Canadian DSL capped, still comparatively cheaper than SA
South Africans have only recently tasted the once forbidden fruit of uncapped Internet, with the first truly successful uncapped ADSL product being launched by MWEB earlier this year.
International telecommunications companies seem to be slowly moving away from unmetered Internet access towards a usage-based billing (UBB) or “capped” model.
Most recently, Bell in Canada has been given the all-clear by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to switch to a usage-based model, and to also provide wholesale services to internet service providers (ISPs) on a capped basis before they’ve switched all of their own customers over to capped products.
The CRTC is a telecommunications regulator similar to South Africa’s own ICASA. In two rulings that were published in May and October this year, the Canadian regulator allowed Bell Canada to begin charging ISPs for the “excess” usage of their customers within 90 days from 28 October.
Unmetered packages will be “grandfathered,” meaning that Canadian users will be able to keep their uncapped accounts for the time being, but the CRTC has approved a proposal that Bell periodically increase the prices of uncapped packages.
Canada’s new system looks a lot like the old structure Telkom used to sell ADSL to retailers. South Africa just had lower data caps (and higher prices) than the Canadians will have.
When ADSL was first launched in South Africa, Telkom sold bandwidth to end users and resellers alike in 3 gigabyte (GB) packages. These packages initially allowed unlimited local usage, but that was terminated a few years down the line.
Telkom then introduced a system whereby subscribers were allowed to go over their allotted capacity (or “cap”) within certain constraints, but could eventually find themselves cut off from the Internet if they consumed too much data.
Nowadays ISPs are able to purchase capacity, or bandwidth, from providers such as Telkom and Neotel and build their own packages.
This means that South African ISPs are able to buy bandwidth in terms of speed (gigabits per second, or Gbps) and then resell it however they want. Usually this takes the form of an account with a certain data usage cap ranging from 1GB to 200GB, but various uncapped offerings are also available now.
Bell Canada is set to provide at least three packages, namely Lite, Lite Plus and Basic. The wholesale information of the packages are presented in the table below.
| Canadian wholesale ADSL pricing | |||
| Package Element | Lite | Lite Plus | Basic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Downstream speed | 512 kbps | 2 Mbps | 5 Mbps |
| Upstream speed | Unconfirmed | Unconfirmed | Unconfirmed |
| Monthly rate | R78 – R92 | R94 – R115 | R127 – R148 |
| Monthly usage (“Cap”) | 2 GB | 20 GB | 60 GB |
| Over-usage charge, per GB | R 13.125 | R 10.500 | R 7.875 |
| Maximum monthly usage charge | R 157.50 | R 157.50 | R 157.50 |
| Maximum total monthly cost | R 249.50 | R 272.50 | R 305.50 |
| Maximum monthly usage | 14 GB | 35 GB | 80 GB |
| $1 (CAD) = R7 (ZAR) | |||
Data such as the final per-gigabyte pricing isn’t included in the table because the Canadian regulations get a little complicated.
Based on the CRTC’s May ruling, Bell can charge a maximum of $22.50 (Canadian dollars, or about R158) for over-usage on all three packages. This means the company can charge for a maximum of 12 “excess” gigabytes on the Lite package, 15GB on Lite Plus, and 20GB on Basic.
Bell may then not charge a cent for “out of bundle” usage until a the user has consumed over 300GB of data. The Canadian incumbent may then charge $0.75 (roughly R5.25) per gigabyte for usage beyond 300GB.
Smaller ISPs such as Teksavvy have expressed their frustration to the Canadian press with the almost immediate introduction of capped Internet.
Perhaps they should visit South Africa and take a look how our ISPs have handled a telecommunications environment similar to that in Canada.
If South African ISPs could figure out how to build a viable business model out of selling Internet access below cost then we certainly have a thing or two we can teach the Canadians, eh?
Canadian DSL capped, still comparatively cheaper than SA << Comments and views
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