6 ms·

Some perspective on exactly how badly ISPs in Canada are overcharging for data

71 points by niyazpk 16y ago

SeanDav 16y ago
In the old days of computing people used to talk about "tackie" or "sneaker" networks. Meaning put the data onto a disk and physically move it to another machine. Looks like we are back to that again!
- sophacles 16y ago
  Thats progress baby! See what Bell knows, and what you should know, is that tech is like fashion, everything old is new again. Look for UUCP and VAX to pick up steam again in the next 6-9 months, and brush op on your z/OS skills for 2012.
afhof 16y ago
I still find the price per text message (my cell carrier still charges 5 cents per) enormous. To send 160GB via 160 char text messages would cost 50 million dollars.
- ianl 16y ago
  We pay 0.15/msg in Canada unless you pay for the unlimited plan which is generally $15/mo. The CRTC must be really bought by the telecommunications industry :(
- jonhohle 16y ago
  The same messages on AT&T would cost $400 million (20 cents for the sender + 20 cents for the sender). That's astonishing.
duke_sam 16y ago
Is it me or is the ISP business getting steadily more anti-customer? Between trying to double charge for bandwidth (charge me a monthly fee and then charge company X for access to me) and attempting to push through lower and lower caps. I understand the increasing costs of infrastructure to provide for users streaming content but would this not be part of their business plans and budgeted for? Or did they expect everybody to continue using the internet like it was 2000? I know the service was always sold on the assumption that the majority of people are low bandwidth users but can ISPs really get this defensive when people start trying to get what they pay for? Also SMS still takes the cake for most crazily overpriced communication medium, over $1000 per Mb.
- natnat 16y ago
  I think a big part of this, in the US at least, is that ISPs are monopolies that can do whatever they want to their customers. We granted telecoms monopoly power back before deregulation became popular, and those monopolies have carried over to the internet. But since the general trend over the past 20-30 years has been to remove existing regulations and not add new ones, there are few laws on the books to protect consumers in the realm of new technology. This is, I think, often a good thing in competitive markets, but when the service providers have monopolies, deregulation may not be the greatest.
  - tomrod 16y ago
    Another part of it is that cable companies/telcos already provide content for a fee that many content providers provide on the internets for free. Hence, content providers cut into their supposed bottom-line. Content providers piggy-back on the ISPs in markets within which the ISP has already entered: one would expect the ISP, as a local monopoly, to exercise market power to force exit of the content providers.
    - roc 16y ago
      That's precisely the catalyst. The ISPs have finally figured out that their high-profit communications and video 'features' are going to be destroyed by IP alternatives and they'll become dumb commodity pipes. So they're trying to jack up the price of bits to compensate.
      - tomrod 16y ago
        Time for the content providers (Google, HN) to invest in ISPs?
        roc 16y ago
        As an Internet user I've never felt Net Neutrality was about the current content providers. For me it's always been about the next Google/Netflix/Youtube. i.e. The companies that can't possibly afford to strike those deals. And Google itself has shown that it's perfectly willing to strike deals to protect its own traffic and throw everyone else under the bus along the way. (What do we really think that Verizon deal was about?) If they bought into several major ISPs, I'm not sure the situation would be much improved.
jasonlotito 16y ago
This is Bell. While I'm not claiming Canadian rates are cheap, this is what Videotron charges: Download speed: 60 Mbps Upload speed: 3 Mbps Total data transfer combined: 150 GB $82.95* Which is 0.55$ You can also get additional data in 30 Gig blocks for 12.50$ (up to 3 a month), which is 0.44$, if you need it. And there are additional services as well. I've been a subscriber to Videotron since 2002, and while they aren't the cheapest, I've found their support fairly good, never having a major problems. Edit: I should note, I'm just providing these prices as a perspective to what's being presented other places. My wife and I also never go over the cap, so we haven't worried about overage charges. However, if we did exceed the cap, apparently it's $4.50/G!
- pyre 16y ago
  IIRC the Bell cap is 25GB/month with $2/GB after that.
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
    In Quebec, the cap is 60GB/month apparently.
    - alsocasey 16y ago
      But 2.35$/GB for overages.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > This is Bell. No, that's been Bell forever, but following the CRTC's last decision any carrier using Bell's network will be forced into those prices, because Bell can now apply usage-based billing on their wholesale customers.
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
    That's what I mean. The prices linked only affects people using Bell's systems.
latch 16y ago
Shipping data is common, both to save money and for greater speed. AWS has their import/export tool that does just this: http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/ http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/ There's also the story of the carrier pigeon which was faster than broadband in South Africa http://www.physorg.com/news171883994.html http://www.physorg.com/news171883994.html Fill a 737 with bluray, fly it from NY to LA, and you'll reach 37,000 Gbit/s. It's called Sneakernet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet
- sid0 16y ago
  My networks prof said in his first lecture that if you don't care about latency, shipping a hard drive is always cheaper.
  - Lagged2Death 16y ago
    It is likely that this will be true for some given quantity of data for a long time. But in Canada, the quantity of data required to make the mail look like a good option has just plummeted. It may be cheaper to mail a DVD+R for as little as 1GB of data. That's just not very much data anymore. Google offers Gmail users more storage than that for free.
- masklinn 16y ago
  Well yeah, but the comparisons here are not just shipping the drive. The original one is shipping an SSD and binning it at the destination, and this one is taking the plane with your drives and binning them when you're done.
- alexophile 16y ago
  When I was interviewing a founder at SpiderOak, he mentioned that they did this for some bigger clients (complete with zero-knowledge encryption) to get them up and running faster.
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  Sneakernet bandwidth is great, true, but oh! The latency!
absconditus 16y ago
Why is this being upvoted? Who does not overcharge based on this idiotic logic? It may have made for a humorous joke on reddit, but I expect better here.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > Why is this being upvoted? Who does not overcharge based on this idiotic logic? Everybody else? In Belgium (not exactly the most forward-looking country internet-wise), I can get no-caps internet for 25€ (12M/740K). That's $34. I only have to download 17GB a month to blow out the $2/GB canadians get. I checked, the current billing month started on the 29th and I already ate through 11.5GB. That's over 4 days (closer to 3 actually, but let's play it tight), which means if I continue at this rate by the end of the month I'll have used roughly 85GB, putting my effective costs at $0.4/GB. 20% of the Bell rate.
- marquis 16y ago
  This is 2011. We have Netflix, gigagbytes of free online storage, dropbox.. Try living in New Zealand or Australia for a while. You start spending time checking your services are not downloading updates automatically, or disabling dropbox except a few days of the month so you don't blow your limit. You wait 2 days for a DVD to arrive in the mail from the local Netflix equivalent. You don't watch local news videos, or upload HD to Vimeo. You get upset at your US friends who email you a 5gb mp3. You're careful about where you hit play. You install AdBlock and worry about not supporting communities that rely on ads. It goes on and on and on - the fact is, our internet culture has grown to where downloading and uploading is a necessity, especially for the youth. Limits are serving to put media control back in the hands of those who control the method of transmission. The entire topic infuriates me as I've experienced limited and unlimited connections, and I certainly can attest to the greater production output I have when on an unlimited connection. The reddit post points how exactly how ridiculous it is to be charged for something in this manner, the sheer unfairness of it. ISPs need to be reproached by their customers, and that will only happen by making it an emotional issue.
  - snsr 16y ago
    Customers' only effective paths to reproach would be to either cut themselves off from culture and communications, or to switch to a competing ISP with more favorable terms. Conveniently for most ISPs, there is no competition.
sbierwagen 16y ago
Daniel Rutter did some similar math, using MicroSD cards, since they're smaller and lighter per gigabyte. http://dansdata.com/gz105.htm http://dansdata.com/gz105.htm If you fill a station wagon with them, and drive for 5 days, you'll do about 477 gibibytes per second, using 19.4 million cards, costing something like 750 million dollars. In the real world, (he said, laughing uproariously) you'd only use a couple dozen three terabyte drives, or something, but still. For certain applications, sneakernetting can be much cheaper than internet transit.
kgermino 16y ago
"never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes"
cal5k 16y ago
FYI, Teksavvy's cable plans still offer 200GB and unlimited options, since they're running on Rogers' lines (I'm a cable customer and have confirmed this with them). This may change, but in the meantime it's the best thing going if you can get it!
pasbesoin 16y ago
Somewhat OT. What does a Netflix streamed movie consume, these days? I recall looking some months ago on their site, but I couldn't find any hard numbers (leaving the impression on me that this was on purpose). I guess next time I watch one, I can fire up a monitor. -- EDIT: Answering myself, partially. My Google-fu is apparently a bit better, today. This is a bit dated, but provides some figures (bless dslreports): http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22164481-Netflix-bandwidth-Is-1GBhr-at-HD-accurate http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22164481-Netflix-bandwidth-... It also cites this link: http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html There's probably better information, but this seems to provide enough of a ballpark for my current interest, the one caveat being any changes in the year or two since.

71 points by niyazpk 16y ago

In the old days of computing people used to talk about "tackie" or "sneaker" networks. Meaning put the data onto a disk and physically move it to another machine. Looks like we are back to that again!

sophacles 16y ago
Thats progress baby! See what Bell knows, and what you should know, is that tech is like fashion, everything old is new again. Look for UUCP and VAX to pick up steam again in the next 6-9 months, and brush op on your z/OS skills for 2012.

afhof 16y ago

I still find the price per text message (my cell carrier still charges 5 cents per) enormous. To send 160GB via 160 char text messages would cost 50 million dollars.

ianl 16y ago
We pay 0.15/msg in Canada unless you pay for the unlimited plan which is generally $15/mo. The CRTC must be really bought by the telecommunications industry :(
jonhohle 16y ago
The same messages on AT&T would cost $400 million (20 cents for the sender + 20 cents for the sender). That's astonishing.

duke_sam 16y ago

Is it me or is the ISP business getting steadily more anti-customer? Between trying to double charge for bandwidth (charge me a monthly fee and then charge company X for access to me) and attempting to push through lower and lower caps. I understand the increasing costs of infrastructure to provide for users streaming content but would this not be part of their business plans and budgeted for? Or did they expect everybody to continue using the internet like it was 2000? I know the service was always sold on the assumption that the majority of people are low bandwidth users but can ISPs really get this defensive when people start trying to get what they pay for? Also SMS still takes the cake for most crazily overpriced communication medium, over $1000 per Mb.

natnat 16y ago
I think a big part of this, in the US at least, is that ISPs are monopolies that can do whatever they want to their customers. We granted telecoms monopoly power back before deregulation became popular, and those monopolies have carried over to the internet. But since the general trend over the past 20-30 years has been to remove existing regulations and not add new ones, there are few laws on the books to protect consumers in the realm of new technology. This is, I think, often a good thing in competitive markets, but when the service providers have monopolies, deregulation may not be the greatest.
- tomrod 16y ago
  Another part of it is that cable companies/telcos already provide content for a fee that many content providers provide on the internets for free. Hence, content providers cut into their supposed bottom-line. Content providers piggy-back on the ISPs in markets within which the ISP has already entered: one would expect the ISP, as a local monopoly, to exercise market power to force exit of the content providers.
  - roc 16y ago
    That's precisely the catalyst. The ISPs have finally figured out that their high-profit communications and video 'features' are going to be destroyed by IP alternatives and they'll become dumb commodity pipes. So they're trying to jack up the price of bits to compensate.
    - tomrod 16y ago
      Time for the content providers (Google, HN) to invest in ISPs?
      - roc 16y ago
        As an Internet user I've never felt Net Neutrality was about the current content providers. For me it's always been about the next Google/Netflix/Youtube. i.e. The companies that can't possibly afford to strike those deals. And Google itself has shown that it's perfectly willing to strike deals to protect its own traffic and throw everyone else under the bus along the way. (What do we really think that Verizon deal was about?) If they bought into several major ISPs, I'm not sure the situation would be much improved.

jasonlotito 16y ago

This is Bell. While I'm not claiming Canadian rates are cheap, this is what Videotron charges: Download speed: 60 Mbps Upload speed: 3 Mbps Total data transfer combined: 150 GB $82.95* Which is 0.55$ You can also get additional data in 30 Gig blocks for 12.50$ (up to 3 a month), which is 0.44$, if you need it. And there are additional services as well. I've been a subscriber to Videotron since 2002, and while they aren't the cheapest, I've found their support fairly good, never having a major problems. Edit: I should note, I'm just providing these prices as a perspective to what's being presented other places. My wife and I also never go over the cap, so we haven't worried about overage charges. However, if we did exceed the cap, apparently it's $4.50/G!

pyre 16y ago
IIRC the Bell cap is 25GB/month with $2/GB after that.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  In Quebec, the cap is 60GB/month apparently.
  - alsocasey 16y ago
    But 2.35$/GB for overages.
masklinn 16y ago
> This is Bell. No, that's been Bell forever, but following the CRTC's last decision any carrier using Bell's network will be forced into those prices, because Bell can now apply usage-based billing on their wholesale customers.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  That's what I mean. The prices linked only affects people using Bell's systems.

latch 16y ago

Shipping data is common, both to save money and for greater speed. AWS has their import/export tool that does just this: http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/ http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/ There's also the story of the carrier pigeon which was faster than broadband in South Africa http://www.physorg.com/news171883994.html http://www.physorg.com/news171883994.html Fill a 737 with bluray, fly it from NY to LA, and you'll reach 37,000 Gbit/s. It's called Sneakernet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

sid0 16y ago
My networks prof said in his first lecture that if you don't care about latency, shipping a hard drive is always cheaper.
- Lagged2Death 16y ago
  It is likely that this will be true for some given quantity of data for a long time. But in Canada, the quantity of data required to make the mail look like a good option has just plummeted. It may be cheaper to mail a DVD+R for as little as 1GB of data. That's just not very much data anymore. Google offers Gmail users more storage than that for free.
masklinn 16y ago
Well yeah, but the comparisons here are not just shipping the drive. The original one is shipping an SSD and binning it at the destination, and this one is taking the plane with your drives and binning them when you're done.
alexophile 16y ago
When I was interviewing a founder at SpiderOak, he mentioned that they did this for some bigger clients (complete with zero-knowledge encryption) to get them up and running faster.
pavel_lishin 16y ago
Sneakernet bandwidth is great, true, but oh! The latency!

absconditus 16y ago

Why is this being upvoted? Who does not overcharge based on this idiotic logic? It may have made for a humorous joke on reddit, but I expect better here.

masklinn 16y ago
> Why is this being upvoted? Who does not overcharge based on this idiotic logic? Everybody else? In Belgium (not exactly the most forward-looking country internet-wise), I can get no-caps internet for 25€ (12M/740K). That's $34. I only have to download 17GB a month to blow out the $2/GB canadians get. I checked, the current billing month started on the 29th and I already ate through 11.5GB. That's over 4 days (closer to 3 actually, but let's play it tight), which means if I continue at this rate by the end of the month I'll have used roughly 85GB, putting my effective costs at $0.4/GB. 20% of the Bell rate.
marquis 16y ago
This is 2011. We have Netflix, gigagbytes of free online storage, dropbox.. Try living in New Zealand or Australia for a while. You start spending time checking your services are not downloading updates automatically, or disabling dropbox except a few days of the month so you don't blow your limit. You wait 2 days for a DVD to arrive in the mail from the local Netflix equivalent. You don't watch local news videos, or upload HD to Vimeo. You get upset at your US friends who email you a 5gb mp3. You're careful about where you hit play. You install AdBlock and worry about not supporting communities that rely on ads. It goes on and on and on - the fact is, our internet culture has grown to where downloading and uploading is a necessity, especially for the youth. Limits are serving to put media control back in the hands of those who control the method of transmission. The entire topic infuriates me as I've experienced limited and unlimited connections, and I certainly can attest to the greater production output I have when on an unlimited connection. The reddit post points how exactly how ridiculous it is to be charged for something in this manner, the sheer unfairness of it. ISPs need to be reproached by their customers, and that will only happen by making it an emotional issue.
- snsr 16y ago
  Customers' only effective paths to reproach would be to either cut themselves off from culture and communications, or to switch to a competing ISP with more favorable terms. Conveniently for most ISPs, there is no competition.

sbierwagen 16y ago

Daniel Rutter did some similar math, using MicroSD cards, since they're smaller and lighter per gigabyte. http://dansdata.com/gz105.htm http://dansdata.com/gz105.htm If you fill a station wagon with them, and drive for 5 days, you'll do about 477 gibibytes per second, using 19.4 million cards, costing something like 750 million dollars. In the real world, (he said, laughing uproariously) you'd only use a couple dozen three terabyte drives, or something, but still. For certain applications, sneakernetting can be much cheaper than internet transit.

kgermino 16y ago

"never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes"

cal5k 16y ago

FYI, Teksavvy's cable plans still offer 200GB and unlimited options, since they're running on Rogers' lines (I'm a cable customer and have confirmed this with them). This may change, but in the meantime it's the best thing going if you can get it!

pasbesoin 16y ago

Somewhat OT. What does a Netflix streamed movie consume, these days? I recall looking some months ago on their site, but I couldn't find any hard numbers (leaving the impression on me that this was on purpose). I guess next time I watch one, I can fire up a monitor. -- EDIT: Answering myself, partially. My Google-fu is apparently a bit better, today. This is a bit dated, but provides some figures (bless dslreports): http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22164481-Netflix-bandwidth-Is-1GBhr-at-HD-accurate http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22164481-Netflix-bandwidth-... It also cites this link: http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html There's probably better information, but this seems to provide enough of a ballpark for my current interest, the one caveat being any changes in the year or two since.