bakedjake - 4:13 pm on Feb 1, 2011 (gmt 0)

Here in Ontario, we have two choices. Bell, or Rogers.

Not true. I have Cogeco at home. 50M down/2M up with no cap. I have Atria at work. 10M down/10M up with no cap.

UBB is fine with me. Maybe it will encourage some competition in last mile, especially considering the low price of LTE equipment. We'll never see competition in last mile if the government mandates that you must only charge X.

People seem to think that cheap, unlimited internet that allows you to pirate all the software you want and steal all the TV you'd like is a basic human right with no regard to the cost of infrastructure.

I'd love to fly first class for the price of economy, too.

For Ecommerce that's an illegal tackle from behind.

This won't affect e-commerce one bit, unless you're in the streaming video business.

It's about forcing, through legislation, private companies to charge for useage. It's now against the law in Canada to offer flat rate plans for many providers.

You're distorting the legislation. The deal is that Bell wants to impose usage based billing on their wholesale customers (read: folks that compete with Bell by using Bell's network).

CRTC said "sure, you can do that, but you must utilize the same pricing scheme on your retail customers so that you don't get an unfair advantage".

Bell said "ok".

Bell is changing their pricing for their customers (both wholesale and retail). They shouldn't be allowed to do that?

That's a ridiculous position to take.

I'm on a flat rate plan myself, dealing with a private company for access. It's insane that the government wouldn't let me and that company continue our agreement that's working profitably for both of us.

That private company utilizes last mile infrastructure that they don't own and didn't put a dime into building. Let's not forget that.

The government created this mess in the first place, by mandating that last mile providers had to open their infrastructure to third parties.

If they hadn't done that in the first place, we'd have more last mile providers. True competition for last mile is what we really need.