An Ontario internet provider is the first in Canada to impose greatly lowered usage caps on its customers. This move comes in response to the exploding popularity of heavy-bandwidth sites like Netflix. Customers who exceed their contracted usage will page steep fees.
Starting on March 1, Ontario TekSavvy members who subscribed to the 5Mbps plan have a new usage cap of 25GB, "substantially down from the 200GB or unlimited deals TekSavvy was able to offer before the CRTC's decision to impose usage based billing," the message added. By way of comparison, Comcast here in the United States has a 250GB data cap. Looks like lots of Canadians can kiss that kind of high ceiling goodbye. And going over will cost you: according to TekSavvy, the CRTC put data overage rates at CAN $1.90 per gigabyte for most of Canada, and $2.35 for the country's French-speaking region.So not only are some internet providers charging users much more for the same service, they are charging the providers more to deliver that content.
Bottom line: no more unlimited buffet. TekSavvy users who bought the "High Speed Internet Premium" plan at $31.95 now get 175GB less per month. "Extensive web surfing, sharing music, video streaming, downloading and playing games, online shopping and email," could put users over the 25GB cap, TekSavvy warns. Also, watch out "power users that use multiple computers, smartphones, and game consoles at the same time."
This is not good, ultimately, for the internet--unless you're a provider--and it's not good for the middle- and lower-classes, folks. This will follow the golden rule of the world that "them with the gold makes the rules" and, worse, Ray Charles' lament that "them that has, gets."
If you're a poor schmuck, you'll have access to less information and entertainment, that's all there is to it.
The way of the world, sadly.
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6 comments:
I shared this link on Facebook... which would likely be the first thing to go if I had to limit my Internet time.
Honestly, I have to disagree with you, Mo. Netflix is not an efficient way to put movies in the hands of individuals.
Long distance, like electricity, and cellphone services started as metered service. The internet is tiered as well, lower bandwidth service is cheaper than T1 and T3 lines which have much more capacity. As it should be. LIke I support high gasoline taxes so that higher users of roads should pay the freight.
It may change one day when the technology is in place, but currently ISP's don't want to pay (and shouldn't have to pay) the freight for bandwidth hogging services like movie streaming.
If you pay a buck to Netflix, well you probably should pay a buck for delivery of it. Or a buck for postage to get it delivered to you by the mailman. If not, pay $15 for a premium cable channel. And start pressuring the HBO's to do less repetition and more variety.
How much do we pay to watch a high def movie at the theater? 5 or 6 bucks for one viewing and overpriced popcorn and soda is extra?
Should all restaurants be required to set an 'all you can eat' price and charge everyone the same?
I am a network technician. BDeandwidth costs money--either the infrastructure to handle peak capacity, costs to the upstream provider or both, depending on the source and destination of the traffic. Networks have heavy and light users. Generally a few percent of the users generate most of the traffic, and most of the cost.
How should this cost be distributed back to the customers--is it fair for someone who just needs to check their email occasionally to have to pay an equal price to someone who uses 100 or 1000 times more bandwidth and cost?
Of course your answer is likely 'just take it out of profits'.
The real problem is that there isn't enough competition, that barriers to entry are too high--otherwise an ISP that was overcharging would lose business to one that charged fairly.
Okay, what all you say may well be true, Radioman but what it's going to ultimately mean is that people and companies with money will have access to more and better information and the poor will have less and/or less quality.
The entertainment thing, sure, people should pay but my concern is for both the distribution of information and knowledge and the people with less money.
Sevesteen, see my response to Radioman, above.
25 gigabytes is a lot of information. The novel Huckleberry Finn takes about 300 kilobytes--That's 0.0003 gigabytes.
Do you remember the couple of years in the 90's where encyclopedias were distributed on CD? An entire encyclopedia, with text, images and a limited amount of sound and video fit on a standard capacity CD--a bit under 2/3 of a gigabyte.
So if you aren't watching movies, 25 gigabytes per month is effectively an unlimited amount of text and images, 37 multimedia encyclopedia's worth of data. Every month. That is not a barrier to using the internet for education or legitimate information, not even much of a barrier to using the internet for entertainment-it is only a barrier to using the internet for hours of video per day.
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