Reporter: Brandan Loney
I’ve been a Bell Internet customer for many years and have been happy with my service and reasonable pricing. My online activities are about as generalized, as one can get – online gaming, streaming and downloading movies and music, instant messaging and social media sites. But when the new usage based billing came around, I was enraged. Especially since I technically wasn’t paying for it, my dad was.
According to Bell Canada’s website, I’m considered a heavy user as I surf the net, play games and watch videos on YouTube. The usage based billing really upset me off because not only do I have to cutback on my online activity, but also if I go over my 25 gigabyte monthly cap, then I’ll be paying for the extra usage of $2 per gigabyte up to a total of $60. Aside from those, I have subscriptions to online services like Xbox LIVE! Netflix and online billing. Accessing these services requires bandwidth.
Relief came when an article was published March 28 on moneyville.ca, a financial blog supported by the Toronto star. The article tells of how Bell has backed off their usage based billing plan. However, it also says that Bell will have “…an alternative scheme for the imposition of usage fees on independent ISPs….”
The article doesn’t go into detail about the alternative plan. It only says “The new plan would give wholesale providers leeway to decide whether to impose the extra bandwidth charges on those high-volume customers.”
This alternative plan doesn’t sound pleasing to me because the description is vague, but it appears to be a step in the right direction.
