A More Expensive Internet: The Bell Way
Bell is coming under scrutiny for its recent move to introduce Usage-Based Billing (UBB) to its wholesale customers. One wholesale Internet provider, TekSavvy, is taking a stand; the company is calling on its customers to petition the CRTC to prevent Bell from introducing UBB.
Consider this the first chapter in what will likely be long drawn out battle between the Bell/Telus/Rogers and smaller ISPs across Canada - particularly in Ontario and Quebec. In a letter to its customers, Teksavvy says that if Bell is allowed to introduce UBB, it "would inherently all but remove unlimited Internet services in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs from month to month."
As part of the plan, Bell would scrap flat-rate billing and charge ISPs for every GB used - somewhere in the range of $1.125 to $1.875 on each GB beyond the monthly allowance. Bell also wants to introduce an 'excessive usage charge' on ISPs' clients. This would charge individual users for every GB beyond an established monthly amount of 300 GBs.
Economics aside, critics argue that the recent move marks a concerted effort by the company to squeeze out competition. But, in the process of doing so, Bell is simply going to make using the Internet more expensive for all users.
Whether or not Bell is successful in its attempt to introduce UBB, the dispute highlights the dangerous nature of Internet access in Canada. If the established telecommunications companies continue to have near complete control over increasingly vital infrastructure, they will likely use it to their advantage. Worse, they will continue to control the market without having to make the infrastructure upgrades that the country desperately needs. And worse still, they'll be able to charge more, while offering less.
Canada is no longer one of the top ten countries for broadband penetration. And I don't think we're likely to move up any time soon, considering Internet users may be facing higher fees. In agreement with web enthusiasts and some economists, I would argue that high-speed, reliable access to the web is no longer a luxury - it's a necessity. The economic benefit of providing more people with high-speed Internet access has been proven by a number of studies.
One solution is federally-funded and operated government broadband network that is then rented out to private companies. Australia recently launched just such a program. Once a national broadband network is in place, private companies would be able to use it accordingly - much like the highway system.
Critics will argue that the government has no place in the broadband industry. While government-run programs aren't always the answer, I suspect that the current situation may soon require government intervention. If that's necessary, it would be nice to have the government step in with a forward-thinking, realizable plan.
But I'm guessing that if Bell gets to go ahead with its UBB plan or not, the gauntlet for our Internet dollars has been thrown.
Photo by Tyson Williams.
Comments (20)
I met Satan once. He said the only reason he stays down there is because he's scared of Bell.
I can't believe I was a customer of Bell for so long. Rogers and Telus might not be the best, but they've definitely been less problematic than Bell has: outsourced customer support that knows nothing beyond the 4 or 5 things management told them to repeat; horrible service itself (my internet was never remotely near the advertised maximum speed and cell phone coverage is sub-par in Toronto compared to Telus and especially Rogers); they tack on random charges like crazy (my $20/month basic phone line costs $35 after everything is said and done due to taxes, and fees; they cling to outdated technology to milk their customers (using a CDMA cell phone network); they've had numerous issues with overbilling and they take forever to resolve them; most of their employees treat customers like shit; etc.
Oh and don't expect the CRTC to actually step in and do something for consumers.
Bell internet has to be the shittiest broadband service out there.....you are constantly loosing connectivity at a certain hr, the same hr every night for me at about 10:30, you call customer service and get someone in india on a humming phone line,and they immediately give you a ridiculous excuse like "it's a problem with your windows, your drivers aren't up to date, blah blah"..They send out a service tech who insists that by actually lowering your bandwidth by frigging around with the wires , that they are actually making your connection faster....
Now what about businesses that rely on surfing customers and random viewings?....the internet itself is a wonderful way to advertise and get a small company up and running at minimal cost....now you may as well scrap it and hand out flyers ....rogers , altho not perfect, offers a far more reliable connection...
We've had TekSavvy around the apartment for a couple of years now, and service is actually very reliable. I'd hate to have to switch ISPs because of Bell screwing around with their wholesale customers, and in turn me. Of course.. as the article states.. my other options are few and far between.
What's even more aggravating is that even if a petition manages to set Bell's plans back, they'll just appeal and cost the country a boat-load of money.
Corporations get away with it because they can. Consumers mean very little and the government even less. The CRTC might as well just bend over and lube up 'cause this one's gonna be a long haul.
The government should nationalize this sort of infrastructure, and rent it out to Bell and whomever else is interested in using it. Bell and Rogers both abuse their positions to the detriment of all Canadians.
And for those looking for an amazing ISP, I can't say enough nice things about Teksavvy. My god they are so good.
The internet is at least as vital to our economy, freedom, and way of life as the highways are. The government must step in and nip this in the bud. Either we need a government monopoly that is top in the world, like the LCBO is, or we need a flood of free competition. It would be nice, as a Canadian, to just once be treated well by a telecom company. Or to be able to avoid them all together.
Thanks for writing about this, but know what would have made this article really awesome?
Publishing it on Tuesday when there was still time to register complaints.
The ISPs should look at hooking up with some of the other players like Cogeco (which just took over Toronto Hydro Telecom) and Cogent and partnering with them to expand in Ontario.
Hopefully the monopoly laws in the country prevent UBB from taking over. I believe Bell is unfairly using their monopoly.
This is why I try and stick with mom & pop type businesses over mega-corps. With the little guy, his business depends on you being satisfied and will fight to keep you happy. My ISP is Velcom and will not switch over to Bell or Rogers unless I have don't have a choice.
I received an email from Velcom with a similar message to Teksavvy's. Here's what they wrote (questionable grammar and all):
Dear Valued Customer!
We are writing this notice to bring some important news to your attention.
There have been several news articles in relation to several positions
being taken by certain companies to restrict/shape your connection to the
internet, also known as throttling. The saga continues.
Recently a filing has been submitted by certain ISPs in order require
certain Telecom providers such as (Bell/Telus/etc) to offer similar speeds
they would offer their own retail customers. The new filing is being
disputed by the Telecom providers, at the same time a new Tariff (fee)
has been submitted to the CRTC by the Telecom providers to force ISPs to
impose new charges/fees. This new Tariff is known as “Used Based billing -
UBB”.
Bell provides Velcom wholesale DSL services. If the new Tariff filing
submitted to CRTC was approved and Bell was permitted to charge UBB, this
would introduce new heavy charges that ultimately would be passed on to
you. Your account would be limited to 60GB per month and you would be
charged a hefty cost per gigabyte thereafter. We must do everything in our
power to prevent this new filing! This would force Velcom the inability to
offer unlimited internet access going forward if the new filing is
approved.
We ask of all of you to submit your comments to the CRTC so we all can be
heard! The deadline is midnight for sharing your thoughts!
How exactly can you submit your comments?
Go to: http://support.crtc.gc.ca/crtcsubmissionmu/forms/Telecom.aspx?lang=e
From the drop down list select “Tariff”.
In the subject line enter:
“File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 - Bell Canada - TN 7181”
In the next “Description / Comments / Questions:” field enter your
comments. Make them aware of how you feel! It’s important!
Sincerely,
This is far from the first chapter in battle. Tek and other small isps have been fighting bell for over a year now. It all started when bell begun to inspect and throttle independent isp's customers traffic.
I don't so much mind that they're looking to bill for traffic on their system, I mean, they do maintain all the physical phone lines which isn't exactly simple/cheap. And people are going to stop paying for phone and tv service and just do all of that on the Internet at some point so they have to set up a new revenue model. But you shouldn't have a particular cap, the fees should be the same across the board.
Here's the letter I wrote on the CRTC comment/petition/thinger:
Bell Canada's proposed tariffs represent a punitive presumption about what is valid Internet use. I say punitive because their wholesale pricing for transfer between end users and a third party Internet Service Provider, with its own connection to the Internet, would see the ISP pay three times as much for any data transferred from a single residence in excess of a 60GB cap. If usage based billing proves necessary, it should be linear or allow for a bulk discount. How can they justify a penalty? Does it really cost three times more after that amount, or is it an arbitrary threshold? Do Canadians who share an address with roommates to save costs need to be penalized under this per-residence scheme?
I research search technology for a small, international company. We have recently licensed a terabyte (1000GB) corpus from the University of Glasgow. It is text and compresses fairly well so it would only be a matter of copying 80GB from our Danish office to my home in Toronto. In most any other market, if I need a larger quantity of service, I pay less. Why ought I be punished instead when the commodity is bandwidth? Many other areas of academic and corporate research involve large data sets and not all of this work is done out of large corporate or institutional offices.
Research needs aside, CRTC has a specific mandate to foster Canadian culture. Artists working with high quality digital media use very large files. Compression used to make them smaller for distribution cannot be applied until the end without losing quality. It would be easy to exceed 60GB of transfer when collaborating on a film project with HDTV video for example, and this is the new standard.
And what if artists wanted their audience to access their content directly over the Internet without going through traditional media outlets? Preventing Canadian distribution of HDTV video through alternative channels represents a conflict of interest, given Bell's TV division.
Carriers in other parts of the world (Japan is a prime example) offer their users much faster Internet access. I am very, very skeptical that Bell has reached the limits of its equipment. Thanks to advances in dense wavelength division multiplexing that allow huge bandwidth over existing fibre trunk infrastructure and ADSL2 for last mile (supported even by the Siemens Speedstream 4200 modems that Bell has been distributing to their customers) the question should not be how to limit the amount of data Canadians can move around, but why aren't we increasing it to world-leading levels?
It's about copyright. People watch TV without ads over the Internet. A lot of people are transferring a lot of content they're not allowed to. That is what I believe is being penalised here. Time Warner is taking the same measures in the United States--search any newswire for the keywords "broadband cap". But copyright is a separate issue. That Bell would even propose this is an insult to the CRTC and the Canadians they protect. Instead of working with our government to help develop a framework for intellectual property that is best for our society, Bell is attempting to control the situation by throttling our ability to move any type of information.
The potential economic activity from unfettered digital communication in our country is much more important than Bell's business model staying the way it is today. Television, telephone and Internet services are fast becoming the same thing and Bell Canada administers the fibre optics and copper wire that link many Canadians together in Ontario and Quebec. They also sell telephone service and television content. It is precisely this conflict of interest that motivated the CRTC to force Bell to offer access to its network infrastructure at wholesale in the first place. Please do not allow them to subvert that intent and stifle our communication.
I've been a Bell customer for a long time, and the quality of the service has steadily declined while the price keeps getting more and more outrageous. The only way to get their attention is to take your business elsewhere. Beware though, I've heard that some of their "retention deals" involve long contracts and hidden penalties.
TekSavvy is a great alternative for customers in the Toronto area looking to make a change. One Bell-free solution we're considering is:
Home phone: TekSavvy
Noticeably cheaper than Bell, especially for adding features, same physical service (i.e. not an "internet phone"). Number portability ensures that you can keep your current phone number.
Internet: TekSavvy
Again, same physical service, but from a company that cares about competing for your business. No modem rental fees or bogus "bandwidth insurance".
Mobile: ???
Are there any mobile providers that don't suck? As far as I can tell, we're still living in the mobile phone dark ages in Canada. Number portability was a big step forward, but I wish the government would step in and prevent things like Bell's outrageous text messaging charges, bogus system access fees, and holding customers hostage with incompatible handsets on long contracts. Virgin even uses Bell's own network, and you can't bring your "Bell phone" over to their service. We need to retire the non-GSM networks and create some incentives for competition from small mobile providers.
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