pnear wrote:
bremer wrote:
We’re lucky to be in Canada. All our ISP’s are pretty good...
...time warner and Comcast are abusing their monopoly positions.
Not to take the thread offside, but I completely disagree with that statement. The Canadian ISPs totally abuse their monopoly position as well, imposing caps and usage fees that are designed to make alternative video options unaffordable. I wrote it about it with some fire in the belly back in 2011, and while the metrics have changed a bit the basic premise still stands - we're getting ripped off.
http://pnear.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/1 ... n-english/ -Pete
I understand what your saying, and I don’t disagree. We’re looking at this from slightly different perspectives. Rogers and Bell are both positioning themselves to be both content producers as well as providers – especially with sports content. They are using this position to protect their cable TV positions and prevent cord cutting.
Download caps are another tool in this goal, but that also has some fat revenue perks for them as well, but here they have a slightly harder time truly hosing people as there is some degree of competition going on. Most Canadians can choose between several cable or phone based ISP’s. (even if some of them are piggy backing off the big providers, they do offer a degree of competition)
In Canada, you see internet speeds consistently increasing. Caps are restrictive, but not onerously so. Prices are elevated, but they aren’t obscene. Netflix and torrents are not throttled (or at least, they are not so throttled as to become unusable).
For example, I’m paying about $80 a month for a 50Mbs connection with a 300GB download cap. Bit torrents and Netflix work flawless for me.
Go to the US, and it’s a different picture. Some areas are good, but most people have 1 ISP to choose from and can’t get more then 2-4Mbs download. Comcast and Time Warner both throttled Netflix to the point it was unusable until Netflix paid carriage fees, which they finaly agreed to last month. To many Americans, the internet is still a slow, shitty experience.
So things up here need improvement, but we’re in far better shape then the Americans.