Canada - Dial '0' for GREED

Pssst...Wanna make a boatload of money, rip of literally millions of people and rest easy cause the government's got your back ? Move to Canada, become an internet provider and wait for the big bucks to roll in.

(Konrad Finkenstein...a name I couldn't make up if I tried)

Our government, in the person of this hideous troll  has decided that it's ok for our national monopolistic Internet Providers to price out the smaller ISPs in Canada. At the same time it opens the door for these same hugely profitable monopolies to throttle and cap our bandwidth subject to overage charges.


Introducing the Usage Based Billing scheme, better known as UBB. In effect this means that a small ISP that used to be able to offer you, the consumer, an internet plan with say unlimited access (or a decent 100+GB/month) for a fixed rate would now be unable to do so. Another way of looking at it is...

The first thing to realize is that we are paying for our Internet connection. I pay XXXX, my ISP, the agreed rate. My ISP pays the Carrier, Bell, the agreed rate. UBB is an additional cost added to an already profit generating price structure. It over rides contracts.

When XXXX buys bandwidth from Bell, they have bandwidth they can redistribute at their discretion.

If you buy a basket of apples from a Farmer, and then give one apple to Tom, three apples to Dick, and 14 apples to Harry, the farmer can’t charge more because Harry took too many apples.

Yet one of the most persistent fallacies floating around is the idea of “bandwidth hogs.”

This sign pretty much says it all when it comes to where we are as a nation when it comes to fostering technological innovation. 


Better yet, here's another showing the OECD country comparison. Clearly, most nations offer their citizens unlimited internet packages and there's Canada way down at the bottom. Leading the pack in mediocrity and corporate greed. 

Shame on our government for letting this get as far as it has. 

Shame on the carriers for their appalling level of hubris and greed.

Shame on the public for tolerating this kind of nonsense.

Shame on the CRTC for being in the back pocket of industry when they're supposed to be looking out for the consumer.

SRW