Bell Proposing Usage-Based Billing

Idiomatick writes "Bell Canada is attempting to impose UBB on its wholesale customers. As Bell was given a last-mile monopoly in much of Canada by the government, they are required to follow rules set up by the CRTC; this includes leasing their lines to competitive ISPs. And they are given a directive by the CRTC to provide competitive speeds to said ISPs. Teksavvy has informed its customers that were this to go through, the current monthly cap would be quartered and the cost for exceeding it would be 'multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on overages.' They have also helpfully included a link where you can send your comments/concerns to the CRTC directly."

You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[jonwil]

No wholesale provider here in Australia could impose such charges on 3rd party ISPs in this way, if they did, the ACCC would put a stop to that. (at least as far as fixed line DSL goes)

Consequence of CRTC regulations

[Dr J. keeps the nerd]

The CRTC requires Bell to resell its lines for fixed rates. Bell must offer service that's at least as good as what it provides to its own customers. As the regulated rate is below Bell's own rate of return from an actual Bell customer, Bell has no incentive to provide better service that what it provides to its own customers. If the CRTC allowed for other arrangements, Bell could strike a deal with a wholesaler to offer unlimited service at a higher price. As it stands, it can't. Nothing here is surprising.

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[Nazlfrag]

Australia? Where you get charged $150 a gigabyte for excess usage? As detailed in the light grey text in smaller font underneath the plan? Yeah, we're doing great.

Telstra: Additional usage charged at $0.15/MB [bigpond.com].
Optus: Excess Data: $0.15/MB up to 2 GB then Speed Limited to 64 kbps [broadbandguide.com.au]

Re:Thats it...

[shimojimatto]

I'm moving to.. oh. Well fuck them!

Move to Japan! The AWESOME internet choices are endless!

1000Mbit fibre Optic for $50/mo after a $300 setup fee (this service is pretty new)
Unlimited usage... no caps... no filters

OR
100Mbit fibre optic for $60~70 a month no setup fee
Unlimited usage... no caps... no filters

OR
50Mbit ADSL for $30 a month.. no setup fee
Unlimited usage... no caps... no filters

OR
3.0Mbit (down... only about 1Mbit up) wireless internet anywhere through the cell network for varying prices based on data usage...

And those top 3 also usually include free IP phones and some sort of video download service... optional Video On Demand services etc.etc...

Why does the US suck so bad?

Re:You canadians need a regulator with some teeth

[jonwil]

I am paying AU$50 per month and getting 25GB (10GB peak and 15GB off peak) per month with no excess usage charges ever. If I exceed the 25GB, I get shaped back down to 64kbps for the rest of the month. Only idiots who sign up with Tel$tra BigPond or Optarse get hit with crap like that, there are options available (no matter what bit of gear your phone line is hooked up to) that have no excess usage fees ever. (pretty much all of them do have the "you get x amount per month and then get shaped down to 64k or 128k for the rest of the month" though)

Or come and live in SA....

[Sken-Pitilkin]

Where I pay around 60 times what Americans pay per gig (at a whopping 384kb/s) and I have a really cheap service provider :)

Re:Thats it...

[shimojimatto]

Yeah. The AWESOME porn choices are endless!

You can get used school girls' panties at vending machines, and act like it's totally normal.

OR Buy mangas with shitting dick-nipples in them, and act like it's totally normal.

OR Can play "Say the tongue-twister correctly and get loads of money. Say it wrong, and get a kick in the balls." on live countrywide TV, and act like it's totally normal.

no one here would call any of that normal...
except the being crushed into the train and the studying...

OR leave your car, bike, and apartment/house unlocked all day and have it all be there when you get back and act love the country for it.

OR see about a gazillion hot girls on my way to and from work everyday and love the city for it.

OR recycle 75% of your garbage and use economical ecological public transit every day... and love the country for it.

OR have a decent sized house that really wasn't that expensive but is still only 30 minutes commute from anywhere in the city... and wonder why people who pay $5000 a month for an apartment are so retarded.

... and yeah... some of the porn/sex biz stuff is pretty messed up. And some of the TV shows are kind of crazy... but F-ing hilarious!

Re:Thats it...

[Mishotaki]

Yeah. The AWESOME porn choices are endless!

You can get used school girls' panties at vending machines, and act like it's totally normal.

OR Buy mangas with shitting dick-nipples in them, and act like it's totally normal.

too bad that there is a law against showing genitals in porn...

Re:Usage based is fine if you're an honest ISP

[Idiomatick]

The problem is that Bell has a monopoly. To deal with this they are forced to sell their lines to other companies to compete with them. But now they are charging said companies per usage which is not how it is supposed to work for backbones. This will result in tripling the cost of competitors services. Which will in turn kill their competition and give them another monopoly. Teksavvy customers paying for the over 200GB/mo service (40$) will end up paying almost 200$ a month in the low end.

Another thing that Bell has been doing is shaping. They have been shaping Teksavvy's customers for years now. Which I think is another fairly clear abuse of monopoly power. Teksavvy is completely against the practice, had they their own lines they would not throttle torrent users or anything like that...

Deadline for filing comments has passed

[debrain]

As I understand it, the deadline for filing comments on the UBB passed on midnight April 14th, 2009.

If you nevertheness wish to file (and high volume of comments, albeit late, may nevertheless be of interest to the CRTC), the commentary ought to fall under "Tariff", and an appropriate subject might be File Number #8740-B2-200904989 - Bell Canada - TN7181.

Keep in mind that this is DSLAM bandwidth (i.e. the "last mile" copper wire) that Bell proposes to impose this tariff on. It is not network bandwidth from an ISP to the backbone. Bell is obliged to sell DSLAM access on a wholesale basis to competitor ISPs. For interesting statistics, consider reading this: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20690166-The-Bell-Disclosure [dslreports.com] -- the statistics read, if I understand it (and there's a pretty decent chance I don't) the risk to a customer of having less than 100% bandwidth available at any one point is exceedingly low (i.e. less than 1% of it occurring for less than five minutes on any given day).

Interestingly, Bell has not disclosed how much money it has paid for Arbour Networks' deep packet inspection and bandwidth limiting hardware. I understand, informally and anecdotally (and, again, there's a decent chance I'm wrong), that the amount spent on the bandwidth limiting hardware greatly exceeds the cost of upgrading the DSLAMs to eliminate any risk of the above mentioned rare less-than-complete bandwidth. I would quite like to see more information on the cost of Arbour Networks' bandwidth limiting hardware, and the cost of upgrading DSLAMS. Hopefully the CRTC board does, too.

Re:sounds entirely reasonable

[Slavik81]

That's not true. Bandwidth is most definitely finite.

The marginal cost is a steps function. For example, on a 100Mbps Ethernet network with 5 computers with each computer using 10Mbps, it's free for any single computer to use 25Mbps if necessary. But if all the computers start trying to use 25Mbps, there is a significant cost to allow that.

Solar Power is another example where your created commodity is 'free', but finite.

net neutrality + beyond

[Anonymous Coward]

Let it be known Bell Canada is also a content provider. They own several television stations, as well as other forms of distributing this content (ie expressvu satallite) By imposing these caps on their internet competition, Bell Canada is also putting a stranglehold on digital distribution services.

For example, with this pricing structure Bell is imposing on their competition, with a streamed movie averaging about 3 gigs of data - at $1.25 a gig it will cost the end user an extra $4 of internet bandwidth to watch a movie through netflix or xbox live.

Theyve made it cheaper for and end user to just use Bell's pay per view service if they want to watch a movie.

Re:Do-over

[frieko]

They are not natural though, they were formed from contracts that were drafted with precision greed and much forward contemplation of their potential future value.

Actually it is a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly has to do with the economics of the situation, not with who or how the contracts are given. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly [wikipedia.org]

Re:Do-over

[JesseMcDonald]

There's no need to get the government involved. Last-mile natural monopolies (roads, power, water, communication) are among the few cases where co-ops happen to be ideal. They have all the advantages of local democratic control over infrastructure, and lack the ethical quandaries inherent in government due to the legitimization of force.

Many existing utilities, most notably electricity, are already managed in large part via co-ops. The trick is to recognize that the co-op is there to own the shared infrastructure and provide oversight, not to run the day-to-day operations. Co-ops are useful when properly applied, but are otherwise inefficient compared to other organizational models.