[Thanos]

If they got a Netflix subscription when they bought their gaming console or are using Netflix gift cards to pay for what they download, then who the hell are the ISP's to barge in and demand a surcharge on something that's already been bought and paid for? What are they going to do next, hammer anyone using iTunes with a $10 a month surcharge? Here's an idea for them to try: make their own fucking TV bundles as efficient, worthwhile, and (most of all) as affordable as Netflix. Maybe if they try that then so many of their previous subscribers wouldn't have dumped them as fast as they could when Netflix arrived on the scene.

Like someone else said, any bandwidth that costs the ISP's 5 to 10 cents a gig shouldn't be jacked up to an extra 5 to 10 dollars a month that gets dumped on the customer. Everywhere else on this planet bandwidth costs are going down. Except for a fucked up place like Canada, all because ISP collusion and government cowardice/indifference are ensuring that the customers get screwed again.

[Xort]

herbie herbie:

I know of people who have Netflix running 24/7 on a tv in another room while they're gaming. Others with hard drives full of movie torrents they'll never watch.
After being an ISP for nearly 20 years, I don't have the same sympathy.
Some people are just fucking pigs and eventually ruin everything for all the rest of us.
After the last system upgrade before I left, the new guy was bragging about 'scoring a good customer' - one I'd refused service to as he was a piggie-boy. First month after he had used twice as much bandwidth as the other 150 WISP users combined.
Lent the people in my basement wireless use until I noticed the traffic jump. They were both watching movies on their laptops while their desktop downloaded torrents. 250 GB in barely a week...

Once the capacity is installed it's wasteful not to use it. If some people only want a few GB of content well that's their option. The world is changing and moving forward.

Do you yell at people that listen to the radio too much? Or people that use up countless GB of TV broadcasts?

Thanos Thanos:

What are they going to do next, hammer anyone using iTunes with a $10 a month surcharge?

That is exactly what they want. They want to make the internet into cable packages. And fuck them.

[herbie]

They're already doing that. Look at all the streaming sites, you'll soon need a Netflix to get this program, Crave to get that program, etc etc. etc.
TSN1 on one outfit, TSN2 on another SNET on another just like buying 'bundles'. 10 years from now the commercials will be back just like on cable.
And the Telcos will own the Streaming services, charge you a monthly fee AND charge you for all that 'extra' bandwidth to use them. The CRTC ruled they can't charge for other site's downloads and not charge from their own.

[wildrosegirl]

The first 5 or so years I was on internet there was a cap. It's actually not a new thing, but an old one being revisited.
It's just like anything else. A portion of the customers severely abuse the unlimited service and the companies can't afford to upgrade everything to accommodate everyone, so we all get screwed because of the bandwidth hogs. Again, nothing new. One bad apple, yadda, yadda...

[herbie]

Yes, the cost to fire up an already hung fibre line and install a DSLAM for a remote community is easily $250,000
Yet it's full of people who as we can see, insist its their right to download as much as they want for $30 a month. And they'll tell you how the telco will make its money back quick from their subdivision of 12 homes if they'd just hurry up and install it.
So happy I no longer deal with people on a farm 50 km from the nearest phone service griping about limits, poor speeds and how I should drive up there and shovel the snow off their dish every other day all winter for that $30 a month.

[bootlegga]

Funny, I always thought there were caps on bandwidth - at least I always had them on Telus. Even after switching to Shaw about 10 years ago, I still had them, although they were higher.

[bootlegga]

Thanos Thanos:

The problem is that their collusion and their influence over the government means that they can build the wall around their buggy-whip factory business model as high as they want and sustain it long after it should have passed away naturally. Look how quickly they managed to bury Verizon entering into Canada, with the Liberals and Dippers coming in on the industry's side thanks to all that cheap 'save Canadian jobs' crap they pulled. Which in itself is as funny as fuck coming from assholes like Bell who have their call centre in Morocco and Telus who set up shop in India or Sri Lanka. The Tories caved in as fast as they could because there was no upside in them pissing off their regular campaign contributors who threatened to go all-Liberal if Verizon was let in.

Even if Verizon had come here, it wouldn't have made any difference - their prices would have been in line with their competitors here, not those in the US - just like Wal-Mart/Target/every other American corporation operating in Canada. It's a different market with different laws and operating costs.

Canada's problem with cell phones is that it is low density and high operating cost - those towers (and the constant upgrades from analog to digital to 3G to LTE) aren't free after all. That's why Canada has some of the expensive cell phone plans in the world - they are too few of us living too spread apart in too big a country.

Thanos Thanos:

Globalization only means something when money flows into the pockets of industry leaders and their pet politicians. It means absolutely nothing, and gets gutted as quickly as possible, when the potential of offering real choice or saving to the customer might actually occur.

I'd say you hit the nail on the head with that comment.

[Regina]

The Canadian media companies own the deliver systems and content. They see the traditional TV cable supply going the way of the DoDo bird via the internet. Since they also own that pipeline and still want all your money, they've simply started to bill you for quantity through the pipe. Without adding much cost to themselves, if any in most communities.

[Thanos]

If they charge each customer a hundred times more for what their extra usage actually costs the ISP to provide then they've gone from the respectability of profit to deep into grotesque profiteering. This isn't a call for artificial price controls overseen by some government agency. It's more of an acknowledgement that this kind of strategy by the ISP's is the natural consequence of the government allowing these companies to behave like a colluding monopoly. All it reveals is that governmental claims of customer protection in Canada are hollow and meaningless because the government isn't just not standing up for the consumer, they're protecting the ISP's as they openly behave in an unscrupulous manner that is against all the principles of what the free market is allegedly all about. It's no different that what happens with the utilities. They manage to deregulate it to the point that the customer got completely shafted by the pseudo-privatization (privatization of profits with no control put upon extra fee charges that are so greedy they should be made illegal) but managed to turn it 'free market' enough that the providers can operate in a completely abusive and irresponsible manner.

Normally in most things finding the middle ground is usually the best solution. With these types of businesses though finding the middle ground turned out to be the worst possible decision to make. Either all-government or all-free market, because the mixing of the two has really just created a clusterfuck of catastrophic proportions that the all-government or all-free market options could not possibly have managed to create on their own.

[Tricks]

Not gonna lie, I got rid of cable and download everything. Why watch tv with commercials when it can automatically download right after it airs in about 7 minutes and I can watch it without commercials whenever I want?

[Jabberwalker]

Bandwidth is like money. You can print more and more and more ...

[Thanos]

The thing is they can create more and more bandwidth all the time but the price they charge customers to use it is going to be far too in excess of what it costs to deliver it. Decent and well-earned profits, yes. Grotesque profiteering, no.