WTF? (Nathan Cullen hates the internet)

General Forums Northern BC Forum
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Are you fucking serious???
Citywest is an absolute gem!!! Good thing they are so honest and want to do everything right…lol

Nathan Cullen Corrects Statements Made About CityWest

While speaking at Prince Rupert City Council on April 26, Member of Parliament Nathan Cullen took the opportunity to correct previous statements made concerning CityWest and Internet billing changes CityWest has proposed. “I made some misstatements in the press about the reading I got from the CRTC and the effect on CityWest. I want to correct those. I think the company is in the right on this one. I think what they’re trying to do is correct. I think there’s other companies, Internet companies that are not trying to the do what’s right.”

Rob Brown, CEO of CityWest responded to Mr. Cullen’s correction, “Nathan came to see us in person to give us the opportunity to clarify our position and our plans. We are very appreciative that he not only took the time to hear our side of the story but also that he corrected his previous statement. Politicians unfortunately have a negative stereotype these days, but it is truly refreshing to come across someone like Nathan who is genuine, and who listens and responds the way he did on this issue.”

For reference, the following article contains the original statements that Mr. Cullen wanted to correct:
bclocalnews.com/bc_north/the … 61629.html

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On topic comment: Old news is old.

On topic comment 2: Yes, CityWest is shitty.

Off topic comment: Nathan Cullen wants to be NDP leader…

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Cullin is pipe dreaming

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Call Mr. Cullen and tell him he should be ashamed to go against his election platform, and to be in direct opposition with his own party’s policies. His Prince Rupert office # is (250) 622-2413. His e-mail address is Cullen@parl.gc.ca.

And here’s a good quote to read to him, from Jack Layton:

“We just don’t agree with the UBB concept. We just don’t think it’s fair, or reasonable. I can understand why the companies might advocate for it, and that’s their right certainly to do so. But I think if the Internet is to realize it’s full potential then we really want to make it the place where it can be a complete free exchange of ideas and that means no to UBB.”

Finally, go here: facebook.com/nothankscitywest

Cullen needs to be embarrassed into actually following his party and his election platform. Sad. If he does run for the leadership, we need to get this out there loud and clear, that he’s against the NDP’s stand on UBB. Don’t let him talk politicianese to you. He’s taken a stand in favour of corporate profits here. Also, don’t let him pretend this is something he needs to look into, or it’s something new. I’ve had an extensive e-mail exchange with him (which I really should post), and he’s steadfastly maintained his stand.

Practically every other NDP MP (and even some Liberal ones) have spoken out against a metered internet. Here’s what another BC MP wrote: libbydavies.ca/news/update/2 … affordable

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They can never replace Jack Leighton

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Wow. Going against the party AND the people who elected him, at the same time. He should be ashamed of himself for selling out to corporate interests.

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So Nathan says he thinks I should be able to charge what I want for my product. I don’t see a problem with that.
I have to pay for upgrades and infrastructure out of cash flow just like other companies. Citywest should too.

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My man, Jack, had it right. I do think Nathan is a good MLA. However, Nathan got it wrong when he advocated for a metered Internet. I’m guessing here, but, he may not have understood the issue properly and he now feels that he cannot correct his error.
I hope that he takes some time to think about his stand on UBB. I do not agree with Nathan on this issue.
No to a metered Internet!

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[quote=“herbie_popnecker”]So Nathan says he thinks I should be able to charge what I want for my product. I don’t see a problem with that.
I have to pay for upgrades and infrastructure out of cash flow just like other companies. Citywest should too.[/quote]

You’re not a city-owned, taxpayer-subsidized monopoly.

Nathan ran on a platform to oppose “all forms of UBB.”

Half a million Canadians signed a petition opposing the practice, and the NDP has clearly taken the side of the consumer in this issue. Nathan has taken the side of the ISPs. I can see why you would like his stand.

How about if your upstream provider started charging you by the byte, at a rate that was higher than they charged their retail customers? Bet you’d be changing your tune then. Or would you think they “should be able to charge what they want for their product.”

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Navigata used to. And a certain native band simply refused to pay for the overages they ran up. Claimed I was falsifying records. Claimed Navigata was. Claimed they’d sue if I cut off their Internet. Which I did the minute their contract expired. Ain’t paying. No way! Got another company to sell them Internet. That outfit had no connection, so they resold mine (which is now unmetered). They refused to pay THEM, so I got hosed for another 3 months.
I personally paid over $12,000 out of my own pocket so a native band could have Internet, installation costs paid for wit $58 million of our tax dollars.
They even hired an outfit to come there and prove “the Internet was no good”. All they proved was no one was working, they were downloading movies and music in the Band Office. Playing poker online in the Ed Centre. Fer fuxsakes even worked with the RCMP and kiddie porn was traced to their router’s IP. So they refused to pay THEM for their equipment, their services. Drove them bankrupt.
Know the response to a demand to pay? Go get a gov’t grant for us that will cover it if you want to get paid.
The sense of entitlement is beyond all belief.
To extend that demand for entitlement to every consumer is against current (free enterprise) thinking. Should you pay a flat rate for electricity no matter how much you use?
If I have to pay, you have to pay.

Fortunately for consumers here I don’t have caps. Telus, Xplornet and your link (cable) DO. Whether they enforce them strictly or not is the consumer’s problem. I don’t have caps, and that hasn’t proven to be much of a market advantage when the locals insist the big guys HAVE TO BE better just because their big guys and no comparison or testing will convince most of them otherwise.
But nobody’s got the right to tell me I can’t charge extra if I want to. You as a consumer get choices, and what people simply refuse to acknowledge is that choices and competition doesn’t necessarily mean better or cheaper. You might end up having to decide who rips you off least like American health care’s ‘freedom of choice’.

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No, because the cost to provide electricity goes up proportionate to the amount you use. Unlike, say, local telephone or cable service. Are you saying that we should be paying by the minute to watch TV as well?

Fair enough. Citywest (and you) don’t pay by the byte. Citywest has consistently tried to insinuate they do – with Chad Cunningham on TV with a big ass calculator saying customers are costing Citywest thousands of dollars. But the truth of the matter is that Citywest doesn’t pay for bandwidth by the byte. No more than it pays for TV by the minute.

No, in Prince Rupert, as has already been stated, Citywest is a city-owned monopoly. There is no choice.

When choice is present, then people vote with their wallets. That was the case when Rogers came to town.

As for whether the government has the right to regulate business, then I guess we disagree. That is one of government’s roles, and in this case, it’s the federal government’s role. Nathan Cullen, our elected representative to that government, ran on a campaign promising to “prohibit all forms of UBB.” Turns out that everyone in his party agrees with that sentiment, including the late Jack Layton (as quoted above). By supporting a metered internet, Nathan’s decided the corporations are more important than his own party’s platform, and his own election promises.

I think if Citywest were smart, they’d charge more for higher bandwidth connections and charge less for low bandwidth connections. Just like they do for telephone and cable service. Want more channels? Pay more. Want more phone lines? Pay more. Imagine if they told you that you watched more than your ‘quota’ of TV this month (46 minutes per day or whatever), and now need to pay more. After all, you’re using more than your share of the ‘shared resource.’

To top things off, part of the rationale that Citywest has provided for wanting to meter the internet is that they have reduced revenue due to their bundling of services. They give all customers a break if you sign up for multiple services, and somehow that’s the fault of internet users?

Here’s how I’d do it:

512k connection: $20 a month.
5meg connection: $30 a month.
15meg connection: $75 a month.

I know I’d pay for the faster connection in a heartbeat.

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Is Citywest still considering this plan? It’s been almost a year since they announced it, but they haven’t implemented it yet, have they? There have been some staff changes there, so maybe they’ve changed their minds. The new CEO has a history rooted in internet tv streaming, doesn’t he? Maybe his thinking is more 21st Century than the previous one, who seemed to just want to bury his head in the sand and hope this century never came to Prince Rupert.

Isn’t the new CEO the guy who did some streaming TV stuff in the past?

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[quote=“MiG”]
Here’s how I’d do it:

512k connection: $20 a month.
5meg connection: $30 a month.
15meg connection: $75 a month.

I know I’d pay for the faster connection in a heartbeat.[/quote]

That’s the thing. In actuality I might have a softer stance on UBB if the pendulum swung both ways. Use less/pay less. Use more/pay more. We’re not talking about that though. What we’re talking about is the company fleeceing people like my mom by setting the low end of the cost structure artificially high. Now they’re coming after the other end of the spectrum.

It’s why I moved from CityWest cell service, the minute my contract was up. I was paying for services I couldn’t possibly use, even though I had what CityWest deemed to be the minimum package. I moved to pay as you go and cut my yearly bill by 75%. Now my money goes to Speakout when I would rather spend it locally. If I had an option to do that for internet, I’d already be on it.

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I do not read this as Nathan Cullen catering to corporate interests at large. Rupert’s situation is highly unusual since Citywest is municipal-owned and has a monopoly. In another venue, somewhere else, I would not be surprised if he stuck with the NDP party line on metering (which most of us probably agree with).

I think that for the local audience here, he simply does not want to come across as being against the peoples’ telecommunications company, lest that cause offence. That is why he issued his correction of previous statements. The irony is that he has offended many of his own supporters in the process, probably unwittingly.

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Yes, and Nathan Cullen would probably agree with an oil pipeline too, or an asbestos mine in the area, if it were a local company doing them.

He’s a hypocrite.

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One again: how about 50 Volts for $100 a month, 75 Volts for $200 a month or $500 a month for 110 Volts?

I say the comparison stands. Usage is usage, the cost of supply doesn’t have any relation to the cost of the product unless the seller says so. The cost of gold is hitting $2,000 an ounce and we’ll sell you these 9-11 commemorative coins plated with 99.999% pure gold for only… do you understand that the consumer only thinks they set the price? It’s not real, it’s bullshit a la WalMart and Madison Ave? Does it work with gas stations? Privatized liquor stores or insurance?
Remember that businesses have always had caps, and business connections subsidized home connections. This isn’t the case any more, because they had those caps they’ve installed equipment to reduce bandwidth costs, or paid huge rates for open connections (like me, like the School Net does). Now home users are using far more than businesses, and demanding even more.
NetFlix? Now there’s quite the model, eh? I have content I sell. Customers want it. You ISPs must deliver it free. A couple years ago did the DVD rentals and the customers expect the Post Office to deliver the movies free?

In an ideal capitalist world, what people want is what they get. We don’t live in one. Otherwise the socialist Harcourt/Clark gov’t wouldn’t have kicked in half a billion dollars for Telus to run fibre to Alcan then squeal and dawdle and sabotage competition over delivering broadband all along the way for years. (And not string it on to Rupert!)
Chretien/Martin wouldn’t have coughed up that $58 million deal with Navigata delivering broadband to rural communities. Which by the way, groups of home where taxpayers lived didn’t qualify as communities and companies that had existing services had their customers stolen with their own tax dollars until I raised shit with Nathan. AFAIK, the 500 odd people in Sowchea Bay were the ONLY taxpaying citizens to get any service out of that deal.
Harper Tories wouldn’t be telling the ISPs how to price goods either. TARFU times and political agendas.

So I’m not going to condemn Nathan, I agree with DTravenn. He’s protecting a community owned outfit, and saying the same thing I am. They’ve got the right to set their own prices. Consumers have the right to go elsewhere or go without if they don’t like it. It’s the Internet, not health care. It’s a want, not a need.

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[quote=“herbie_popnecker”]One again: how about 50 Volts for $100 a month, 75 Volts for $200 a month or $500 a month for 110 Volts?

I say the comparison stands. Usage is usage, the cost of supply doesn’t have any relation to the cost of the product unless the seller says so.[/quote]

Well the government gets to regulate the telecommunications industry, whether sellers like it or not. They set the rules. Hence the unmetered local phone service and unmetered cable TV service. And yes, telephone companies wanted to meter local service too, until the government mandated an unmetered service.

Citywest was trying to convince people that customers were costing them hundreds of dollars, which is why they needed to start metering. As was pointed out, they even had a guy on TV with a calculator trying to figure out how many thousands a customer cost them. The implication was that the cost of supply was well above the cost of the product. Which isn’t true.

This is a city-owned monopoly, and in my opinion, shouldn’t be out out there trying to deceive both its customers and its owners in that way.

Your internet access is free?

The Post Office isn’t in competition with Netflix. And the post office didn’t charge extra for delivering the DVDs. Citywest is in direct competition with Netflix.

Which is fine, but that wasn’t the campaign platform he ran on. It’s there in black and white – “ALL forms of UBB.”

Not in Prince Rupert. No choice, remember? And this is a government-owned company, remember? The way you change things is by complaining and lobbying. You can’t change things by choosing another provider.

And the NDP has championed the “internet as a human right” declaration by the UN.

But this might be all moot, since as Smurfette has pointed out, there’s been a leadership change at Citywest. And we really haven’t heard much about their metering plans since then.

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Hell I’d take 59 cents for delivering a Netflix download. That’s totally fair.

What I don’t get is CityWest is owned by the town, why don’t the citizens make it deliver what they want? I hear the complaining, but they’re in a position to actually DO something about it.
I’m arguing because I do exactly what you described. But customers don’t want those choices either, they want 15 Mb service AND unlimited downloads for $20 a month. And I have ZERO sympathy for home users after dealing with them all these years. ZERO of mine will upgrade to the better, faster package.

Since Monday:
“it’s slower than dialup” yet sending the customer to speediest.net read 3.65 down and 2.5 up.
Customer that cancelled. Her router wasn’t plugged in, we can see that thru the radio’s ARP table. But we hadn’t come and plugged it in FOR HER for three weeks (because she wouldn’t agree to a callout charge), so she’s going to 440Kb XplrNet (one sixth the speed with caps )for $20 a month more.
A travel agent hasn’t paid for May, June or July. So she got cut off, and has called every other day demanding to be reconnected. Came in today to ask who we thought we were, SHE was trying to ‘run a business’. Still didn’t pay.
FIFTY MILES out in the bush, pissed because their service slows to 330Kb sometimes. Won’t cut the bushes grown up in front of it, insists we should do it free. Going back to Telus dialup paying $3 a month less. Already has FREE backup dialup with us.

Want a better deal? Pool your funds and I’ll sell ya all the equipment to run a WISP, server bank included, all you need is a backbone. I’m sick of it.

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[quote=“herbie_popnecker”]One again: how about 50 Volts for $100 a month, 75 Volts for $200 a month or $500 a month for 110 Volts?

I say the comparison stands. …[/quote]

Actually, that reasoning is flawed. A better example would be paying according to your capacity of service. For example, people would pay a flat rate on an 80 amp service into their house, and people with 120 amp service would pay more; 200 amp even more. The customer would likely pay more for what they use in electricity today, but the pay scheme would certainly be valid.

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[quote=“Smurfette”]Yes, and Nathan Cullen would probably agree with an oil pipeline too, or an asbestos mine in the area, if it were a local company doing them.

He’s a hypocrite.[/quote]

I will agree that he has painted himself into a corner with the UBB issue. I’ll be curious to see if he sticks to his current position on metering our interwebz.