Canadian Elections

Posted on April 13, 2011 by matthew

I would hate to see Canada suffer through a Harper majority, in fact I  would love nothing more than to see the Harper Conservatives lose (to anybody), in fact I would love to see them lose and disappear completely as a party…  but since that’s not likely to happen here’s how to track the ridings where your vote is most likely to keep the Conservatives at bay:

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UBB?

Posted on April 13, 2011 by matthew

Still waiting to see what will happen…  I haven’t payed much attention since it went back to the CRTC, but Bell have appeared to have backed off pushing UBB down the throats of resellers.  Of course they will probably come up with something equally evil….

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The Wait and Debate

Posted on February 14, 2011 by adie

So the CRTC have put UBB on hold for 60 days…  Actually the gov’t told them to go back to the drawing board with it… I hope that something better comes out of them this time… Actually I hope that they ditch UBB altogether!

In the mean time here’s a couple of interesting posts by Michael Geist:

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The Boycott of Bell Begins

Posted on January 31, 2011 by matthew

Today I cancelled my Bell home phone… it will officially be disconnected on March 2, and from then on out I’ll have a dry loop with TekSavvy. I know they’re a Bell reseller, and that they in turn will be paying bell, but at least I’m not giving Bell any of my money directly.   Plus I’ve been very happy thus far with their DSL service, and they continue to earn my trust by not trying to mark up the UBB rates that they’re being forced to contend with.

So the money I was spending on my basic home phone will now cover the the $7.25 Band A dry loop rate,  the $14.25 – 120GB extra usage insurance, and it should even cover most of the extra daytime minutes I might use on my cell phone.

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Usage Based Billing (and again with the UBB)

Posted on January 29, 2011 by adie

digital Home has posted an article about what they think you can do about Usage Based Billing. They believe that online petitions and blog rants will have little effect.  They suggest that you file a complaint with the CRTC, and more importantly that you write to your MP about it (A list of MPs can be found here).

For example my MP is Thierry St-Cyr for the Constituency of Jean-Le Ber.

If you address your mail (snail mail is better than email) to their Parliament Hill address the postage is free.

Your MP’s Name
House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
K1A 0A6

Also signing the petition definitely won’t hurt so if you haven’t signed OpenMedia.ca‘s “Stop the Meter” petition please consider doing so:

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