Well there was a "hoorah" in the form of tap, tap, tappity, tap, (from myself included) today following the decision to delay the CRTC's decision to force ISP's, large and small, to bill customers by usage or BBU. (you can see CTV's story on this here)
I feel a sense of not releif, maybe a bit of victory, but mostly "damn the man", for now. These corporate giants, to me, are like the bullies in the consumer world.
Now, lets put this into perspective. A creative "scenario" if you will. You are looking for a place to rent. You have many options, a large apartment complex, a room in a house or shared accommodations, part of a house, or an entire house. Each choice has their own benefits. In the case of the apartment complex and room, you wouldn't be paying extraneous amounts in rent and utilities THE SACRIFICE: lack of privacy and
"personal space". In the case of part of a house(ie: basement apartment), this is more of your middle ground, the "happy medium between the two opposites, if you will. You get a little more privacy AND a mediocre price. THE SACRIFICE: while it is somewhat private and not over-priced you still don't get that "my home" feeling. Finally, with an entire house you get your privacy and "personal space" but THE SACRIFICE: more money. Now, granted I know there are some exceptions to these parameters but for this scenario lets pretend there aren't any. The whole concept here is that you get to choose where to rent.
The premise is you get to live there as long as you pay your rent. You can hook up your phone, cable (if available), decorate and move your furniture in, sleep, eat, shower and dress in your chosen domicile as long as you pay. You may not be able to attach say a satellite to the proposed building because that creates repairs. You can usually paint with the promise to paint original colors upon departure. All in all the place is yours, temporarily. It's not borrowed, it's paid for.
What the "giants" are trying to do, as landlords, are say "o.k. we'll rent you this apartment for the price of a rental house! No problem. Now, while your making your exaggerated payments you CANNOT bring in your bed, sofa or food. You MAY NEVER hang pictures. In fact, maybe you should just bring yourself and nothing else. Yes, that would be better. Oh, what's that. OH MY NO, this apartment is for you and you only, you'll have to pay extra for your child to come too.....(add some heated discussion here!) .....that's fine sir we understand that you don't want to rent this apartment but I must say we ARE the only apartment provider in town, what I mean is there are other providers but we've forced them to charge the same as us so you'll have to move out of the country to find another, good day"
This from a "giant" who touts local while they base their call centers in other countries, spend a fortune on marketing and then try to buffer it by donating to charity. I thought monopolies were illegal. Wait, they are and we do or should have a choice. As far as I'm concerned, the biggies are only whining because people are starting to realize that there is choice out there and "they" DO NOT have the market by the butt (and maybe are suffering some jet lag from a recent law suit. (CTV's story here)). Consumers are now understanding that they don't have to pay copious amounts of money, wrapped up in sneaking marketing, for average service, more than lack luster customer service, when they can support small local businesses, get a human on the other end, and technical issues are dealt with without hesitation, with politeness and without sneaky charges, and I'm sure this scares the wits out of the media giants. I hope, but doubt, that this is a wake up call for them. Hopefully inspiration begins with competition.
Sincerely,
The Cleaner
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