Bell Tries to Punch the Internet in the Face, Again
Received a letter from the CEO of my ISP, Teksavvy. It states:
Bell has been directed by the CRTC to provide matching speeds which would allow us all to have more flexibility in our day to day online requirements. Instead of adhering to these directives, Bell decided to take this issue to the federal Cabinet and at the same time file a tariff application with the CRTC proposing to introduce Usage Based Billing (UBB) on its wholesale customer accounts.
[…]
If Bell were to be allowed to introduce UBB on this service, a cap of 60GB would be imposed on all of its users, with very heavy penalties per Gigabyte afterwards (multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on
overages). This would inherently all but remove Unlimited internet services in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs from month to month.
This is a total disaster, like most of Bell’s policies with regard to internet access lately. Anyway, he (Rocky Gaudrault) gives details about how to protest:
If you’d like to make your comments/concerns known about what Bell is
attempting to do, please do so here
Select the word “Tariff” from the drop down list.
Add the following in Subject Line “File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 – Bell Canada – TN 7181” and make your thoughts known!
This is what I wrote by way of complaint:
Please, do not allow Bell to apply UBB to wholesale accounts. I switched to Teksavvy precisely to avoid Bell’s backwards policies. We should not allow our internet service to get worse with time as every other technological measure gets better. The only reasons for it are the Bell / Rogers duopoly on internet service and their related failure to build infrastructure for the (totally predictable) growth of internet video; real competition must be allowed or we will fall even further behind other countries. Please ensure that Bell cannot force regressive billing practices upon wholesalers like my ISP. Instead, force them to invest in their infrastructure so we need not see bandwidth as a scarce resource.
The deadline is midnight tonight, so if you care about this, please submit a message.