The CRTC released a study on 05 Jul 2012 entitled “Price Comparisons of Wireline, Wireless and Internet Services in Canada and with Foreign Jurisdictions”
This study challenges some of the common wisdom espoused in various public forums, news website comments and dedicated websites about the cost of Internet service in Canada.
The report is sure to generate a lot of feedback over the next little while.
This report is interesting. Unless I'm missing something, the report excludes data hub technologies - they don't fall under the Broadband Internet (wireline) category, and they don't really fit either of the Mobile Internet category service "baskets". Assuming these devices are deployed outside of Canada as well, and since they're marketed as "broadband" solutions for rural users, would it not have been reasonable to include 3g "portable" hub costs in this report? - either a separate category or another "service basket" in an expanded Broadband category....? Canada's hubs vs other countries' hubs, data hub service costs (here) vs other Canadian broadband services, etc. - that might be interesting stuff for the folks around the Sault North and other rural areas.
ReplyDeleteThe report mentions overage costs in the Broadband category but then appears to address the point by simply making the assumption that Broadband users generally stay below the caps:
"Most of the service providers surveyed for this study either have no usage caps or, where they do apply, they are high enough that no overage fees would be incurred given the data usage assumptions adopted for the four above-noted broadband service baskets"
This assumption is based on the CRTC 2011 Communications Monitoring Report, but if the report is biased, or things have changed, or if you're not the "average" user, then overages apply, and there could be a substantial impacts and difference between Canada vs the world. Or not. The only way to really know is to gather and factor in overage fees for some baseline usage pattern, or take a large sample of actual customer billing data, including overages, and compare actual costs on a per-GB basis.
Just my 2c.