Canada's Usage based Billing - Bell Rethinks, Netflix to the Rescue

     

Bell Canada Usage based Billing story continues (see previous episodes here).

Now the carrier has a new idea - it proposed that " ..the CRTC implement a new wholesale Internet pricing model that supports investment, competition and choice. Called Aggregated Volume Pricing, or AVP, the model provides wholesale ISPs with complete pricing flexibility on a per-customer basis. It offers wholesale ISPs the flexibility to develop their own pricing approaches, while supporting the fundamental principle that those who use less network capacity do not subsidize those that use the most .. In the case of legacy networks, the vast majority of ISPs will not have to pay for AVP because Bell will provide a significant usage credit up to 41 GB per user on an aggregate basis. As long as the ISP average does not exceed 41 GB per user, it will not have to pay AVP".

For more details on "How the AVP model works" see "Bell’s Aggregated Volume Pricing (AVP) proposal for high-speed Internet services used by wholesale ISPs" - here.

On the same day, Neil Hunt (picture), Chief Product Officer, Netflix was there to help his loyal Canadian customers, in a different way.

In the company's blog, Neil announces that "starting today, watching movies and TV shows streaming from Netflix will use 2/3 less data on average, with minimal impact to video quality. Now Canadians can watch 30 hours of streaming from Netflix in a month that will consume only 9 GBytes of data, well below most data caps ..Any member can adjust the settings anytime by visiting the Manage Video Quality page, found under Your Account .. In the past, viewing 30 hours of Netflix could consume as much as 70 GBytes, if it was all in HD, and typically about 30 GBytes".

So, with the new proposal from Bell, Netflix users may go back to the previous quality!

See "Netflix Lowers Data Usage By 2/3 For Members In Canada" - here.