Thursday, October 28, 2010

Bell Says Jump, CRTC Jumps

The CRTC is such an obedient little corporate lap dog. When Bell says jump, the CRTC jumps. Usage based billing was a approved several months ago but the CRTC stipulated that UBB could only begin once Bell had eliminated all its unlimited accounts. Bell asked the CRTC to reconsider this requirement. The CRTC jumped.

Now, accounts created before 1 January, 2007, will be grandfathered. On Bell's retail side this means they won't have to eliminate many unlimited accounts since they stopped offering that option in 2007. On the wholesale ISP side, accounts created before 2007 will not be subject to UBB. Unfortunately, I signed up with TekSavvy in October 2007, so I'm going to be UBBed, starting in 90 days.

Considering I use about 60 to 100GB per month and the UBB cap is only 60GB, my paltry 3 Mb/s Internet access is about to become very, very expensive. To cover the cost, I'm going to cancel all the features on my land line and reduce it to the basic phone service, which is needed for the DSL. Effectively, Bell is not making any more money from me than it did before UBB. I'll be sure to tell the Bell CSR exactly why I'm cancelling the services.

Nobody at Bell will care why I'm reducing my services. Bell's goal is to eradicate the wholesale ISP competition and UBB is a big step towards that result. One of the mandates of the CRTC is that it must foster competition in the telecom market, which is directly at odds with Bell's goal. Sooner or later, the CRTC is going to have to answer for being Bell's obedient corporate lap dog.

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