Skeena Bulkley Valley MP Nathan Cullen says CityWest is going to have some explaining to do if they choose to proceed with plans for usage based billing as the government pushes the CRTC to reverse a decision allowing it to be implemented.
“If Telus, Bell and Rogers aren’t able to do so, I don’t see why CityWest would be able to,” he said during a February 9 media call.
“It looks like a rip-off of public money and I think they are going to make a strong case for why it is being done…On the surface it seems very unfair. I think CityWest would have to make the case to me, the public and the federal government as to why they would like to do that.”
That being said, Cullen said he does see why CityWest would want to go this route, to an extent.
“I understand part of the argument if people are using a large amount of the bandwidth and clogging up the system. But that clogging has not been proven and increasing bandwidth is something that can be done for pennies on the gigabyte,” he said.
CityWest said it is currently planning to implement usage-based billing in March, which could take the form of either different data allowances for existing speed packages or different allocations with all packages offering the same speed.