[neilk]

Thank you.

I'm Canadian but I have been out of the country for a longish time now. The whole debate made no sense to me.

Yeah it sucks to be charged per byte, but surely Bell has the right to charge however they like. In the linked article, The Tyee's conspiracy theory that they wanted to force people back to television seemed inane.

But if it's about imposing a user-based rate structure on Bell's competitors that use them as a bandwidth provider, that makes perfect sense.

[MikeCapone]

> but surely Bell has the right to charge however they like. In the linked article, The Tyee's conspiracy theory that they wanted to force people back to television seemed inane.

Bell infrastructure (phone lines) is basically a regulated monopoly the same way that a water utility is. They certainly shouldn't have the right to charge whatever they like and crush competition as they please, making things worse for everybody except themselves.

There was this quote in the Globe & Mail today (national paper):

"download caps in Canada have become so low that they are beginning to look less like traffic management measures and more like a defensive manoeuvre, by which companies such as Bell, Rogers and Shaw try to protect profits at their TV distribution and broadcasting units."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/int...

[nkassis]

My bandwidth cap is almost the same now on Bell as it was when I first got a cable modem back in 2000 on Videotron. It's ridiculous. 25GB is a joke.

[neilk]

Well, I left Canada in 2000... before Harper et al. Forgive me for being behind the times.

And when I said Bell has the right to charge whatever, I was making a distinction between their consumer packages and their wholesale rates, both of which are regulated but obviously the wholesale rate should be as close to the actual cost of bandwidth as possible.