Recent Headlines
October 2, 2009
Tweet Be Sure to Read Part One: Astroturf Overload — Broadband for America = One Giant Industry Front Group for an important introduction to what this super-sized industry front group is all about. Members of Broadband for America Red: A company or group actively engaging in anti-consumer lobbying, opposes Net Neutrality, supports Internet Overcharging, belongs […]
October 2, 2009
Tweet Astroturf: One of the underhanded tactics increasingly being used by telecom companies is “Astroturf lobbying” – creating front groups that try to mimic true grassroots, but that are all about corporate money, not citizen power. Astroturf lobbying is hardly a new approach. Senator Lloyd Bentsen is credited with coining the term in the 1980s […]
September 27, 2009
Tweet Hong Kong remains bullish on broadband. Despite the economic downturn, City Telecom continues to invest millions in constructing one of Hong Kong’s largest fiber optic broadband networks, providing fiber to the home connections to residents. City Telecom’s HK Broadband service relies on an all-fiber optic network, and has been dubbed “the Verizon FiOS of […]
September 23, 2009
Tweet BendBroadband, a small provider serving central Oregon, breathlessly announced the imminent launch of new higher speed broadband service for its customers after completing an upgrade to DOCSIS 3. Along with the launch announcement came a new logo of a sprinting dog the company attaches its new tagline to: “We’re the local dog. We better […]
September 23, 2009
Tweet Stop the Cap! reader Rick has been educating me about some of the new-found aggression by Shaw Communications, one of western Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, in expanding its business reach across Canada. Woe to those who get in the way. Novus Entertainment is already familiar with this story. As Stop the Cap! reported previously, […]
September 22, 2009
Tweet The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, the Canadian equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, may be forced to consider American broadband policy before defining Net Neutrality and its role in Canadian broadband, according to an article published today in The Globe & Mail. [FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's] proposal – to codify and enforce […]
September 21, 2009
Tweet In March 2000, two cable magnates sat down for the cable industry equivalent of My Dinner With Andre. Fine wine, beautiful table linens, an exquisite meal, and a Monopoly board with pieces swapped back and forth representing hundreds of thousands of Canadian consumers. Ted Rogers and Jim Shaw drew a line on the western […]
September 11, 2009
Tweet Just like FairPoint Communications, the Towering Inferno of phone companies haunting New England, Frontier Communications is making a whole lot of promises to state regulators and consumers, if they’ll only support the deal to transfer ownership of phone service from Verizon to them. This time, Frontier is issuing a self-serving press release touting their […]
September 7, 2009
Tweet I see it took all of five minutes for George Ou and his friends at Digital Society to be swayed by the tunnel vision myopia of last week’s latest effort to justify Internet Overcharging schemes. Until recently, I’ve always rationalized my distain for smaller usage caps by ignoring the fact that I’m being subsidized […]
September 1, 2009
Tweet In 2007, we took our first major trip away from western New York in 20 years and spent two weeks an hour away from Calgary, Alberta. After two weeks in Kananaskis Country, Banff, Calgary, and other spots all over southern Alberta, we came away with the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Good […]
August 31, 2009
Tweet A federal appeals court in Washington has struck down, for a second time, a rulemaking by the Federal Communications Commission to limit the size of the nation’s largest cable operators to 30% of the nation’s pay television marketplace, calling the rule “arbitrary and capricious.” The 30% rule, designed to keep no single company from […]
August 27, 2009
Tweet Less than half of Americans surveyed by PC Magazine report they are very satisfied with the broadband speed delivered by their Internet service provider. PC Magazine released a comprehensive study this month on speed, provider satisfaction, and consumer opinions about the state of broadband in their community. The publisher sampled more than 17,000 participants, […]
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Users who exceed the new usage allowances face an overlimit fee of $1/GB — maximum $80 a month (up $20 effective Jan. 1, 2012).
As a Fibe 12 customer, that’s a $3 monthly price increase, along with 20% less bandwidth per month. Their excuse will probably be the PVR, which they claim is worth $500 but frequently discounted to $350 or less,such as during Black Friday and Boxing Week. There are also programming credits, which make the receiver cost virtually nothing.
Let’s assume, then, that the PVR is worth $360, or $10/month over three years. They will give the PVR as a rent-to-own at no extra charge to those who triple play home services with Bell for three years. Take the Internet cost of $27.50 for one year, remove the cost of the included PVR, and it’s like paying $17.50 for just the Internet. 50¢/GB initially, but then they raise it to $1. Be careful if you watch Netflix or lots of movies online!
It’s clear they want to make money by capping higher speeds. People like fast Internet, but if they use it to replace cable or satellite, they will pay a lot.
Should the cap decrease affect customers like me, i will tell Bell to honour the old limits. If they make me sign for a year, the price and service should stay at least the same for a year.
Alex, you don’t think Bell paid $500 for their PVR do you? Then again, at least you can buy your PVR. Not so much in the United States where it is Rent-to-Never-Own. Time Warner’s DVR service now carries an equipment rental charge AND a service charge that is over $15 a month for both. Few people notice because it’s frequently bundled into the everyday high price double or triple-play service.
The game Bell is playing is highly predictable: they will keep lowering the cap and raising the maximum overlimit fee until the maximum is gone for good. Then the sky is the limit.
TekSavvy and other independent ISPs are probably the only relief around, unless you threaten Bell with leaving if they don’t ease up on those caps. But that sticks most people with 3-7Mbps DSL (line quality depending).
There is no market for stingily-capped high speed premium broadband. Why pay for a Jaguar you can’t take out of the driveway?
Ha… I just cancelled with Bell for both my phone & internet! They put me through to their “Loyalty” dept. before they would process my order, and they offered to… lower my fees, and increase my bandwidth cap! And all this just after receiving a letter about increased fees beginning in 2012.
Loyalty? I have been a customer since they days when you could only have ONE phone, and you HAD TO RENT IT from Bell! That’s over 35 years! I should have been offered a better deal WITHOUT cancelling my service! When I went to business training, I was told that it was less expensive to KEEP a customer than it was to ACQUIRE one.
Good Luck and Good Bye Bell!
The bandwidth cap is all a game. I’d counter-offer you’ll stay if they remove the cap entirely and leave it that way indefinitely. Charging for broadband usage is like charging for a glass of water. There are some costs to bring it to you, but they are nowhere near the amount some people want to charge. Marketing is all about trying to assign a value to something that often isn’t worth that much at all. That’s how repurposed Florida tap water becomes $1 bottles of Dasani you just have to have.
Bell rewards new customers with big rebates and special deals and screws their long-term customers. It’s so short-sighted because it conditions customers to bounce between Bell and Rogers/Videotron/Cogeco with their annual introductory offers. When the offer expires, customers switch.
Yup… TekSavvy is who I went with. I’m going to get faster download & upload speeds, and I will also be saving somewhere around $100.00 / month.
I should have done this over a year ago when I first became aware of a lot of the smaller (& better) ISP’s.
man, bell canada must be the worse communication provider i hAVE HAD TO DEAL WITH.
PUT ME AT THE HELM OF THIS S****Y COMPANY FOR AS LITTLE AS ONE YEAR AND WATCH THE PRIDE OF CANADA FLARE IN SHINE
Hey Bell, make me an offer but get rid of your customer relation ceo
Bell last year had a media blitz going around attracting people with their fibre lines are reasonable prices and bandwidth – now, once they have these people locked in contracts, they are going to juice them of as much $$$ as they can! They have been suckered in! NEVER trust the big monopolies – they will trick you to go to them then not let you go easily! A wolf is still a wolf no matter how many sheep skins he tries on!
They hook with the introductory offer and then slam you when it expires. You have to stand your ground and be prepared to dump them if they won’t extend your promo offer for another year.
Most year contracts have price protection built-in so you don’t get stuck with the rate hike until they expire. But the dirty secret is, prices for new customers barely increase at all in an effort to lure you in. So take advantage by being willing to switch to the competition. A year after that, you can always switch back.
Everything with these companies is negotiable when you are seriously threatening to leave. Then tell your elected officials the status quo is a failure. There is no reason why cities and towns can’t invest in their own broadband networks and put the duopoly in its place, especially considering the CRTC has been impotent doing so.
This site rocks!
If you hate capping, you’re not alone!
The internet capping stunt was brought on to the customers to limit their internet freedom and hike their access fees, thus abusing their oligopolistic position.
We can’t let this trend continue.
Seriously, this capping thing needs to go away…