By Lisa Schick

Unlimited Internet could be on the way out

Feb 11, 2011 | 12:05 PM

A local business is watching discussions at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission carefully.

A usage-based billing decision could change plans for local internet service provider iNET 2000.

Todd Chamberlain, the owner of iNet 2000, said if the CRTC’s usage-based billing decision isn’t reversed then his business model is going to have to change dramatically.

“We’ve built our company on the idea of unlimited internet, we don’t cap or metre our customers,” he said.
If the internet service provider (ISP) that iNet 2000 buys their bandwidth from starts charging per byte, like a new CRTC policy indicates, Chamberlain said his company is going to have to start charging their customers per byte as well.

The large ISPs have said they need to start metering the internet because of increased bandwidth usage by customers.

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This is largely because of streaming services such as YouTube, Skype and especially Netflix.
Chamberlain said he has seen the bandwidth use for his customers double in the last few months since Netflix became available in Canada.

“If you were just web-surfing and emailing and things like that … hundreds or dozens of megabytes a day is lots. When you’re doing Netflix one hour of TV is about two gigabytes of data,” Chamberlain said.

Chamberlain doesn’t know how big the company’s bandwidth caps would be, but he said likely only about five per cent of his customers would be affected.

He said he doesn’t like the idea of metered internet service, but Chamberlain also understands that there is a need for it.

“There isn’t an infinite amount of (bandwidth) capacity and there is essentially an infinite amount of want on the part of the customers, so if people aren’t metred in some way then some people will use a tremendous amount of bandwidth.”

Chamberlain said only about 10 per cent of internet users are taking up 90 per cent of bandwidth.

But Chamberlain is ultimately against metered internet billing and CRTC policy controls.

“I don’t think that the CRTC getting involved really is, actually the right way. It really should be up to the individual business, so if we don’t want to metre traffic but our competitors do, then that should be up to them and us and our customers can decide,” said Chamberlain.

The CRTC has defended the policy by describing the internet as a utility, like water or electricity, for which usage-based billing is a legitimate principle.

Chamberlain isn’t the only one against the metred billing plan.

Rallies took place across Canada on the weekend against metred internet and an online petition created by OpenMedia.ca has over 400,000 signatures.

The House of Commons has gotten into the argument as well.

The NDP and Liberal party have come out against metered billing and Prime Minister Stephen Harper has asked his industry minister to review the CRTC policy.

SaskTel spokeswoman Michelle Englott said SaskTel has no current plans to switch to usage-based billing.

Shaw High Speed Internet has already started to metre their service.

The smallest plan has a cap of 15 gigabytes per month and the largest is 350 gigabytes per month.
Overage charges vary from $1 to $2 per gigabyte depending on the customer’s plan.

lschick@panow.com