Canadian Internet service provider announced launch of new broadband packages for its Gateway Access Services subscribers designed in compliance with CRTC’s approval of Bell Canada’s plans related to usage-based billing.
Two months ago, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved Bell Canada’s demand to roll out usage-based billing for its GAS users. In connection with this event industry critics fairly feared that Bell Canada’s data allotments would then become default data allotments for everybody.
Meanwhile, the country’s Network Operators Consortium expressed its discontent with the ruling, saying that broadband providers there will fall under the Bell Canada’s usage-based billing criteria. Consequently, forcing ISPs to mirror Bell’s billing plans will kill the competition on the market, to the detriment of users. It turned out that Network Operators Consortium was right. Just after the expiration date of the CRTC’s 90-day delay, a number of broadband providers started rolling out bandwidth caps and higher rates.
One of the examples is Internet service provider TekSavvy. The representatives of the ISP announced that since it would incur extra usage-based costs to provide DSL High-Speed Internet to consumers residing in Ontario and Quebec, they decided to implement usage-based billing on all related services in those areas in March.
Now customers of the ISP can forget about the 200GB or even unlimited monthly data usage plans. Instead, they will face a 25GB monthly data cap, with the only option of 40GB of “Insurance” for an addition $4.75 monthly fee. This scheme can be extended up to 300GB, totaling to $55.00 extra monthly fee. However, such data allotments will expire at the end of each month, and here the broadband provider offers consumers a “Usage Vault” option enabling them to buy prepaid blocks of data in $10, $25, $50, or $100 caps if they exceed their monthly data cap. As for the prices, they are scary: Lite users will have to pay $2.35 per GB up to 300GB, while Premium users will pay $1.90 per GB up to 300GB. Both categories will pay $0.95 per GB after 300GB.
In other words, if you have exceeded your monthly cap and want to download or stream an HD film, it would cost you at least $5. No other example is needed to prove just how harmful to ordinary consumers the ruling of Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission appeared to be.
