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[Lumbajak]

Yeah, I heard that the whole thing has been officially veto'd.

And while I haven't read up on an official source saying it was, I'm rather hopeful that it's already behind us.

[Neonivek]

Yeah, I heard that the whole thing has been officially veto'd.

And while I haven't read up on an official source saying it was, I'm rather hopeful that it's already behind us.

Not even reworked? Some things in that bill worked and needed to be made.

[The Doctor]

I heard the Gub'ment told the CRTC to take it back and re-work it, they had till June. If they didn't work it over, it'd be thrown out.

[Tilla]

I've sent off my opposition to the Usage Based Billing to the CRTC comment line. It went thusly:

I will attempt to keep my comments on this matter short, sweet, and to the point.

1. It is impossible for these smaller companies to b uild their own infrastructure (unwanted redundancy, cost threshold, city bylaws, etc), thusly giving larger established ISPs a defacto monopoly on the last mile internet infrastructure - a monopoly granted by the federal government no less.

2. To distinguish themselves from the larger telecom companies (Bell, Rogers, et al), the smaller companies attempt to offer good prices on unlimited internet packages unavailable to the residential user, as well as more personal customer service.

3. This new billing system forces these smaller companies to remove their major defining difference from Bell - why go to a company like TekSavvy anymore when the pricing will be essentially the same.

4. Bandwidth has little inherent price - the estimate provided from informed specialists is roughly three cents per Gigabyte. This is in sharp contrast to the almost unbelievable charges levied by Bell at 2 dollars and most shockingly, Rogers with their 5 dollar gigabyte plan. This kind of gouging is anti-consumer and unfairly punishes users who are more knowledgeable and active in the digital frontier.

5. The only data Chairman von Finckenstein was able to provide was that provided by Bell - was no independent research conducted on this matter? I find the claims made highly suspect and believe that a wider range of data needs to be analyzed, including that of countries where no such Billing system is implemented as well as statistics from TekSavvy. Most suspicious of the claims of Bell are the small numbers of their average bandwidth use and their claim that there is any congestion of the system.

6. Services like Netflix and Steam use far, far more data than would be economical - thusly, such a billing scheme may kill the tech industry in Canada! A video game from Steam or the Playstation Network can be well over 20 Gigabytes, or $40 extra charge by Bell's current pricing scheme. This is frankly unacceptable. An HD movie over netflix is over 1 GB per hour, meaning that it is no longer economical to stream multiple movies in a week. People will go to offline services rather than pay ludicrous charges, and no one will be to blame but the CRTC for letting this ludicrous scam of Bell's through.

[xl 4ndre lx]

Well this topic is definitly not forgotten.  I just recieved a notice from my internet provider-xplornet- stating as of september 1st i will be capped at 20gb per month.  Overage charges will cost $3.5 per gb. What a joke.

[Grakelin]

That's got nothing to do with the bill. Our ISPs have been spying on our activity for years. I've received cryptic e-mails from them, too.

[Dwarf]

Oh wow, surprise activity in my old thread. :3

[DJ]

I just recieved a notice from my internet provider-xplornet- stating as of september 1st i will be capped at 20gb per month.  Overage charges will cost $3.5 per gb..

That's the exact same cap ADSL has here in Bosnia. Our overage charges are 6€ per gb, though, so you can take comfort in the fact that you're still slightly better than 3rd world countries.

[Dave1004]

I'm canadian, but this doesn't adversely affect me. I don't, and never have, had any kind of mobile phone, and I don't plan on getting one. As long as I'm still allowed to pirate to my heart's content, I love canada.

Anybody want 2.67 tetrabytes of anime, movies, games and TV shows? E-books, too.

[Grakelin]

You're not allowed to pirate to your heart's content just because you are able to.

I don't think anybody should accept any files from you. You are either some sort of incredibly opaque undercover cop, or an extremely ignorant pirate. Both of them are unwise to spend time trading material with.

[Makbeth]

Also, I look forward to getting nostalgic about when the internet was free and wild 40 years from now.

Back in my day the internet wasn't a safe place! People trying to take your credit card details, and selling you drugs to make your danglys stiff! But there was always the bay12 forums, where everybody knew your avatar...

Oh, 2006 wasn't so bad.  At least you could feel safe going to IGN or Something Awful without an ad blocker to keep you from getting infected with keyloggers through banner ads.

I bought UT2004 that year and downloaded hundreds of mods, maps, and other files for it from a variety of sites without a second thought, and it was pretty safe to do so.  I would never do that today.

[Dwarf]

The real difficulty there is defining tetrabyte.