Fuck Canada

I routinely move a 1GB per day over svn and git alone, plus another 5-6GB in basic web browsing, programming documentation queries, numerous online services and VPN tunnels. Then another 1-2GB on Youtube and streaming music/radio. Throw in the occasional 10-20GB Steam purchase and a few 2GB-4GB HD movies a month. Not a big deal, right?

Well all of the major ISPs in Canada (who are also all of the cable television/telecommunications providers) are mad that their customers are waking up and realizing that they don't need a $90+/month repackaged TV deal when Netflix offers unlimited new-release HD movie streaming for $8/month. Who the fuck wants to watch the same shitty made-for-TV movie six times per month on different channels? So now they're punishing all of their users across the board by lowering the bandwidth caps and enforcing overage costs with outrageous prices.

I used to get have a 200GB/month soft cap that was never enforced, it was just there in the agreement to stop the worst offenders. I never once was punished, and I would go over that limit by a lot all of the time.

Now I'm forced into 100GB/month and have to pay $1 per GB over for the same fucking base cost. Fucking insane seeing as how it only costs then a couple of cents per GB, if that.

They're just trying to stop people from using Netflix, iTunes, etc. to protect their dead/dying business model. They're all doing it in collusion, the government is in on it, and there is no one else to turn to for nominally priced internet access--there is no hope.

What the fuck are us programmers and power users supposed to do now? I already got fucked when HST came in and I had to charge my customers I do contract work for an extra 5% in taxes, which I ate out of my own pocket. Fuck this dump, it's worse than a third world country when it comes to the Internet and modern business models. Can I immigrate to your dungeon, XARN?

>>13
The four major ISPs in Canada are Bell, Rogers, Shaw, and Telus. All of the other smaller ISPs lease the lines from the four major ones.

All of them operate standard Cable TV or TV-over-IP on DSL networks. They also operate the existing telecommunications infrastructure, telephones, wireless/mobile phones, and so on.

People have been switching from their $100+/month cell phones or $30-40/month land lines to $2-$5 month Skype packages. People have been cancelling their $100-$300/month Cable TV packages in droves in favor of $8/month unlimited new-release 1080p movies (digital cable here is only 720p).

Their business was starting to dry up in their old-school last-century markets of prepackaged overplayed content, so instead of embracing the new, they're retaliating by making it too cost prohibitive to use these newer Internet services. They're trying to turn the regular Internet into the same high priced shit you see with wireless Internet/mobile phone access.