So you’ll be happy to pay for Cable TV by the hour? Or pay for local phone calls on your home phone by the minute, right?
You’re the ideal customer for a government-run company!
I wonder if a Pizza place or taxi company pay the same amount for a business line as a funeral home? Will this be the next business strategy?
What did Citywest do with business phone line rates when they faced the exact same situation they now face with internet use? Did they penalize businesses who use “more than average” and start charging them by the minute on incoming calls when they went “over the cap” ? I seem to remember something about the cost of a business line in Rupert recently…[/quote]
For cable - If its fair, why not. Heavy users pay more. Light users pay less.
Comparing incoming calls to internet usage doesn’t really fly. You can’t control who calls you, but you do control what you download. Having said that, I’m pretty sure 1 800 numbers are charged by the minute for incoming.
As for local calls? again I don’t think its the norm, unless you have an example? Although if you go over on minutes on cell phones, do you not pay for minutes used in or out (local or not depending on the plan?) but I’m not sure there.
[quote=“PLA”]Using Beanaround’s logic. We should charge him $5 for every posts he makes here in HTMF, and $0.10 for every character over the 100 characters limit. Also, $0.50 for every minute spent logged in to this website.
LOL, Feliks would be super rich by then. [/quote]
Red herring alert. That would only make sense if I had 1200 posts and you only had 56…but it seems to be the opposite, now doesn’t it…?
Here’s a link from Citywest that explains most of it. Pretty much supports what I’ve said (or tried to say) lol. They also have an email address set up for inquiries / complaints / comments there as well.
You might be able to justify citywest ripping you off to yourself but personally I am not willing to do so.
citywest is combining two methods of billing in an attempt to rape its customers wallets. Normally when you pay for usage you get a guaranteed transfer rate as in you can transfer at 100Mbit/second guaranteed but you pay for the amount of data transferred.
Citywest used to bill a fair price for their connections, you pay 50.00/mo for 10mbit no rate guarantee you get the speed you get (usually nowhere near 10mbit) but they dont bill you for the amount of data transferred. 50.00/mo More than covers your share of the pipe plus their profit. The math is simple; take the total cost of citywests pipe divided by the number of users it can supply add in a % for profit and you end up with your price per customer.
Now citywest wants to start raping its customers by charging about 100x a fair price per GB on top of their already profitable rates. Raises all around.
Quite frankly citywest management has mental issues if they think their piss poor excuse for service deserves top dollar qos line rates. I had the displeasure of using their service for 6 months and got maybe 75% uptime. To make matters worse their billing dept is so incompetent you cant pay in cash or you risk someone pocketing the $$ and you being on the hook. Thats not even mentioning the fact that 3 months after I cancelled my service I was still receiving bills for the 3 months and no sign of my deposit being returned.
Yes I think citywest offers top notch service worth every penny.
[quote=“PLA”]Using Beanaround’s logic. We should charge him $5 for every posts he makes here in HTMF, and $0.10 for every character over the 100 characters limit. Also, $0.50 for every minute spent logged in to this website.
LOL, Feliks would be super rich by then. [/quote]
Red herring alert. That would only make sense if I had 1200 posts and you only had 56…but it seems to be the opposite, now doesn’t it…?[/quote]
Comparing my post numbers is a very weak argument.
The point is are you willing to pay the unjustified cost for service. It’s the matter of wasting your money on poor service provided by a mismanaged public corporation.
Nevermind caps. My parents’ $37 Citywest internet connection struggles to load Google Maps at basic map setting, as the $36 Telus connection I used to have can load Google Maps at satellite setting in a heart beat.
@ Jesus -How is it that you are being (or will be) raped if you canceled your service 3 months ago?
I think its fairly obvious why I have taken this stance, but if not, here it is - "I’m looking forward to lower rates, as I do not go over the set limit, therefore I would be less "ripped off"as you put it, if this change does go into effect.
Its seems obvious (to me anyways) from this thread that some people do not want to pay their share of usage and a disproportionate share of those people seem to be active on HTMF. I guess I am the only one who is willing to represent 93% of the users who will be unaffected or benefit from this change. Oh well…life goes on. Peace out.
The kid downstairs and his wife shared my connection. To the tune of over 50 Gigs A DAY. He said he’d be willing to share the cost, but I turned him down.
If he’d done that in Oct before my Navigata contract expired, it would have cost me an EXTRA $8,250.00
My daughters landlord shared his wireless with 3 tenants. She got a letter informing her to get her own connection. He obviously got the warning from Shaw.
The guy in the townhouses got a warning letter from Telus last spring. He let the treeplanters next door connect. He told Telus they couldn’t tell him how much he could download. So they cut him off and refused him new service.
The Band Council came in asking me how to get hold of Rogers. Half a dozen families got bills over $2000 and were told it was an additional $1700 to get out of their contracts early.
One minesite switched to our service, they installed 3 Explornet dishes, 3 accounts. The Satellite installer discovered that within 15 minutes, all 3 exceed their caps and were restricted to dialup speed for the remainder of the month.
Another uses the big satellite, $7500.00 a month. It can’t handle their needs.
I run a total block on Netflix, and have had customers cancel because of that. Too fucking bad, but somebody has to pay
I would love to see a local politician inform themselves and have the balls to put Citywest under the microscope and ask them to explain themselves fully and properly. That would take some sort of leadership though. Something we seem to be seriously lacking in this town.
[quote=“Beanaround”]@ Jesus -How is it that you are being (or will be) raped if you canceled your service 3 months ago?
I think its fairly obvious why I have taken this stance, but if not, here it is - "I’m looking forward to lower rates, as I do not go over the set limit, therefore I would be less "ripped off"as you put it, if this change does go into effect.
Its seems obvious (to me anyways) from this thread that some people do not want to pay their share of usage and a disproportionate share of those people seem to be active on HTMF. I guess I am the only one who is willing to represent 93% of the users who will be unaffected or benefit from this change. Oh well…life goes on. Peace out.[/quote]
I have to agree here. And from another perspective, from what I gather, the prices for Citywest internet hasn’t gone up in over 4 years or so, which is rare for any commodity or service, or whatever you want to call it. So, if they do go through with plans for customers who use less than the average, then as a part of the 93%, I’m also looking forward to lower rates too. Rape Jesus? Come on now, your vitriol is amusing.
On another note, i find this forum to be more of a lightening rod for people who find pleasure in complaining. So, regardless of what Citywest says, does, did or attempts to do, they will fail in the eyes of the majority in here. So really. what’s the point? It’s actually rather depressing. I’m just glad that the views reflected in here aren’t those of the majority in the “real” world.
[quote]“The options we have to deal with are to partner with another company to run a fibre link to Prince George to open up the corridor and take control of our own destiny. From Terrace to Prince George there’s only one provider of bandwidth. The price is high and the supply of bandwidth is low,” he explained.
From Prince George, CityWest would have several providers to choose from, which would lower costs. CityWest will be doing due diligence to look at the possibility of its own fibre link to Prince George.[/quote]
For those who claim to represent all of the 93 percenters, I can politely tell you don’t represent me and some of the others. Also I am not one of those heavy users, and I’m one of those who’re more or less affected by CityWest plans.
However, I do know what CityWest is planning to do soon is still unjustified and will have a negative impact on progress in technology here. Especially for educational purposes, our ability to embrace technology, and our ability to share information freely. I predict within 10 years time we’ll start seeing something like this:
Are we so lucky that we can still subscribe to a non-guarantee 5Mbps DSL connection, with a (soon to be enforced) 100GB cap for only $45 from the only ISP in town? As opposed to $84 for the same connection and speed, but 80% less included capacity and cost 5 times more for extra GB.
Let’s hope Chad Cunningham doesn’t go there.
Ever since your first post all you did here is complaining about people writing unpleasant comments about Citywest, and then waving pom poms for your beloved telecom company. lol
Meanwhile, inflation has kept on truckin’. We’re seeing everything else has gone up about 10-14% in price. Which is right on the nose for what Citywest is claiming has happened to their costs. Citywest’s costs have gone up, and they’ve kept their prices the same.
Now they’re wondering why they’re losing money.
Perhaps this is the problem? Citywest is afraid to raise their rates to match inflation?
My handy consumer price calculator tells me that something that cost $45.00 5 years ago should now cost roughly $50.50. This is a national average, of course. It’s probably a higher inflation rate in Northern BC. As some have pointed out:
Finally,
Personally, I find this forum is a lightening rod for people who like to complain about this forum.
Meanwhile, inflation has kept on truckin’. We’re seeing everything else has gone up about 10-14% in price. Which is right on the nose for what Citywest is claiming has happened to their costs. Citywest’s costs have gone up, and they’ve kept their prices the same.
Now they’re wondering why they’re losing money.
Perhaps this is the problem? Citywest is afraid to raise their rates to match inflation?
My handy consumer price calculator tells me that something that cost $45.00 5 years ago should now cost roughly $50.50. This is a national average, of course. It’s probably a higher inflation rate in Northern BC. As some have pointed out:
Finally,
Personally, I find this forum is a lightening rod for people who like to complain about this forum.[/quote]
Yeah this is so true everything costs more in the north get used to it… Maybe down south your internet might be cheaper and faster, but what about other costs… No one else is about to set up shop as an ISP so take it or leave it… I spend many hours a day on line emailing and surfing and have used 10 gig for March… 75-100 gig is a lot… Furthermore I had an issue with my internet last night and within an hour Dave @ citywest had it fixed, so to me while not perfect we could do worse for an ISP…
If someone goes over their cap, they are informed, and then for the rest of the month, they are throttled when the pipe is “full”, but not throttled when there is bandwidth available. That’s fair.
Remember, Citywest doesn’t pay for the amount of data that you send and receive. They pay for the pipe. If you are using more than “your share” of the pipe, you don’t cost Citywest any more money than a light user, but when the pipe is full, you’re slowing down those light users. If a heavy user goes over their cap, then ok, slow them down when the pipe is full.
Citywest has done this in the past. They have throttled heavy users at peak times. I’m not sure why they stopped.
If the UBB proposal is truly about equity and making the best of the available bandwidth, then that’s a fair solution for everyone. But I don’t think the issue is one of bandwidth. I think it’s an issue of Citywest wanting to make more money, hence the $2.00/GB.
Prove me wrong, Citywest, and implement a fair bandwidth sharing plan that doesn’t punish your best customers.
BTW, this is the solution some ISPs, especially those with limited bandwidth, have implemented instead of UBB. Some ISPs have a daily cap (how about 2GB per day?), and then throttle you once you go over it. That’s fair, isn’t it?
[quote=“MiG”]
Personally, I find this forum is a lightening rod for people who like to complain about this forum.[/quote]
QFT
// Update:
Excellent points MiG, however - Citywest will always be blind, basking in their glory and will never accept an open policy like this.
I think it would be a better alternative than $x/GB as it’s been pointed out and confirmed so many times (even by Citywest Employees) that they don’t pay by how much Bandwidth they use.
Throttling is a better approach, I know for a fact business & residential customers will be adversely affected.
I completed my co-op work experience with: The City Of Prince Rupert’s IT Department, and The Prince Rupert Library’s CAPSite
I have been employed by: The Friendship House Association of Prince Rupert (I was in charge of the CAPSite), and The Gitmaxmak’ay Nisga’a Society.
and I must say - these CAPsites are going to be hit hard and are only a few of the many examples of “heavy users”.
I don’t see why anyone’s attempting to rationalize Citywest’s ridiculous pocketing attempt - maybe you should ask them for an endorsement.
[/quote]