Let’s stop talking about only having two choices for internet services.
It is part of the big lie propaganda. Yes, most Canadians have a choice of two wires coming into our homes for internet service. That is double the number that most of the world enjoys. In Canada and the US, we have facilities based competition powering investment in continually improving the services being offered.
Most of the rest of the world has only one choice.
And like most of the world, we also have hundreds of others that offer internet services to the public, companies that make use of those two sets of wires. That means that the internet service providers (ISPs) also have a choice of suppliers, a choice that isn’t available in most countries.
On a technical level, the ISPs can choose between aggregated connections and connecting their own equipment to unbundled loops. ISPs in Ontario and Quebec can reach their end-users all over Ontario and Quebec by connecting at one single point in Toronto. They don’t have to put equipment in every switching centre, engineer their backbone network, lease long distance connections, manage the traffic. They just need a local interconnection in Toronto and pay Bell about $20 per month and let Bell do all the work for them.
The main point is that there are lots of choices for consumers, including choices of different types of service from each of the service providers.
Which makes me wonder, why did the alternate ISPs tell all of their customers that their caps were being lowered to 25GB, regardless of how the customers were connected (including those on unbundled local loops). Why did the alternate ISPs not pass on the reduction in the basic GAS tariff; after all, if they decided to pass on the potential cost increase for excess bits, why were they keeping all of the cost reductions for themselves?
Update: I have been informed that Yak had prepared to apply usage based pricing only to its GAS customers. Yak appears to have suspended accepting customers that cannot be served from its co-locates in a limited number of areas. Co-locate based Yak customers continue to enjoy flat rate unlimited service.
Such a fundamental change to their costing structures would necessitate a fundamental reworking of their business model and pricing strategy. As many have pointed out, these UBB costs are borne by the independent ISPs, not the customer. They are under no obligation to match anybody else’s pricing structure, including the caps imposed by Bell.
If they felt this was the best way they could differentiate their services, providing maximum value to the greatest possible consumers in their target market while maximizing their own profits, that is their decision to make. They are an independent business, and their retail pricing is as equally unregulated as Bell’s.