More on usage-based billing

Here's what Bell had to say about this issue:

There is a copper loop that goes from our Central Office to the home and all data travels on that pipe so it's Internet traffic, it's television traffic, it's actually voice traffic, long distance traffic, but that's not where there are general congestion issues. The real issue is when you get to the Central Office and you go behind that to the general Internet, FIBE TV is completely different.

In short, according to the telco itself admits that congestion is not a last-mile issue. However, Bell has previously argued against giving third party ISPs access to the traffic at the bottleneck point:

with ADSL-CO, once the independent ISP gets subsidized access to the full speed and capacity over that fibre, and the ability to fully differentiate their service from ours -- and there goes usage-based billing -- there is nothing more for the ISP to build. If they get a customer, they pay us. If they don't get a customer, they don't pay us. Their cost structure is success-based, as I mentioned yesterday, with no upfront risk capital required.

Essentially what makes sense to me is allowing the third parties in earlier as they've requested and allowing Bell to make a reasonable profit on that last mile list for which congestion isn't a problem. The current overage rates don't strike me as particularly reasonable.

(Quotes taken from a post by Michael Geist)