🚀 go-pugleaf

In <3CEA7D4A.F8004316@sympatico.ca>
   Dave Smith <adavid.smith@sympatico.ca> wrote:

[My stupid ISP just doesn't seem to be able to post messages
more than 1/2 the time, so reposted with slight alterations
from Google].

| > You admit they should be able to raise the price to cover
| > these costs, it seems.  But then you insist that they must
| > raise the price for everyone, including those who are *not*
| > imposing very large costs on them.
| 
| I admitted that the service agreement provides for changing the price for the
| service. 

It also seems to allow for changing pretty much whatever 
they want.  The part you quoted never mentioned any limits 
on what they could change; rather, it seemed to simply give 
one example of something they felt they would be most likely 
to want to change.  Where does it rule out other forms of 
change?  Is there anything in this agreement that protects
the consumer from anything that Sympatico should wish 
to do?

| Bear in mind that internet access rates have dropped dramatically
| over the last decade as advances in technology came along and the number of
| users grew.

I am not so sure about that.  I have seen a number of cut-rate
services, but quite a few  basic dialup ones are still around 
$20 a month or so for "unlimited" access.  People seem to be 
subscribing to these services.  Perhaps they have turned out 
to be more trustworthy, or at least seem that way.    $20 a 
month is similar to what I paid for my first commercial ISP in 
1995 (netcom).  In any case, we are talking about a much higher 
level of technology.  Even when you are charged Sympatico's $8/G 
for download, that is far cheaper than things used to be (you 
would be hard pressed to download a G a month in the old days), 
and of course everything is much much faster too.  So there is 
"internet access" and there is "internet access".

| > Why should I have to pay a much larger price for my access
| > in order to subsidize someone who uses a great deal more
| > bandwidth than I do?  I applaud Sympatico for having the
| > fair-mindedness to make the heavy users pay their share of
| > the bill (not really though, see A. Smith on the butcher
| > and the baker).
| 
| If you are not using the net much, you can buy more limited plans. Planning to
| spend more time on the net, I opted for the unlimited access offered by
| Sympatico. It is still advertising the High Speed Edition as unlimited access.

I don't think so, can I?  If I want high-speed access 
(high-speed for me is  more a matter of quality of net-use than 
quantity) I think I am forced to buy Sympatico's DSL (or some 
other DSL at basically the same rate) or cable.  All of these 
currently offer the same price for those people who use huge 
amounts of bandwidth and those people who use only a small 
amount, which hardly seems fair.

The ability to buy "more limited plans" is what Sympatico 
is planning to introduce.  I will probably get the plan 
limited to 5G/month for $45.  If you want the 6G/month plan, 
it will cost you $53.  The 7G/month will cost you $61, etc.  
You can get whatever one you want, and switch around 
automatically with no effort.  Sounds not to bad to me.  
Except that perhaps all of them should be cheaper, and there 
should be plans even cheaper than the 5G/month plan 
(but which still offer the same high speed).

| It seems to me that, having lured people to an *unlimted access* service, they
| have decided that they should try to squeeze more money out of their customers
| by altering their unlimited access to a  limited access, and at higher rates.
| All this is being done at a time when technology is driving competitors' prices
| down and their customer bases are expanding.

I have noticed that some other ADSL providers already 
have a 5G/month transfer limit, and some others have
similar but higher limits.  For example, check eol at
http://www.eol.ca/dsl/residential.html.   Also, I have 
heard that Rogers plans to introduce a similar limit for 
their cable service.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Calvin Ostrum                                           cbo@interlog.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 To say altruism and morality are possible in virtue of something 
 basic to human nature is not to say that men are basically good.  
 Men are basically complicated; how good they are depends on whether 
 certain conceptions and ways of thinking have achieved dominance, a 
 dominance which is precarious in any case.  The manner in which 
 human beings have conducted themselves so far does not encourage 
 optimism about the moral future of the species.   
      -- Thomas Nagel, "The possibility of altruism"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------