Zombie James
Banned
firehawk12 said:
I just love how Bell is flat-out destroying their own chances of selling UBB to people. Makes me smile.
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Usage Based Billing approved, Canadian govt shoots it down, more developments to come
- Thread starter Anony
- Start date
I just love how Bell is flat-out destroying their own chances of selling UBB to people. Makes me smile.
Bell commercial posted in the responses.Zombie James said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArpmbnxIQIQ
It's very annoying seeing the government sluff this issue and hoping it just disappears under the bed. Even with this thread it's hard to keep issues at hand well... 'at hand' when there's nothing but delays and no real news to report. I will be pretty damn pissed of this turns into one of those 'LETS STAND UP FOR THE PEOPLE OF CANADA AND MAKE A BIG STINK' and then as soon as the spotlight is gone, and the chance to score political points declines then nothing has been done to fix the issue and it is left broken. Either way if I end up having to get my main internet access through tethering through Wind Mobile to avoid these UBB companies I will.
bloodydrake
Cool Smoke Luke
Shambles said:
Umm didn't you know supreme courts overturned foreign owned telcos in canada? Winds got 4 months to get the fuck out of canada.
bloodydrake said:
Hardly. It doesn't matter how Telus tries to eliminate them as competition, they have a variety of options open to them. Their parent company wasn't bought out because they wanted to shut down operations in Canada. Mobilicity is also a great option for those not in Quebec.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
StevieP said:
It is against the law for foreign corporations to own Canadian telecom companies. In theory, this was a protection put into place to prevent huge American corporations from taking us over. In practice, protection from foreign corporations means strengthening our domestic mega-corps.
bloodydrake
Cool Smoke Luke
StevieP said:
Basically its law in Canada that only Canadian company's may offer service... this protects companies like Bell and Shaw.
Conservatives overturned it and let wind in...Federal Courts ruled conservatives didn't have legal right to do this so Winds screwed..and we're screwed too.
Heres one link theres other reports in news..basically this came out during the UBB week and was completely overshadowed.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/WIND-May-Again-Be-Not-Canadian-Enough-To-Compete-112614
WIND May Again Be Not Canadian Enough To Compete
Court Ruling Again Threatens New Competitor
by Karl Bode Tuesday 08-Feb-2011 tags: legal · competition · business · wireless · alternatives · Op/Ed · legislation · world · consumers · Bell Sympatico · wireless · TekSavvy DSL
Back in 2009 you might recall that a new Canadian wireless company named WIND Mobile had initial efforts to enter the Canadian market blocked by the CRTC -- who argued that the company technically wasn't Canadian enough. Specifically, the CRTC argued that because WIND was 60% funded by 61% owned by Orascom, a telecom company that does ample business in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and South Asia -- they couldn't do business in Canada. However, the Canadian government ultimately over-ruled the CRTC and allowed WIND to do business and bring a new layer of wireless competition to Canada.
Now WIND's business is threatened once again with a Canadian Federal Court decision declaring that the government made "errors of law" in overturning the CRTC's ruling. WIND Mobile now has 45 days to either comply, appeal the decision or cease operations. Says WIND of the newfound declaration that they're once again not Canadian enough:
"We are currently examining our options but this is not over yet. We dont intend to back down," Anthony Lacavara, chairman of WIND Mobile, said in a statement. "We are very disappointed with this decision. We wont let this be a setback for wireless competition in Canada and are consulting with our advisers to determine our next steps."
WIND could shuffle their funding around, but they could also push to change the regulations governing foreign investment in Canadas telecommunications networks via new legislation through Parliament. The latter may be a tough sell -- given that just like here in the States, there are plenty of free marketeers who vociferously oppose government involvement in supposed "free markets" -- yet willfully support protectionist government intervention when it comes to protecting incumbents from actual competition. Support of that sort of government "meddling" in markets is quite hypocritical and artificially patriotic, and the results are usually quite apparent (think: airline industry).
Stumpokapow said:
Well that I knew about... and it's true that the law itself is a case of "you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't" (i.e. Time Warner would have a field day, but then... ->) but our current mega-corps are dry-fisting us as is. Some competition on the mobile front have driven prices down over the past year or so.
Zombie James
Banned
Some meeting going on right now, you can follow Open Media's Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/OpenMedia_ca
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
ConvenientBox said:
It is against the law for foreign corporations to own Canadian telecom companies. In theory, this was a protection put into place to prevent huge American corporations from taking us over. In practice, protection from foreign corporations means strengthening our domestic mega-corps.
Wind was owned by an Egyptian company in contravention of the law and a court ruled that this needed to be resolved.
OpinionatedCyborg
Member
It was a few weeks ago, but it was definitely reassuring to hear this from my MP:
bloodydrake
Cool Smoke Luke
it was more hyperbole that they are being kicked out of the countryShambles said:
However it is being forced to change to meet the law or discontinue service, with the way things work in Canada that could go on for years.
My understanding is the Federal ruling basically said its majority ownership is Egyptian not Canadian. Winds solution will probably end up finding a loophole in that to make it Canadian Owned enough to pass the CRTC regulation.
Zombie James
Banned
@openmedia_ca said:
This bodes well, i'm sure.
edit:
@openmedia_ca said:
added_time
Member
I *finally* got my response from Tony Clement to my email about UBB that I sent when the issue first got mainstream attention.
It seems to be a mass email that is sent to anybody who wrote him. I find it slimy that they waited until the election was called to send this email out.
To look at the bright side though - it could also be a good sign that they want to make it an election issue which would force all parties to focus on it.
It seems to be a mass email that is sent to anybody who wrote him. I find it slimy that they waited until the election was called to send this email out.
To look at the bright side though - it could also be a good sign that they want to make it an election issue which would force all parties to focus on it.
SneakyStephan
Banned
Greed makes the world go 'round.
Going back to the 56k days in 2011 , good going.
My country (Belgium)has data caps as well (50GB for me, 20 GB a year ago, 10 GB 2 years ago) ,along with extra costs per 1GB (0.5 euros, last year 1 euro).
Basically we don't have online movie rentals like netflix and DD with steam has barely taken off.
The 2 major ISP's who basically have a monopoly on cable and dsl respectively have agressive blame campaigns to publicly disregard everyone that uses more than their alotted bandwidth (which was 10 GB 2 years ago remember) as a pirate and a 'mass consumer' or people who 'run their own servers' (what?).
Prices are 3x higher here than in our neighbouring country (border is 50 km away from where I live) , where there incidentally is much more competition and therefor also no data caps.
Our only cable provider always boasted 'fastest inet in Belgium and among the fastest in the world' , which is pretty funny because when you downloaded from a server at that speed (30mb/sec) you would cap your bandwidth in 1 hour 24 minutes for your entire month.
Sad to see this kind of crap seep over to canada and other countries too now.
Going back to the 56k days in 2011 , good going.
My country (Belgium)has data caps as well (50GB for me, 20 GB a year ago, 10 GB 2 years ago) ,along with extra costs per 1GB (0.5 euros, last year 1 euro).
Basically we don't have online movie rentals like netflix and DD with steam has barely taken off.
The 2 major ISP's who basically have a monopoly on cable and dsl respectively have agressive blame campaigns to publicly disregard everyone that uses more than their alotted bandwidth (which was 10 GB 2 years ago remember) as a pirate and a 'mass consumer' or people who 'run their own servers' (what?).
Prices are 3x higher here than in our neighbouring country (border is 50 km away from where I live) , where there incidentally is much more competition and therefor also no data caps.
Our only cable provider always boasted 'fastest inet in Belgium and among the fastest in the world' , which is pretty funny because when you downloaded from a server at that speed (30mb/sec) you would cap your bandwidth in 1 hour 24 minutes for your entire month.
Sad to see this kind of crap seep over to canada and other countries too now.
In other related news Rogers has been caught throttling WoW users.
"The ISP recommends "turning off the peer-to-peer setting in the World of Warcraft game and ensuring that no peer-to-peer applications are running on any connected computer.""
I like the side story at the bottom of the article:
"Separately, Rogers just coughed up $275,000 after the CRTC said it had been calling its own prepaid mobile customers without their consent."
"The ISP recommends "turning off the peer-to-peer setting in the World of Warcraft game and ensuring that no peer-to-peer applications are running on any connected computer.""
I like the side story at the bottom of the article:
"Separately, Rogers just coughed up $275,000 after the CRTC said it had been calling its own prepaid mobile customers without their consent."
Zombie James
Banned
Zombie James
Banned
Oh, so what's Bell's doing is that instead of charging users per-GB, they'll be charging ISPs for the total amount of bandwidth their users use. So it's still UBB, just at the wholesale level which still means higher prices for us.
*slow clap*
*slow clap*
added_time
Member
Zombie James said:
That blows if that is what is going to happen. All it does is ensure that we still have to pay more and Bell gets to point the finger at the smaller ISP instead of themselves since they technically don't have to charge the UBB to the end user but will have to since Bell is still charging them by the amount of data.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
Canada Netflix giving more options on Bandwidth usage:
Good on Netflix for trying to adapt to changing conditions and provide options for consumers, but the fact that they should have never had to fucking do it in the first place because of all this UBB nonsense angers me.
How is this new Bell proposal combating any of the issues and criticisms brought up for UBB? It's the same shit wrapped in a different package.
How is this new Bell proposal combating any of the issues and criticisms brought up for UBB? It's the same shit wrapped in a different package.
Stoffinator
Member
Firestorm said:
Is it really? Just seems like they will find another way to do it. Bell and Rogers and not going to give up on this, and our good old government will probably help them in some way.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
It's nice that Netflix is offering this, but they looked pretty crappy in HD even at their best quality, so I don't know what to think of all this.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Just wait, there's going to be "Netflix from Rogers" and if you choose to subscribe to that option, Netflix won't count toward your bandwidth cap.
CAW
Member
So now that Bell has 'backed down' (because of the elections), does that prove that Bell and the Harper government were working together on this? As in, Bell keeps people in the Harper government rich enough that the Harper government wouldn't have actually stepped in to do anything?
CAW said:
Although I'm no fan of Harper and some of his backroom dealings, I don't think you can peg this on any one of the political parties. Honestly, the only party that really gives a shit about stuff like this is the NDP, and we all know how electable the NDP is. I'm not sure the Liberals would do any different in this situation.
added_time
Member
StevieP said:
I agree. I really really dislike the Conservatives but I can't really put the blame on them either. This whole problem seems to be deep-rooted from how closely tied the CRTC is to the big providers.
The best hope is for Canadians to blame all parties for their inaction instead of blaming any party for their actions. (I know NDP is against all of this but I just dont think they have a chance.. although my riding always votes NDP)
http://money.ca.msn.com/investing/news/breaking-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=28167509
How much more is that then what they charge now?
16-Bit Heroics
Neo Member
It's sad to see this day has come already. Second rate service or detrimental service. What a choice!