Bell Canada attempts to muscle the competition with "Usage Based Billing"

Bell Canada provides wholesale access to independent Internet Service Providers across their service area at wholesale rates.  This allows a limited number of competing ISPs to provide broadband service at affordable rates in cities where competition has been limited, at best.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC), which regulates telecommunications in Canada, ordered Bell Canada to provide equitable access to those independent providers at the same pricing they offer their own retail customers.  But now Bell Canada wants to introduce punitive Usage Based Billing on those wholesale accounts, which would immediately destroy many independent providers who could not begin to compete on price or service.

Not only would customers find their Internet access limited, but substantial overage penalties imposed for exceeding those limits would also be introduced.

TekSavvy, an Ontario-based company providing DSL service, has sent e-mail to their customers pleading with them to contact the CRTC and oppose Bell Canada’s petition.  If you are in Canada, you can make a difference by sending comments to the CRTC opposing this proposal.  You need not be a TekSavvy customer to participate.

Usage caps and limits designed to bolster big profits and thwart competition are not just an American problem.  These issues impact on customers wherever limited competition and lack of informed oversight is common.

The deadline for comments is midnight tonight!

Dear Valued Customer,

We are writing to you today as many activities are underway to shape/reshape Internet use as you all know it. Over the last year some of you have been made aware and/or have seen activities on throttling in the news or in your daily lives. Another proceeding relating to the Internet in Canada required Telecom providers (Bell/Telus/etc.) to provide ISPs with wholesale service speeds that match those that they offer to their own retail customers.

Specifically, Bell has been directed by the CRTC to provide matching speeds which would allow us all to have more flexibility in our day to day online requirements. Instead of adhering to these directives, Bell decided to take this issue to the federal Cabinet and at the same time file a tariff application with the CRTC proposing to introduce Usage Based Billing (UBB) on its wholesale customer accounts.

What does this mean for you, the consumer?

Bell provides TekSavvy with last mile, wholesale DSL access services, which TekSavvy uses to provide you with your Internet access. If Bell were to be allowed to introduce UBB on this service, a cap of 60GB would be imposed on all of its users, with very heavy penalties per Gigabyte afterwards (multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on overages). This would inherently all but remove Unlimited internet services in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs from month to month.

If you’d like to make your comments/concerns known about what Bell is attempting to do, please do so here.

Select the word “Tariff” from the drop down list.

Add the following in Subject Line “File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 – Bell Canada – TN 7181” and make your thoughts known!

The deadline for filing your comments is today at midnight, so hurry!

Regards,

Rocky

The Rochester Business Journal is conducting an online survey of its readers about usage capping ending tonight at 9:00pm.  Those interested in participating must first register for access, before they can vote in the poll.  The voting link may be tied to our tipster Pete’s subscription, but there is still a section in the poll to share your comments about the issue.

This is particularly a good place to discuss the impact of usage capping on your home-based business, workers who telecommute to office, thinking of starting a new business from home, or have a product or service already that could be impacted by usage caps.

KP writes:

Just for information, the Penfield Town Board is having a community discussion (as opposed to an official board meeting) Tuesday, April 14, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the Browncroft Community Church, 2530 Browncroft Blvd. Additional information can be found here.

Penfield residents who wish to speak up about this issue and inform and educate their neighbors have a great opportunity to do so this evening.

I have been getting news tips {thanks Carsten, J, and others) about newspapers in Texas reporting that the Texas Internet Rationing Plan from Time Warner has been “postponed” until October, and this represents some sort of consumer victory.

Hardly.

First, this is not exactly breaking news.  Landel Hobbs, Time Warner’s COO, already made mention the cap plan would begin implementation in Austin and San Antonio in October, presumably with a trial period.  It sounds like Mr. Hobbs, bless his heart, already knew about the “consumer victory” that comes “as a result of complaints” before the Time Warner folks on the ground down in Texas knew, because they only started speaking about it this week.

Trials will begin in Rochester, N.Y., and Greensboro, N.C., in August. We will apply what we learn from these two markets when we launch trials in San Antonio and Austin, Texas, in October, but we will guarantee at least the same level of usage capacity in these trials.

Now, actual billing starts in January, up until they change their minds again.

A trial program intended to charge varying rates depending on usage was slated to begin this summer. The decision to delay the meter program was prompted mostly by customer reaction, said Gavino Ramos, Time Warner’s vice president of communication for South Texas.

“What happened as we’re continuing to listen was we worked in some of the comments and ideas that got sent to us,” Ramos said. “We came to the realization, let’s do this in October.”

Meanwhile, Rochester is the big “lucky winner,” joining Greensboro in starting the Internet Rationing Plan in August.  I suppose it was inevitable our two cities come closer together, considering a whole lot of people exiting Rochester end up moving to North Carolina.  Sooner is better in cities with fewer competitive choices anyway.

If Time Warner was truly responsive to its customers, it would drop this Titanic-like disaster of a rationing plan today.

There is no consumer victory here, and this company is still not listening.  Instead, by putting off the abuse for a few months, they hope you will fall complacent and not continue to engage in a united effort to resist unwarranted capping of your Internet access.  The first step of coping with an abusive relationship with your Internet provider is recognizing you are in one.  Being told you are not going to get hit with punitive caps today, but in a few months, doesn’t change that.  Don’t be a victim.

[Updated Tuesday 10:12am: Added city of Rochester, although I do not know if Mayor Duffy is invited to these gatherings.]

This Friday, there will be a closed meeting of the county’s supervisors, and Time Warner has been invited to come speak on the issue of usage caps and take questions.  The meeting is informal, and not open to the public, but that doesn’t mean you cannot make a direct influence on how this meeting transpires.

I have received direct input that many town and village officials are not hearing from constituents about Time Warner Internet Rationing, and are woefully under-informed about this issue.  Therefore, it is OUR responsibility to help inform, educate, and directly lobby them with our firm opposition to usage caps of any kind, and the complete lack of proven justification for their usage cap experiment, its tiers, and pricing.  Winter is over here in Rochester, but there is a real risk of a Time Warner Snowjob if we do not make it absolutely clear to each and every town that caps are absolutely, unequivocally, unacceptable in any amount.

To not protest means that locally elected officials will be at risk of believing the propaganda they are about to receive and assume it must be accurate because nobody is complaining.  That must change, and preferably before this Friday.

While local officials have no regulatory enforcement power to deny Time Warner the ability to launch their “experiment,” the more opposition on every level, the better.  And don’t you believe this won’t be an issue at franchise renewal time.

Simply put, we must fight this battle on every front at the same time.  So tomorrow morning, start the phone calls, e-mails, and faxes! Some towns, like Brighton, have already had their constituents ringing the phones at the town hall off the hook, and town officials are on board.  Those folks need to hear our thanks and support.  Other towns have not heard as much, and they need to.

Here are the points you need to raise:

• Time Warner is conducting this experiment in the only upstate city not served by Verizon and their expanding FiOS (fiber to the home) network, which provides formidable broadband competition and a simple alternative for dissatisfied customers to head elsewhere.  They know here in Rochester, you really have nowhere else to go if you want uncapped cable modem-like service.
• Frontier Communications, while being an honorable corporate citizen by promising not to cap their DSL service, cannot currently compete on the same level as Road Runner for consistency of speed, availability, and price unless a consumer signs a long term contract with a steep cancellation penalty.  If DSL isn’t even available to your home, tell them!
• Time Warner has consistently refused to publicly release their raw data on which they base their “need” to impose usage caps, tiers, and overage charges.  We are asked to take their word for it.
• Time Warner just increased rates in Rochester two months ago.  Let them know how much you are already paying, and ask how much more does this company need from us?
• Ask them what other company would get away with raising the price for unlimited broadband service by 300% with no improvement in service, and only vague promises about a future upgrade.  How can any company ask a customer who wants the same level of service they enjoy today for $39.95, to pay $150 tomorrow?
• Tell your supervisor their “experiment” is being imposed against your wishes, and that at no time do you want to participate.  Tell them you are concerned they may not understand that by this fall, the higher cost tiers and overage fees are hardly an “experiment” because you are going to be billed for them.
• Tell them other cable operators like Cablevision do not impose ANY usage limits and don’t want to, because their current pricing is already profitable!  Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, charges every standard broadband customer the same price, and simply requests they do not exceed 250GB of usage per month, more than six times the amount Time Warner’s paltry standard service tier would offer.
• Ask why should Time Warner impose tiers on the customers they claim aren’t even a problem?  Those with lower consumption are being asked to choose a plan that offers as little as 1GB of data, and then they face a $2 per gigabyte penalty for each additional gigabyte!
• Tell them talking about sending tens of thousands of e-mails and looking at simple web pages is not the real issue.  Using online file backup programs, watching online video, making phone calls over the Internet, and the future services that are forthcoming in our high technology future are what’s at issue, and punitive usage caps retard those services and new businesses from ever getting off the ground, all while a virtual monopoly broadband provider rakes in fat profits.
• Tell them Time Warner has a vested interest in protecting their core video business – selling you cable TV packages that, ironically, you have to take on an all you can eat basis, while they want to take away that currently affordable option for their broadband service, which now let’s you watch TV and radio programming that could reduce your need to keep your cable TV package.
• Tell them you don’t want to have to watch a gas gauge and have Internet service rationed to you in small portions at high prices while Time Warner’s own SEC filings show their broadband division continues to grow in profits, all while the bandwidth costs for them are on the decline!  Where is the crisis?
• Ask them, above all, to not simply accept the statements from interested company officials as fact.  Let them know you’d be happy to provide them with copies of challenges to their assertions, point by point, as well as industry observations which suggest the company is making a spectacle of itself, has tiers bordering on the “obscene,” and are so out of whack with the rest of the American broadband industry, the company has to try and compare its broadband rationing with foreign countries like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.  Remind them this is Monroe County, New York, United States of America!
• Finally, let them know that people affected by this include: financially stressed families with teenagers, small businesses run from the home, workers conducting company business from a home office, the large deaf community in our area that depends on broadband video phones to help communicate with friends, families, and business associates, and frankly, your own town’s ability to offer services like online video of town board meetings and functions.

Always be polite, persuasive, and professional in your communications. You need not raise every one of these issues – pick the few that are most important to you, but make it clear this issue is so important to you, your town official’s position on it will be a major factor for you in the next election.  Your choice of arguments should also consider the political environment in your town.  In some communities, you will be more effective when you stress the lack of competition and need for more players in this market, and that there is nothing wrong with pushing back against job-killing, innovation wrecking, unjustified capping experiments in our hurting economy. In others, reminding them of Rep. Eric Massa’s involvement in this issue and that there is a groundswell of consumer opposition visible in every form of local media and online.

This site is ready and willing to answer any question from any government official looking for additional information or resources on this topic.  And those answers won’t just be coming from me, but from independent news sources, researchers, and industry trade publications that do report on and explore capping alternatives.  This is an issue that will have a profound impact on this community.  In all my conversations with consumers, government officials, and businessmen, I’ve yet to find one that has been looking forward to their community being the “chosen ones” for this “test.”

Finally, simply ask, “who wants this?”  Outside of Time Warner executives talking to other Time Warner executives, practically nobody.  And just last fall, International Data Corporation asked the same question I did of 787 U.S. consumers.  And remember these results:

• 81 percent do not like the idea of establishing a bandwidth cap and charging for use above the cap.
• 51 percent would try to change service providers if their BSP imposed bandwidth caps.
• 83 percent say that do not know what a gigabyte or have no idea how many gigabytes they use.
• Even light users are opposed to the whole idea of bandwidth capping.
• Only 5 percent said unequivocally that “those who use more should pay more.”

Gigaom, a respected online publisher double checked the results with their own poll.  Ninety-one percent of 1,159 voters said that they would switch to another ISP, while 6 percent said they would not switch.

What will consumers pay for?  Improved service today, not vague promises about tomorrow!  Instead of relying on punitive usage caps to finance the next generation of broadband systems, why not create new levels of premium tiers to appeal to the very heavy users Time Warner wants to pay for improvements?  How about faster tiers of service priced higher than the current standard service.  Time Warner themselves had success doing this with the introduction of its Turbo tier for an additional $10 a month.  How about SuperTurbo for $20 more a month?  ExtremeTurbo at $30 more a month?  Sit back and rake in the profits, but make everyone happy, from your lightest consuming customers to the heaviest of them all, who will happily pay for a better level of service today to make an even better and faster level of service available tomorrow.  Caps are for bottles, not for broadband, not in the United States of America.

Here is a comprehensive contact list.  Find your community in the list below and get busy. (Thanks so much to everyone who helped contribute to getting this list together so fast!)

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