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Stop Usage Based Billing


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#1 YOYO

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Posted 27 January 2011 - 09:20 PM

I just found out usage based billing. This has to be one if not thee most fascist thing the CRTC and Feds have ever done.

http://stopusagebase....wordpress.com/

#2 YOYO

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Posted 27 January 2011 - 09:33 PM

http://www.techvibes...-you-2011-01-24

#3 sebberry

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Posted 27 January 2011 - 09:34 PM

I actually asked Shaw today to activate the bandwidth monitor for my account. I was told that it is only activated if/when I go over my monthly limit.

Basically they don't want someone who goes over a couple of times to be able to argue that their usage is considerably less than their monthly allotment many other months of the year.

ISP's really do this because services like Netflix pose a major risk to their TV and media services, including their own Video on Demand rental services provided through cable boxes.

I can only hope that services such as Netflix sue the ISPs for being anti competitive.

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#4 YOYO

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Posted 27 January 2011 - 09:34 PM

http://www.dslreport...mbitions-108276

#5 YOYO

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Posted 27 January 2011 - 09:36 PM

I can only hope that services such as Netflix sue the ISPs for being anti competitive.


I agree.

#6 gumgum

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Posted 27 January 2011 - 09:37 PM

I have netflix and have been with shaw for years. I will be switching to Telus if I get dinged.

#7 sebberry

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Posted 27 January 2011 - 09:41 PM

I have netflix and have been with shaw for years. I will be switching to Telus if I get dinged.


Telus will also be implementing UBB.

What you can do is call Shaw and ask what your usage has been for the last few months to give you an idea of ho wmuch bandwidth your Netflix has been consuming.

I would request that they add the bandwidth monitor to your account management page at secure.shaw.ca so you can check it yourself to see where you stand.

If they refuse to add it, just tell them that with no way to track your usage yourself you will move to Telus should you get a warning letter from them.

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#8 YOYO

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Posted 27 January 2011 - 09:42 PM

I have netflix and have been with shaw for years. I will be switching to Telus if I get dinged.


Beat me to it Sebberry

#9 spanky123

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Posted 27 January 2011 - 09:45 PM

Both Shaw and Telus have had usage caps and fee surcharges for years. The only difference now is that they say they are going to start applying the fees.

#10 sebberry

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Posted 27 January 2011 - 09:46 PM

There are some threads dealing with this at the forum at digitalhome.ca, including specific threads for Shaw and Telus related discussions.

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#11 sebberry

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Posted 27 January 2011 - 09:48 PM

Both Shaw and Telus have had usage caps and fee surcharges for years. The only difference now is that they say they are going to start applying the fees.


They've been very loosely enforced. I know people who regularly go over their limits by two or three times.


I don't blame them. If my best offerings were $5 movie rentals through the cable box, I'd be worried about Netflix too :rolleyes:

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#12 sebberry

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Posted 28 January 2011 - 10:38 AM

I had Netflix as a 30 day trial. I cancelled it because the movies I watched on it were in 2 channel stereo.

Thanks to UBB, we'll likely see no improvement in picture and sound quality from Netflix, and I wouldn't be surprised if they further compress their video in order to use less bandwidth.

Since I am using only a quarter of my monthly bandwidth, I am considering speaking with my money and dropping my Shaw service from Extreme to regular high-speed.

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#13 LJ

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Posted 28 January 2011 - 07:11 PM

Until this UBB thing came along I didn't even know that there were limits. I still don't know what mine is. I thought the high speed, extreme, lite etc. were just descriptions of the speed of the connection.

I've never been charged any extra fees and I download lots of TV programming etc.
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#14 G-Man

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Posted 28 January 2011 - 08:20 PM

Will be asking for the bandwidth monitoring to my account as well.

#15 VicHockeyFan

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Posted 28 January 2011 - 08:36 PM

At the risk of sounding like a Killjoy, why would you expect ISPs to be "all-you-can-eat"? No other business works that way. What is wrong with paying for what you get?
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#16 sebberry

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Posted 28 January 2011 - 08:56 PM

At the risk of sounding like a Killjoy, why would you expect ISPs to be "all-you-can-eat"? No other business works that way. What is wrong with paying for what you get?


I've been paying ~$50/mo for my internet for years now. That $50 includes 100GB of data transfer, amongst other things.

If I go over my 100GB for two months, they charge me by the GB. Their "per GB" rate is significantly more than it costs to deliver that data to me.

Now, my usage averages ~10GB per month. I'd love to pay based on what I used, but something tells me that I won't be getting my internet for $10/mo...


Another way to look at it is this:

If I am allocated 100GB per month data transfer, that's 1200GB per year. If I was a heavy Netflix user, it is reasonable to assume that I would be using it more during the winter (staying in more, watching more movies, etc..).

So, let's say for a few months in the winter they ding me for my extra usage, but since I consume less data in the summer months, my yearly data usage is less than my allotment of 1200GB.

So, I end up paying more even though my average data consumption is less than what I am entitled to for the year.


And why is it that internet hosting companies can offer hosting services that include 200-300GB of monthly traffic (consumed by visitors to your website) for little more than $10/mo?

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#17 http

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Posted 28 January 2011 - 10:21 PM

At the risk of sounding like a Killjoy, why would you expect ISPs to be "all-you-can-eat"? No other business works that way. What is wrong with paying for what you get?


Not at all killjoy, it's a fair question. I do some volunteering at Victoria Free-Net and can give you a semi-technical, semi-philisophical outline of the issues.

Tracking the number of bytes a customer uses over time is, in general, inane. The cost to run a network does not significantly change when the amount of traffic running through it changes.

We have several dial-up phone lines coming in (really, telephone modems!). We also have a rather fat network pipe to the outside world that is in no danger of being used to full capacity. If every phone line on every PRI was in use simultaneously, at maximum bandwidth, we could not reliably measure the change in our power consumption. Our equipment would not wear out any faster. Our upstream provider's power consumption wouldn't change in any measureable way, and, you guessed right, their equipment wouldn't be wearing out any faster. Nobody could tell if they sent zero bytes, either.

From an operational point of view, we don't give a rat's ass how many bytes customers send back and forth. We do care about how many phone lines are in use (I stopped breathing for a bit the first time I saw the bill for our PRIs), and how long, which is why we bill dial-up customers by the length of time connected, not the number of bytes used.

Now, some ISPs oversubscribe their customers. This is when the connection from the ISP to the outside world is not large enough to handle all customers using their advertised bandwidth at the same time. If all of them do try using full capacity for extended periods, nobody gets that maximum. The only thing an ISP can do to fix this is either (i) buy a bigger pipe, or (ii) reduce the number of users using full capacity by any means possible - and somehow, billing people for something tends to deter them from it. Mind you, that's not exactly a fix.

From an ISPs point of view, billing by the byte only makes sense if your bandwidth is limited and you are unwilling to upgrade your infrastructure. The equipment to keep track of who is sending/receiving how many bytes, and when (and locking them down if they go over some arbitrary limit) is not cheap. Companies that make that accounting and interference eqipment train their sales agents to not mention that a bigger pipe solves the problem outright.

For an overview of how, at higher levels there are business agreements to prevent charging by the byte, see this fine overview at arstechnica. The opening is rather compelling:

In 2005, AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre famously told BusinessWeek, "What they [Google, Vonage, and others] would like to do is to use my pipes free. But I ain't going to let them do that…Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?"

The story of how the Internet is structured economically is not so much a story about net neutrality, but rather it's a story about how ISPs actually do use AT&T's pipes for free, and about why AT&T actually wants them to do so.

I'm not a policy wonk, just a technician. Take with as many grains of salt as you feel is safe.
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#18 sebberry

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Posted 28 January 2011 - 10:28 PM

Geez.. VFN is still around? I remember being a member 13, 14 years ago?

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#19 Phil McAvity

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Posted 31 January 2011 - 10:22 AM

At the risk of sounding like a Killjoy, why would you expect ISPs to be "all-you-can-eat"? No other business works that way. What is wrong with paying for what you get?


That's exactly how local residential phone service works and has worked for as long as I can remember. :confused:
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#20 G-Man

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Posted 31 January 2011 - 10:45 AM

^Good point.

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