There has been an immense amount of misinformation about this ruling, so I'll attempt to set the record straight (since I've been following it pretty closely).
- Canada has three large telecom providers that span multiple provinces: Telus, Bell, and Rogers. Internet service has a few other large players (Shaw Communications) and many small players. For the most part, network infrastructure is purchased, maintained, and operated by the "Big 3" and Shaw (which operates only in Western provinces, and who is my ISP).
- The telecom industry is regulated by an arms-length agency called the Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). The CRTC is most famous for enforcing the infamous "Canadian-content" rules that ensure, in addition to quality Canadian and international programming, we get an additional percentage of programming that is mandated by law to be of Canadian origin. If you think that's a ridiculous rule, imagine how the vast majority of people here feel.
- The CRTC has a long and distinguished history of decisions that attempt to find a "middle-ground" between the sides being argued. Net neutrality died in Canada because of this, much to the concern of everyone who wasn't a telecom provider.
- In the Eastern provinces particularly, a number of small ISPs are permitted to use the networks of the larger providers to deliver services; essentially, they are middlemen. They lease bandwidth from the network owners and operators at rates determined by the CRTC, and the network owners are required to let them. Thus, artificial competition is created - the small guys can set low prices and pull customers from the larger ISPs, who in turn have to keep their prices low.
- Until this latest decision, the rates at which the small ISPs purchased network usage from the large network owners (who are also ISPs) were flat. This allowed the small ones to operate "unlimited bandwidth" plans, in which approximately 20% of their customer base used up to 80% of the total network capacity. Fees for maintenance and network expansion were low or non-existent; the network operators (which, to be fair, aren't exactly hurting) had to pay their own infrastructure costs.
- In Western Canada, these "artificial competitors" largely don't exist. I have two choices of ISP: Telus, or Shaw. Both have fixed bandwidth caps, and offer a variety of plans at different rates (which, compared to the US or Europe, are obscenely high).
- The recent CRTC decision allowed network owners to bill those ISPs riding on their infrastructure in accordance with their usage of the overall network; essentially, it would make unlimited plans prohibitively expensive for the smaller operators.
The decision didn't eliminate the ability of providers to offer unlimited bandwidth, but it prevented smaller ISPs who don't own or service their own infrastructure from providing plans which their competitors who own the network do not without paying extra for that ability. So, in many ways, it makes a lot of sense - for years, some areas have benefitted from artificially low costs (compared to the rest of the country) for Internet. On the flip side, permitting the network operators to charge the small ISPs based on the bandwidth used eliminates the [granted, artificial] competition that keeps the larger ISPs prices low to compete with the small ones who maintain a competitive advantage. However, the country already largely has usage-based billing (as do other countries) - most plans from the larger ISPs have specified bandwidth caps, above which you pay per-use. This decision doesn't change that in the slightest.
Now, the government is stepping in to reverse the CRTC decision (according to today's updates, the CRTC is reviewing its own decision) and return things to the days of artificial competitiveness.
So, despite being a huge proponent of net neutrality and low-cost Internet for everyone, I actually kind of agree with the CRTC's original decision - network's should have the ability to charge their competitors based on their usage. Bandwidth is a finite resource on a network. That is not to say that I think the ISP market in Canada is healthy - rather, I think some introduction of alternative forms of competition is necessary to prevent us becoming even more of a telecom backwater.
I've read several position papers in the last year that effectively argue that the billing and usage methods of the future are going to eliminate "unlimited" use plans for TV, Internet, and mobile data, but expand services so that you will pay for a bandwidth allotment each month, and be able to use that as you please. This is talking about the global market - currently, Americans pay significantly above the actual cost for voice plans on mobile devices while paying immensely under the cost for their unlimited data bundles. Europeans too, for that matter. Eventually, we're all going to be billed on what we use, but we'll have the ability to choose what it is used to actually do. That, I think, makes a lot of sense.
