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Usage-based-billing turned out to be not a complete disaster in Canada. ISPs were no longer incentivized to use deep-packet-inspection to interrupt or throttle
by cbhl 11y ago
Usage-based-billing turned out to be not a complete disaster in Canada. ISPs were no longer incentivized to use deep-packet-inspection to interrupt or throttle connections. Regulations required incumbents to grant access to last-mile networks to smaller ISPs to encourage competition. Users had more choice -- plans differentiated on both speed and on bandwidth caps, so if you needed a small amount of data in a month but you needed it quickly, you could still save money by picking the right plan. ISPs were encouraged to build out their networks more, since increased speed led to increased usage led to more recurring income: if you wanted the fastest speeds now and could pay $200/month for it, you got it; if you didn't, you could get Internet faster than the average American "high speed" connection for something like $30/month.
- thedudemabry 11y agoThat's a really interesting perspective. I didn't know that Canadian internet providers operated that way. I wonder what the effect would be like in the US, given that we could muscle last-mile competition regulations through. That could change my mind about data caps.
- rasz_pl 11y ago>$30/month thats what unlimited 250/20 cable costs in civilized world, goes to show how "Usage-based-billing turned out to be not a complete disaster"