Vonage files complaint over Canada VoIP surcharge by Shaw

[mandy]

Vonage Canada, a leading provider of internet telephones, wants federal regulators to investigate what it calls a "thinly veiled VoIP tax" by one of its competitors.

Joe Parent, vice-president of marketing for Vonage Canada, said Tuesday that Shaw Communications was using the so-called tax to unfairly drive up VoIP prices in Western Canada...

In his announcement Tuesday, Parent said Shaw wants its high-speed internet customers to pay a $10 "quality of service enhancement" fee if they use a VoIP phone service from a provider such as Vonage Canada...

full article: http://www.cbc.ca/story/business/nationa...60307.html

related topics:
The VoIP Backlash: New Software Lets Phone Companies Block VoIP Calls
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...931.0.html
BellSouth, other telcos, consider move from flat fees to pay-as-you-go broadband
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...910.0.html

[rose]

The cable and telephone companies will get their way and pretty soon everyone will pay more.  They have the lobbyists to buy politicians-consumers don't. 

[bargainbloodhound]

[quote author=rose link=topic=2995.msg10664#msg10664 date=1142098383]
The cable and telephone companies will get their way and pretty soon everyone will pay more.  They have the lobbyists to buy politicians-consumers don't. 
[/quote]

It's inevitable that the days of flat fees for Internet usage will end. 

[dnc_ont]

Shaw's just a bunch of criminals.

Ah, wait, they own Star Choice (satellite) and I subscribe.  Hmm.  Well, at least on that end they're better and cheaper than Bell, who's going to lose most of my business (except for my unlimited DSL, lol) because they just piss me off.

It's odd though, because it wasn't that long ago that all the broadband offerings here in Canada were set up similar to what many of the postings here are talking about what the US providers want to do, ie limit bandwidth, charge for extra usage, etc. - It already WAS like that here, up until the last couple of years, Bell et al. dropped the bandwidth limitations, increased the speeds offered in the various packages, no extra charges for bandwidth, etc.  What I'm paying now for 3Mbit/s DSL with unlimited bandwidth, is the same as what I was paying for it when I signed up 3 or 4 years ago, and it was 1Mbit/s with 10GB combined up/down.  (or something like that, maybe it was 1.5Mbit/s - slow anyways  ;D)

All that changed because people were just plain getting pissed off at all the extra charges and would switch at the drop of a hat to a lower cost provider.  Service is generally the same across the board, except for the days of all the cable companies offering the @home service, which just plain sucked..

[regic]

1.5Mbit/s - slow

My first Internet access provider in the early 90's was Delphi.  4.8 Kbit/s  :blinkie: There wasn't a WWW in those days.