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Updated: Canada’s Telecom Regulator Investigates Rigged Broadband Pricing in Six Days of Hearings

The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission is investigating Canadian ISP practices all week in a series of public hearings.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) opened the first day of hearings on the practice of usage-based billing for Internet usage, advocated by the country’s largest wholesale provider of Internet bandwidth, Bell Canada.

These hearings are a follow-up to earlier ones that ultimately allowed Bell to mandate usage billing not only for its own customers, but for all independent ISPs that purchase bandwidth from the company.  Since the vast majority of independent providers purchase bandwidth from Bell, the CRTC ruling would have mandated the end of “unlimited use” Internet plans across the country.

Nearly a half-million Canadians disagreed with the CRTC ruling and created a political firestorm earlier this year, demanding that the government step in and overturn the CRTC ruling.  Bell temporarily withdrew the usage based billing mandate pending the outcome of hearings expected to run from today until early next week.

Appearing at today’s hearing, executives from Bell continued to defend usage-based pricing and plan pricing that forces consumers to guess at how much Internet usage they will need each month.

In more aggressive questioning than earlier hearings, CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein questioned Internet pricing plans that do not “rollover” or rebate consumers for unused usage, but still penalizes customers for going over their plan limits.

von Finckenstein also questioned Bell’s pricing for independent ISPs, particularly penalty rates ISPs who underestimate their wholesale usage needs would face under Bell’s advocated pricing model.  The chairman seemed suspicious of the fact Bell does not charge its own ISP unit penalty rates, only independent providers.

The hearing will also explore why companies like Bell can deliver “unlimited viewing” on their Fibe TV IPTV service, but cannot deliver unlimited Internet access to end users.

Interested in following the hearings live? Visit the CRTC live stream hearing page.

[Updated 10:20am ET: Bell Canada executives just admitted in this morning’s hearings its Internet Overcharging scheme involving usage pricing many times higher than the actual cost of provisioning the service was driven by “competition” and not by “congestion” issues.  In other words, Canadian consumers are paying very high Internet pricing and overlimit fees because of the pervasive lack of competition, not because companies need the extra money to “upgrade their networks.”]

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Gary Salter
Gary Salter
13 years ago

These powerful and big companies that control most peoples access to the internet have finally achieved one of their goals…that is, to control access to the internet, limit the power of smaller companies to give customers reasonable cost acces to this internet and these big companies have also taken over the countries TV companies and media companies too, Like the game Monopoly, they have now total control over these informational streams and now they want to be able to charge rates similar to rates they cahrge for cell phones and your tablet computers connected by cellular networlks to the internet.… Read more »

Michel
Michel
13 years ago

I am ashamed to be Canadian I am ashamed to be forced to make business with thiefs for my internet access I am ashamed to be among the few idiots who are paying 2-3 times the price for a EXTREMELY LIMITED internet service I have absolutely NO RESPECT for THIEVES like videotron. Mre than 50$ CDN a month for *limited* internet access is almost criminal Hope they will pay someday for ripping off all canadians like this. I think the CRTC must stop that large scale abuse of all canadians customer. Enough is enough I have more respect in a… Read more »

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