[apn]

Never one to miss an opportunity to screw over its customers and ca$h in, I've been reading that Robbers has filed a TPIA tariff indicating that it would like to impose its own version of UBB from July 1st 2011.

Happy Canada Day from your friends at Robbers!

 

[hugh]

Honestly, I don't think this should come as any surprise. Everything the government has done in the last year pointed to it happening

 

[Jase88]

BDU's will need to recover revenue lost to Internet-based TV (Netflix, iTunes, Apple TV, et al). And this is how they intend to do it. No surprise there.

 

[timlocke]

UBB is what exactly? ( I tried to search for UBB but the search engine complains it was too short and did not even find this thread.)

 

[cfloyd]

UBB

User Based Billing

 

[57]

...I tried to search for UBB but the search engine complains it was too short and did not even find this thread.)

See the following useful post - read the part on search tips - may not help for UBB, but may in the future (sometimes the site's search engine acts weird, but it can search for 3 characters if you add the wildcard.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=57741


The Google search link in this forum, found the following previous thread for example:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=110888

User Based Billing

It's Usage-Based Billing, not user.

 

[timlocke]

Thanks 57. I'll remember that wildcard trick


I doubt UBB will affect me much. I think my heaviest time was about 4Gb out of a 60 cap and that was downloading 4 Linux distros in the same month.

 

[laidback]

According to their customer service, they have had UBB in place for close to 2 years. When I called earlier this week about bundles, I was told they were already doing it. At another fourm, there are many posts from people stating they been billed extra for going over their caps.
UBB is a cash grab plain and simple.

 

[jeneral]

Rogers' current implementation is nothing like Bell's upcoming UBB. Currently on Rogers there is a $50 max charge with no limit. Bell's upcoming UBB is a $60 max UP TO 300GB. After 300GB, they will charge $1-2/GB with NO maximum. That is the type of UBB that has people scared.

 

[apn]

The fundamental difference here is that Robbers does not (yet) have rubber-stamped approval to screw customers of its reseller services for overages.

Blue and Red have been screwing their own customers on overages for some time. Blue recently paid off the right people to get approval to screw GAS "resellers" offering DSL service on its network e.g. Teksavvy.

Red is now requesting the same right to screw TPIA "resellers" offering cable service on its network e.g. Teksavvy.

Blue and Red have two objectives in mind;

1. Clamp down on bandwidth, thus making it very expensive to use the internet for streaming high-data-rate content (video), thus protecting their own TV distribution businesses.

2. Spike the competition. Stem the tide of defections to "reseller" services offering lower prices and unlimited bandwidth on the blue and red networks.

IMHO, Blue and Red would like nothing more than to revert us back to dial-up internet, since that would effectively kill video availability on that medium.

 

[hugh]

UBB for Cable was passed by the CRTC long before it was for the telcos.

 

[ScaryBob]

Agreed. The twist here is that overages are being charged to wholesale customers, aka resellers. That was not allowed previously. The old model was to charge wholesale customers a flat rate for total data used. The new scheme targets individuals who are customers of another company. It's like GM billing gas stations $2 per litre if a leased car driver puts more than 25,000km a year on a vehicle.