ISPs Complain to CRTC over Capacity-Based Billing Prices

Get ready for a whole new year of more acronymic Internet-related arguing.

The ongoing battle between Canada's small Internet service providers and Bell and Rogers will continue afresh in this new year, as the former have filed a complaint with the CRTC over what they say are unfair pricing models being offered by the telecom giants. The complaint stems from the CRTC's ruling last year (so fun to say, this early in the year) that Bell's usage-based billing model was unfair to the indie ISPs such as TekSavvy that rely on Bell's infrastructure to deliver Internet access to their customers. The CRTC ruled that Bell would have to bill the ISPs based on the capacity they'd at peak usage hours, not how much data was transmitted across their networks.

The decision was greeted as reasonable and balanced to all parties involved, but now the Canadian Network Operators Consortium Inc., a trade group that represents the small ISPs, has lodged a complaint saying the prices Bell is planning to charge are far too high for the small ISPs to remain competitive. TekSavvy has said the new pricing scheme means their subscribers will be paying $3 or $4 more per month, which could severely limit their ability to attract new customers (although speaking from personal experience, we doubt that too many existing TekSavvy subscribers will suddenly flee to Bell or Rogers). Anyhow, expect this to carry on for much of the year, which is undoubtedly a great thing for this country: you can't put a price on crafting good, honest policy.