Usage Based Billing and Net Neutrality

Pretty controversial topic, especially in Canada, where they're talking about a bill which would force ISPs who buy their bandwidth from companies who make the networks to sell at the same rate with the same caps as the companies they buy from.

Thoughts?

Wait, what? Sorry, I'm an idiot. Do you have a link?

Is this the thing where they charge by how much you download, as opposed to just an unlimited monthly bill? I can see they're trying to stop the people who download tons and tons of movies and stuff.

I think my internet has a 40GB monthly cap, after that, they'll charge extra. 40GB is plenty as long as you aren't downloading movies and stuff. So it kind of makes sense if they're trying to stop illegal downloading or trying to give faster internet speeds to more people.

But on the other hand, they're things like Steam, Netflix, etc where you download games and movies legally, that might take up a lot of GB's, so it wouldn't be fair to those people.

Okay, that's kind of what I thought. Honestly, I'm surprised they didn't try this years ago. I'm completely against that and everything, but that's basically how most phone plans are. I'm sick of all this nickel and diming nonsense.

Is this aka the Net Neutrality issue?

Nope. It's the AND Net Neutrality thread! Hahaaaa


I'm so clever!

They've turned my market into a test market for a cap for the last few years. Basically when I hit my alloted amount of internet usage they slow my ass down. It doesn't matter if I'm legally downloading shit from Itunes or illegally and it bugs the crap out of me. Bugs the shit out of me.

I heard something about Netflix killing the internet because so many people are using it. The evil Netflix,

They're also driving rental stores out of business. Which sucks, 'cause I liked going to the rental store. The people at Rogers were awesome.

I think this is a bigger problem in Canada, mostly because ISPs all charge ridiculously high prices compared to other countries. Example:



It's pretty ridiculous that for unlimited internet, Canadians are paying almost $1/GB compared to 2 cents in America.

Also, both sides are claiming the others are being uncompetitive, here, which has caused a bit of a shitstorm in my brain. Small ISPs who buy their bandwidth off of bigger companies and invest little into the network are forced to sell at the same price as the networks they use, which disallows small ISPs to sell at smaller prices, driving other companies to have to drop prices to compete.

On the other hand, it's the bigger companies that have to maintain the network at large, and who are forced (by law) to sell bandwidth to small ISPs at wholesale prices for the sake of competition, and allowing smaller companies to compete with big ISPs. I'd have more sympathy for this side of the argument if it weren't for the aforementioned graph.