Rich sez:
Bell Canada has imposed a 5GB monthly bandwidth cap on consumer DSL, charging $7.90/Gb
for traffic exceeding the cap, and raising prices 10%. The primary impact
will be on users of streaming audio & video.Note that SBC (Pacific Bell) of Texas is the largest (20%) shareholder of
BCE (which controls Bell Canada). SBC has been sued by an association of
California ISPs for presenting restrictive contracts that would give
control of the DSL pipe to SBC, for SBC-only video content services.SBC is applying similar logic in Canada, via BCE & Bell Canada. Since a
competitive DSL market never emerged in Canada, BCE/SBC are using bandwidth
caps (instead of ISP contracts) to control streaming media distribution in
Canada.
(Thanks, Rich!)
