Shaw Consultation about UBB
Oh the drama of the "usage based billing" debate! Or is it really a debate when one side is a few huge companies with a virtual monopoly on high speed internet and the other side is pretty much everyone else?
The sparring match between the Prime Minister and the CRTC seems to be concerned more with the telco providers than cable providers, as the latter falls under slightly different rules. Also, the CRTC ruling doesn't change anything about what rules can be imposed on end users – it's concerned with the relationship between the telcos and independent providers which need to use the same infrastructure. So it was a nice surprise when Shaw took some initiative and scheduled some discussions about their recent decision to start imposing bandwidth caps.
I decided to take them up on their offer of attending a consultation session and thought I might get a little feedback from my millions of readers on what I should bring up. I'm walking in assuming that they'll see "no caps!" as a non-starter for debate, so with that in mind, this is what I plan to suggest:
- A more reasonable overage charge. If Amazon lets me run a server at ten cents or less per GB of bandwidth, why does my ISP think charging me $1-2 per GB is fair?
- Allow banking of GB under the limit. Most months, I'm using less than half my cap. This month I changed online backup providers and went way over. But throughout the year, it would even out. I think a lot of people are in the same position. Even fairer would be to get money back for the GB you don't use, but somehow I see them less likely to go for that. Businesses like the subscription model for a reason: it makes them a steady income per customer.
- A higher cap. I seem to remember hearing that high speed internet in the U.S. tends to have around a 250GB cap (if anyone has a reference to this, I'd appreciate it!). This seems a lot more reasonable given the rise of services like Netflix, that cause people to legally use a lot more bandwidth. In fact, Shaw's initial decision to start imposing caps shortly after Netflix was introduced in Canada was rather suspicious, as the service obviously competes with Shaw's TV offerings.
- Netflix and Michael Geist have both talked recently about the real cost for last-mile internet delivery (which would presumably be the part where congestion was really a problem). The figure ranges somewhere between one and three cents per GB. If ISPs are claiming that UBB at $1-2 / GB over the cap is fair, they should provide some publicly available numbers to back that up. Otherwise, they shouldn't be surprised when customers think they're just trying to milk them for more money.
Anything I should add? Any corrections to make to that information, or ways that the argument could be strengthened and/or made more persuasive (recognizing the fact that they're in it to make money and are going to be balancing how much the anger of customers is going to cost vs. the amount any concessions are going to cost)?
No, I'm not expecting much from this, but as with voting, I feel that an attempt at positive participation secures a certain amount of the right to complain afterwards. Please get any comments in before 6PM on Monday, March 7th, as that's when I'll be attending. I'll be sure to report back on how things go.
March 4th, 2011 - 09:12
Michael Geist is fond of saying that soon, all users will be heavy users. My concern is that if Shaw sets usage caps even to 300 GB/month now, in early 2011, are they willing to commit to increasing these appropriately going forward? Nielsen’s Law says bandwidth doubles every 21 months. Cisco says Internet traffic will increase tenfold from 2008 to 2014 (http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/ts_101110c.html), about the same rate. Is Shaw willing to commit to doubling usage caps every 21 months?
Personally, I think Shaw should differentiate their offerings by EITHER bandwith OR usage, not both. Give everyone uncapped traffic and have them choose 7.5 Mbps, 15 Mbps, 50 Mbps, etc. Or give everyone 100 Mbps and differentiate on total use.
It’s also worth asking why they charge so disproportionately much for their 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps offerings, but that’s a whole other story.
March 4th, 2011 - 19:03
Very good points, as always. I was very focused on immediate usage issues, but it would be interesting to know what they plan to do to address Nielsen’s Law. My guess right now is: not much – but it would be awesome to be proven wrong on that and certainly a worthwhile point to bring up. It’s troubling that the usage study they originally referred to when deciding to impose the caps wasn’t very current.
I agree on the speed vs. usage differentiation too… it’s like we’re getting penalized twice. Somehow I think we’d need much more competition, though, before they’d budge on that.
March 5th, 2011 - 15:36
I was going to give you some feedback but I have just got word from Shaw that I can come to the Langley session on Monday night.
Just to touch base, I agree with your points as well as those from Chris. However, I am not assuming that they will see ‘no caps’ as a non-starter. I don’t want to pre-judge what novel ideas people may come up with. You can get an inkling of what was discussed at previous sessions at:
http://www.shaw.ca/Customer-Discussion-Summaries/
Since Shaw says they need UBB to handle congestion but UBB does nothing to stop congestion, I will be interested to hear how Shaw thinks this will solve this supposed problem. Unfortunately, I believe its real problem is how to make more money out of its Internet offerings.
Do you think TekSavvy’s recent cable internet offering in the Lower Mainland will have much impact and be a salvation for disgruntle Shaw users (300GB for $30/month)?