Usage-Based Billing: Links Roundup

This post is a compilation of links I've been reading, with my responses.

There have been remarkably few car analogies in what I've been reading. Shocking, I know.

  • The Public is Right to Be Cynical of Internet Usage Regulators [ Globe and Mail ]

    Winning quote:

    Who are you calling a hog? We are entering a multimedia world where sharing ever-bigger files – whether they be high-resolution photos of the grandkids, films from Netflix or the NFB or YouTube – is increasingly just part of life. A people’s creative edge resides in its ability to share and manipulate such digital content.

  • Usage-based billing debate: Bandwidth hogs or business bulls? [ CBC News ]

    Eerily reminisicient of a discussion I had recently about 'Fair And Balanced', the author has bent over backwards to give the internet duopoly their due. The quote here that makes me cringe is But I'm also the member of the household who pays the internet bills, and I'm not too thrilled that my family's downloading habits could soon lead to even bigger bills.. I thought you fool, do you actually think your internet bill will go down by penalizing heavier users?. The answer is of course no.

  • Paying so much for bandwidth, getting so little. Another outline of what Big Telcom wants to accomplish, in an article by the person who invented the term "Net Neutrality"
  • Really, it's obvious what the Telcom Oligarchy are up to. They want to crush competition kill the growth of competing/innovative services (such as Netflix) by imposing a crushing financial burden on anyone who would use them.

    Remember that there is always a top 10% of users, no matter what the measurements of bandwidth are. This is merely another excuse to trim some more off the top of the would-be caps to reduce the need for capital expenditures. This in addition to the fact that bandwidth is not a finite resource, and transmitting one additional gigabyte costs nearly nothing: not $1, not $5 or whatever your ISP feels like charging this week. And who is to say that their meters are entirely accurate? Unlike gas pump meters there's no standard of evaluation at all: and you can count on the fact that they will run fast when revenues are down.

    The CRTC's own documentation supports that Capital expenditures are flat, while revenue growth is at 10% per year.

    Though not strictly related, in times like this, it's important to remember what sort of corporate entities we're dealing with

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