Bell internet ridiculous overcharge.

this is not really the right forum but i want to see what u guys think. im using Bell fibe 12 internet with 90gb cap and last month apparently i went over by 30 gb. that made my bill nearly 100 bucks for that month which is absurd.

the problem is i do not torrent at all, and download maybe at most 1 gb a week of anime and serials. all the rest is youtube and web browsing. Im pretty sure no one is stealing my wireless because my ssid is non broadcasting, wpa2 secruity and on my routers page i recognize all the devices.

so i can only think of 2 reasons. bell is inflating my internet usage (which i am more inclined to think because last month i was only using around 50gb and i havnt done anything new this month), or somehow youtube videos use a huge amount of bandwith and i really am over.

i am living in toronto and thought id give bell a chance as their plans look good on paper. ppl were recommending me teksavvy but i didnt want to sign a 1 year contract and buy a 100 dollar modem at the time.

 

Yep that's typical canadian isp's for you. Though, you do know that they have nearly silently lowered caps on all their plans, right? Rogers too. Quick google reveals that fibe12 gives you "up to 50gb of bandwidth", so grandfathered accounts would still only have 75gb likely.

better forum for isp related stuff is >> Canadian forums | DSLReports.com, ISP Information

And I also recommend teksavvy, they are the only game in town with unlimited bandwidth options at the moment. Dunno where you heard of contracts, they specifically do NOT do contracts, it's month-to-month prepaid; you do need to purchase a modem, but you'll never see a rental fee again and save money long term.

 

I always laugh good when seeing/reading/hearing about ppl who think youtube is not much download
Even on low def youtube will eat up your bandwidth fast not even talking about watching HD

6min 1080p = 250Mb
24min = 1Gb ....

On the same reason netflix is freaking out on bell caps ...


Back on the main topic:

Bell = Hell
Rogers = Robers

Recommending Teksavvy
TekSavvy forum | DSLReports.com, ISP Information
ubb will screw up everyone next year but that is yet to come

ps.: Just feel lucky that you didn't get 1000$ bill like a lot of ppl .. and not got double charged.

ps.2.: You could get some bandwidth meters up running like netlimiter or there are freewares alts.
And install video downloader extensions for firefox .. they will show how big are the files you are watching.

 

Youtube does use a lot of bandwidth, especially if your watching on higher definitions.

How many users are there in your network?

I suggest installing Networx on your computer/s and monitoring the hourly/daily/weekly usage. You can set up multiple types of alarms. (eg. I have mine set to warn me if ive exceeded more than 1gb traffic in an hour)

 

2 users, but the other one barely uses any. I watched about 30 mins of 720p from youtube today and my bell page says today i used 3 gbs. this is getting out of hand.

the only reason why i havnt made the switch yet is because i want the activation fee to be amortized over a longer period and i havnt had the time to call them yet. I wonder if bell has any retention plans for internet..

 

If you have the time, try turning the modem off for a whole day. See if any usage is made. You can make your case from there.

 

50 gigs?
I would be in SOOOOO much trouble.

Seriously, in this day and age, 50 gigs isn't much really. A few hours online gaming, couple movies, stream some music... it all adds up really fast.

The really annoying part is knowing what these companies are paying for that bandwidth (yes, I know they have other expenses), but seriously, of all of their costs bandwidth is one of the cheapest things. You can lease a server for $60 per month with 500 gigs of bandwidth per month.

 

Yup, bandwidth makes even coffee profit margins look paltry, it literally costs cents but they charge up to $2.50/gb.

Remember that 720p can be up to 100mb per minute, though via youtube's h264 compressions it's more like 50mb/min. Still quite large when you think about it.

And you do realize that the modem+activation with tsi is close to what you'll be paying in overcharges with bell right?

 

I've tested it on 720p youtube today I got on average 15MB/min (music video), 17MB/s (movie preview) and 16.7MB/s (boxing fight)
So 30min of 720p would equal to no more than 510MB.

I've tried to take into account possible motion compensation that would cause more static videos to be smaller in size compared to rapidly changing one but there's no way in hell you could get up to 100MB/min.

MB- Megabytes

EDIT: Being an idiot I did this test over Wi-Fi which could inflate it to some extent as there's a lot of metadata on wireless that is not used on Ethernet. This doesn't invalidate my numbers though- I may have made them bigger that they were but definitely not lower.

 

You'll be happy to hear that in Canada, the CRTC just allowed Bell to put monthly caps on all its networks and the ones it sells to smaller companies. After said cap, they'll be charging "per GB".

CBC News - Technology & Science - CRTC green lights usage-based internet billing

That means that even teksavvy and co(who piggyback on Bell's network) will slowly be pushed towards the same system as now Bell is allowed to increase the prices of the bandwidth it allocates to them without notice.

Smells like monopoly

 

for some reason my cap IS 90gb, i think it was some student offer or something. Yeah i heard bell is raising the 30gb overcharge cap to 60gb in january.

After recieving that bill, i check my internet usage daily now. Altho it does seem to generally mirror my usage (eg, i was out entire day and my usage for that day dropped to 200mb), i still cannot understand how i can use 3gb a day with no torrents or downloads.

I called bell, which was a complete waste of time, telling me to check my downloads, change my wireless authorization, we cannot waive any charges, blah blah. The only thing i got out of that was me to call 310-surf for retentions. a search in redflagdeals revealed no one ever got decent retention plans from bell.

anyways.. i have 10 days left this month and around 30gb left.. hope i make it.

 

I am amazed to hear of payig for internet by the GB. I guess I have been spoiled by the last 15 yers using Cox cable and paying about $30/mo for unlimited use. I just never give it a thought, except times there seems to be a slow down then I get a little testy.