Attached Link: Online Petition

Rogers@Home has announced that it plans to change its cable internet service from its standard, unlimited service that costs around $40 a month to a tiered service - where users who use very little bandwidth will be charged $25/month, and those who use more bandwidth can be charged up to $80 a month. This is not a rumor, it was announced in several newspapers and its going to happen. Now Bell Sympatico High-Speed has announced that if Rogers goes ahead with its plan, it will introduce a tiered service as well. It plans to introduce a 5gb cap (this included upstream/downstream and email). If you stay below this 5gb cap, you will pay the same rate you are paying now. However, for every 1gb you go over the cap, you will be billed $10. This is rediculous. In this day and age, with online streaming media, mp3s, divx, flash-driven websites, internet radio, webcams, etc you can easily exceed a GB of transfer daily. I checked my usage, in under three days, with just regular surfing, being logged into the renderosity chatroom and ICQ, downloading 2 movies and some mp3s and checking my email ive went over 2.5gb transferred. This means id hit the 5gb cap in under a week, and my monthly fees would be over $200. Keep in mind that even if you dont consider yourself a high-bandwidth user, you could easily go over that limit. Think of all the web popups, the email spam, the icq spam, image/flash/sound-rich websites, etc. Also, people intent on causing mischief can bombard users with DOS attacks and packetfloods and cause their monthly fees to skyrocket. If youre not Sympatico HSE or @Home user, this will STILL affect you. please take the time to sign this petition. As you well know, when one major player in a market is allowed to get away with something as rediculous as this, the rest will follow. These are two of the largest players... you think if you sit back and let this slide because it doesnt directly affect you that you wont be feeling the effects of that apathy and inaction a few months down the line? This is our chance to quash this, once and for all - WE ARE THE MARKET, and WE dictate the rules the merchants must follow, and not vice-versa. Its time to raise your voice and be heard, and if these providers dont listen, you can bet that others who will provide you with what you want will step into their place. Cheers, -Gabriel

I've already gone and put my name on the petition, Gab. Currently my local cable company, Charter, still has an ongoing agreement with the @Home ppl and a very reasonable montly charge of only $30, but they will soon be switching over to supplying the cable internet service themselves. Hopefully they won't get the 'hot' idea to do tier charging.

thanks lucy... this is important folks we have an opportunity to stop this, once and for all if you can get this out to enough people we can change the internet, change the world in a little way, maybe not so little.. 600 signatures in a day isnt bad, but its not enough they can dismiss 600 signatures they cant dismiss 10,000 if everyone that reads this can take a few moments of their day to sign it, and another few moments to pass this info on to 5-10 of their friends, weve won. help me

I really cant believe how much bandwith I used...I'd really hate to see my bill. Expecially when I get over 100 e-mails a day.

Damn... I may not have cable, but I have friends who do. On my way.

just signed! tam ;o)

I hate to burst your bubble but I really don't think a petition is going to solve it (they can and will dismiss 10,000 signitures) What they will pay attention to is the bottom line, if your service provider does this price change then cancel your service with them. With no money coming in they will go out of business, and then other providers will know that a teired plan is not the way to go. Thinking about it, you may want to seriously consider canceling service with them now, explaining to them that this is the reason why. Much more effective than a petition. And hey you can always sign-up again once the silliness is over.

shadow - i honestly dont think a company of that calibre will dismiss such a large number of petitions. ive worked at large corporations such as these before, and they place a very large emphasis on customer service and satisfaction. so i dont believe that a company like that will look at 10k signatures on a petition saying that if their scheme goes into effect they will cancel their service and simply dismiss such a large number of customers and revenue. these are companies that pay a lot of money for advertising just to lure in some new customers, theyre not about to let them just fade out. and im saying that the 600 petitions weve got in one day could easily rise to 10,000 in a few days if every one of the people that read about this takes the time to sign and to spread this info to their friends and ask them to do so as well. ive spammed this to over 300 people on my icq list. you think that 10k signatures will stay that way? no - that will mushroom into a much larger number, and believe me something of this magnitude WILL get media attention. but in order to do that you folks need to stop saying 'this probably wont help', stop the negativity, and take a moment to sign the bloody thing and actually DO something about it before its too late. cheers, -gabriel

Just signed... although I have pacbell dsl service. We gotta have a voice now and although it may not stop it from occurring, it's a great start. People can always cancel their accounts at a later time, if necessary!

I use Sympatico High Speed for my connection to the internet. If this teired plan as stated in this message thread becomes a reality, I would definately cancel my account with Sympatico and my account with Expressview. I would also switch my long distance to another provider as well. Whats next, if I watch more than ten hours of TV a week I have to pay an extra buck an hour? Give me a break.

I signed the petition. I use DSL--business DSL because I can't get any other kind in my neighborhood. What on earth is to prevent this tiered system from jumping to DSL? It's rather insane. The last thing you want to do to a growing economic sector is reduce the number of available consumers. If I didn'thave broadband, I wouldn't surf. And since I'm disabled, I do most of my banking and shopping online. I'd hate to see my usage, it's probably astronomical. They have been trying this pay-by-the-byte as long as I can remember. The real people to get against it are Amazon and the other big mercantiles.

This smells like a monopolized market. Wasnt there a law against it? I live in Europe and have no clue what @Home is, but I hapily sign the petition.... Maxx :-)

I have Sympatico HS and business wise Blackhearted s`right. It could be a build break build technic.So I believe it is possible that bell is going to lauch a better internet speed service soon.

signed;)

ditto! I don't even want to think what my ISP bill would run if something like this went into effect!

Signed

Signed

Ditto. This is just outrageous. I'd switch to AOHell before I'd pay for something like this rip off.

Reminds me of the "Early" days of AOL when they charged a base fee but added hourly charges as well. To make matters worse their so-called 800 line was Not Toll Free. My first month of service was very low as I had just started to get the hang of the ways of the World Wide Web. The second month, I was hit by a $950 AOL bill. Needless to say I switched to a local company the next day. I will be more than happy to sign the petition rather than go through that with my local companies :) Also, I can only hope if they do go through with that plan that they devise a better way to sift out junk mail as I get over 5mb of that garbage a day and I am currently with 4 ISP's (business and personal related) Deja vu "All over again x 2" ;]

2 days of coffee glasses and a bit full of thingking since you handed me the url twice.......... and it just struck me right........... yap it's goddamn outrages.......... signed

heyas; yep, that's the way things used to be, internet service was charged by a minute rate. you'd get a certain number of hours for your base fee, then however many cents per minute. isp bills were expensive back then. and then we were saved by flat-fee services. one low monthly fee, and you could access all you want. get all the email you want, chat all you want, download tons of stuff all you want. life was good! now it looks like we're coming around full circle. what with all the 'free' sites charging for bandwidth and bandwidth this and bandwidth that, and you can't transfer this much and blah blah blah.... bandwidth: the final frontier. :/ since bandwidth is becoming such a big issue (and a big expense, not just for professional sites), i don't know as we can avoid the per-minute/per-hour/per-gig charges indefinitely. but as someone who remembers strictly budgeted online time, i'll fight it the best i can. it sucked.

damnit, you just cant win. signatures were well over 1000, and the damn petitiononline website went down this morning. now you cant view petitions (cgi errors) and it seems the count is down to around 150. im praying that they will restore the lost signatures. you know, ive never been one for conspiracy theories, but i wouldnt be suprised if @Home or Sympatico had their hand in this somehow - just seems like too big a coincidence that ive never seen petitiononline.com go down or have any problems in the past, yet the moment that a petition against such large companies starts to really take off its suddenly smacked right down to nothing by mysterious 'technical difficulties'. this is complete bullshit.

Damn, i dont even have high speed. But on my dual 56k lines i burn easily 15gigs a month. Forgot to log off my timed one once vice my unlimited but slower connection and got 532 hours for that month... hehe 332 over my limit at 50cents per hour. Id be utterly screwed if that policy to effect. Take in account rogers of the old @home and to a lesser extent sympatico have erratic service. Sync lights flickering, email crashing, the main pipeline saturated. Now they could charge 2x maybe 5x as much to a heavy user and still provide crap.

Well this about takes me over the edge, I mean my hard earned dollar goes far enough with out this if it happens to me ......Well I will Just vanish like nothing...I dont make that much to begin with and I wont spend one more dime for ISP if this is what is coming ,,,I love the people I met here but Well all stock up on post cards and stamps just incase this thing prevailes in my area. For what its worth I signed the petiction too.... Happy New Year my butt....Not if this goes in effect.