 |
| Stop the Meter campaign |
It's not rocket science that when costs go up, profits goes down and the slim lines that most sme's operate under means they cannot pass on increased costs to the consumer; the consumer will just go elsewhere.
So while the corporate internet giants are out lobbying for a bigger and bigger share of the telecommunications market, Canadians are getting wise and researching this 'need' to have a metering of the internet. The larger players are interested in having the price of the internet services they provide (one estimate is as much as a 300% increase -for shame) be billed by the gigabyte, meaning Canadians will now have to monitor their usage or pay big . And just like our cell phone costs, as compared to other nations, Canadians are already paying far too much and this impacts small businesses and how they operate.
Looking at the data from the work of Chris Stavropolous, the_cost_of_bandwidth_canada_versus_the_world., Canadians are right to be angry and have been demonstrating it with online petitions, talk show call-ins and lots of print media. The government is suggesting that they will step in and overturn the CRTC approval for the billing change but it makes you wonder, will they when they haven't done anything to these same corporate giants over cell phone billing ?
While we all have enough to do just in operating our small businesses in Canada, it might be worth your while to stop 'creating' business just for a minute and decide now, 'Can I even carry on with what I am doing if I have to monitor all of my employees, use the internet sparingly or devote much of my thin line profit to paying much higher internet costs ? How much of my business is dependent on using the internet ? Will I have to choose between accessing information and accessing customers?'
It's surprising how far reaching is the influence of large corporations. They are not the main source of employment for the country, nor are they the largest force in the economy ~ small business is. And yet, in this situation, their reach goes to almost every single Canadian and it certainly covers every small business.
Canadians don't like to be reminded of this; we are a fairly independent-minded group and we like options but there are no options when the big guys all agree that they can get a lot more money if they band together and demand it. That's not competition; it's collusion. Businesses are not suppose to do that but it seems to work best when corporate profit is at stake.
So today, consider what your business may look like with or without the internet; what increases you can afford and where you'll get the money to pay for them. It's not likely that you'll be able to increase your business by 300% to cover the costs.
Really makes you want to sign one of those damn petitions. Here it is Stop the Meter on your internet fees
