Kevin Van Paassen
If you're wondering why usage-based billing - paying for the Internet that you use rather than having unlimited access - has become such a political flashpoint, consider this: Canadians have embraced the Internet for watching movies and television shows more than any other country. According to the CRTC, the average Canadian Internet customer downloads or uploads 15.4 gigabytes of data every month - that's just slightly less than 10 movies.
This appetite for video requires a lot of bandwidth. For 10 per cent of Canadians, it means more bandwidth than their plans allow, which leads to extra - or "overage" - fees of about $1 to $2.50 per gigabyte, depending on your company.
How do you avoid those pesky fees? Picking the right plan is imperative. Here, a UBB primer.
Know yourself
Are you a light user, a digital packrat - or somewhere in between?
Technology expert Marc Saltzman is an admitted packrat, and what he hoards requires a lot of bandwidth - games, movies and television shows. So when he picked a plan, the father of three young kids found one that allows for 175 gigabytes a month. He has never gone over.
His parents are on the other end of the spectrum - they pick up e-mails and do light Web surfing, but don't use the Net to watch TV or movies - so they opted for a plan with much less power.
Mr. Saltzman uses a simple rule of thumb for when he streams video: One hour of standard definition video - regular video, not high definition - from Netflix equals about one gigabyte of power. So if you watch a couple of two-hour movies a week, that works out to about 16 gigabytes per month. (Remember, downloading means you're copying a file from one location to another; streaming plays content without downloading.) Music requires a lot less - downloading a track uses about 3 or 4 megabytes. One gigabyte is about 1,000 megabytes. An e-mail with a large attachment would be about 3 to 5 megabytes.
Keep in mind that high-definition video is the biggest user of power. Andy Walker, a technology expert at butterscotch.com, a site that aims to demystify technology, says that watching an hour of House, on Apple TV, uses about 1.6 gigabytes. Download a season's worth, and that could crack many people's monthly limit.
How bandwidth is like taking a shower
Sure, size matters, but finding the right gigabyte cap isn't the only issue in picking a plan. You have to think about capacity as well. Think of it like taking a shower in your home, says Mr. Walker. Let's say you have three bathrooms with three showers. If three people take showers at the same time, and all three have great water pressure - the capacity is right.
"So there are two measurements with Internet - how fast the content comes in and how much I use," Mr. Walker says.
That means not just finding a plan with the right cap, but finding one with the right speed. For a person who is just e-mailing, surfing, using Facebook and downloading music, a middle-of-the-road service - 5 to 10 megabytes per second - is enough, he advises. For heavy users of video content, you need more. Mr. Walker chose a plan with a 50-megabit-per-second connection, because, as he says, he hates a drizzly shower. The computer equivalent is waiting for your show to slowly download, instead of just pushing play and sitting back to watch.
Know what you have
Want to know how much data you are using now? Log online to your account with your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Everyone who subscribes to an ISP should have a password and username.
Those ISPs will often send you a reminder when you're at a certain threshold, say, 75 per cent of your cap. Mr. Saltzman says it's very hard to ignore the advisory - many companies will send it so you can't read your screen without acknowledging the message first. Getting that message early in the month may mean going on a media diet to avoid overage fees.
Mr. Saltzman also recommends the free app called Consume that tells you numerically and graphically how much power you have used.
Beware thy neighbour
If you have a wireless network in your home, estimating what your limit should be will require more than just figuring out how much you download on your computer. Your spouse and kids will also be downloading - on their own computers and other devices, such as tablets and smart phones. Your kids may also be playing games, say on a Nintendo DS that requires WiFi. That's why it's important to regularly check to see how much you're using and if you're coming close to your cap.
More than that, Mr. Saltzman warns, it's important to secure your wireless network with a password because if you don't, your neighbours may use your network and their downloading will be counted toward your cap as well. Not to mention the security concerns of someone else having access to your WiFi, committing criminal acts like identity theft to downloading child pornography.
Think ahead
Buy a plan for what you're using today, says Duncan Stewart, a technology expert at Deloitte Canada, but be aware: Tomorrow you're likely going to be using much more bandwidth.
The average mobile user uses less than a gigabyte and the average fixed-line user uses about 10 gigabytes, but "we anticipate - and when you look at the global patterns - that those numbers will be up by a factor of 10 over the next two or three years without any problem at all," says Mr. Stewart. "And that might be a conservative number."
That means households will have more devices and do more video streaming and downloading. But not to worry, Mr. Stewart says - no ISP has ever turned down a consumer who asks for a bigger, more expensive plan.