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Our internet is basically poo poo. That being said, since Cogeco started charging for overages up to a maximum of $20 or $30, we've gone over the cap every month and have yet to be threatened or disconnected. Until Cogeco calls and threatens me, I'm basically treating it as paying an extra $30 for an unmetered line. I'm 100% certain this ride is coming to an end at some point though. I don't seriously expect to be able to buy my way out of lovely bit metering for $30 for a long time.
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Nov 1, 2010 01:49
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MelonDude posted:At those prices it's actually cheaper to fill up a hard drive and mail it to someone. This might be a joke, but before Cogeco introduced overage charges with a monetary cap I used to do all my downloading on my campus machine. I'd ssh into my office, download what I wanted, then take my portable hard disk, drive five minutes to get on campus, start the copy while I brew a nice cup of tea.
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Nov 1, 2010 01:54
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kuddles posted:Who the hell needs to pay the higher "Fibe 25" price to gain blazing fast speeds of 25MBPS but is fine with a 75GB limit? Good news, we've substantially decreased the time it takes to fill your monthly quota! 
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Nov 2, 2010 18:32
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If you pick up, can you ask them to not call you? I had Cogeco trying to sell us phone service to go with our internet and TV. They were pretty persistent, but not really the "once a week" harassment you describe. After the fourth or fifth call I asked if they could please stop calling to sell me a phone because I wasn't going to buy one and it was just pissing off an otherwise happy customer, and I haven't had them call about it since. Completely anecdotal, of course.
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Nov 9, 2010 08:43
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Oh yeah, the mailers keep on coming. Which is fine because winter is coming and they're great firestarters under kindling in the fireplace. If I could somehow figure out how to get them to send me MORE mailers I could probably cut down on my heating costs 
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Nov 9, 2010 08:47
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I think handing out exemptions on a per-app basis would almost be worse than what we have now. Sure maybe now you can stream netflix without worrying about your cap, but what happens when the next big bandwidth heavy service comes to town? Also if you think they're stingy about bandwidth caps now, just wait until "UNLIMITED NETFLIX AND LAST.FM 10gb general bitcap*" plans hit. * "what's the problem now? why would you possibly need more than 10gb now that you can stream netflix all you want!"
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Nov 18, 2010 08:50
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spoof posted:Good news everyone! Bell lowered their 6Mbit DSL caps to 25GB/month and raised the maximum overage to $60/month. Unless you go over 300GB/month, in which case the sky is the limit. Bell appears to literally be evil.
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Dec 19, 2010 19:59
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As soon as there's no viable reason to go with TekSavvy for uncapped service I fully expect companies like Cogeco to remove the "max $30 for overages" provision. Given everything I see, there's no reason that the ISPs won't use every opportunity to squeeze every last dollar out of Canadians.
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Dec 23, 2010 19:07
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Oh yeah I wasn't aiming that specifically at you, I just happen to be on Cogeco as well. It's just where I see it going. As bad as it sounds but I hope the big companies start gouging people for prices because -- LITERALLY -- the only slim chance Canadians have of changing this is public outrage, and that won't happen until mom and pop start to see a $100 overage because they've "just been watching tv online, what's the big deal?"
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Dec 23, 2010 19:42
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Yeah. Every time I launch Steam there's some 200mb update to TF2. I want to install some PSN demos but they're like 2-4gb and while I'm covered under Cogeco's $30 overage cap I don't really want to start pushing it or anything. Yeesh. They have me trained, what can I say? It helps that I have an office on campus that's connected to a fat fat campus pipe with no bitcaps or rate limits, but that doesn't help me when it comes to things like Netflix or PSN 
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Dec 23, 2010 20:17
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Are they giving you poo poo? You *should* be covered by their $30 overage fee. Also the top tiered one is 120GB, isn't it? (not that the extra 20gb would make much a difference) Since you already have one cable connection you can try hooking up a Teksavvy DSL line and load balancing your traffic out those two through a m0n0wall box or something. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Dec 26, 2010 |
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Dec 26, 2010 20:46
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That's really awesome. I hope you get a chance to expand out into bandwidth capping and all that, but you'll probably just be steered in some direction after telling your story. Good luck though! Let us know when/if it airs! edit: Unless you mean like a LIVE interview tomorrow, which I would totally tune into.
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Jan 6, 2011 23:25
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I recommend "gently caress you CRTC".
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Jan 6, 2011 23:45
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It'll probably be on cbc.ca/thenational too, though I don't know what their turnaround is.
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Jan 7, 2011 22:45
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I'm seriously going to have to move across the country to downtown Vancouver just to find a good ISP soon 
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Jan 15, 2011 07:04
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Health care, shmealth care. I can get all the pseudo medical advice I need online, but first I need a good internet connection
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Jan 25, 2011 03:56
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teethgrinder posted:edit: Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Comedy It's really more of a Tragedy.
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Jan 25, 2011 20:34
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This is how the next ten years will look: A bunch of grannies will get $2000 bills because their wifi was "hacked" or they are dirty rear end pirates. CBC airs tons of fluff pieces on how granny can't afford her nursing home bill because she got charged too much, nothing happens because people still have no idea what a bit cap is or why people are getting charged a lot of money. The whole monopoly aspect will remain completely untouched. Eventually some senator will get his wifi hacked and decide this is a serious issue, but instead of addressing the problem they'll just enact some milquetoast legislation that doesn't actually help consumers in any way, or will be some kind of "make ISPs be more lenient to customers who owe a lot of money" kind of thing.
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Jan 25, 2011 21:10
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I don't know who's rolled into CTVGlobeMedia but I watch a lot of stuff on discovery.ca and sites like that. I always hate knowing that's eating into my cap. This stuff is probably available on Cogeco's on-demand thing but their on demand system is utter poo poo so I can't find anything useful.
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Jan 26, 2011 02:47
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The Gunslinger posted:Amusingly Cogeco recently added a "We reserve the right to charge you $10 per 1GB" clause at the bottom of their usual fineprint crap on the package pages and whatnot. It's especially confusing given that the maximum overages are listed at $30 for $1.25 per gigabyte right above it. $10 per 1GB, I hope I am reading this bullshit wrong (very bottom). It was also on my paper bill last month. Isn't that the kind of thing they need to send you new T&C for? I don't think we've received a new T&C in the mail yet, and I can't imagine how adding something like "oh by the way now we can charge you $10/gb" is something they could just slip in legally. Right now between four people we are hovering at just under 100gb/mo. We could probably police ourselves down to 70 or 80gb if we HAD to, but we've been kind of spoiled by Cogeco's "max $30 overage" policy. Once that goes away I'm kind of afraid to see what the first "surprise bill" will be like. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Jan 26, 2011 |
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Jan 26, 2011 21:41
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thexerox123 posted:This must contravene the Competition Act somehow, right? If it's a worthwhile law in the least... maybe some complaints to the Competition Bureau would be useful... although whatever this is saying might make things complicated when it comes to authority there. Maybe, but it won't matter because Bell will trot out fifty of their highest priced lawyers to explain how UBB is necessary because peer to peer and congestion and high cost of infrastructure, and then when you try to counter that this is all bullshit they have fifty expensive lawyers that will pick your common sense apart because you can't provide some outlandish information.
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Jan 26, 2011 22:18
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Sashimi posted:In theory they should but chances are they won't. Bell tried this on a friend of mine several years ago. He signed a contract for their internet around 2006 before ISPs had caps, and several years later he basically found a fee on his bill for exceeding this sudden cap. He fought with Bell to remove the fee for months, saying that any changes to the contract requires them to send a new contract. Unsurprisingly, he got nowhere with them and moved to Teksavvy as soon as his contract expired. Well, at that point it might be worth looking into small claims court. I'm not saying that it's the right thing to do, or whether Bell was even legally in the wrong, but if some rudimentary research concluded that yes, they did need a new T&C, then that seems like a pretty open and shut case. Can you even take a large corporation to small claims court?
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Jan 26, 2011 22:20
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We're Canadians. Far too polite for our own good.
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Jan 27, 2011 05:30
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I want to laugh, thinking that if I were a Bell customer I might be paying overage fees to watch something owned by Bell in the first place.
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Jan 27, 2011 06:38
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Bonzo posted:I thought it was mentioned before that if you use Bell, on demand and streaming from their services would not count against your bandwidth. Monopoly? Who, me? 
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Jan 27, 2011 22:04
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The problem clearly lies with both ISPs and the government. There's more than enough blame to go around.
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Jan 28, 2011 20:59
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Since I'd bet more people know America's politics than they do Canadian, I'm surprised this hasn't been (rightly or wrongly) compared to Net Neutrality more. Here we have the big corporations who are potentially going to make it more expensive to access content UNLESS IT'S ON THEIR OWN SERVERS. Something which America just struck down. Why are we falling behind to America in internet freedoms? I'm not saying the two situations ARE actually similar at the core, but if you tickle everyone's "Canada is supposed to be better <  >" bone then that'll probably help solidify the "CANADA HAS THIRD WORLD INTERNET ACCESS" angle.
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Jan 30, 2011 21:38
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ZShakespeare posted:Rather than spending $5 for an extra GB of internet I could get a Someone needs to spoof the campaign: Five Five dolla Five dollar per giiiiig (that's like one netflix movie)
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Jan 31, 2011 23:56
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edit: Doublepost
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Jan 31, 2011 23:57
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less than three posted:Of course they don't differentiate between local and transit traffic, so they're adding 24GB to my meter even though the content is hosted locally. It's a shame about the UBB because without the burden of having to pay ridiculous fees for overages I would say that this is exactly how it should work in a neutral internet -- same price no matter where you get your content. Er -- I'm not trying to make any point other than without the context of the UBB that would actually be a good thing (then again without UBB you wouldn't have brought it up so -- )
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Feb 1, 2011 00:02
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less than three posted:I agree with you. Delivery should be location neutral. However if they want to start charging based on usage, it's bullshit to count data they're not actually having to pull from the Internet. Yeah I almost felt bad replying because it's obvious what the intent of your post was and I didn't want to muddy the water with philosophy.
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Feb 1, 2011 00:08
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Yeah, I'd just like to point out that pretty soon it will literally be cheaper and faster for me to take my PS3, unplug it, put it in my car, drive five to ten minutes to my office on campus, plug it in and download whatever game or demo I want than it will for me to do it at home.
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Feb 1, 2011 18:37
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Stanley Pain posted:My MP is Peter Kent, totes the company line pretty hard core. I've sent him a bunch of my concerns and the responses I get back are pretty much what you'd expect for someone toting the company line. I expect nothing less from David Sweet, but I'll be damned if I don't try
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Feb 1, 2011 20:13
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Ugh. Does anyone have a decent form letter I can expand on? Every time I start writing I just get angry and belligerent. I'm not even an angry guy, but I can't put two coherent sentences together without throwing in angry language.
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Feb 1, 2011 20:22
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The idea of these "skype will be more expensive now" stories ALMOST seems sort of disingenuous, or at least off the mark. If the spouse in question had a lovely 25gb cap then the ISP could have just cut her off altogether since she was technically going over her allocation. The fact that she's going to have to pay more now is valid, but before she was running the risk of just being cut off entirely. So her story really would be more of a "hey, ISPs are charging too much for low bitcaps" which is a good complaint but it's not really focused on UBB. I know the idea of bitcaps and UBB are so closely entwined that you can't really rail against one without seemingly railing against the other, but are we complaining about the excessive price of overlimit bandwidth or are we complaining about lovely low bitcaps. Both are valid complaints, but I can't help but feel that the message is getting muddled. It's something that's kind of bothered me from day one of this UBB thing. I'm having a lot of trouble articulating what I'm trying to say so hopefully someone can follow where I'm trying to take this.
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Feb 2, 2011 03:36
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Oh I don't doubt the effects, and I want this as dead as everyone else so I wouldn't cry if they went with this angle, but I'm trying to bring some attention to the fact that I think there are two valid complaints to be made, and they're getting really confused with each other. 1. There is a problem because Canadian ISPs give us lovely unrealistic bitcaps 2. ISPs are using UBB to charge Canadians unfair prices for overage, compared to what it costs to deliver that overage service. I mean if I had to pay a penny per gig delivered like the ISP does I wouldn't even be batting an eye right now. Hell, five cents even. Again, I'm not trying to take a stand for UBB or anything, and I still don't think I'm articulating it properly. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Feb 2, 2011 |
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Feb 2, 2011 03:45
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ZShakespeare posted:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...aign=DTN+Canada The question is, will they be prepared to grill him? Or will he just be there to officially spout the same statistics that we already know? I mean, it sounds good, but if they don't have a technical consultant on their side and aren't prepared to play the devil's advocate then this is just going to be a day's worth of "our internet tubes are clogged don't you see we need people to pay extra to flush more" and everyone will be all "hey well that makes sense".
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Feb 2, 2011 23:28
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Haha that's amazing. drat, except for Egypt, this is turning out to be a pretty good day!
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Feb 3, 2011 05:29
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Maybe try throwing something like this in: "Americans just received assurances that their internet access would be fair and open, where providers can't give preferred access to certain content delivery sources over others. Here in Canada, corporations like Bell and Rogers who own video on demand services have the option of delivering their content without penalty to your bandwidth cap, effectively giving preferential treatment to their own service while making competitors like Netflix a less viable option for consumers." Also if you can find some actual numbers to back this up: "How can providers in America offer service with much higher, if not unmetered, bandwidth caps with a much larger population, while Canadians in urban areas still have to deal with archaic limitations? A family of four, netflix, 60gb cap, etc etc." in addition to the "cents per gigabyte" UBB thing. If you hit the "Well Americans have this and this, why are we so behind?", maybe it'll be sensationalist enough to give birth to a soundbite or something. If nothing else, it might just hit some nationalistic pride nerve.
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Feb 3, 2011 19:04
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Godinster posted:It seems as this is the best approach in any case. Compare Canada negatively to the USA and people get in a tiff about it very easily. And in this case it happens to be true
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Feb 3, 2011 19:12
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