Source: Chronicle Herald

Brace yourselves or, I should say, your wallets.

Starting early next year, most Internet service providers will be charging customers a surcharge — per gigabyte — for bandwidth use that exceeds a monthly cap.

It’s called usage-based billing (UBB), and critics say its spread is going to stifle future digital innovation in this country, kill competition and let big Internet providers pad their profits by gouging Internet users while also giving their own online video products an unfair advantage.

Now, I don’t profess to be an expert on this subject. There’s a ton of material online on the issue, easily found by Googling, so do your own research. But, based on what I’ve read or been told to date, I think anyone who uses the Internet in Canada — in other words, just about everyone — should be very concerned about the implications.

The practice of UBB isn’t brand new in Canada, but thanks to a recent CRTC decision giving Bell the green light to start expanded Internet metering in early 2011, it’s about to become the norm just about everywhere.

What does it all mean?

When Internet access started, most people paid for dial-up access from the phone company, paying by the minute.

Then came direct Internet connections, where people paid a flat fee to the phone or cable company to simply get online. There were no limits, other than connection speed, to what you could download (or upload).

At a certain point, some big companies, like Rogers and Bell, went to Internet packages that, depending on how much you paid, offered higher speeds and a higher monthly bandwidth cap for, of course, a higher price.

In Nova Scotia, we’ve been fortunate, as neither Bell Aliant nor EastLink has used, to my knowledge, usage-based billing. More on that later.

Nationally, Bell’s small DSL competitors, which buy their bandwidth wholesale from the big teleco, have always been free to market their Internet products as they saw fit — until now.

This fall, the CRTC gave Bell the right to charge those small independents the same UBB rates — including penalties for over-the-cap usage — for "wholesale" bandwidth that their new retail customers must pay.

Not surprisingly, those small firms — which formed CNOC (Canadian Network Operators Consortium) in response — are now arguing before the CRTC to discount that price. Otherwise, critics say, they may have to raise their own prices higher than Bell just to stay afloat, effectively putting them out of business.

UBB and Internet throttling, another way to lower online traffic, are needed, we’re told, because demand is growing — due to an explosion in popularity of online video— beyond the supply of infrastructure.

Interesting, then, that Bell’s new service, IPTV — online television, basically — will apparently be exempt from UBB metering.

What’s worrisome about all of this is that Canada, by moving to a metered Internet experience that actively dissuades people — through hits on their wallet — from high-bandwidth online activities, is falling behind the rest of the wired world in terms of digital competitiveness and affordability.

Some critics say Canada should do what others have done and separate the companies that own the physical networks from those that offer content over that bandwidth, eliminating conflicts of interest. Worth discussing.

I tried finding out what Bell Aliant is planning, but other than an email stating they do not now use UBB, I got nowhere.

EastLink was more helpful. Jill Laing, their spokeswoman, said the cable company does plan to bring in UBB sometime in the new year on its fast 100- and 30-mbps services, which will have a 250-gigabyte monthly bandwidth cap. (Bell Canada’s cap, by comparison, will reportedly be 60 gigabytes.) EastLink’s 15-mbps service will remain uncapped.

Laing said 250 gigabytes (one of the highest caps around, she said) equals about 60 high-def (or 300 standard-def) movies.

Before any UBB charges begin, however, EastLink plans to bring in usage self-montitoring tools for customers, she said.

Lots to chew on here.

© Chronicle Herald