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Stanley cup playoffs–Round 2

Written on April 27, 2011 at 8:59 pm, by

First off, my picks from the first round:

Chicago in 7 – Actual Result: Vancouver in 7

San Jose in 6 – Actual result: San Jose in 6

Phoenix in 6 – Actual result : Detroit in 4

Anaheim in 7 – Actual Result: Nashville in 6

Washington in 5 – Actual Result: Washington in 5

Philadelphia in 5 – Actual Result: Philadelphia in 7

Boston in 6 – Actual Result: Boston in 7

Tampa Bay in 5 – Actual Result: Tampa Bay in 7

Overall I picked 5 of the 8 series winners correctly, and even got the number of games right twice.  The only series I completely missed was Detroit and Phoenix, I really thought Phoenix would play better, and that Detroit’s injuries would catch up to them. I am not surprised in Nashville winning, in fact, I’m more surprised on how poorly Anaheim played, though their goaltending may have cost them the series.  Vancouver And Chicago was everything we thought it would be, and then some.  I’m very sad at the result, but the series was fun to watch.

In round two we have Washington/Tampa Bay, Philadelphia/Boston, Vancouver/Nashville, and San Jose/Detroit.  I am very much looking forward to Philly/Boston and San Jose/Detroit.  They should be amazing series, and I’m super excited for them. But, the predictions:

Washington in 6 – Tampa is good, but does have holes, and Washington is playing the best hockey I’ve seen the team play since Ovechkin arrived

Boston in 6 – Goaltending decides this series, and on paper, that is no contest here

Nashville in 7 – Nashville is probably the best team no one knows anything about.  All they’ve done is win a lot of gams in a very difficult division. Watch out for them.

Detroit in 6 – Detroit is probably going to be the healthiest and most rested they’ve been all season. Look out for this team.

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Sony PSN outage–more details, very little good news

Written on April 27, 2011 at 8:45 pm, by

In the continuing saga of the PlayStation Network (PSN) outage that is now entering its 8th day, Sony has provided more details on exactly what happened, and the news only gets worse.  Beyond the information they provided yesterday, an email went out to PSN users today which provided much of the information that I have already posted.  What has come out today gives me an idea of exactly how this attack occurred.

First of all, the news that’s good. All credit card information was encrypted, and Sony does believe that no credit card data has been compromised.  While you should still monitor your cards closely for the next while, this is good news, and does make me breath a little easier.
Now, the bad news.  Based on wording in a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page for this issue, it appears that this was an actual physical attack on Sony’s data center.  This means that an individual or group of people obtained physical access to the PSN data center and directly connected to a server and was able to download the personal data.  According to Sony, the personal information was held in a database that was unencrypted, and that data was obtained by the intruders.

As a result of this attack, Sony is moving the PSN to a new data center in a “new, more secure location.” I believe that is why the restoration of service is taking so long. Moving a data center which accommodates over 70 million users is no small task, and will of course take some time.  There is a sheer scale here that both helps and hinders.  I’m sure that Sony is very efficient at adding capacity to the PSN by adding new servers to a cluster in a datacenter.  But building a cluster from scratch, and then adding more capacity, is not an easy task. I’m also willing to bet that all personal information will be encrypted from this point forward as well, and it is likely that software engineers not only have to write the software to make that happen, they also have to write software that will let the PSN access that encrypted data, something they likely hadn’t planned for when designing the PSN.  I actually feel bad for every employee of Sony who works on the software and hardware for the PSN. I have little doubt that this has probably been the worst week of their lives.  The work they are doing to restore the service is enormous, and they will likely never get credit for what will be an amazing feat.

The last bit of news is one that is good for everyone.  When the PSN comes back online, there will be be a software update (I assume for both the PS3 and the PSP), that will require users to change the PSN account passwords, since those have been compromised. I will theorize that the update will also include any new encryption pieces that are likely being build into the PSN right now.

I’ve thought about this for a bit, and I’m kind of torn on what to say.  When someone gets physical access to a server, it is significantly easier to hack into that server and gather information. This does make me feel better about the robustness of the PSN itself, since the attack came from within.  However, the fact that someone was able to get into what should be a secure area is unacceptable, but physical attacks can happen.  This is akin to a bank robbery or a theft from a museum.  We are appalled at how such a thing can be allowed to happen, and why there wasn’t more security, but the simple fact is that they do happen from time to time.

Because of the type of attack, I honestly don’t know where to start with how my personal information was obtained.  It is easy to say that all of that personal information should have been encrypted on the servers, and that it should have been impossible to access, but in reality, I don’t know of too many companies that actually encrypt all data on their servers.  To put it simply, encrypting everything is a significant amount of work, and does make recovering from issues more difficult.  Data should be safe in a physically secure environment, and sometimes we depend on that to keep that data safe.  I will grant that not many networks have data on the scale of Sony, but I also wonder if someone broke into a Google data center; how much personal information could be obtained there?  That’s a question I hope we never find an answer to, but it is a valid question.

At the end of the day, the result of the attack is the same. Personal information of tens of millions of people, including myself, has been compromised.  Everyone who is on the PSN is more vulnerable to identity theft, phishing attacks, and password attacks than they were two weeks ago. This is fact, and nothing I have said today changes that. I’m not trying to downplay the severity of this breach, because it is bad, among the worst I have ever heard of in the industry  That being said, I find it a bit easier to, and this may not be a good word for this, sympathize with Sony on the method of attack; one which is arguably the most difficult to predict and defend against. I’m willing to bet that 90% of workplaces would be in a similar, albeit smaller scale, situation if the same thing happened to them.  Would mine? I hope to never find out.

[Read] – Sony PlayStation Blog

[Read]  – Joystiq

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Stanley Cup Playoffs: Round 1

Written on April 12, 2011 at 6:48 pm, by

Just a quickie, so it’s on the record:

Chicago in 7

San Jose in 6

Phoenix in 6

Anaheim in 7

Washington in 5

Philadelphia in 5

Boston in 6

Tampa Bay in 5

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The Shaw Customer Discussion Sessions

Written on March 23, 2011 at 9:22 pm, by

On March 21st, I had the opportunity to attend one of the Shaw Internet Customer Consultation Sessions.  It was a good session, and I had so much to say that I actually had written 1500 words down in a blog post that I completely scrapped before starting this one.  That may seem excessive, but after re-reading it I realized all I was doing was a play-by-play of the session, which is not what I actually want to do.  What you’ll read here is are my thoughts on on the session as a whole. If I went into huge detail, this would be a lot bigger than anyone, myself included, wants.

My overall feeling coming out of the meeting was simply that Shaw is trying to find a way to make more money off of a subscriber base that is not growing.  That in itself is not really shocking, but to actually hear it be presented that way is what is actually interesting.  Shaw shared more information that I expected them to in this meeting, and because of that I have a different perspective.  Shaw told us that in the past, the majority of new revenues came from the addition of customers, but that in the recent past the amount of new customers being added has dropped dramatically.  Basically it comes down to the fact that the markets they are in are full and built out and that there are not many new subscribers in them.  Shaw is looking for ways to grow its revenue stream with what is essentially a stagnated customer base.  In the past, they have done this by annual rate increases.  But the claim is that now those annual rate increases do not cover the increasing cost of running the network.  More on that a little later.

A good chunk of the talk focused on network congestion.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the majority of the network use is in the evening, and that was confirmed. Peak times are from roughly 5pm-midnight each day.  Shaw’s primary focus at this point is dealing with that congestion.  How they do that is something called a node split.  A node is pretty much exactly as it sounds; which is to say a central node for the internet connections.  Each node services 500-1000 homes, and the nodes then feed into a “community hub,” of which several exist in each city.  Those hubs then feed into a single datacenter in each city, which is connected to Shaw’s “backbone” network.  It was indicated to us that the majority of the congestion exists between the node and the homes.  It makes sense, because as people use more data, it means that the node can be pushed to the capacity of what it can handle.  Node splits are pretty simple.  Assuming 800 homes on a node, node splitting is when a new node is built, and that node takes about 400 homes, leaving each node at 400 homes.  This essentially doubles the capacity of the existing node, and adds new capacity with a new node.  It was indicated that Shaw currently does up to 500 node splits every single year, and that 300-400 are always being planned as they monitor more congestion.  However, with the rate of growth of internet usage, they have actually had to inject more money this fiscal year into doing more node splits.  My math based on the cost information they gave us, along with headroom and other costs, puts it probably in the 160 additional node area.  This means that Shaw is trying to do roughly 660 node splits this year instead of the normal 500.

Now, it may sound like they are doing a lot to try to combat congestion, and they are.  But after looking at some data, listening to points other attendees made at the meeting, this sounds good but they could be doing a lot more.  An attendee at the table I was at pointed out something that I hadn’t noticed, which is that the amount of money Shaw is investing in capital expenditures(which are infrastructure projects like building new nodes, upgrading equipment, etc.), has not kept up with the growth in revenue in the past few years.  This means that Shaw is investing less for every dollar in revenue than they have in the past.  This injection of money to do the additional node splits and upgrades this year is a very good start, but I personally think that Shaw can, and should, put a lot more investment into capital so it can work better to meet that demand.  It is simply the cost of doing business.  Shaw did tell us that there are many factors why this stat is the way it is, and that there still must be a profit margin for the company, which is a valid point.  However, the internet market is the real growth market right now in terms of usage, more so than TV or Phone, and more money does need to go there.  An employee threw a very large number at us for how much money they have invested to build out their network in the last decade.  It is impressive, and it is why the Shaw network is as robust as it is now.  But if congestion is still an issue, than it is not enough.

There was talk regarding how to deal with the congestion.  Lots of talk.  Most of the discussion revolved around how to reduce congestion during the peak times of 5pm-midnight.  My view on this is simple: the only way to reduce the congestion is the build more infrastructure.  The plan to cap data usage will not fix the problem of the congestion.  the core of the problem is that it’s not the actual data that is the problem, but the rate of speed in which the data is being downloaded that is.  I go a lot more into that topic in this post. This is the main reason why I don’t like Usage Based Billing.  Any method of capping someone’s internet will not really change their usage.  All it will do is add yet another tax onto that usage.  there was a suggestion to make data rates higher during peak periods.  Again, that will not solve the problem because people are not going to be watching many Netflix movies at three o’clock in the morning.  There were other ideas worth merit, such as offering unlimited data to those customers subscribing to Shaw’s “Triple play.”  Triple play users are those users who have Shaw TV, internet, and Phone.  Other ideas included increasing the caps dramatically.  But I will re-iterate my personal opinion that any form of a cap on datawill only serve as a tax, and as one person pointed out, there will be people who will try to reach that cap every month to “get their money’s worth” where they otherwise might not.  If that occurs on any large scale, that would only add to the problem, not solve it.

As I said above, Shaw shared a lot of information that I didn’t expect them to share.  There were not many questions that were not answered in that room.  That was a very encouraging sign in the entire process.  For the most part, I was very impressed with how the employees talked with us, and handled us.  They seemed honest, willing to listen, and genuinely accepted the points we made.  They were very honest about the fact that they throttle bittorrent uploads “intelligently” which they described as throttling when a node became congested because of bittorrent traffic. They admitted that they know where the growth is, and that they are going to struggle to meet that growth.  and one of the more interesting things to come out of it was that they did say that these meetings were being done to help them find a way to generate more revenue so they could do the necessary upgrades to keep their network running as well as possible.  That is where the UBB plans stemmed from.

The one aspect of the presentation which I really didn’t like were the charts and graphs they had at the front of the room.  Actually, really didn’t like is probably an understatement.  Shaw was very open with us on almost every respect, but those graphs truly looked like they and something to hide.  One graph showed data usage over the last 10 years, and showed a “60% increase since July 2010” but had absolutely ZERO scale to it.  There was no way of knowing if the increases were from 4GB to 10, 40 to 100, or 40000 to 1000000.  Without a proper scale of the actual increase, that graph was 100% useless.  I questioned someone on that, and I was told that the graph served only to “begin the talks, and give people a sense of scale.”  For me, it did the exact opposite.  While I have no reason to dispute that there has been that 60% increase, without an actual scale to use, that graph was immediately dismissed.  They had a similar chart that showed that 45% of all traffic was peer to peer, but didn’t indicate exactly how much traffic that really is.  That chart is again immediately dismissed because it does not contain any actual data.  No matter how open Shaw was in the meeting, the charts attempting to show scale were completely ineffective in their intended purpose.

One other thing that I was really frustrated with was a phrase that I heard way too much during the meeting.  “If you were Shaw, what would you do?”  I completely understand the reason the reason why they ask that question.  It is meant to stir the discussion.  However we heard that question, or a variation of that question so many time it did seem at times that Shaw was trying to ask that instead of giving us an answer.  A couple attendees told me that they felt that became frustrating, and I agree.  Sometimes we wanted an answer, and were given another question.  I wanted to actually hear what Shaw wanted to do, not say what I think they should do.  Constantly asking us for our perspective when what we wanted was theirs added a level of difficulty to the meeting that didn’t need to be there.

I’m really torn on what I feel coming out of this meeting.  On one hand, I’m really happy that this happened, and it really did feel like Shaw was truly asking for customer input, and that that input did mean something.  They were more candid and forthcoming than I ever thought they would be, yet still felt like they were holding back just a bit.  They didn’t want to steer the discussion in any specific direction, other than trying to keep it specific to internet discussion.  But yet it did feel like the talk kept going to “we need to increase the amount of money we take in to make this work”  I’m not sure if it’s possible to feel encouraged and discouraged at the same time, but that’s kind of how I feel.  I’m happy that Shaw did these meetings, not many companies as large as Shaw would, but I’m still very apprehensive for the future.

This may come down to an economics question that I’m really not qualified to answer.  Shaw says that it is costing them more to maintain their network, and usual rate increases do not keep up.  This in theory should mean that Shaw will have to find either new ways to gain revenue, or do the work more efficiently.  The numbers do show that they do not put as much into capital projects as they have in the past, and that is at the very least where they should start.  But the simple fact that is that under the UBB system, there will be not one bill that goes down, and many that go up.  This is not a system that the general consumer wants.  I heard the phrase “cost of doing business” a lot from a number of attendees.  I agree with them.  Keeping the network running at the standard that Shaw has set frankly is the cost of doing business.  And while I think most people can stomach rate increases, going to UBB is not something they can really tolerate long term, since the usage patterns dictate that usage is only going up.  An employee told us that Shaw is a company that does not believe in contracts, which means that they have to win our business every single day.  Well if winning our business every single day is the cost of doing business, than Shaw needs to put the money into it to do that.  If Shaw has enough money to spend $2 Billion to buy a TV network and invest Billions of dollars into building a mobile network for cell phones, than it should have the money to maintain its internet network.  It’s as simple as that.

At the end of the day I really do believe that something will change.  I’m not sure when, but at some point in the future Shaw will change it’s structure of delivery and pricing on its internet service.  I have zero knowledge of what that may be, but my gut feeling is that we will see some kind of system where the bandwidth, or rate of speed, you get will be offered at a low cost, and the amount of data you get will be separate.  An example of this is that a user could get the regular high speed plan now, but get it with 250GB of data per month, or get high speed extreme with 100GB.  Separating those out does have advantages, but also carries more overhead and difficulty for users, and still does cap the plans.  I’m not a fan of this plan, but the more I think about it, the more I fear that this will be the eventual endgame.  My personal preference is that Shaw keep the status quo; not because I just want unlimited internet all the time, but because I believe that that is truly the best way for the internet to function.  As several attendees can confirm, my data usage is not nearly as high as some other people who attended.  But I do believe in un-metered internet.  I believe that Shaw can, and should, be able to invest the necessary money into network upgrades without such mechanisms as UBB.  Annual rate increases are fine with me, those are the cost of *my* doing business, but anything beyond that is simply another tax on the consumer.

I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what I took out of that meeting.  I took six pages of notes and have read through them enough times that my head is starting to spin.  I ended up not writing at all what I thought I would write about, because if I did that this would be 10,000 words long.  Talking about every single thing that was said, every point made, would simply be too much, and would end up being just a huge ramble of a post.  That speaks volumes to the fact that this discussion as a whole is not over, and there is much more to come in the future.  I could talk for hours about Shaw, UBB, and the internet in general, because the internet is much more important than most people realize, though I think that that is slowly starting to change. Radically changing the structure of how we pay for the internet would be like trying to change the structure of how we pay for electricity or water, and this industry is less than 20 years old.  I’m very interested to see what Shaw will do at the end of all of this.  they have a difficult balancing act to walk.  Now we get to see if they’ll fall.

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Shaw Customer Discussions – First Impressions

Written on March 21, 2011 at 10:19 pm, by

Today was my day to participate in the Shaw customer discussions on Internet billing.  It was a 2 hour session that turned into 3 hours, followed by coffee with a couple people.  I will be posting a lot more about this in the coming days, but for tonight I just wanted to get out some quick bullet points.

  • Overall I was impressed with the atmosphere and tone.  The representatives from Shaw were talking to us, not at us, and welcomed discussions and questions
  • There was a lot of discussions, but not many answers.  For every question that was asked by an attendee, it seems that there was a question from a Shaw representative.  I understand that this was to try to gather more ideas and information, but did get a tad frustrating.
  • It really seems like Shaw does not know what the endgame here will be.  The representative I spent most of my time talking to spoke at great length about how the customer backlash to the UBB plans was much more than they ever thought, and that it really did cause them to pause.
  • The Shaw representatives did take a fair amount of notes, cataloging almost every idea that was tossed around. One employee collected all of the notes taken so they can be transcribed
  • The general feeling in the room was very anti UBB, but I do think that more fair ideas were presented.
  • The tone of most attendees was much less confrontational that I thought it would be, I think because the Shaw representatives were very open and willing to listen.
  • After coming out of the meeting, I don’t know what the endgame to this entire process will be.  That is not necessarily a bad thing, but for all the discussions I did not leave with many answers.
  • the graphs were hilarious, and not in a good way.

there is a lot more to come.  I took six pages of notes that I need to re-read and organize into something I can actually post here.  I also have to filter out what I should, and am willing to post.  I will try to get the full breakdown and insight into the discussions up as soon as possible, but it’s after 11 and I need to go to sleep.  On a personal note I’m getting a root canal Tuesday afternoon, so getting the post up Tuesday will be entirely dependent on how I feel and how medicated I am.  You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to that.

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Bandwidth and Data – Clearing up the confusion

Written on February 9, 2011 at 8:47 am, by

There has been a lot of confusion over Usage Based Billing over the past few weeks.  There has been much debate on both sides of this issue.   Unfortunately, much of this debate is being had by people who do not understand the technology behind the concept.  I do not claim to be an expert, but I do believe that I can help clarify some of the confusion that has been so clear over the past few weeks.  Once again, I will mainly use Shaw as my example.  This is only because I personally have Shaw as my provider, and I have the most experience with them.  I am not trying to single Shaw out, as what I am going to talk about here is true for all Internet Service Providers.

First off, nearly everyone who has talked about this story has been using the term “bandwidth cap.”  I myself am included in this.  Many people have been doing this because it makes it easier for most people to understand, and keeps some confusing terms and technology out of the discussion.  I need to clarify two things to make the rest of what I’m saying make a little more sense.

The term “bandwidth” does not actually have anything to do with the limits being put in place by the ISP’s such as Shaw.  Bandwidth is the term used to describe how fast your internet connection is.  Shaw’s high speed plan provides a bandwidth of 7.5 megabits per second (Mbps).  This means that a user can download files, videos, music, etc, at a maximum speed of 937 KiloBytes (KB) per second; or just under 1 MegaByte per second.  The High Speed Extreme plan is twice that speed.  The bandwidth that Shaw provides allows for faster downloads.

What I, and many others, have been calling the “bandwidth cap” until this point is actually a data transfer limit.  This limit governs how much data you can transfer, not how fast you can download it.  The limit on Shaw High Speed is 60GB per billing cycle, while for High Speed Extreme allows for 100GB per billing cycle.  This data transfer limit has no bearing at all on how fast you can download that data, which is your Bandwidth.

Wait, what?

To put it simply, data limits are how much you can download, and your available bandwidth is how fast you can download it.  At the end it’s pretty simple, but it’s been misrepresented to this point.  This should hopefully make my next explanation a little easier to understand.

Networks that have been built by ISP’s are very complex.  Much too complex for me to really talk about in detail here.  Shaw, Bell, Telus, Rogers all spend considerable amounts of money to build out and upgrade their networks.  This point is fact, and it can’t be disputed.  I won’t even try, because that they do spend that money for the upgrades is, in the long run, better for Canadians.  This is good, and something that we want to continue.

This brings us back to the bandwidth vs. data limits discussion.  What the ISP’s spend money on to upgrade their networks is mostly about the ability to increase available bandwidth.  The infrastructure is upgraded to allow for faster data transfers.  Now, this doesn’t mean just for you.  Part of the investment is for the “backbone” network, which is where the bulk of data is carried.  When you load a website based in Europe, the BBC for example, that website comes through a cable that literally runs through the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, and then runs across North America to its destination.  The upgrades that ISP’s, as well as the major “backbone” providers that most of the public has never heard of, to allow for faster transfers.   Again, this is good for consumers, and is something that we want to continue to further expand what users can do on the internet.  The investment that the ISP’s make have allowed for improved speed on our internet in the past 10 years.

Now we talk about data transfer.  I’ll just get this out of the way first.  Data transfer over that network is not free. However, it is much closer to free than most know.  All large ISP’s have contracts or agreements with each other to allow traffic to flow from one ISP’s network to another.  This is how someone on a Shaw or Bell computer can read this website, which is hosted by a provider in the United States.  These agreements are called peering agreements, which is actually at its core a very simple thing.  Taking the example of Shaw and Bell, a peering agreement is where they build a connection between their two networks that allows data to be transferred between them.  If the overall data transfer is anywhere close to equal between both sides, most times no money changes hands, since the cost would end up being equal for both sides anyway.  In cases where the data transfer is not equal, the party with lesser traffic may have to pay for that connectivity.  However, the sheer scale of traffic that is transferred between ISP’s means that in most cases, no money does change hands.

Where money often does change hands is in an IP transit agreement.  This type of agreement is where a provider such as Shaw does not have direct access to another provider’s network, i.e. one in the United Kingdom.  In this case, Shaw would have to pay an IP Transit provider so traffic can get from Shaw’s network to the United Kingdom and vice-versa.

My understanding from communicating with people who do have direct knowledge on this is that the cost to deliver 1GB of data to a customer is 1-3 cents.  This means that at most, on a 60GB/month plan the actual cost to deliver 60GB to the user is at most $1.80.

There is a fantastic write up that goes into more detail about peering agreements and how much it costs for data transfer here.  I encourage you to read it to get a more detailed grasp on this concept.

Now, the 1-3 cents/GB does not include costs like network maintenance, labour, etc.  There is a cost to that of course, and that will increase the cost per GB overall.  However, this is why Shaw charges $37 or $47/month for the High Speed plan.  Those costs, as well as others, are built into that price that you pay per month.

However, the simple fact that Shaw would like to charge an overage fee of $2/GB when in fact it costs them 1-3 cents is a markup of approximately 6600%.  This is why they can offer the “data packs” which can give you up to 250GB for $50, which is 20 cents/GB.  Even this is a significant markup (600%) on something that is as close to free as a gigabyte of data.

So If All This Data Is Free, Why Do They Want to Charge So Much For It?

I’ve heard many arguments for UBB that bandwidth is limited, and that charging for data is a way to solve that.  Frankly, that is not true.  Bandwidth, by its definition of being how fast a provider can serve that data to you, is limited.  This is why Shaw has plans of 1, 7.5, 15, 50, and in some areas 100Mbps.  That is the physical size of the “pipe” that Shaw is providing to you, and that is what is scarce.  There is no scarcity on the actual amount of data that can be transferred to you.  The only limiting factor is how fast you can actually get it.  The cost for an ISP to provide you with 5GB of data is, in the grand scheme of things, virtually identical to how much it would cost them to provide you with 500GB of data.  It doesn’t matter whether it takes a 1 hour, 1 week, or 1 month to transfer that data to you; the actual cost of the data is the same.  The real cost is in how fast they can actually get that data to you.

Shaw, and many other providers would have the general public believe that the internet should be treated like utilities such as water.  They say that it costs money to build the pipe to deliver the product to the user, but also for the actual product they deliver.  If an area needs more water, they have to build a bigger pipe to carry more water, and there is a cost to that.  This makes sense, since water is a scarce resource, and there is a finite amount of it in the world.  However, this argument does not quite work for the internet.  While actually building the “pipe” and expanding it from time to time does cost money, the cost of actually moving data through that pipe over time is negligible.  Data, or “bits” as I like to call them, is not a finite resource, and cannot be treated as such.

The actual data transfer, which is what Bell, Shaw, and Rogers seek to limit and charge overage fees for, is actually the cheapest part of the entire equation on the internet.  This is simply another way for these companies to make money where they do not have to raise their basic rates.  They don’t even need the majority of their customers to go over the limits, since the current overages that they are charging are so inflated that the profit margin on those 10% of users is massive.

So when many ISP’s tell you that bandwidth is limited, remember two things.  First, bandwidth actually is limited.  However, in the discussion of UBB, bandwidth has absolutely nothing to do with what your ISP is charging you for overages.  While an ISP would like to have you believe that they are the same, in reality, they are trying to take the most plentiful and cheapest part of their ecosystem and pass it off as a much higher cost and limited part.

Internet, news, Shaw, thoughs, Usage Based Billing , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Shaw Delays Usage Based Billing Implementation–What Does This Mean?

Written on February 8, 2011 at 8:20 pm, by

Shaw today announced that it is going to, at least temporarily, suspend the service which would have enabled usage based billing on their internet plans. Usage Based Billing had gone into effect on January 1, 2011. For a more detailed explanation please see my article I wrote about this here.

In the press release, and on a page on the Shaw website, Peter Bissonnette, President of Shaw Communications, said: "We have been listening to the discussion taking place and determined that we want to hear directly from our own customers before we roll out any kind of program. Wherever we end up needs to work first and foremost for our customers."

Shaw will be conducting public consultation with its customers in it’s service area. Dates, times, and venues will be announced on February 14th.

[read] – Shaw press release

[read] – Shaw website

I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about what this really means. Now, I am pleased that Shaw is willing to at lest go through this process and listen to its customers. Obviously there has been enough of a negative response to this Shaw feels that it must at least try to salvage some positive PR out of this situation. I do commend them for doing this, as it does show that they are at least willing to listen.

Do I personally thing that this means they will stop the usage based billing altogether? In a word: no. Shaw launched a redesign of its website on February 7th, which includes a new data usage tool which is significantly more robust than the previous one. While I do not like the concept of the caps, I do think that Shaw has done a good job with this data usage tool on the new website. I highly doubt that they would have invested the resources into building this new tool for their new website unless they fully intend to go through with usage based billing.

So why have these public sessions? I think that it is so they can say that they have talked to their customers publicly about this new system. Shaw has been widely criticized by many, myself included, for it’s poor handling of the implementation of UBB. Doing this allows Shaw to save face and say that they have listened to their customers and gathered the feedback that the customers really wanted to give. I wish that they would have done this ahead of time, but at least they are offering this olive branch now.

While I am skeptical, and do not believe that this will change the fact that Shaw will put UBB in place in the end, I do believe that these public meetings can be good. If enough people voice their opinion, real change can be made. My ultimate wish is to have UBB overturned altogether. But I don’t believe that Shaw is willing to go that far, unless forced to by a massive outcry by its customers, or by legislation from government. Over 420,000 Canadians have signed a petition to stop UBB. That is not something that can be ignored. Perhaps if enough of those people speak up with Shaw, they will realize that this is something that is so un-popular with their customer base, they will not be able to go forward with UBB at all.

However, I am realistic. I said earlier that I fully expect Shaw to continue with UBB after this consultation process is over. While I completely disagree with UBB, we must deal with the most likely scenario. I have said in previous articles that I am not completely against the idea of usage caps; I am against the idea of unfair usage caps, which the current Shaw caps currently are. Shaw wants to punish the “heavy users” of today. What they fail to realize is that the heavy user of 2011 is the casual user of 2013. Or maybe they do realize that, and this is part of their plan. Either way, with internet usage trending up and while the current proposed caps of 60 and 100 GB may be adequate for most users today, it will not be soon. And what about the average family household with 4-5 internet users. As more and more people user the internet for more and more media rich activities, it will be nearly impossible for a household with more than one person to say under a cap of 60 or 100GB.

The real cost to Shaw is not the amount of data transferred, but how fast they can transfer it. I will talk more about this in a future article, but Shaw’s claims that bandwidth is limited and they can only transfer so much data is an exaggeration and a half truth. A cap of 60 or 100GB will do nothing to change Shaw’s overall service. Service providers in the United States that have put in service caps have limits of 250GB, because their goal is only to stop the true abusers of the system, not those who just want to watch a few movies or TV shows via legal services. If we must have UBB, let us have reasonable, realistic caps, not what we have now.

The way to make this happen is to get involved. We have an opportunity here. Shaw is counting on user apathy in these public consultations. If Shaw really values user feedback as much as they are indicating with this process, then it is up to its customers to make it actually have feedback to consider.  It is our responsibility to make this happen.  Be active, and let Shaw know that you are not happy.  Unless you do that, none of this matters.

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BREAKING NEWS: Shaw will NOT proceed with Usaged Based Billing immediately.

Written on February 8, 2011 at 1:22 pm, by

This news broke a few minutes ago.  Via a press Release Shaw has announced that they will be engaging in customer consultation sessions regarding usage based billing in February and March, and will not be charging any overage costs until that process is complete.

There is no guarantee that this will change anything.  This is really only a delay of at least one month, as after two warnings people may have begun seeing charges as early as March.  However this is an encouraging sign that Shaw is at the very least listening to its customers and the outrage that moving to usage based billing has caused.

I will try to write up more on this when I can properly understand and absorb what this really means, but for now please find links to the press releases below.

http://www.shaw.ca/Internet/New-Data-Usage/?WT.mc_id=C796A1718S98

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Shaw-to-Engage-Customers-in-Consultation-Process-on-Internet-Usage-Allowances-TSX-SJR.B-1392517.htm

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Bandwidth Caps–The Critical Mass

Written on February 1, 2011 at 9:59 pm, by

The issue of bandwidth caps in Canada has hit critical mass. It is being widely reported by mainstream media, and more and more people are asking questions, and voicing their opposition to these limits. This has caused the House of Commons to respond to Canadians unrest.

So how did the tipping point get reached?

I believe the final straw came when news broke on January 31st, 2011 that a small ISP in Eastern Canada, Teksavvy, was being forced to significantly reduce what it could offer its customers. As I discussed in an earlier article, Bell and Rogers are now allowed to charge smaller ISPs that lease space on their networks on the same usage based model that it can for it’s customers. This essentially means that those smaller ISPs are very limited in what it can offer to it’s customers. This resulted in Teksavvy having to reduce it’s bandwidth limit on customers in Ontario from 200GB a month down to 25GB. This is a reduction of nearly 88%. Even a single average Canadian can use 25GB of data per month, without using any online video service like Netflix.

The reaction to this news has been overwhelming, with people finally understanding what the usage based billing model means to Canadians, and what we can expect from our ISP’s.

The link to the CBC article that really started this can be found here.

This specific case has even been carried on some US based technology news websites. Ars Technica and crutchgear both had articles about this, and Tech News Today, a daily tech news show produced by the TWiT network, covered it on their show on Monday, January 31st as well cnet’s Buzz Out Loud covered the issue on Tuesday, February 1st.. This issue has interested our neighbours to the south in a big way, and goes to show how big of an issue this is.

[read] – Ars Technica

[read] – crunchgear

[read] – Tech News Today

[read] – Buzz Out Loud

What will the CRTC do?

Honeslty, I have no idea. The CRTC just recently ruled that the rate that Bell can charge small ISP’s for overage is to be reduced by 15%. That is not much, but it is a start. With the Government ordering a review, anything is possible. However, the CRTC does not have a history of being friendly to consumers in it’s decisions. The vast majority of its rulings in the recent past on ISPs and Usage Based Billing has been in the favour of the media companies, with little regard to the consumer. Perhaps with a government ordered review the CRTC may look more carefully at the wishes of Canadians, but it really is unknown.

What is the landscape looking like in the Government

The New Democratic Party(NDP) has been in opposition of UBB since the beginning, and now with the issue hitting critical mass, more people are finding that out. On February 1 the opposition Liberal party also stated that they are opposed to the UBB model in Canada.

The Conservative government has not come out with a firm stance. Stephen Harper has called UBB “troubling” and Industry minister Tony Clement has confirmed that the government will be reviewing the CRTC decision and that it will be watched closely.

What if the CRTC doesn’t change it’s ruling?

Well, in that unfortunate scenario, the Government could step in and overrule the CRTC decision. With the Liberals and the NDP already stating their opposition, this would pass the House of Commons quite quickly and easily. This is one of the few issues in recent memory that all major parties agree on, and I hope that they can come together for the good of the consumer on this issue.

So does this mean that the debate is over?

Not even close. There are no guarantees yet. The CRTC could rule to keep UBB as it is. And the Government could chose not to override that decision. There is still much work to do.

The best thing you can do right now is contact your Member of Parliament, Prime Minister Harper, and Tony Clement, to voice your opposition to UBB. The next thing you can do is sign the online petition at www.openmedia.ca/stopthemeter. The petition has grown by almost 75,000 signatures in the last 24 hours, and as of this writing is around 250,000.

The time to act is now. The voice of the consumer is very powerful, and hundreds of thousands of voices together can be deafening, and hard to ignore. Sign the petition, write to your MP and to the Prime Minister. Without further action this could be nothing more than window dressing.

Anything else?

This is a note relating to Shaw users. Shaw took a good step today, February 1st, and enabled it’s bandwidth monitor for all of its customers. This can be accessed from secure.shaw.ca. Be aware that clicking on the modem usage link tries to open a pop up to display the graph. Most browsers block pop up windows automatically now, and it will have to be disabled for Shaw’s website. An annoyance, but at least we have the tool now.

I found that in the previous two billing cycles my household used 77.8GB in both months, well over the 60GB cap on the plan. This is troubling because those of us in the house, especially in the December-January billing cycle, were aware of the cap and were trying to lower our usage. We did not use Netflix at all and tried to curb our streaming video usage.

We will have to monitor our usage, and if we cannot get under 60GB, will probably have to upgrade to Shaw extreme. Based on our usage we would have had $36 in overage fees, with nothing but “normal” usage.

I personally hope that the CRTC reverses the decision to allow ISPs to implement Usage Based Billing. This is nothing but a cash grab for the service providers, while Shaw is currently enjoying record profits without the UBB system in place. It is simply not needed, and only serves to crush innovation and technology in Canada, when the future moving forward is based on that technology.

[read] – Conservative and Liberal parties talking about the topic

[read] – CRTC ordered to review the decision

[read] – openmedia.ca

[sign] – Stop the meter petition

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