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.
