U. S. CARRIERS CLAWING BACK WIRELESS DATA PLANS.

• As Canada’s telecom regulator considers demands for unlimited wireless data plans, the two largest U.S. carriers are clawing back the freedom.

Verizon and AT&T made their legacy unlimited data plans l ess desirable l ast week, with Verizon forcing its heaviest users to switch to limited plans or face disconnection and AT&T raising its price for the grandfathered plans by US$ 5 for the second time in a year.

Their reasoning hints at why Canada’s top three carriers have refused to offer unlimited data plans even though Canadians advocate for the option, especially after the third largest U. S. carrier T- Mobile got rid of data caps to offer one plan with unlimited data last summer.

“Because our network is a shared resource and we need to ensure all customers have a great mobile experience with Verizon, we are notifying a small group of customers who are out of contract on unlimited plans and use more than 200 GB a month that they must move to a Verizon Plan by February 16, 2017,” Verizon said.

Customers who don’ t move to a new plan will be disconnected.

Using more than 200 GB of wireless data per month seems preposterous in Canada, where the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission pegs average monthly usage at about 1.3 GB for subscribers with data plans. Canadian carriers boast of having built some of the best networks in the world, but wireless data costs more in Canada than most G7 countries, according to a CRTCcommissioned report released last summer.

Discount carriers including the newly rebranded Freedom Mobile, formerly Wind Mobile, and Chatr Mobile of- fer unlimited data, but drastically reduce speeds after customers surpass data caps of up to 8 GB and 4 GB, respectively. SaskTel and Manitoba Telecom Services do the same for their plans, albeit at higher data limits of 15 GB.

The major players have steered clear of the plans that their counterparts in the U.S. are pulling back from. Yet they were forced to address the matter at a CRTC hearing last fall on data pricing.

The issue at hand was differential pricing, the practice of exempting certain data such as music streaming from data usage as a consumer perk. Some argued this tactic could keep data caps lower for longer by incentivizing the use of “free” content selected by the operator, also hurting a free and open Internet. Consumer advocacy group OpenMedia pushed the idea of eliminating data caps to the forefront of the hearing.

OpenMedia’s David Christopher is confident his organization made a good case for mandating at least an optional unlimited plan so Canada can catch up with the U.S. and Europe where unlimited plans are “perfectly normal” despite the recent moves to pull back the benefit.

“The telecom companies certainly have been dragging their heels when it comes to unlimited data,” he said.

“Data usage has really skyrocketed … instead of engaging in anti- consumer behaviour, it should be on incumbents to ensure their networks are up to scratch to handle the data.”

Representatives f r om Rogers and Telus at the CRTC hearing said t hat eliminating data caps would cause the rates to go up for the majority of users, meaning light users would subsidize heavy users.