CRTC and Bandwidth Limits, an appeal from a faithful Steam user.
The CRTC stands for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. They say they are there to protect the consumers concerning Radio, Television and Telecommunications. The irony here is that many of those that make up the CRTC are ex-CEOs of large telecom companies here in Canada. The CRTC has recently passed a bill that will allow large telecom companies to charge independent IPS a flat rate for any gigabyte used over 60GB (monthly). (http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/10/28/crtc-usage-based-billing-internet.html)
It is worth noting that, on average, Canada's internet infrastructure is much better than the United States, especially along the east and west coast areas. It costs the large telecom companies between $0.01-$0.05 dollars per gigabyte used in bandwidth. This bill will allow Bell (Our largest telecom company) to charge Independant IPSs $1.12 per gigabyte used beyond the base bandwidth limit. Fortunately, this is up to a maximum of $22.50. This means that smaller ISPs will find themselves having to charge their customers for their bandwidth. It also means the end of unlimited download plans. This goes directly against the progression of the internet as a medium of sharing information, and of course distributing games, movies, television and music digitally.
These kinds of decisions can hurt the gaming industry immensely. Canadian Steam users will potentially be severely affected by this. Games today are getting larger and larger. It is not uncommon to see games over 20 gigabytes (which alone takes 1/3rd of a 60GB download limit). Couple this with services such as netflix and streaming television, and internet power users (which I'm sure make a rather large portion of the Steam userbase) will be hung by the necks with this. This is a government decision that directly impedes your abilities to sell games to customers.
There is already a petition that already has over 70,000 signatures (http://openmedia.ca/meter). I know this may not be within your normal procedures, but I write this letter to ask of Valve a service too its community, to stand behind us and let us know that you're on our side. How you do this is up to you really. contacting those at the CRTC (http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/about/whoweare.htm), posting something on the Steam forums, or putting up a news post, making statements to the community. Such an action will show the Canadian Steam users that you indeed care about customer satisfaction (and of course you care about the money you make off of us for the great service that Steam provides).
It's great to see 70,000 users coming together to speak out against this decision. It would be even greater to have support from Valve in knowing that you are on our side. Either way, thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I can only hope this situation works out for the betterment of the consumers, and your customer base.
Sincerely,
A Concerned Steam User.
