Enough Already With All This Internet Usage Press

I can’t believe the amount of press over the last week on Canadian Internet usage-based billing. Seriously, the exposure in the press is way over the top- it has even headlined the Globe and Mail for days! Either we’re having a real slow month for news (is anyone watching the Middle East?) or the newspeople are grasping for a federal election issue. Really, what’s the big fuss?

In wading through this, it appears that what we as Canadians think we have in monthly charges using the Internet versus what we’ve signed up for is very different. Iain Marlow of the Globe wrote in a recent column that more than half of Canadians surveyed last summer thought their Internet plans were unlimited and that they could get all the high-definition video streaming and file-transferring they could consume. This might be what we think but the reality is that over 90% of Internet users have set limits in monthly bandwidth and we’ve had this for some time. For example, Bell offers a number of options including their popular 25 GB package for about $35/ mo., TELUS offers plans ranging from 13 gigabytes per month for a bundled price of $20 to 250 GB per month for $50 and Shaw has a high-end 350 GB for $150/ mo. They ALL have extra charges – highlighted on their websites- that when you exceed your monthly bandwidth, you will be billed from $1- $2 per GB extra.

However, when ‘big bad bear’ Bell said they would charge for bandwidth when selling to ISPs like Yak and Primus and the CRTC agreed, everyone cried ‘the sky is falling’. This is where it got really confusing. Last week, growing consumer uproar over the CRTC’s move on this forced Industry Minister Tony Clement to announce he’ll examine the matter; then, on Tuesday, the Prime Minister said that he wanted a formal review of it; on Thursday, the CRTC’s chairman was hauled out of a crucial set of hearings to appear before a committee of hostile MPs to discuss it… election anyone? And on it goes.

What’s the reality? In 2010, the average Canadian Internet customer downloaded and uploaded 15.4 gigabytes of data every month. Only 10 per cent of users currently go over their monthly limits. It’s only when people started realizing that new applications like Netflix video streaming and other new apps could eat away at the monthly bandwidth that people started to wake up. Back to the ‘big bad bear’, Bell intends to charge real dollars for each byte. One small problem- they’re regulated under the CRTC and subject to their edicts.

And this is where the question of Internet ‘metering’ hits a brick wall that most people tend to forget. Internet service providers are for-profit, publicly traded companies with responsibilities to their shareholders. CEOs would be fired if they didn’t capitalize on exploding bandwidth usage. According to Bell, not forcing metered use on their small rivals, something they already do on their regular customers, would inevitably hemorrhage customers to their rivals. Is it unfair for them to cry foul? I certainly don’t like Bell, but they might have a point here. It’s called greed- I mean, capitalism.