Canadian online gamers, Steam and X-Box live users are going to get screwed...

[aPod]

I thought the standard practice was you could sign up for a capped service or alternatively pay a bit more for unlimited.

Least that's how it is State side.

 

[antofdeath]

So... no answer to why this is bad if Shaw is smart and actually doesn't price fix like American companies and has to as such fight over their customers?

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

While I'd say that I don't like the change, the OP makes a fundamental mistake in a key presumption supporting the argument against it: that bandwidth is an unlimited resource. While this resource is extensible (it can grow with additional infrastructure development), at any particular moment there is a total maximum amount of data the network structure in any location can handle.

 

[Sarahcidal]

wont effect me at all.. I've never even made it 3/4 the way through my internet usage (including laptops an xbox running almost constantly) so I highly doubt this will harm me.

 

[SteewpidZombie]

I'm currently with a company called 'MCSnet' and the've been using this system for a while now. So my house gets a 60GB download/upload limit per month, and I recently found out we even have a Streaming limit on how many videos we can watch on say Youtube or Megavideo. Then it's like an additional $60 for 40GB if you go over your limit. The only reason we put up with this BS is because it's the only service provider near our location.

 

[Aesir23]

As far as I know, my family's service provider doesn't do this and doesn't plan to so I don't think this will affect me.

 

[Hashime]

At home I am capped at 60gb / month.
At university I am "Capped" at 2gb / day, but that means I on rare occasions get put into the slow queue which is still faster than at home.

 

[Vauban]

Where I live, I use cable internet. It's really fast but has a 60GB limit, and have only gone over it once. Only play games online on the PC which helps. I just can't download games as they are getting almost 20GB in size now but I prefer buying games in retail anyway.

A good way to do things is to wait till near the end of the month, some providers will let you see how much you've used per day and just download the bigger stuff at the end of the month depending on how much you have left.

Have heard that some DSL providers don't do this yet.

 

[guardian001]

Recently a body of the Canadian government approved "Usage Based Billing" - basically defining online data as something it's not - a finite resource. This was ruling was done in favour of Canadian internet service providers who now get to put a cap on the amount of data consumers can use each month - you go over that cap, you get charged somewhere around $2/GB.

This is nothing new. ISP's have been doing this since they were created. Now they just have a justification for it.

It's really not that big of a deal. You probably already have one, and just didn't realize it. Actually, you almost definitely had one, since if you live in Canada, your Internet is either coming from Bell or Rogers (or somebody they resell to,) and both of those companies have caps on all (or almost all) of their plans.

My limit has been 60GB/month for at least 5 years. In that time, I've gone over once, when I got a new PC and had to re-download all my steam games. It wasn't even the gameplay that set me over, and it never will. Gameplay takes up a tiny amount of bandwidth.

Edit: Oh, and even when I did go over, I went over on the last day of the month, so it didn't make a difference anyway. Even after downloading 15-ish games at the start of the month, I still had enough bandwidth left to play games and use the internet for an entire month.

 

[michiehoward]

Already had to deal with this with Bell, we couldn't figure out why we kept going over our cap with Bell, then we realized practically everything we do is streaming, whether on the comp and our Live play, which swiftly put us over our cap every month.

Had to switch to unlimited bandwidth, and pay out my ass for it to avoid over cap usage. fuckers

 

[Canid117]

Well lets hope this doesn't happen in the states

 

[Chamale]

Wait, you guys didn't already have this? I thought it was just the norm... (Australian here)

Honestly, Australians get the short end of the stick on anything Internet or gaming-related. This bill would let Canadian internet access become more similar to Australian internet access, which is something we all obviously want to avoid.

My MP is Rob Anders, so I won't expect him to do anything useful on this issue.

 

[Something Amyss]

Recently a body of the Canadian government approved "Usage Based Billing" - basically defining online data as something it's not - a finite resource. This was ruling was done in favour of Canadian internet service providers who now get to put a cap on the amount of data consumers can use each month - you go over that cap, you get charged somewhere around $2/GB.

(This guy explains it beautifully - http://openmedia.ca/blog/open-letter-concerning-not-so-open-internet)

Anyways, this really pisses me off - I regularly download games from Steam, as do my boyfriend and my roommates, and we tend to play a lof of League of Legends or L4D, (usually while running Skype in the background). This is going to add up to one gigantic bill.(Not to mention all the implications of Canadian's rights to access information being limited.)

I'm asking other Canadians - how will this affect your time gaming? Will you pull back on online gaming/downloading or are you willing to pay?
Also, I'm wondering how much data is used up when you're playing games online (say, League of Legends or Darkfall) - no one I've asked seems to know.

By the way, there is a petition to stop this:
http://openmedia.ca/meter

Just remember, Digital Distribution "is the future."

I wish more people noticed this sort of potential, but hey....

 

[Something Amyss]

Well lets hope this doesn't happen in the states

We already have bandwidth caps. The two largest cab;e companies and a lot of the smaller ones have them. I've been told Fios doesn't have it, so now I only need to wait for Verizon to make my dreams a reality.

 

[Buccura]

Well lets hope this doesn't happen in the states

We already have bandwidth caps. The two largest cab;e companies and a lot of the smaller ones have them. I've been told Fios doesn't have it, so now I only need to wait for Verizon to make my dreams a reality.

Of course FiOS won't have it, because they will do everything necessary to get people to switch to it. Including raising the price of Cable internet.

 

[Don't taze me bro]

This is pretty normal in Australia. In fact, we're starting to go the opposite way, with some ISPs providing unlimited data plans. It used to be pretty bad. I remember back when Age of Conan came out, I was limited to 20 gigabytes of data, and downloading AoC took 14 gigs. Today though, my data cap is a terabyte, and I haven't gotten close to using that each month yet.

 

[AWC Viper]

So it's like Australia's internet now...

 

[theriddlen]

I have 10 gigs limit - i live in Poland. I exceed it every damned month, and that means practically no internet (slows down to like 1 kb/s), and additional 1gb costs like 7$ (we earn about 3x less than average us citizen, so it's like 20$ for us). Thank god in about a month i will finally have unlimited internet installed.

And canadians? Someone hooked up your igloos to internet, and you are still complaining? Eh!