Monday, August 8, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Monopolistic Tendencies
Hey all my Canadian Internet using friends,
you all signed this petition, right? If not, please do it now.
The corporations that provide us with communications services such as; television delivery, television content creation, telephone, mobile phone, internet, are, in many cases one and the same. Bell, Rogers, Shaw, and Telus all offer these services. Bell and Telus have in the past it is rumored to have been considering a merger. as it stands, you generally have choice of four companies to deal with when it comes to these services.
Now this oligopoly would very much to reach into your pockets and extract more money, and they are killing two birds with one stone. Bird number one: The CRTC recently made a decision that would allow ISPs to implement usage based billing or UBB. This means that depending on you usage, you could be spending upwards of 300 dollars for the same bandwidth you enjoy today. This is a problem if you listen to music online on popular services such as grooveshark and pandora, or if you like to watch kitten videos on youtube, or stream movies on netflix, or if (god forbid) you utilize p2p networks like limewire or bit torrent. Or worse yet, if you rely on the internet for your living, as is the case with many podcasters, software developers, or web-designers, affordable access is required to survive.
Bird number two is just as bad. With this decision, the big four effectively muscle out the competition, your skypes, and netflixes. if you have to pay exorbitant fees to watch a movie on netflix, you wouldn't watch it. Instead you might be more likely to purchase a movie from your friendly PPV provider for a much more reasonable price. Bye-bye netflix it was nice knowing ya. But what you want to talk to a loved one far from home, will you use skype and pay ridiculous overage fees, or will you use the much cheaper long distance phone service, that is provided by the same guys that give you tv?
Further this impacts all the smaller competition that offer better deals on better service. The Big Guys are required to sell other ISPs access to their network at a cheaper rate than consumers get. These smaller ISPs sell their services for less than the majors do, taking potential customers away. But this decision from the CRCT means that these small players have to pay overages too, which mean that they will have to raise their prices, which in turn makes them less attractive to the consumer.
This cannot be allowed to happen, internet access has become, and is becoming with each passing moment more and more important in our daily lives. it will stifle innovation, and Canada will fall behind the rest of the world.
Please make your opinion known. Write to your MPs, call them, visit them in person, or at least sign this petition. Joing 250,000 other Canadians in affecting some change. it's in all of our best interest to stop this.
http://www.openmedia.ca/meter
you all signed this petition, right? If not, please do it now.
The corporations that provide us with communications services such as; television delivery, television content creation, telephone, mobile phone, internet, are, in many cases one and the same. Bell, Rogers, Shaw, and Telus all offer these services. Bell and Telus have in the past it is rumored to have been considering a merger. as it stands, you generally have choice of four companies to deal with when it comes to these services.
Now this oligopoly would very much to reach into your pockets and extract more money, and they are killing two birds with one stone. Bird number one: The CRTC recently made a decision that would allow ISPs to implement usage based billing or UBB. This means that depending on you usage, you could be spending upwards of 300 dollars for the same bandwidth you enjoy today. This is a problem if you listen to music online on popular services such as grooveshark and pandora, or if you like to watch kitten videos on youtube, or stream movies on netflix, or if (god forbid) you utilize p2p networks like limewire or bit torrent. Or worse yet, if you rely on the internet for your living, as is the case with many podcasters, software developers, or web-designers, affordable access is required to survive.
Bird number two is just as bad. With this decision, the big four effectively muscle out the competition, your skypes, and netflixes. if you have to pay exorbitant fees to watch a movie on netflix, you wouldn't watch it. Instead you might be more likely to purchase a movie from your friendly PPV provider for a much more reasonable price. Bye-bye netflix it was nice knowing ya. But what you want to talk to a loved one far from home, will you use skype and pay ridiculous overage fees, or will you use the much cheaper long distance phone service, that is provided by the same guys that give you tv?
Further this impacts all the smaller competition that offer better deals on better service. The Big Guys are required to sell other ISPs access to their network at a cheaper rate than consumers get. These smaller ISPs sell their services for less than the majors do, taking potential customers away. But this decision from the CRCT means that these small players have to pay overages too, which mean that they will have to raise their prices, which in turn makes them less attractive to the consumer.
This cannot be allowed to happen, internet access has become, and is becoming with each passing moment more and more important in our daily lives. it will stifle innovation, and Canada will fall behind the rest of the world.
Please make your opinion known. Write to your MPs, call them, visit them in person, or at least sign this petition. Joing 250,000 other Canadians in affecting some change. it's in all of our best interest to stop this.
http://www.openmedia.ca/meter
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