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Kirby

No Free Internet for You, Canada

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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/canada-gets-first-bitter-dose-of-metered-internet-billing.ars

That just sucks a royal nut right there. They cut the data cap down by over 80% which means anyone not being careful can get charged out the ass for going over the limit. Yes, you can buy "insurance" which will provide you with an extra 40GB, but how does that even factor in for those who need to stream data constantly, more than likely going well over the cap + the insurance?

Oh Internet, how I wish you will stay free

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YES! Thank God my bank fucked up my billing and I had to call the Bell service center. I had never realized how much the they were going to penalize me for over use, which is often.

I watch a lot of online streaming, so I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'll just have to cut back, I guess.

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Technician said:

I watch a lot of online streaming, so I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'll just have to cut back, I guess.

Leech wifi off your neighbors?

Seriously though, this really sucks. I used to think the data cap for Comcast here in the States was bad, but 25GB/month? That's insane.

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I can't do anything. Online gaming, videos, fuck, even porn. 25GBs is nothing.

They've made the internet like one of those old phone sex chats &2.50 a minute deals. The internet is my only source of entertainment at home. I don't have a tv.

With the new HST and this shit, we need to riot the streets of Toronto. We're getting fucked hard.

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I wonder if this will effect Eastlink; which is my ISP. It sounds awful, but if this is implemented it could help kick my internet addiction.

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chopkinsca said:

I wonder if this will effect Eastlink; which is my ISP. It sounds awful, but if this is implemented it could help kick my internet addiction.

YES, YES IT WILL! It's all being monitored by Bell.

And I too am an addict. This may help me approach more productive hobbies.

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My ex-gf had a 40gb cap with Telus even despite going over that cap, they didnt charge anything extra than the regular bill. Or even have a phonecall for it, we went over probobly.. 20-30 gigs a month.

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The fine was minimal, but with this new plan you have to buy net insurance. They now charge everyone for every gig over the limit.

In Canada they have you by the balls.

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Too many people would be/are outraged over it. I'm pretty sure there is SOME kind of action we could take against it, im thinking a petition would do fuck all but is there some kind of possibility at all? I mean c'mon, why dont they just give us the 'Driving-per-mile' tax while they're at it.

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Radon said:

I mean c'mon, why dont they just give us the 'Driving-per-mile' tax while they're at it.

You mean like an emissions tax or that extra tax they charge us for tires?

We're getting fucked. We're just not used to banning stuff in protest. Especially not with todays iGuimicks and Cell phones. They know that the internet is an untaped vault of money. It has become essential for todays business.

When cigarettes skyrocketed in price. All everyone had to do was ban cigarettes for a week. They would have sunked the government right there on provincial tax. Or if in Toronto, stopped driving for a week. My God, the money that would be lost. The power is in our hands, it's just no one will want to put forth the effort or take the sacrifice. I know I sure don't.

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Data caps are a way of life over in NZ(Oz as well). I had cable internet (25mbps) with a cap of 25Gb. $2.95 per gigabyte when I went over. I'd rather pay the extra fee than to have my service slowed down. But if you werent lucky enough to be in one of the city centres, you'd have 'fast as your line could go' adsl and pay through the teeth for a cap higher than 5gb-10gb.

The fact the US and other places are only now starting to put these caps on astounds me. How was it economical to do in the first place?

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Either way this is unjust and bullshit. It is funny to see the French get fucked over more LOL!

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Radon said:

Either way this is unjust and bullshit. It is funny to see the French get fucked over more LOL!

Give them something real to bitch about.

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Guarantee'd Stephan Dion, will come outta the shadows and demand another apology for something irrelevant *cough* 2006 elections

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r. Competitive ISPs, which connect to Canada's top telco for last-mile copper connections to customers, will also be metered by Bell

lkjdshfa;slkdjfa;lsdkfads WAT

Imagine if Level 3 suddenly said "hey, you're going to have to pay us and we monitor your usage" do you think that would fly in the US?



Probably, damn. ;_;

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In the west we have Shaw for cable and Telus for ADSL. Techies are switching back to Telus in droves because they still don't do metering. This might be an incentive for them to finish rolling out fibre.

My plan with Shaw has always been for 100 GB. They now advertise the speed as 15 Mbps, but it consistently manages 20. It's not bad, but we go way over the limit all the time. The last few months I think we've managed 250 GB. They called me once about our usage a couple years ago. It was 153 GB that month. They never called me since despite their bills always showing us over and recommending we upgrade. Weird practice.

Have my brother looking into the cost of switching us back to Telus (because he does nothing but play CoD these days and has time).

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What? What the hell is with all this bandwidth cap crap? Is this actually how ISPs work in most other places? That's psychotic.

Huh, maybe being in Texas has an advantage after all. >_<

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For residents of Saskatchewan, SaskTel have announced they do NOT intend to charge UBB.

Yay. 5mbps for $5 a month and truly unlimited bandwidth is still the best deal around.

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We're paying about $55 for 100 gigs and the speed is 15/1 Mbps, which is bullshit. Even Telus can do better on upload than 1 Mbps.

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Xaser said:

What? What the hell is with all this bandwidth cap crap? Is this actually how ISPs work in most other places? That's psychotic.


In general only ADSM (3G/GPRS/ wireless) providers put such a hard limit on their bandwidth (typically 5GB a month for "economic" contracts and an actual limit of 1 GB/day for "unlimited" ones, but there are contracts with far less). At least land-based providers haven't put forth such a clause here yet (Greece), but virtually ALL of them have a clause that says that they can throttle your speed/temporarily cut you/kick you out if you "improperly" use network resources in any way. I guess streaming shit 24/7 or trying to use a home contract as a HTTP/FTP/Internet radio server classifies as "improper use".

From experience, I know that 5 GB/month are OK-ish for daily internet fucking around, including watching some youtube videos. I once had to make do with such a limit for several months (army job...), and I always kept NetMeter activated and actually set the alarm at a conservative 4.2 GB/ month. That translated into an average of 150 MB/day. Since I didn't actually surf that much EVERY day, I could go "over quota" several times, and sometimes I even made an effort to eat up some bandwidth with P2P.

But then again that was in 2008, when HD video wasn't ubiquitous. Also, I had made a habit of storing any youtube videos I liked offline and avoid re-streaming if it could be avoided.

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UK here. Mine was at 50GB, but I wasn't using anything like that so dropped down to a cheaper package that was 25GB. But then I got an email last May saying they were doubling the allowance of all their packages, so I got bumped back up to 50GB again, heh.

According to my usage history, I've never gone over 15GB. I stream lots of TV shows and music and play a shitload of Minecraft, so the only way I can see people going over 25GB a month is if they're torrenting half the internet.

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Gee, that's brought you down to Australia levels. :( Well, at least we don't have the speed (in Perth anyway) to burn through that much data so quickly.

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Technician said:

It has become essential for todays business.

And in many cases, not just business, but normal life. A lot of things that used to be done by letters or by going to an office is now becoming exclusively done by the web. Or, if not exclusively, there are big incentives to do it by the web rather than through the traditional avenues.

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Then whats with all these ad's i see in the new yorker (magazine) and the like about how doing business in canada is better due to the solid banking system, low crime rate, all these diverse cultural aspect's ect? i know its more than likely to do with the isp's, but someone somewhere had to up the antie with something for them to do this. it's usually a domino effect caused by something else.

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DooMAD said:

According to my usage history, I've never gone over 15GB. I stream lots of TV shows and music and play a shitload of Minecraft, so the only way I can see people going over 25GB a month is if they're torrenting half the internet.

It's what half of us on here do :P What I'd hate to imagine is having that cap while I try to get Steam to reinstall my missing games since my old hard drve crashed this past summer. 6 - 8 games with each between 5 and 10 gigs each? Not to mention that just downloading one of them already uses almost a third of the 25GB cap. It's like they want you to stop having fun on the internet :(

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The best part of this article is where it says they're charging Quebec almost double. They must really hate those Frenchies.

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