[Canadians] An internet crisis is upon us. Stop UBB!

I don't use the word crisis often but I believe that this is a serious issue and effects every Canadian and anyone who deals with Canadians online so I post this to bring awareness to this currently developing issue.

Bell (one of the major telecommunications companies in Canada) has proposed "Usage-Based Billing" which is nothing new to internet users with bandwidth caps and mobile users with data plans, however, several ISP resellers offer fixed prices for unlimited bandwidth per month. Bell's proposal, however, includes the elimination of the reseller's ability to offer such plans and it has been reported that bandwidth caps would be as low as 25GB per month (for both up and downstream and quite possibly across their entire line of service plans) and cost as much as $2.00/GB for overage fees essentially doubling the cost of internet access (depending on the type of user, of course). This proposal has already been passed by the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission) and its effects can be seen on all Bell internet subscribers as soon as March 1st, 2011 and other ISPs as soon as Summer 2011.

I don't think I have to explain how big of a hit that is to internet users in Canada. 25GB is essentially nothing in the days of HD Youtube and Netflix. 25GB is the amount of data available on a Single-Layer Blu-ray Disc. I can't word an argument better than the opening page of http://antiubb.com. If you're confused about the situation, please just read that first page. It really puts things into perspective.

If you don't really want to read more on it, please take the time to sign the petition at http://stopthemeter.ca. Even if you're not Canadian, you might have family in Canada, you might have Canadian friends, heck, you know somebody from Canada, you're reading words from someone in Canada now. If you still want to hear from Canada on the internet, please show your support for the anti-ubb movement.

Your signatures and support is MUCH APPRECIATED.

Note: At the time of posting, 189,328 people have signed the petition. This is a serious issue and the people in power need to know what we think. I wouldn't have asked for your help if we didn't need it. We want well over 200,000 signatures before this thing goes to Parliament.

 

i signed the twitter petition and that one x_x;

I'm from the US so it doesn't affect me directly but D< that sucks.