[tpm] Usage Based Billing - What you should know..

[Abram Hindle]

On 11-02-01 10:43 AM, arocker at Vex.Net wrote:
>> The last mile monopoly in Canada is certainly a problem.  However, the
>> idea of usage billing is not a bad one.  It works for water, electricity
>> and natural gas.

In this section I argue that I have been using usage billing in the past
and now I am being ripped off:

With TekSavvy I have been using usage based billing for a long time. I
had a 200GB cap. To get that same cap it would cost me $20 extra now.
Why should I accept this? I didn't have unlimited before I had 200gb.
Now I have 25gb. How is that fair. When did the cost of bandwidth
suddenly change so harshly to deserve a markup of multiple orders of
magnitude?

Let me be perfectly clear, I am getting LESS now than before. I was
limited before and now I've been limited multiple orders of magnitude or
forced to pay much more to not even reach pre-UBB allowance.

So please accept the fact that many of us were paying usage based
billing. If I went over, I paid.

In this section I argue about the statistical distributions of usage and
how "power-users" are a fundamental part of the customer base and ISPs
know this:

As well, the distribution of use of this kind of service will always be
powerlaw-like. That means it is scale free. That means no matter how
many of the power users you remove, you will still have power users and
the distribution will look same except the maximum will be different.
The distribution looks the same at all scales. Thus it is disingenuous
to argue that a few bad apples ruin it for everyone else. Everyone else
wasn't using that much anyways and the ISPs knew it.

In this section I illustrate where the Rogers bandwidth is likely going:

BTW I heard a rumour that the Rogers DVR boxes use 4TB a month if you
leave it on 24/7. 5040hrs, it depends on the bitrate.

Regardless, even at 3 hrs a day that's still 500GB/mo. Do they charge
you usage based billing for television programming? At least Rogers has
the bandwidth and capacity, they've just dedicated it to a dying medium.

In this section I show how you have no power but Bell and Rogers get to
visit the minister of industry (ask yourself, when is the last time a
citizens group concerned with issues like this met with the minister of
industry):

http://lobbywatcher.ca/lobby.php?minfull=Clement,Tony&sortorder=date_sub

http://pastebin.com/nDticBw9

It's not just the fault of the CRTC the current government is completely
complicit (and are responsible for the CRTC).

abram

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 262 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/toronto-pm/attachments/20110201/299aae02/attachment.bin>