UBB Compromise is Almost a Step in The Right Direction; Comment Thread
 

Earlier this week the CRTC released their landmark decision regarding UBB (Usage Based Billing) for internet access and downloads. In their document, there seemed to be something for everyone but does it signify a step towards true innovation for the Canadian telecom industry? We weigh in.

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I would say it's an improvement over UBB, but it most certainly is not an improvement over the current/past system. The basic Gas/TPIA prices were set in place years ago. Since then operation costs have fallen as well as transportation costs. Internet costs should be going down, not up. It's a step in the wrong direction, just not as bad as UBB or AVP.

While I don't agree with all of Sam's opinions, I do believe it is a step in one right direction: the big telecoms didn't get their way this time.

I've said it a few times but I'd like to see the people own and maintain a non-profit fiber optic network, with the goal of having fiber reach the most amount of people possible. Shaw, Bell, Teksavvy, et al could then rent access to these lines for actual usage value plus whatever it would take for maintenance.

As it stands now, anyone not in a preferred area ends up languishing on dialup or other terrible services. ISPs won't run cable lines or people are too far away for DSL. In countries like the UK, it's not much of an issue, but with the land mass Canada has there are a lot of people missing access to quality internet, even around the GRVD. Since this program would be non-profit they would not care where the lines were run, providing a lot more people with internet.

This would also directly put all ISPs in direct competition with each other. Customer service might actually be important again.

Several smaller/rural communities in the U.S. tried establishing community ISPs, to significant success, due to the egregious prices the large ISP corporations were charging to rural customers. In fact, these local government initiatives were so successful that the corporations managed to get state lawmakers to introduce legislation effectively banning such projects -- on the basis that it was interfering with the free market. No mention of the high barriers to entry maintained by the lobbying corporations which ensure that the free market couldn't actually function in these cases. And, surely an accident of fate, there just happened to be a correlation between campaign donations sources and votes for this legislation.

What would be the capital incentive then to expand this network and provide the most innovative and best possible service? Even a cooperative ISP, like Access Communications would have different tiers of service because it it simply unaffordable to provide a level of service to rural areas that is similar to urban areas.

I think we really need to get rid of the CRTC as a whole, all they seem to do is make life harder for those who want to actually help out the consumer. Hell it took netflix a long time to come to canada because they had to guarantee X amount of canadian content to please the CRTC. Think of all the tax payer money that goes to the CRTC and to Canadian Content on TV, most of those shows are absolute garbage, and we're footing the bill!

Not to mention the different between East and West...

It's cant be THAT much more expensive to make bits and bytes travel in Québec then it is for bits and bytes in BC...

Just look at Videotron prices/packages VS Shaw/Telus prices from BC.

Actually, if you go onto the Bell site and switch the URL between ON / QC, you will see that several services are less expensive or have more features in Quebec. This is actually due to the larger amount of competition here from some bigger players (Videotron) and the wealth of smaller figures (Cogeco, Acanac, Electronic Box, etc.).

It is odd, hell go look at their Atlantic site with Bell (Bell Aliant). All of their plans are unlimited bandwidth, yet rest of Canada with Bell have caps.