UPDATE Feb 3: Following the lead of the opposition parties, the conservative industry minister, Tony Clement, has informed the CRTC that they must revise their decision.
Just as Canada now gets to lead the world with a now competitive cellular provider marketplace, we are shortly going to fall rapidly behind in the Internet service provider gig. Thanks to a decision rendered by the Canadian Radio-Television Commission (CRTC), all third-party Internet service providers (ISPs) who were using Bell’s infrastructure will now have to follow a new cost structure.
Previously, Bell charged the ISPs about four cents per gigabyte. This in turn meant that these providers could offer packages with unlimited bandwidth to their customers. In my case, I had a $30/month plan whereby I was allotted 200GB a month. These deals were much better than what Bell offered their own customers, even though we all used the same network.
Thanks to this new decision, my ISP will have no choice but to substantially match the fees of Bell. As of March 1st, my 200GB/month is no more – it’ll now be 25GB/month for the same price. I used 140GB last month, mostly due to our use of Netflix. If I lived in Quebec, the cap would be over double, at 60GB. I’ve been told that this is because Bell is in competition in Quebec with Videotron.
In Ontario, this decision just wiped out all the DSL competition. Providers that use the Cable infrastructure from Rogers also have this decision apply, so all the competition there has been eradicated as well. The end result is that we’ll have the Bell-Rogers oligopoly. As we know from our experience with the same oligopoly on the cellular service front, this isn’t good. The two don’t compete for the lowest price; they compete for the highest price. When one increases price and/or decreases service, the other company follows.
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2 responses to “One step forward, one step back”
Please sign the petition at http://openmedia.ca/meter!!!!
Agreed!