A new ruling came into play that allowed large Internet service providers such as Shaw Communications and Bell Canada to charge third-party providers of their service for bandwidth usage. It effectively kills “unlimited” plans and raises the price for anyone who uses more than “average”. But what else does it do? It could potentially kill the third-party providers because the ruling also states that the charge for the bandwidth allowed is 85% below selling price. That leaves 15% wiggle room for the third-party providers to opertate and make their profit. As well, it will hurt content providers such as NetFlix which recently entered the Canadian market. Watching high definition videos uses approx 1GB per hour, while the base bandwidth included for most new rate plans will be 25GB, thus making you limited to watching 25 hours per month, not including regular web surfing. Canadians are a top user of video online services, but after this, a lot of people will be watching their bandwidth limits (no pun intented).

As mentioned in the Report on Business article:

Large companies such as Bell, which argued for the right to levy an even more expensive charge to small providers, say their networks are expensive to maintain and that Internet service is a business with slow return on investment.
Liberal industry critic Marc Garneau, who said he will pressure Mr. Clement to throw the decision back to the regulator, said he doesn’t buy the large providers’ arguments about Internet network traffic and congestion.

Thankfully, the Canadian Government has decided to review the recent ruling. While normally they don’t speak out about CRTC rulings, this one has created a large backlash amongst the Canadian population and it was hard for them not to take notice.

While this isn’t an “Internet marketing” post, I feel this is an important topic for the entire Internet community in Canada.