Ars Technica: Metered billing: it's a lack of competition, not congestion

By Matthew Lasar for Ars Technica

It looks like Canada's telecom regulators are showing some new-found skepticism about metered or "usage-based" billing (UBB). The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has been holding hearings over the last few days about its controversial (and for the moment suspended) move to let Bell Canada bill independent ISPs on a wholesale byte-by-byte basis.

Newspaper reports suggest that at least some of the commissioners aren't buying arguments that the telcos need UBB to "discipline" consumers so that they won't congest networks with excessive downloading.

"No single user or wholesale customer is the cause of congestion," Bell vice-president Mirko Bibic explained to the CRTC at the event. "But clearly, wholesale users contribute a disproportionate share of total traffic, and by extension, congestion." Read more »

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Read more at arstechnica.com