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

[Liam R E Quin]

On Wed, 2011-02-16 at 17:05 -0500, Matt Sergeant wrote:
> Liam R E Quin wrote:

[...]

Matt, good to hear from you.

> > I do take the point that the charges are too high, but that's separate
> > from charging based on usage. Bandwidth*is*  a limited resource: any
> > given router has a maximum capacity, any given connection has a maximum
> > throughput at any given time.
> There are three basic problems with the model of UBB as has been 
> presented to the CRTC, all of them based on a pyramid of lies and 
> deceptions:
> 
> 1) The cost of $2/G. This is ridiculous and outlandish.

No argument from me there.

> I'm actually pro usage 
> based billing, if the price reflects the cost more accurately and is 
> reduced as the cost reduces over time.
+1

> If they want to give people unlimited bandwidth on their 
> pipes don't you think they should be able to?

I haven't been able to penetrate the rhetoric on either side to
determine if that's an option or not.

> 3) Bell/Rogers are already making a profit off these third party 
> providers. Unless and until there is COMPLETE disclosure of 
> profits/losses of providing services to external providers it is 
> entirely unreasonable of the CRTC to just take Bell's word for it that 
> these are the costs involved. Full disclosure is absolutely paramount.

You don't generally get full disclosure of costs/profits, not least
because total accounting isn't straightforward. I could go for, "clear
disclosure" though.

> 
> The whole thing really stinks of protection of their TV services in 
> light of people using the internet more for video, rather than true 
> costs of doing business.

Well, that part makes sense to me.

It's sometimes hard to have sympathy for people complaining about "tiny"
bandwidth caps and limits massively higher than anything available here,
for significantly less money... it all sounds a bit irrelevant, but
maybe when I find my server hosting bill going up I'll suddenly wish I'd
been more active :-)  Things like peer-to-peer connections are rate
limited out here in the country too, so having a higher monthly cap
wouldn't necessarily mean downloading more pictures of cows or videos of
sheep grazing.  But it would be nice to be able to get a loaf of bread
for a farthing without having to cycle up hill both ways.

Liam


-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/