decx
Premium
join:2002-06-07
Vancouver, BC | Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed Here is Geist latest article in the Star on Canada's continuing drop on net access rankings and poor outlook.
»www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/643388 | |
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Chuck Carlson
@bell.ca | Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed It's sad to see that Canada has slipped lower than India on a price per megabyte rate. If you take throttling into account Canada would be below the chart literally falling off the edge of the world ranking dead last by-light years. | |
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AkFubar
Resistance is Futile
join:2005-02-28
Toronto Can. | Good article...helps us with our cause too. Easy to read for most. Good to see some light cast on these issues in a public forum like the Star.
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"No matter where you go, there you are." - Buckaroo Banzai | |
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El Quintron
Could you spare a consulting gig?
join:2008-04-28
Etobicoke, ON
 ·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Acanac
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed The most telling item that should be brought to the CRTCs attention is the following:
quote:
Canada ranks 28th out of 30 countries, ahead of only Mexico and Poland. This may be the most telling metric, since it confirms that Canadians pay more for less.
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Working to bring you closer to a Bell and Rogers free household. | |
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| | static416
join:2007-01-26
Toronto, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
 ·Rogers Hi-Speed
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by El Quintron  :The most telling item that should be brought to the CRTCs attention is the following: quote:
Canada ranks 28th out of 30 countries, ahead of only Mexico and Poland. This may be the most telling metric, since it confirms that Canadians pay more for less.
But Bell said they NEED the extra money from bandwidth overage charges to upgrade the network. I mean we're not economic powerhouses like Mexico or Poland, we can't expect to have better than third-world level connectivity without overage charges and caps. | |
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R0CKY
TSI Rocky
Premium,VIP
join:2005-05-19
Chatham, ON | Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed LOL | |
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Not LOLing
@rogers.com | Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed I would LOL too were it not for this sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. | |
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El Quintron
Could you spare a consulting gig?
join:2008-04-28
Etobicoke, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Acanac
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by Not LOLing :
I would LOL too were it not for this sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach.
You and me both... the amounts of bile I emit due to the worsening state of the internet in Canada is gonna shorten my lifespan for sure.
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Working to bring you closer to a Bell and Rogers free household. | |
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mlerner
Premium
join:2000-11-25
Nepean, ON | 28th really? And we're supposed to be close to the US? We should just call ourselves a third world country! | |
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Deep Throat
@teksavvy.com
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by mlerner :28th really? And we're supposed to be close to the US? We should just call ourselves a third world country! Good idea. That way we'd be eligible to get foreign aid from Lesotho, Bangladesh, and The Federated States of Micronesia, to help bring our internet standards up to that of the 2nd world.
Of course Harper would just hand the money over to Bell. | |
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DrZEUS
join:2004-01-13
Mississauga, ON | the sad part is it feels like there is nothing we can do and simply accept our fate as an ailing nation who no longer is the envy of others | |
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| static416
join:2007-01-26
Toronto, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Rogers Hi-Speed
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by DrZEUS :the sad part is it feels like there is nothing we can do and simply accept our fate as an ailing nation who no longer is the envy of others There is a possibility that GlobalLive (the new cell carrier) could shake things up a bit in Q4-2009/Q1-2010.
»networkfineprint.com/index.php?t···Wireless
There was a leaked presentation on Howard Forums (may be real, may be a marketing move) that implied they will have a 10Mbps wireless network with 30 GB data plans for $40 per month.
If true, that could really mess with internet delivery in Canada. Why buy a DSL connection at 5Mbps when you can get a 10Mbps wireless connection for the same price, granted with a 30GB cap. I'd buy it.
Regardless of the details, if wired connections continue to suck with this sort of magnitude, there is a good chance a cell carrier could step in and take over. HSPA can do 14Mbps down and 6Mbps up, that kicks Bells ass. | |
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Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed You'll note that the 30GB plan is actually "unlimited", so there's no option to purchase anything above 30GB (which could be an issue). There's also an extra $5 fee to tether.
The cellular networks can't support very many high-bandwidth users. Services like Rogers RocketStick (advertised as 7.2mbit) have very low bandwidth caps (5GB max) because it's a cellular service; the amount of bandwidth in any given area is extremely limited.
The same will be true for GlobaLive. Cellular networks can't be used to deploy home broadband due to insufficient bandwidth (it's all shared). Even LTE (4G) can't provide enough for home broadband.
As such, cellular-based internet service will remain a high-priced mobile-oriented solution. | |
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Davesnothere
@teksavvy.com
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by Guspaz :As such, cellular-based internet service will remain a high-priced mobile-oriented solution. But you can rest assured that Bell and the other cell providers will find a way to fudge the numbers to influence many folks to overlook the cost in favour of the functionality.
And if Bell also gets the cost of DSL service up enough due to UBB and any other ways of raising its price, the wireless plans will not seem as different, even to those who DO compare the numbers, and some customers will migrate anyway, yes ?
Hmmmm.... | |
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Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed That doesn't change the fact that cellular service is an inherently shared medium. You've got a VERY small amount of bandwidth in any given place, and everybody has to share it.
LTE (4G) is ~82mbit per 5MHz of spectrum. HSDPA (3.5G) is (as far as I can tell) up to ~7mbit per 5MHz of spectrum (although Rogers' 7.2mbit service is only ~3.6mbit per 5MHz of spectrum).
Many of these companies have only like 10 or 20 MHz of spectrum to play with. So with current 3.5G networks they can expect to push no more than roughly 14mbit/s among ALL customers in any given cell.
Even though LTE pushes it way up, that's still not enough for widespread fixed broadband deployment. It might be OK for getting into that a bit, with perhaps some low-bandwidth fixed offerings, but not enough to go nuts with it. | |
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| | | | | cacruden
join:2008-03-18
Toronto, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by Guspaz :LTE (4G) is ~82mbit per 5MHz of spectrum. HSDPA (3.5G) is (as far as I can tell) up to ~7mbit per 5MHz of spectrum (although Rogers' 7.2mbit service is only ~3.6mbit per 5MHz of spectrum). Many of these companies have only like 10 or 20 MHz of spectrum to play with. So with current 3.5G networks they can expect to push no more than roughly 14mbit/s among ALL customers in any given cell. Even though LTE pushes it way up, that's still not enough for widespread fixed broadband deployment. It might be OK for getting into that a bit, with perhaps some low-bandwidth fixed offerings, but not enough to go nuts with it. With LTE I thought it was sufficient for broadband to houses given that if a one tower becomes saturated, you would just increase the density of towers in that area (is that not the case?). | |
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| Livadia
join:2007-12-18
Canada
| said by DrZEUS :the sad part is it feels like there is nothing we can do and simply accept our fate as an ailing nation who no longer is the envy of others That ended in late '80s up to mid '90s with slashing and burning everything. Most often, government policies do not have any obvious impact until years later. By then, people will have forgotten what brought them there. That allows those cretins to continue governing with the only concern what the polls will say the next day.
OTOH, why blame them? People get the government they deserve, right? | |
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Maynard G Krebs
@teksavvy.com
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed
The government and the CRTC's position is basically that of trying to protect a dying market concept, that of a monolithic carrier & content provider.
The bulk of the rest of the OECD countries are or are moving towards real common carrier networks and FTTP.
Canada's current position is as futile as trying protect buggy whip manufacturers from the impact of the automobile. | |
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decx
Premium
join:2002-06-07
Vancouver, BC
·Bell Sympatico
| The real problem I see isn't that our current predicament is bad, it's that there's no really solution to the problems being implemented in the foreseeable future. While other countries are busy implementing FTTH or similar last mile connectivity, Canadian providers are busy implementing DPI based throttling, and usage based billing. While the world is going in one direction, Canada isn't following slowly behind, we're practically going the opposite direction. | |
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chronoss2009
join:2008-09-23
1 edit | "the lil mexican dog form da taco bell commercials just ran past canada today for faster net access"
....while throttled tests showed it was faster to use a note attached to the lil dog rather then send something via BCE's back bone. | |
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Guest
@teksavvy.com | Bell is generating $354,000 per employee, btw
i got that quote from another thread here, if their making that much, how do they NEED money to upgrade??? what BS | |
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Martian3
join:2004-10-17
Lindsay, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Yeah, cell technology isn't nearly robust enough to support widespread adoption as a primary internet solution. Increasing cell density can help to a point, but there's only so much spectrum out there, and until somebody figures out a way to push a lot more data over the radio waves available it's not going to be sufficient. I'm not overly familiar with LTE, but Guspaz's numbers are in line with what little I know of it, and that kind of bandwidth isn't going to be sufficient for more than a handful of subscribers per cell without some massive oversubscription going on.
Not to mention that putting up new towers is expensive, and the start ups aren't likely going to have the cash to do so in any real numbers. If the subscription levels remain constant or increase it amortizes quickly, but there's still a significant initial investment.
The entire Canadian telecom industry is a bit of a joke, an the biggest problem is that Canadians have gotten so used to it that they're largely apathetic. Nobody bats an eye at the idea of paying $50+ per month for 7 mbps, despite the fact that most of the rest of the world gets much faster for much cheaper. I tell people that text messaging is disabled on my phone because I consider it to be too expensive, and I get funny looks.
As long as Canadian consumers are content to let the current situation stand, Bell and friends have no incentive to change. It's more profitable to implement UBB and not invest in infrastructure. Sure it's going to hamstring Canadian internet connectivity in a few years, but that's somebody else's problem. | |
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Sanny
join:2007-11-20
united kingd
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| The fact that Canada seems to have fallen so far behind other countries is quite shocking.
I lived in Canada from 2003 till 2008. Started off with Bell for my internet then switched to TekSavvy. For the first maybe 2-3 years while I was in Canada I was getting a faster connection than my parents in the UK were and I was paying less. After that point though it all started to change, rapidly.
I'm back living in the UK now and I pay £17.50 (about $34) a month for a 'upto 24Mb' connection (I currently sync at 14mb) which is unthrottled and unlimited.
Just seems amazing to me that in the UK the speed and cost of the internet seems to have improved year upon year. While in Canada, it just seems to have stood still, or even been held back. I still keep an eye on prices in Canada as I do intend to move back at somepoint and it's almost laughable to see some of the prices over there now. Bell charging $73 or so for a throttled, limited 16Mb connection, that's unbelievable. | |
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Martian3
join:2004-10-17
Lindsay, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
1 edit | Bell's advertised price on Max16 is promotional. $72.95 includes a $5 bundle discount and a $10 promotional discount, and doesn't include the mandatory $3.95 modem rental. The actual cost for 16mbps internet through Bell is $91.90 per month. Should you have the audacity to actually use all that bandwidth you're paying for, anything over 100 GB is charged at $1.00 per GB up to $30 per month, meaning that a moderate to heavy user can pay as much as $121.90.
By comparison, I can bond two lines from TSI for about $75 per month. Assuming the CRTC gets their heads out of their behinds any time soon, that ought to provide me with 14 mbps down, 1.6 up and 400 GB of usage. And MLPPP is inherently less cost efficient, since it requires two drops, two line cards and special hardware or software at either end of the connection.
Something's not right about that. | |
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justsomeguy
join:2007-10-08
London, ON
| Who cares about the "slipping position" ? this isn't a competition.
Over the course of the last several months there has been so many pointless posts here from people talking about how other countries are getting 100mbit upto multi-gigabit connections to the home. Its just silliness. | |
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mlerner
Premium
join:2000-11-25
Nepean, ON
·Rogers Hi-Speed
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by justsomeguy :Who cares about the "slipping position" ? this isn't a competition. Over the course of the last several months there has been so many pointless posts here from people talking about how other countries are getting 100mbit upto multi-gigabit connections to the home. Its just silliness. Ok so do you enjoy your "up to" 10 mpbs with 95 GB cap service? Would you enjoy it even more if every ISP was forced to match it? Competition is a good thing otherwise it turns to monopolistic corruption. | |
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| | justsomeguy
join:2007-10-08
London, ON
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed Ok so do you enjoy your "up to" 10 mpbs with 95 GB cap service? Would you enjoy it even more if every ISP was forced to match it? Competition is a good thing otherwise it turns to monopolistic corruption.
What has that got to do with this thread? | |
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mlerner
Premium
join:2000-11-25
Nepean, ON
·Rogers Hi-Speed
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by justsomeguy :Ok so do you enjoy your "up to" 10 mpbs with 95 GB cap service? Would you enjoy it even more if every ISP was forced to match it? Competition is a good thing otherwise it turns to monopolistic corruption.
What has that got to do with this thread? You really are clueless aren't you? | |
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| | | | justsomeguy
join:2007-10-08
London, ON
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by mlerner :said by justsomeguy :Ok so do you enjoy your "up to" 10 mpbs with 95 GB cap service? Would you enjoy it even more if every ISP was forced to match it? Competition is a good thing otherwise it turns to monopolistic corruption.
What has that got to do with this thread? You really are clueless aren't you? This thread isnt about competition amongst ISPs. | |
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| | | Martian3
join:2004-10-17
Lindsay, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
1 edit | said by justsomeguy :What has that got to do with this thread? Being a little friendlier --
The lack of competition in the Canadian broadband market has everything to do with this thread. The whole reason that Canada is falling behind in terms of speed and cost is because the incumbents don't have sufficient competition. Pretty much all of the negative things that have happened around here since TSI started offering internet (everything from speed caps to throttling and now possibly usage based billing) is a direct result of BCE acting like a petulant child because the CRTC actually had the nerve to tell them to share their toys. They're trying very, very hard to avoid having to compete directly, because then they'd have to acknowledge the fact that their services are overpriced and underpowered.
ADSL2+ supports speeds up to 24 mbps. Bell customers, if they're very lucky and have a lot of money to throw around, can get 16. Wholesale subscribers can get 5. Can you honestly tell me you see nothing wrong with this picture, especially when other markets clearly demonstrate that offering much higher speeds at lower prices is very economically viable? | |
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| | | | justsomeguy
join:2007-10-08
London, ON
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed Well its always nice to wish that we could get higher speeds for the same or less money.
The fact is that the Canadian market demonstrates that people are willing to pay more for less, so that is what we will continue to get.
Other markets have other circumstances and they cannot be applied here for various reasons. | |
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Peter Principle
@cgocable.net
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by justsomeguy :The fact is that the Canadian market demonstrates that people are willing to pay more for less, so that is what we will continue to get. Nice simplistic play on semantics.
Substitute have for willing. Just like any other commodity with little competition.
You can't be that simple. It was a joke right? | |
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| | | | | | justsomeguy
join:2007-10-08
London, ON
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by Peter Principle :said by justsomeguy :The fact is that the Canadian market demonstrates that people are willing to pay more for less, so that is what we will continue to get. Nice simplistic play on semantics. Substitute have for willing. Just like any other commodity with little competition. You can't be that simple. It was a joke right? Broadband internet is a choice, nobody is forced to have it. Nobody is being forced to pay Bell and Rogers for it.
If it was profitable in Canada to provide low cost, high bandwidth residential internet access , then someone would be doing it. Where are they?
Where are the fibre rollouts? Why do most companies seem content with fighting for the use of existing infrastructure and not building their own new
infrastructure?
I'd be complaining more about these ISPs that spend all their time fighting with Bell/CRTC instead of doing their own equipment rollouts. I realize it is expensive, but one small piece at a time and slowly but surely they get somewhere. Fighting with the CRTC/Bell only will lead to more fighting because these companies will still be using someone elses infrastructure. | |
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| Martian3
join:2004-10-17
Lindsay, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
1 edit | said by justsomeguy :Who cares about the "slipping position" ? Right here.
It's not so much about competing as it is keeping up with the global standard. The entire world is moving towards digital distribution as a primary medium for pretty much everything. If we as a nation don't develop the infrastructure to support that, we're going to get left behind. And as long as there are consumers out there who still think 10mbps is fast and that $70+ is a fair price for that level of connectivity, it's not going to happen. Why should Bell upgrade when people are seemingly content with the creaking old infrastructure they have in place now?
I read recently that many if not most of Bell's DSLAMs are still connected upstream on OC3 or OC12 lines. That's a bloody joke, especially when Verizon immediately to the south of us is offering FIOS services with virtually no oversubscription.
EDIT - I was trying to avoid any rants, but I feel that I ought to clarify something. My last two posts make it seem as if I blame the Canadian consumers for Canada's lagging position. This is partly true, but most of the ignorance on this issue comes from the fact that Canada is essentially a monopoly when it comes to telecommunications. Canadian consumers literally don't know any better, because nobody's offering it. I can only hope that's going to change soon. | |
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Lewism8
join:2008-04-25
Quebec, QC | Rogers and Bell have a lot of right of way to put poles and wires. New companies can't have those. Why? Bell and Rogers block them. | |
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cacruden
join:2008-03-18
Toronto, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Actually, the tax dollars continues this year - the feds are subsidizing addition buildout to bell lines for "rural" (i.e. underserved areas). [don't have the piece in front of me - but it was a couple of months ago]
Additionally, when the lines are put down - there is work paid for by the city to put the road back the way it was before - cities were complaining about being forced to subsidize telco's line construction. | |
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| jat
join:2008-04-28
Burlington, ON
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by cacruden :Actually, the tax dollars continues this year - the feds are subsidizing addition buildout to bell lines for "rural" (i.e. underserved areas). I'd heard about that, but my understanding was that it was an open contract which Bell won, which isn't quite the same thing. I could be wrong though. Either way, I don't think that's quite the same thing as financing the whole of Bell's network. The government does a lot of that kind of thing.
said by cacruden :Additionally, when the lines are put down - there is work paid for by the city to put the road back the way it was before - cities were complaining about being forced to subsidize telco's line construction. Now that's a new one. I just assumed Bell had to pay for all of that cleanup work. Happen to have any links on the subject? | |
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| | backness
join:2005-07-08
K2P OW2
| Re: Canada's slipping position on net access cost & speed said by jat :said by cacruden :Actually, the tax dollars continues this year - the feds are subsidizing addition buildout to bell lines for "rural" (i.e. underserved areas). I'd heard about that, but my understanding was that it was an open contract which Bell won, which isn't quite the same thing. I could be wrong though. Either way, I don't think that's quite the same thing as financing the whole of Bell's network. The government does a lot of that kind of thing. If you knew anything about government contracting, you'd know that the contract *likely* excluded just about everyone else in Canada by means of Statement of Work or adding a clause that says you have to have a fiber backbone to connect to or a presence in all of these communities already.
This is another handout for work that has already been paid for by the taxpayers in the form of government granted monopoly. | |
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