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Monday, February 14, 2011

CRTC Internet Usage Based Billing - The Saga Continues

The peoples voices have been heard! As I mentioned in my last blog on this topic the CRTC is now reviewing their decision. I am sure they there will be some sort of UBB in the end, but how it works out is going to be interesting.

Some the Larger ISP's have already had UBB in place for some time now, having a CAP on your internet connection was something never heard of before here in Newfoundland before Rogers communications came to town, and they implemented  monthly caps on their residential users.  This is why I always stuck with Bell Aliant for my ISP, they never once, and have yet to implement UBB, but Bell Canada does have UBB it just hasn't worked its way down into our neck of the woods yet.

I have had many people ask me how will this affect them if it does get implemented. Well it comes down to how much you use your internet service, and it will work out to be the same as getting a monthly electric bill.  It may curb some of the "network congestion" they are talking about, but I doubt it.

I have a small problem with implementing CAPS on internet services, as from what I am able to tell this new act would only apply to residential customers, and not commercial accounts. Which hardly seems fair, since it will be the residential customer who is going to be accessing commercial services via the web.

With websites delivering more and more rich content with both audio and video streaming content, your monthly allotment won't be long disappearing, and the monthly internet bill will be getting that much higher.  I can see people who use the internet, using less services and demanding more low band content.  When netflix advertises only $8 a month for unlimited movies and TV shows, I think you will think twice about watching a movie or two a day from this service.

I did  24 hour test last week, to see how much bandwidth I myself would use during this time.  I downloaded a small program called NetStat Live, which tracked my incoming out and outgoing traffic.  Now during that 24 hours, I spent 8 hours sleeping, and 8 hours sleeping, so my computer never got that much use, but between a some emails, time on facebook, surfing, and a some quick downloads, I managed to rack-up a surprising 954 Mega Bytes of data.  That is almost 1GB in less that 24 hours with maybe 4-5 hours of use during that time.  Now this did not include the time I spent playing online with my xbox, nor did it include the episode of top gear that I had watched that evening on Netflix.

So Keeping that the average person does about 1.5GB (allotment for the xbox and netflix) of data each day, and the CRTC would like to see a starting CAP of 25GB on a residential account, that is guaranteeing the ISP's extra income each and every month, considering February  only has 28 days, you can expect to be over your monthly limit each and every month, by a substantial amount.

I hope for the all residential users, and all the promotion into doing things online, that this CRTC act stays right where its too now, under review for the trash.

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