This is turning into a really depressing week. Yesterday, it was the Canadian DMCA bill. Today, the CRTC approved usage based billing (UBB). Bell shoots and scores again!
UBB won't kick in immediately. It becomes active 60 days after Bell informs the CRTC in writing that it has eliminated all its customers on grandfathered unlimited accounts. But that won't be very difficult. Bell can just switch people without so much as a by-your-leave.
Once UBB takes effect, there is a cap of 60GB per month. The overage fee is wopping $1.75 per Gigabyte, up to maximum $22.50. There's a secondary cap of 300GB with a fee of $0.75 per Gigabyte. I used 95GB in April so my Internet bill would have been around $56 plus taxes. April was unusual though. March was 66GB which is around $44. Wow, that's suddenly one very expensive 3Mb/s DSL connection!
The throttle is supposed to go away once the UBB comes into effect, since the UBB is supposed to curtail the dastardly bandwidth hogs. I fully expect Bell to find some reason to keep the throttle in place, probably using the unchanged usage as an excuse. With the CRTC in their back pocket, they know they can get away with anything. This is turning into a very depressing week.
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