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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: Margins just got smaller.

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My ISP (Shaw Cable) announced yesterday that it's moving to usage-based home broadband as opposed to flat rate monthly billing.

Makes me wonder if this how much this will effect the DJ industry in my Province.
Will the cheap cut rate DJ's dissipate because while the music they're d/l-ing might be free their Net usage billing would go up a lot.
I know I'm going to have to raise my rates to cover any increase.
Will any of the other small DJ outfits pack it in?

Gas prices going up, Net fees going up,
Is there another shoe gonna drop??
 
Posted Tue 26 Apr 11 @ 7:45 am
I've been usage based with Rogers since the beginning of the year. My average monthly bill is $125, that's double what it was when I was flat rated! I've also noticed, that any large zip files (100MB+) will sometimes time out since pay-per-use billing started, forcing me to download the file multiple times thus increasing my usage.

I find myself in the same boat as you Marcel, and am not quite certain how I'm going to implement the increase to my current clients.
 
It's irritating as all hell.
Fee's are going to have to up to cover the expense, but I'm not sure how much.

Doesn't Rodger's also limit the amount you can download in one session? I really don;t understand that as well.
 
Flipping heck, for 40 Canadian Dollars in the UK you get truly unlimited broadband up to 8Mps and if you're in a cable area it's even faster. There are capped services far far cheaper. Even GSM broadband here is not that expensive!

$125 .... that's a lot!

Keith
 
They are on a tiered system, the first 10gb is $60 and additional gigs are $10 each. I download 1.5 - 2 gigs a week in music alone which isn't hard because the files are rather large because of their quality.

I'm not quite certain if there is a download restriction per session, but I have noticed that a download of 150MB for example, will download approx halfway and then quit for no apparent reason. So that 150MB file actually becomes 225MB of downloaded data (75MB being an unusable partial file). It is annoying as all hell.

It reminds me of the time when you used to be able to receive text messages for free but sending them was 10 cents each. Then the phone companies realized that they could double dip and charge for the received message as well forcing everyone to get a text messaging plan. Another Canadian capitalist conspiracy! That's alot of C's!

Still scratching my head here as to how I can bill this out an still be fair. It's not my clientele's fault that I'm paying more, but it was also not my choice to go this route either. Rogers is happy the bill gets paid on time every month, so they don't care about the injustice... they call it POLICY.
 
It just gets better - The main competition TELUS is now announcing "per Use" billing.
 
superaceman wrote :
They are on a tiered system, the first 10gb is $60 and additional gigs are $10 each. I download 1.5 - 2 gigs a week in music alone which isn't hard because the files are rather large because of their quality.

I'm not quite certain if there is a download restriction per session, but I have noticed that a download of 150MB for example, will download approx halfway and then quit for no apparent reason. So that 150MB file actually becomes 225MB of downloaded data (75MB being an unusable partial file). It is annoying as all hell.

It reminds me of the time when you used to be able to receive text messages for free but sending them was 10 cents each. Then the phone companies realized that they could double dip and charge for the received message as well forcing everyone to get a text messaging plan. Another Canadian capitalist conspiracy! That's alot of C's!

Still scratching my head here as to how I can bill this out an still be fair. It's not my clientele's fault that I'm paying more, but it was also not my choice to go this route either. Rogers is happy the bill gets paid on time every month, so they don't care about the injustice... they call it POLICY.


A little off topic: Does the telco's in Canada charge for receiving text messages???
 
Here in the States they are moving twards that!! starting in May or June from what I have read!! AT&T and and Comcast are being pressured by the T.V. Station because no one is getting their service for watching T.V. They are using Netflix and Hulu to watch all their shows. So the Cable and satalite providers are Crying....I hope they do what they have been doing with the cell phone data since they started that last Nov. Allowing 2gb foir your cell to download and thats exsisting customers are not affected by the change!...Only new customers will be subjected to these new rules.....


Either way its ALL BS to me!!
 
mats_s wrote :
A little off topic: Does the telco's in Canada charge for receiving text messages???


Yes mats. In 2005/2006 the cellular companies banded together to charge 10 cents per received text message (if you did not have an existing text message plan), it was free to receive prior to this. It basically forced everybody to pay for a text messaging plan and/or bundle of some sort. They always win :(
 
That's just like if the postal service would charge you for the mail you received. Hope all the craziness stays on your side of the Atlantic and stops as soon as possible.

My current cell phone operator has a tiered system for speed and amount for cell phone data. If you reach the amount limit, you either have to buy additional amount or live with 120 kbit/s for the rest of the month, which anyway is more than 2x the old 56k modems. I think it's OK for the cell phone data, but it would be outrageous if anyone tried that scheme for the broadband connections (DSL, DOCSIS, FTTB/FTTH).
 
On your side of the pond you guys have the benefit of being ahead of the game. With a more dense population in a smaller area, the cell providers don't have to build such a large infrastructure (ex. more towers, service centers, etc.) We are also a few years behind Europe technology wise. The phones you guys see today, we won't see for a year or two.
 
Very Interesting!!
 


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