Written many years ago, but isn’t it refreshing that “…plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…”? The CRTC continues to protect the monopolies.

For those of you who are not techno-dweebs or geeks (like I am), you may not have noticed that this past week the CRTC ruled in favor of Bell (and Rogers, I would assume) in their battle with Service Providers who “sublet” bandwidth from them and repackage that to customers (specifically Teksavvy, but others as well) that they must uphold Bell’s Usage Based Billing rules, when they repackage the service.

Previous to this companies like Teksavvy allowed you to have unlimited usage for a month, with no “caps” on your usage of the broadband access to your house. This meant you could run NetFlix, YouTube, and many other bandwidth hogs with impunity, without having to worry about overrunning your monthly bandwidth allowance and then being gouged by your Service Provider. Remember I have already Needed to Ask for special dispensations from Rogers for the same kind of problems (so this is a topic near and dear to my heart).

This is another blow to those of us who are unimpressed by the Monopoly that the Major  Communication Service Providers have in Canada (for Phones, Internet and Cell Phones), and now we are being held by a much tighter shock collar as well.

Putting on my Bell Share Holder hat however, let me also explain something to my fellow geeks, this is what large Companies do, they use their sway and clout to try to crush competitors that are taking away their client base. This was to be expected, and if the CRTC had not made a judgement in their favor, my guess would be that Bell would have simply choked the bandwidth in some other way to stop rampant usage of High Speed Internet access. You need to be a realist here, and as long at the CRTC (and the FCC to a certain extent in the U.S.), is in charge of this service (or at least make the rules), the monopolies are going to get what they want (sorry to rain on your parade, but that’s the way it works these days).

What can you do?

Nothing.

Simple ain’t it though? Not quite true either, there is little you can do to get what you had with Teksavvy again, however, you can negotiate/argue/cajole with your current service provider to try to get a better deal. I check RedFlagDeals forums to see what other folks have received from Rogers and Bell, so you can get a better deal, but it is not going to be Unlimited.

If anyone cares to prove me wrong on this one, please post a comment on how it is possible (no, I am not asking for which petition to sign, I mean an actual deal or procedure that gives you unlimited High Speed Internet access), and if I can verify it is legally possible, I will make an entire post up about it (and give you full credit too!).