{"id":931,"date":"2011-01-26T02:28:31","date_gmt":"2011-01-26T07:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/?p=931"},"modified":"2012-11-02T17:53:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-02T22:53:35","slug":"usage-based-billing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/?p=931","title":{"rendered":"Usage Based Billing"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a fair bit to write about UBB, there are updates to this post:
\nUBB Update 5, including my submission to the CRTC<\/a>
\nUBB Update 4, including a new metaphor.<\/a> (I didn’t say it was a good one though!)
\nUBB Update 3, a reminder of the basic economics behind the CRTC being involved in regulating wholesale internet in the first place<\/a>.
\nUBB Update 2(b), a very long post on the issue.<\/a> Also, 2(a) came just before that, as a short summary<\/a>.
\nAnd the first update, including my first letter on UBB to my MP.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Cloud computing – you may have heard of it, it’s becoming quite the buzz word lately. The idea is that rather than everyone having all this computer hardware on their desks or in their laps or (now with smartphones) in their pocket, you put the big giant gobs of data on a central server that you reach over the internet. If you have a complex task but don’t have the computing power on your smart-phone, for example natural language speech-to-text for something more complex than an address book lookup, you just send the audio to the cloud, and let it compute the conversion. It’s supposedly going to be the wave of the future, and some cloud computing start-up companies have already been bought out at ridiculous prices. You can even keep your data there, backed up, safe from a local calamity, and available wherever you want it.<\/p>\n

Streaming video is already becoming popular, with internet connections now able to process streaming hi-def movies and TV shows from Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc. <\/p>\n

But you may not ever see these in Canada thanks to the outrageous usage based billing model the ISPs have started. <\/p>\n

It’s also hippocritical. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A bit is a bit is a bit. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a heavy user, regardless of what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s causing the heavy use, you will pay more. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the concept,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Mirko Bibic, Bell Canada\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s senior vice-president for regulatory affairs.<\/a> Somehow a bit isn’t<\/em> a bit when it’s coming from Bell or Rogers for another service: Rogers’ digital phones, Bell’s IPTV (“Fibe”) and Rogers on demand use the same bits travelling over their networks, but they wouldn’t dream of charging $2.50\/GB for that data. In fact, it was the rollout of Rogers’ digital home phone service that first lead to throttling and data transfer caps being implemented on their network.<\/p>\n

Not to muddy the waters, but there are two issues with that one: network congestion has been in the past (and may again become) an issue affecting the quality of service, especially at peak usage times. Throttling (as much as I also disagree with how heavy-handed it is\/was), is one method to solve that issue. Caps, and usage based billing, on the other hand, are completely unrelated to any notion of congestion: it’s possible to blow through your cap in just a few hours of downloading with the speeds available these days, which you could easily do in the off-hours without affecting the rest of the network. The only good explanation I’ve heard for bit caps is to snuff out on-line competition for Bell and Rogers’ video\/TV services.<\/p>\n

“The rates are absolutely atrocious. How the hell are we doing above one dollar for extra usage?” said Rocky Gaudrault, president of Chatham, Ont.-based Teksavvy. “It’s in the thousands of multiples beyond what the costs are.”<\/a> <\/p>\n

Indeed, Teksavvy currently charges just 25 cents per GB, or 10 cents per GB in pre-purchased blocks<\/a>, and that’s their retail <\/em>price. These charges from Bell and Rogers (which they are now trying to force on their resellers like Teksavvy<\/a>) are outrageous. From most reports, the actual cost of a GB of data is around a penny<\/strong>, maybe as much as three cents. However, today’s CRTC ruling is forcing Teksavvy to match Bell’s pricing (with as much as a whopping 15% discount)<\/a>. That is extremely uncompetitive. It undermines the whole idea of bringing in competition<\/strong> with resellers of monopoly infrastructure, and moreover, it’s bad for Canadians.<\/p>\n

Now, I’m not against charging based on usage. In many ways, that makes sense. However, these charges are ridiculous, usurious even. And just as there are usury laws against charging excessive interest on loans, the ISPs, if they want to charge for usage, shouldn’t be able to apply a 250X mark-up, fees that put whole industries out of business as infrastructure becomes too expensive to use. They especially shouldn’t be allowed to engage in the anti-competitive act of forcing their resellers to adopt their own pricing model (what’s the point in having resellers then?). The ruling doesn’t even make clear if the resellers are getting charged on a per GB basis, or if they can also create buy-in-advance usage plans like Bell can. <\/p>\n

The next step is to do something about it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Open Media has a petition going<\/a>, which I’ve already signed. I’m going to write letters to my MP, Tony Clement, and the CRTC as well. I’ll update this post when I’m done, but don’t wait for me: write your own! Though you may get stuck with the same fee package, switch to a reseller like Teksavvy<\/a> if you can, and tell Bell or Rogers why you’re leaving when you cancel your service with them.<\/p>\n

The Globe and Mail opinion piece: A metered internet is a regulatory failure.<\/a><\/p>\n

Edit to add: Ellen Roseman’s blog post<\/a>. “Since Ottawa has abdicated, Quebec passed a consumer protection law that restricts penalties charged on cellular contracts. Manitoba also plans to impose new rules, although perhaps moving too far into an area of federal responsibility.” Hey, maybe a note to the MPP wouldn’t be out of place, either…<\/p>\n

The CRTC ruling itself<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a fair bit to write about UBB, there are updates to this post: UBB Update 5, including my submission to the CRTC UBB Update 4, including a new metaphor. (I didn’t say it was a good one though!) UBB Update 3, a reminder of the basic economics behind the CRTC being involved in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}