / 10 Mbps 27 €
20 Megabitov / sek. simetrično 28 €
50 Megabitov / sek. simetrično 39 €
100 Megabitov / sek. simetrično 49 €
200 Megabitov / sek. simetrično 200 €
300 Megabitov / sek. simetrično 300 €
500 Megabitov / sek. simetrično 500 €
1 Gigabit / sek. simetrično 1000 €

[Big Kahuna Burger]

Canada

Canada