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Ultimately Overpriced: Videotron’s 120Mbps Service Usage Limited With Overlimit Fees That Don’t Quit

Phillip Dampier September 27, 2010 Broadband Speed, Canada, Data Caps, Editorial & Site News, Vidéotron 7 Comments

Videotron last week unveiled 120/20Mbps broadband service loaded down with tricks and traps that will cost many Canadians far more than the $149.95CDN monthly asking price.

Québec’s largest cable operator introduced Ultimate Speed Internet 120 for “users who want to experience the fastest Internet access in Québec.”  But with a download limit of just 170GB per month combined with an upload limit of a paltry 30GB per month, what many Internet enthusiasts are also likely to experience is a huge bill.

Videotron is rolling out a high-speed Internet access service that will give residents of the Québec City area the fastest speeds in Canada. As of tomorrow, Ultimate Speed Internet 120 will support download speeds of 120 mbps and upload speeds of 20 mbps, a first for Québec City.

Ultimate Speed Internet 120 pushes back the frontier for intensive Internet users,” said Robert Dépatie, President & CEO of Videotron. “Today, we are launching the high-speed Internet service of the future. With the pace at which users’ needs are changing, we are not so far from the day when 120 mbps will be a must-have convenience.”

Astonishing capacity
As of tomorrow, Ultimate Speed Internet 120 will be available in nearly 80% of the greater Québec City area, or to nearly 310,000 households and businesses. The service will be accessible throughout the Québec City area by December 31, 2010 and will then be gradually rolled out to other parts of Videotron’s service area.

Astonishing Overcharging

Yanette is going to the bank to withdraw more funds to pay her exorbitant Videotron broadband bill.

Unlike many other Internet Overcharging plans from Canada’s usage cap-happy providers, Videotron’s highest-speed plans don’t limit the amount of overlimit fees customers will be exposed to once their allowance is exhausted.  In little more than three hours of usage at near-maximum speeds, overlimit fees of $1.50CDN per gigabyte kick in until your usage allows resets the following month.  That’s more than $50 an hour in overlimit fees if running the service near top speeds.

Videotron’s press release says those limits are “well in excess of the current needs of heavy bandwidth users.”

Even worse, Videotron targets its highest speed broadband plan for “traffic management,” which throttles upload speeds dramatically for customers who “have uploaded a statistically significant amount of data,” which is never defined:

Every 15 minutes, a system checks the usage rate for each upload channel (each upload channel typically serves a few dozen modems). If the usage rate has reached a threshold beyond which congestion is imminent, the system identifies the USI 120 modems on that channel that have uploaded a statistically significant amount of data. Uploading from these modems is then momentarily given lower priority. Depending on the severity and duration of the congestion, uploading speed may be slowed for these modems.  […]The above measures are applicable at all times.

That assures customers of a less-than-blazing-fast broadband experience they have paid top dollar to receive.  In effect, this means Videotron’s customers who pay three times the regular price for a concierge-like-broadband-experience are pushed to the back of the line if they actually use it.

A Videotron customer on Broadband Reports wrote, “It’s like driving a jet-car in an alley. You can probably start the engine, but don’t open the gas too much!”

Another customer from Montreal noted it takes no time at all for customers to blow through those kinds of limits:

This is merely a political play to be able to advertise as “the fastest ISP in Quebec/Canada”. Obviously such ridiculous caps are nowhere near the needs of someone who would pay $150 for that kind of speed, but they don’t mind saying things like “well in excess of the current needs of heavy bandwidth users” because 90% of the population, even the journalists themselves, have no idea what gigabytes are in the first place.

Considering most recent games released on Steam/D2D can be over 20GB, one HD episode is 1.3GB to stream each, 170GB is very little.

The cable operator will also throw some small bones to their existing customers effective Oct. 13:

  • Customers with Videotron’s standard High Speed Internet service ($42.95CDN – 7.5Mbps/720kbps) will get a 10 gigabyte usage allowance increase — to 40GB of usage per month.  The overlimit fee remains a stunning $4.50 per gigabyte, up to a maximum of $50 per month;
  • Upstream speeds on Ultimate Speed Internet 50 service ($81.95CDN – 50/1Mbps) will be doubled from 1Mbps to 2Mbps with no price increase.  Considering that plan limits consumption to 125GB per month, the faster speeds mean unlimited overlimit fees of $1.50 per month will add up even faster.

Delivering high speed broadband at premium prices with usage limits and speed throttles is a business plan disaster.  Customers willing to pay the highest prices for fast broadband don’t seek those Cadillac plans to browse web pages.  They want to leverage the fastest possible speeds to make high bandwidth applications work better and faster.  In a business environment, those faster speeds save time, which saves money.  But broadband providers who engage in Internet Overcharging schemes that limit use and charge confiscatory overlimit fees destroy demand for their own products, because few customers are willing to pay the premium prices these plans charge -and- expose themselves to overlimit fees if they happen to exceed an arbitrary usage limit.

Further south in the United States, Americans are still rejecting overpriced DOCSIS 3-premium speed broadband plans, and they come with no usage caps.  Time Warner Cable’s DOCSIS 3 expansion delivers a premium price on the resulting faster speed tiers, and the company managed to sign up fewer than 2,000 customers as of January.

Now imagine a plan that commanded a premium price -and- slapped a limit on usage.

As they say in Québec: c’est ridicule!

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Ian L
13 years ago

To be fair, 120/20 is faster than any cable provider offers in the US. Also, on the upload side, if Videotron is running a single 64QAM upload channel in their markets, you have to manage capacity for anyone to get their advertised speeds; there’s only 30 Mbps of capacity available on the whole channel. This is why Comcast only has 10 mbps of upload speed, and even the aggressive Cablevision has just 15 Mbps. Also, 170GB is more than 40GB…not as much as Comcast’s 250GB, but it’s not a paltry amount either. Particularly considering that at 120 Mbps most (but… Read more »

jr
jr
13 years ago

120Mbps you can only check your email with

BrionS
Editor
13 years ago
Reply to  jr

Let’s not get carried away with hyperbole and look at some actual numbers… 120Mbps (with a 170GB cap) is about 2.5 times faster than their next service level (50Mbps with a 40GB cap). — Price per GB with the 120 plan ($149.95) is $0.88/GB with a 170GB cap — Price per GB with the 50 plan ($81.95) is $0.66/GB with a 125GB cap — Price per GB with the standard plan ($42.95) is $1.07/GB with a 40GB cap The fastest way to blow through your downstream bandwidth is by downloading large files. The article gives a few examples, so let’s… Read more »

R
R
13 years ago
Reply to  BrionS

Dear BrionS (Videotron employee),

You want numbers? The price of this plan is 150$ per month. A hundred and f****ng fifty dollars per month. That’s 2000$ per year. And you dare put a bandwidth cap on me, and a low a** one. And with all that you still throttle. Wtf happened? I know that’s not PKP’s idea.

Please make us have a good laugh and release the number of subscribers to this plan.

I’m out.

zee
zee
13 years ago

screw videotron.

Phil
Phil
13 years ago

I’ve had the pitchfork out for a couple of years, they have been reducing the usage amounts since they have been doing business. I know a time where only a few select plans had limits, now you need to go on the “Business” side of Videotron to get an unlimited plan, and pay extra of course. I’m not going to go limited and have to make my “internet months” fit in Videotron’s vicious policy of usage and over charging. I’m going to download as many episodes and movies (15gb+ for a 1080p) through NetFlix, and download as many games through… Read more »

Limitbreaker
Limitbreaker
12 years ago

i absolutely agree, im really upset with this internet usage cap! it’s ludicrous! in my household we’re 3 people who’s using the internet and none of us are heavy users but 170gig is tiny. saying that 170gig is enough because you’d have to watch netflix for 5days straight to cap it is rediculous because internet isnt meant for one thing every month. the internet bandwidth isnt made out of of crude oil, it is not a resource and we shouldnt have limits on it as if its to save the planet! it is just electronic datas and it shouldnt cost… Read more »

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