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Providers have a love-hate relationship with fiber optics. When confronted with a competitor rebuilding their network to provide fiber to customer homes, many providers lampoon and mock fiber’s capabilities, claiming it’s more light than substance. But when a provider itself wants to do fiber on the cheap, which means not actually providing true fiber-to-the-home service, they’ll bandy about marketing slogans like “100% fiber optic network” or “advanced fiber network.” Fiber is better, and those who have it want to promote it. Those that don’t want to pretend they do.
Bell has decided it can deliver truthiness in fiber optic broadband by simply chopping a letter off the end of the word ‘fiber.’
Fibe is a close cousin of AT&T’s U-verse system. It uses fiber optics part of the way, but relies on the same old copper phone wire that’s hanging on those phone poles in your front or back yard. Because of the shorter distance of copper involved, Bell can use more advanced VDSL2 technology for a faster connection.
That’s certainly an improvement over Bell’s anemic DSL service, difficult to provide to many Canadians spread across the countryside. But don’t mistake it for Verizon FiOS, or any other true fiber to the home service. After learning the details, you won’t mistake it for a great consumer value either.
Fibe offers some urban and suburban Canadians new choices in broadband speed: 6/1Mbps, 12/1Mbps, 18/1Mbps and 25/7Mbps at prices ranging from $31.95-52.95 per month ($5 higher for standalone broadband service). Prices may be slightly lower in some areas depending on what’s on offer from competitors.
But Bell also brings an uninvited guest to the party: Internet Overcharging usage limits. They also reserve the right to throttle your speeds lower when using high traffic applications.
Check out the company’s marketing rhetoric next to the limitations:
- “Fibe 6 will light up your online life.” The bulb burns out after 25GB of consumption, and your online life is in the dark until the next billing cycle begins.
- With Fibe 12, “You’re totally cool and connected online.” Unfortunately, after 50GB of usage, -you- are left out in the cold.
- “Digital defines who you are. At any given time, you are networked and on your game.” With Fibe 16, the game is over after using 75GB. Then you can redefine yourself with a good book for the rest of the month.
- “You’re a master of the digital universe. A power++ online user who blazes through bytes and is always looking for more upload speeds. Nothing less than the awesome power of Fibe 25 will do.” Fibe 25, like Fibe 12, sputters out after 75GB of usage. Then Bell is the master… of your wallet. There’s nothing like blazing fast speed that gets a bucket of cold water thrown on it with a usage limit and overlimit penalty. Nothing else will do… for Bell.
Bell is among the more nervy providers out there. After creating Internet Overcharging schemes that force customers into low usage allowance plans, the company offers to sell you “usage insurance” to protect you from their own paltry limits! For an additional $5 per month up front, you get protection from their overlimit penalties for up to 40 additional gigabytes of usage. Of course, you pay the fee whether exceeding the limit or not. If you don’t have Overcharging Insurance, look out. Overlimit penalties start at $1/GB and run to $2 and beyond for some smaller allowance plans. For now, Bell limits the maximum overlimit penalty to $30 per month, but that can change at any time, as Rogers customers have found out.
Fibe appears to be primarily available in parts of Toronto and the GTA. Selected customers may also receive a letter offering 50 percent off their IPTV video package for one year. Expect the service to primarily launch in larger cities. Living in a rural community in a province like Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba? Don’t hold your breath waiting for these kinds of services to arrive anytime soon.
[flv width=”640″ height=”405″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bell Entertainment Overview.flv[/flv]
A Bell-produced overview of their new Fibe IPTV service. (6 minutes)
Playing Devil’s Advocate here, $63 per month isn’t bad for 25/7, and some folks won’t need more than 115GB.
That said, Bell is creating artificial scarcity whre there is none. But we knew that.
$63 is pretty high and i know allot of people who would be holding back for 120 even. i already pass my 100GB on a “12” line without even trying. (it only runs at 8ish btw) look at how much it costs in other countries, we are on the high price spectrum in comparison
Hooray for Fibe.. Bell has created an internet connection that can exhaust its usage cap in 7hrs if used to potential.. Enjoy that speed for less than 1% of the month.. great service guys..
In Quebec, much of the rage over the Fibe service has to do with more advantageous packages for Ontarians: http://blogue.imtl.com/2010/03/loffre-ridicule-de-bell-fibe/
Since the main connexions are now running on fiber optics, limiting the transfers is just insulting our collective intelligence.
What’s good for Bell isn’t good for Canadians.
No such thing as a fiber optics network, you need to have a fiber optics distribution hub. Where your location is less then two blocks of walking distance. All this BS these companies have capitalized on is nothing more than a lie, a real fiber optics network would run you between 100k to a million depending on purity of the source and just how well the network optics have been setup. Data at the speed of light does not in this case equal true speed of light, if they did that they would be out of business. It’s a just… Read more »