I want endless bandwidth as well, but this is absolutely the decline of this site, with "what I want" and "the way I present the world to support my bias" crowding out "what is real" and "actual fact".
Isn't that sort of tactic best left on reddit?
Do you have any evidence that he's wrong, an argument why he's wrong, or even a different assertion of the facts?
This has actually been a fairly fact-filled, low-whine conversation, with reason-filled arguments. It's a topic (proper regulation of state-granted monopolies) that goes back hundreds of years (to American Colonial times, at least). The fact is, you need a monopoly on last mile connections because it's not feasible to let 3-4 ISPs run last-mile connections, even if it could be made profitable. To prevent the company with that monopoly from owning the whole telecommunications industry (at least in that region), governments sometimes force them to lease those lines to competitors at agreed-upon rates, so that those competitors can keep the monopoly (in this case, Bell) in check. But Canada's change has let Bell impose restrictions on those competitors' plans, so that those competitors can't offer better plans (at least in terms of cost/GB), which basically circumvents the whole reason to make Bell let competitors lease the lines.
This is a futile discussion. It is an embarrassment for HN and, honestly, an embarrassment for the Canadian tech community.
Download caps are way too low, no doubt about it. Providers are protecting their own self interests by undermining businesses like Netflix, no doubt about it. However that is an entirely separate discussion.
It is not a separate discussion, is THE discussion right here. For the life of me, I can't figure out what discussion you're trying to have or what it is that you find so disgusting/disgraceful.
2. What the ISPs and/or infrastructure owners are charging is orders of magnitude beyond covering costs. Bandwidth is getting cheaper as technology advances and old lines are paid for, and yet they are raising prices.
3. Many of the hackers on this site are developing cloud-based solutions to computing problems, solutions which can advance the well-being of the human race and provide new value to the marketplace. ISPs' greed has stifled and will continue to stifle this economic and societal growth.
Given these three points, I think it's clear why commenters are arguing against ridiculously overpriced Internet access.
This is not the standards for HN. It is, if anything, the antithesis of HN.
