Internet services marked up 6,000%

[Sky_2000]

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technol...037/story.html

Last June, Bell customer Wanda Rooney was billed $47,000 for one week's worth of Internet service because she used her cellular phone as a modem. Hackers broke into Amber Hunter's Videotron account and she was charged more than $1,000 for months of exceeding her monthly Internet cap.

While those cases are exceptional, Canadians in general have been complaining about the high cost of Internet services for years.

A report published at the end of March by Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in Internet and e-commerce, shows Internet services are marked up a staggering 6,000 per cent and rising.

It costs ISPs only about a penny to deliver a gigabyte of data over a high-speed Internet line, and it costs another seven cents a month to provide and maintain the physical infrastructure on a DSL telephone line for a residential customer, according to Geist's calculations. Since neither Bell nor Videotron has ever made such numbers public, Geist said the cost of about eight cents roughly includes what it costs to build and maintain the network, but may not include all costs.

While telecommunications companies claim high traffic on their networks costs them money, experts disagree.

"The expensive portion is the wires, and the equipment that drives the wires," said Adrian Byram, the chief technology officer of ISP Radiant Communications, which pays to use the infrastructure of the large ISPs. "They're charging an enormous amount of money (for data), and everybody who knows anything in the industry knows that's completely made up."

A recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed Canadians pay among the highest prices for highspeed Internet in the world at $11.85 per megabit per second, behind only Sweden, Luxembourg, Turkey, Poland and Mexico. In Britain, which has the second-lowest rates in the OECD survey, telecom company O2 advertises on its website a charge of $21.06 Cdn, for Internet service of up to 20 megabits per second with a limit of 20 gigabytes of data per month. Bell charges $62.95 for a 16-megabit-per-section speed, and Videotron's 15-megabit service costs $65.95 a month.

Isabelle Dessureault, vice-president of corporate affairs for Videotron, said Canada's vast territory and lack of large urban centres results in a higher cost to install infrastructure here. She said Videotron must constantly re-invest profits to bolster the network.

Agustin Diaz-Pines, an OECD telecommunication economist and policy analyst, said he believes the main reason for high prices is the lack of competition in Canada.



Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/busines...#ixzz1IgZIbJCo

[dangonay]

$11.85 per megabit/second average in Canada? Really?

I pay $1.50 per megabit/second with Shaw. I pay closer to $2.00 with Telus. Even their two extreme examples, Bell and Videotron are around $3.93 and $4.66 each.

How the hell do they come up $11.85 as an average?
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[silva95teg]

Originally Posted by dangonay

$11.85 per megabit/second average in Canada? Really?

I pay $1.50 per megabit/second with Shaw. I pay closer to $2.00 with Telus. Even their two extreme examples, Bell and Videotron are around $3.93 and $4.66 each.

How the hell do they come up $11.85 as an average?
Posted via RS Mobile

They probable factor in the lite speed customers, the ones that pay like 20 bucks for 256 or 512 whatever it is.

[dangonay]

^ Even so, there are huge flaws with their numbers. For example, Shaw says my plan is for 15mb/s yet I routinely get 20-25 mb/s. Telus I get a consistent 16-17mb/s even though they say 10-15.



I don't know what Telus or Shaw Lite customers get as I don't know anyone using those plans. Even so, if Shaw has 10 times as many users using High Speed vs Lite, then that should be factored into their price. And I bet they used the listed minimum speeds for the plans instead of actual speeds.

Another problem is whoever did these calculations probably used average instead of median, which would be far more representative of what Canadians pay.

[ShadowBun]

wtf we got the high speed from shaw and all im getting is 3mb/s... 5 at good times

[silva95teg]

I agree with you, you get higher numbers than you pay for on shaw because of the speedboost afaik. However on telus you should never see over the 15 unless something is wrong with your qos/ profile.
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[dangonay]

^ Checked my Telus and it's around 14mb/s right now.

However, I know for a fact I had several tests that were from 16-17 when I first got it installed as I was doing a lot of comparisons between Shaw and Telus so I could set up my dual WAN router. So something could have changed since then.

[pokchop]

@ my house i pay for 15mbps connections but the speed really varies, sometimes i see the connection drop as low as 5mbps sometimes it gets to 29mbps, i think it really depends on if a lot of people are using the internet in your area at that time or not...
but kinda shitty we only get 1mbps upload only, people in HK probably pay same price get like 80mbps down/upload... lol... i want to stream with my SC2, but quality is just too shitty with 1mbps upload...

[tiger_handheld]

guys running speedtest using shaw might get skewed results, because shaw uses speedboost for the 10-15seconds...

[snowball]

My telus got 15 Mbps when i first started, now that my trial period is over I'm getting 3.5 Mbps @ 37 dollars a month.