Open Media?

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

On 11/20/2010 04:56 PM, James Knott wrote:
> Actually, usage based billing has a lot in favour of it. With flat rate
> billing, the light user is subsidizing the heavy user. Why should
> someone who only reads a bit of email and does a bit of surfing pay as
> much as someone who's constantly downloading large files, videos etc.
> Perhaps a better way would be to have a separate connection fee, well
> below what we currently pay and then pick from a selection of data block
> sizes. It would also allow over use at fees that, if encountered
> frequently, would encourage one to go for the next size up. Throughout
> the history of telecom, usage based billing has been far more common
> than flat rate. Flat rate local phones have been pretty much unique to
> North America and other packet based networks, such as X.25, frame
> relay, ATM were typically usage based billing. However, if the ISPs
> decide to charge UBB on top of what we currently pay, then we'd
> certainly have cause to complain.

I would be happy to pay UBB if and only if I had real choice for 
Internet connectivity. As long as two media companies masquerading as 
ISPs continue to have a choke hold on the "last mile", we will not have 
any choice and they will succeed in ruining Internet access just like 
they've ruined mobile phone "service" in this country. We need to have 
dark fiber optic cable to the node provided by a public utility and then 
we'll have a choice from many providers who will be happy to sell IP and 
bandwidth at much more reasonable prices. If people want the "value 
added" services that Rogers and Bell offer, they'll pay for them. If 
they don't, it's obvious that there was no value being added and they'll 
die a well-deserved death. I'd like to see both of these companies 
forced out of the "last mile" business.

Of course if we leave this to federal politicians, it will never happen. 
They'll get bogged down in discussions about how to can provide 
broadband access to northern communities and we'll have the perverse 
situation where Nunavut, with a population density of 0.015 people/sq. 
km., will hold up a solution for the GTA, population density 3972 
people/sq. km. This is something that we need to do municipally.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis
1419-3266 Yonge St.
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

<http://dinamis.com>
+1 416-410-3326
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