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Bugs
Joined: 16 Dec 2009
Posts: 1942
  
votes: 5
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 Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 10:52 pm Post subject: Geist: The real reason we pay so much for Internet |
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More on the internet monopolists and their hunger for risk-free profits ...
The public has reacted to the CRTC's recent decision to allow government regulated monopolies to charge by usage. Apparently there are petitions being signed all over the place. The government promised to review the situation, and now Rogers is licking the worst wounds it has suffered since negative option billing came up -- remember that clever ploy, where they would save themselves the problem of 'selling' us on their 'services' by simply giving them to us, and if we didn't object, it'd be part of the contract?
Last week, public concern with Internet bandwidth caps hit a fever pitch as hundreds of thousands of Canadians signed petitions against Internet provider practices of “metering” Internet use.
The CRTC winced, and backed off their intentions, while essentially promising to implement the decision at some time in the future when big events keep internet billing off the front pages.
| Quote: | ... Canadians will be disappointed — some even surprised — to learn that Internet “metering” is already almost uniformly in place. The “caps” are the existing and common provider limits on usage, above which you are billed extra. They are unlikely to disappear anytime soon, what ever the CRTC decides after its review.
The CRTC usage-based billing case involves the narrow question of whether large providers such as Bell can impose usage-based billing rates (metering) on bandwidth that it “wholesales” to small providers small providers, affecting the rates they can in turn charge their subscribers. This is only a tiny segment of the market.
The existing, almost universal Internet caps are significant. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development reports that Canada stands virtually alone with near universal use of caps and our cap rates are set lower than those elsewhere. For example, while U.S. giant Comcast has a 250 gigabyte per month cap, some Canadian providers have caps as small as 2 gigabytes per month.
The caps are already having a consumer impact. Bell admits that about 10 per cent of its subscribers exceed their monthly cap (resulting in an extra charge), a figure that is sure to increase over time. The effect extends far beyond consumers paying more. The extra cost has a real negative effect on the Canadian digital economy, harming innovation and keeping new business models out of the country.
The widespread use of bandwidth caps in Canada is a function of a highly concentrated market where a handful of ISPs control so much of the market. |
In other words, the lack of real competition in the internet market is being used as an excuse to leverage their prices higher, charging users more for less ... less than almost anywhere else in the world. The article makes the point that, at heart, the problem goes back to the lack of competition in the internet market ... just as it is with cell phones.
| Quote: | Fostering greater competition should include opening the Canadian market by removing foreign investment barriers, particularly for wireless broadband services that play a key part of the forthcoming spectrum auction. It would also involve working with provinces and municipalities to develop community-based broadband networks that are not reliant on the dominant ISPs, as well as working with Canarie, Canada’s research and education high speed network provider, to link local communities and offer alternatives to the dominant providers.
The government should also impose open access requirements that facilitate the entry of competitors into new spectrum allocation and build open-access requirements into new residential developments, municipal construction, and other initiatives.
Measures to spur greater competition are essential, but it will realistically take several years before new competitors can make their mark on the market. In the meantime, it is also crucial to address the potential for anti-competitive behaviour.
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The suspicion is that the caps are at crude attempt by the dominant internet providers to capture, for themselves, the markets for products such as Netflix, and who knows what else is coming down the pipe.
Personally, I think the regulators are in the bag for the big-money cable and telephone companies.
| Quote: | | While there is great anger with the CRTC and the dominant service providers, we should recognize that the current market is a product of years of regulatory neglect, and policy choices that created a communications market with very few players. We are now paying the price — literally — for those choices and it will take a concerted policy effort to put us back on course. |
(Michael Geist, the writer, holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law.)
Read the whole article at http://www.thestar.com/busines.....ernet?bn=1 |
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teabag
Joined: 30 Nov 2008
Posts: 479
votes: 6
Location: Mississauga Ontario
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| Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:03 am Post subject: |
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| Unfortunately both Rogers and Bell already charge for usage. If you go over your useage you pay. It is only the small internet providers that using the big companies technology provide unlimited use. Obviously the big guns are not going to give unlimited use when they can charge rates that reflect usage. |
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Bugs
Joined: 16 Dec 2009
Posts: 1942
votes: 5
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| Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 9:47 am Post subject: |
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Don't you think the point is to make the market competitive, at least in some degree?
They insert themselves as middlemen, between the producer of the material and the consumer of it, exploiting their licensed monopoly rather than competing to win customers. They get more arrogant by the day, and they charge more and more for less and less, when compared to other countries.
When they sell their service, they deny that they put limits on your content. They stress the speed of the data stream instead. You think you are getting 3Mb/second ... what does that mean, except that you have a certain capacity? They mention nothing about surcharges for usage, and most people have no clue how where their usage is high, and where it is low.
Make your objection known ... sign the petition. |
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Geist: The real reason we pay so much for Internet |
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