Firestorm
I did my best, I have no regrets!
This is a good a 5000th post as any.
As you may know, the CRTC ruled in favour of Bell enforcing Usage Based Billing on the companies it wholesales its lines to (Teksavvy, Acanac, etc.). This also enables Rogers, Telus, and Shaw to do the same to their customers and wholesalers. As of today, the only major telecom company that doesn't have bandwidth caps is Telus - and that's only because they haven't activated monitoring yet on their higher speed lines. This means every ISP in Canada may have bandwidth caps in the future - whether they want to or not.
This is not about piracy. Bandwidth caps stifles innovation. Period. We cannot expect to be able to use innovations like Netflix for streaming video, CBC Radio 3 for streaming independant Canadian music, Steam for digitally distributing video games and patches, with the medium being artifically neutered like this.
The "it costs money" argument holds no water here for ISPs. They have money granted from our taxes to expand their infrastructure. They make billions of dollars in profit a year. The reason for bandwidth caps are not money. It is to protect their existing businesses. Rogers made caps smaller the day after Netflix announced Canadian service in favour of its own Video on Demand service and cable service. Bell throttled bittorrent, the distribution technology of choice for CBC and not its Video on Demand service. Shaw started enforcing caps the same month it bought CanWest Global.
Right now OpenMedia.ca is doing a major push to get the CRTC and Tony Clement - the Industry Minister - to look at their decision again. They are an advocacy group that can get things down. Please support their efforts by signing the petition and telling your friends both about it and what is happening to our internet.
http://openmedia.ca/meter
Tony Clement has replied saying that he is paying attention to this but he won't be able to reply until the appeal period is over. Keep hammering the message home in the meantime. Canadians are not happy.
I'm someone who often has CBC Radio 3 in the background all day and have downloaded 90GB of Steam games in a month before. I am on Telus and I'll admit I was ignorant to the fact that there even were strictly enforced bandwidth caps in most of the country until last year or so. I especially didn't realize how small they were (2GB on some of the slower cable plans and 80GB on standard plans?!). I don't want to have to start moderating my usage because companies want to protect their television business. The internet is a great platform for innovation. Let's keep it that way.
Updates as of December 9th, 2010
Over 21,000 people have signed
City Councillor Puts Forward Groundbreaking Motion to Stop Usage-Based Internet Billing
Donation Drive to take petition to the next step with full page ads
The Vancouver Sun just ran a story on it
As you may know, the CRTC ruled in favour of Bell enforcing Usage Based Billing on the companies it wholesales its lines to (Teksavvy, Acanac, etc.). This also enables Rogers, Telus, and Shaw to do the same to their customers and wholesalers. As of today, the only major telecom company that doesn't have bandwidth caps is Telus - and that's only because they haven't activated monitoring yet on their higher speed lines. This means every ISP in Canada may have bandwidth caps in the future - whether they want to or not.
This is not about piracy. Bandwidth caps stifles innovation. Period. We cannot expect to be able to use innovations like Netflix for streaming video, CBC Radio 3 for streaming independant Canadian music, Steam for digitally distributing video games and patches, with the medium being artifically neutered like this.
The "it costs money" argument holds no water here for ISPs. They have money granted from our taxes to expand their infrastructure. They make billions of dollars in profit a year. The reason for bandwidth caps are not money. It is to protect their existing businesses. Rogers made caps smaller the day after Netflix announced Canadian service in favour of its own Video on Demand service and cable service. Bell throttled bittorrent, the distribution technology of choice for CBC and not its Video on Demand service. Shaw started enforcing caps the same month it bought CanWest Global.
Right now OpenMedia.ca is doing a major push to get the CRTC and Tony Clement - the Industry Minister - to look at their decision again. They are an advocacy group that can get things down. Please support their efforts by signing the petition and telling your friends both about it and what is happening to our internet.
http://openmedia.ca/meter
Tony Clement has replied saying that he is paying attention to this but he won't be able to reply until the appeal period is over. Keep hammering the message home in the meantime. Canadians are not happy.
I'm someone who often has CBC Radio 3 in the background all day and have downloaded 90GB of Steam games in a month before. I am on Telus and I'll admit I was ignorant to the fact that there even were strictly enforced bandwidth caps in most of the country until last year or so. I especially didn't realize how small they were (2GB on some of the slower cable plans and 80GB on standard plans?!). I don't want to have to start moderating my usage because companies want to protect their television business. The internet is a great platform for innovation. Let's keep it that way.
Updates as of December 9th, 2010
Over 21,000 people have signed
City Councillor Puts Forward Groundbreaking Motion to Stop Usage-Based Internet Billing
Donation Drive to take petition to the next step with full page ads
The Vancouver Sun just ran a story on it
It will also affect Vancouver city itself, which live-streams its council meetings and is increasingly moving into web-based forms of communication.