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

[Zer_]

Bell, Rogers, Cogeco all have caps in place for high speed internet, with tiered plans varying the price / bandwidth.

The old days of unlimited bandwidth are over.

But this is hardly new.
I got Rogers Internet when I first moved almost 3 years ago, and they had this in place then.
Personally do I think it's stupid? Yes.
Am I all in a fuss over it? No. I don't ever come close to hitting my cap, and I download crap all the time, plus play on XBL, I play EVE Online regularly, and my wife uploads pictures to Facebook like it's going out of style.

So, 'meh'. As long as they keep the caps reasonable, then I'm fine with it.
Since I'm really, then, only paying for the speed of the 'net, and not how much I use.

Do you stream movies or TV shows?

I mean, that's what kills my limit, aside from Steam.

 

[Zer_]

Okay, I *really* hate to bump this, but I've put up an open letter to Valve, asking to support Canadian Steam users, or at least advise those that do not know of this to stand up and protest as well.

http://breeuurph.blogspot.com/2011/01/open-letter-to-valve-software.html

 

[Smagmuck_]

Dude, that has got to suck... D:
(Fights off the urge to say: "America, fuck yeah!")

 

[antofdeath]

Yeah i didn't wanna bump it too but everyone got all quiet.

Anyhow that thing for steam explains alot of the little logistics questions I had behind it, so thank you for posting that. With the amount of people who actually use the internet supporting this hopefully we will start to see some changes favouring free internet again because largely in North American but alot of other places (poor aussies) this whole trend is getting ridiculous. It can only hurt the progression of things.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

Right now Shaw is the only company in Canada which does this. Since the other companies haven't hopped on board, I don't think they will anytime soon.

Every major company does it.

Bell, Rogers, Cogeco all have caps in place for high speed internet, with tiered plans varying the price / bandwidth.

The old days of unlimited bandwidth are over.

I was on the phone with Telus last week about this subject. They informed me that Shaw is the only company which does this and assured me I wouldn't be billed if I went over the set limit on my account.

Yeah, but telus still has a bandwidth limit seen here: http://www.telus.com/content/internet/highspeed/highspeed.jsp maybe they just pull the money outa you some other way to compensate? At least shaw has it at like 100gb for the plan I'm on, no reason for me to download/upload more than 100gb of stuff in a month...

 

[CobraX]

I will now go Rage for about 2 minutes about this and then go pop in Dead Space 2 and instantly feel better!

 

[Cyberjester]

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

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

So basically we've been screwed since the interwebz were turned on? Figures.

I wouldn't be so pissed off if Telstra didn't have a strangle hold on the country areas with their over priced mobile broadband.

Just enable the DSLAM, don't count the cost just do it, so I can get a real isp.

The problem with Telstra is that they get the equipment set up, Optus sues them for free use of said equipment, and everyone goes with Optus who charge more for less.

So Telstra knocks up the prices and says well, lets recoup cost shall we. Turns into a lose-lose-lose situation. Government needs to take over Telstra and remove Optus from existence. Controlling, but at least everything would be at a reasonable price. Till they realised they were the only people around so could engage in the same price fixing every private company does. -.-

But yea, Aus is the home of limited internets. Most of the world doesn't have that system.

 

[SJXarg]

Tragically, it's pretty common in NZ, which is where I'm living at the moment. So limited to 40 Gigs a month (which is the highest any plan will offer), and then 2 dollars per gig over that.

Which means I generally don't get to play games online as much as I'd like, especially as the bandwidth is shared with 3 other people.

The Telstra plan I'm on allows me unlimited data.... if my pockets are deep enough :/ $30 for each 25gb 'pack'. Sounds like you're getting a pretty short stick there with that $2/gb after cap reached.

 

[Bihac]

Tragically, it's pretty common in NZ, which is where I'm living at the moment. So limited to 40 Gigs a month (which is the highest any plan will offer), and then 2 dollars per gig over that.

Which means I generally don't get to play games online as much as I'd like, especially as the bandwidth is shared with 3 other people.

The Telstra plan I'm on allows me unlimited data.... if my pockets are deep enough :/ $30 for each 25gb 'pack'. Sounds like you're getting a pretty short stick there with that $2/gb after cap reached.

Yeah I will be switching to them once I move out, far more affordable than telecom, considering that 40 gig plan is 70 a month to start off with.

 

[UberNoodle]

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

Sorry, Australian here too, but living in Japan with a fibreoptic connection to curb, and no upper limit. 4,700 yen per month. In relation, a Big Mac set is about 600 yen.

 

[xXGeckoXx]

Fortunately I'm with Novus, which has a 125GBx2 (up and down, so they explicitly support torrenting and running a personal web server) bandwidth limit, and I've only hit it once (in 1 day no less!) I told them I was running torrents, they re-set it for me. They run their own wires to the buildings, and aren't dependent on any of the incumbents.

I've also looked up some alternative ISPs, and it seems Allstream serves business users, and has no cap DSL at 7Mb/s, but home users could get it as well. Might be a bit expensive ($35 for the first 6 months, $70 for the rest unless you want to sign a contract), but at least you can use as much as you want.

Telus also has a tendency of ignoring bandwidth limitations if you bundle with TV service. Again, somewhat expensive, but it isn't the end of the world. Certainly Bell and Rogers will be trying to screw users as well as resellers, but there are viable alternatives despite the ruling.

This Company sounds AWESOME!!!

 

[Worgen]

Sounds better than what Comcast does here in the US. You go over the limit of 250GB, they go "NOU!" and shut your service down (last I checked). ;~;

contact the fcc, according to the new rules they arnt supposed to be able to

 

[Tron-tonian]

Meh, don't worry about it - I'm on Shaw and my "limit" is somewhere in the 100GB range. I've yet to get hit with charges, and I'm regularly downloading open-source / creative commons files. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it...)

 

[Nueemann]

We have our service through Eastlink and I haven't heard anything of us getting a bandwidth cap.

Hopefully it'll stay that way. Especially since our only alternative is Bell, and they suck.

 

[HellspawnCandy]

Sounds better than what Comcast does here in the US. You go over the limit of 250GB, they go "NOU!" and shut your service down (last I checked). ;~;

I have comcast and that hasn't happened. But they are evil.