The IT Nerd

It’s a sad day in Canada. The CRTC has condemned DSL users in Canada to being screwed by Bell Canada by approving usage based billing to ISPs that resell Bell Canada DSL service. The CBC does report that there is a catch:

The regulator attached a key caveat to the approval, however, in that Bell must apply usage-based billing to all of its retail customers before it can implement the scheme with its wholesale internet service providers.

Bell will therefore need to move any customers it has on unlimited downloading services onto new usage-based plans before it can apply the same scheme on a wholesale basis.

This is a useless condition. Bell has moved it’s high speed Internet users to usage based billing schemes ages ago. So the fact that this is in the decision means nothing.

All that this decision does is reduce competition by making independent ISPs just like Bell, but without Bell’s revenue structure. The net result is that they’ll be run out of business. Thus limiting choice for Canadian Consumers. That’s not a shock given that the CRTC is founded and consists of members of the telecom industry. The only way for crap like this from happening is to ditch the CRTC, which is something that I’ve written about previously.

Until that happens, it’s time to for Canadians to send their MP an e-mail telling them to fight this rather craptastic decision.

This entry was posted on May 6, 2010 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Bell, CRTC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.