Currently, the situation here is we have two  providers.  Time Warner, who is trying to get the state to ban municipal broadband, as two cities got so fed up with Time Warner's lack of service they started their own, and have been kicking Time Warner's butt in those cities.

Then there's AT&T, who is implementing a 150GB cap.  Low, but not criminal.  There's nothing to keep them from colluding with Time Warner to keep degrading service, especially since communities will no longer be able to do it themselves here thanks to teabaggers.  (Yeah, another reason to hate the Tea Party).

The rural communities really have it rough, as they're now banned from doing it themseleves, and the megamarket telecoms won't come there, so they're stuck with dialup.

BTW people  are cancelling because of it, but it's mostly younger folks who aren't tied into cable, I think it's now 10% of people under 30 have broadband but no cable TV.   Also monopoly laws in the US are largely unenforced, we have good laws on the books, but the anti-monopoly lobby has been defanged in the US, just like unions.  This is why I push so hard for labor and consumer rights, I feel like to have a functioning free market, you need a balanced of power between labor, indsutry, and consumers.  Market inequality leads to monopolies, which is just as much of a market failure as communism.

The most important role of a government in the economy is to try and prevent market failures.   The broadband industry in the US due to deregulation is a market failure.

Sadly, that's not entirely accurate.  What they did was veto a plan that would have effectively mandated extremely restrictly caps and standardized overage charges on downstream providers.  The CRTC is free to revise the plan and resubmit it.  We still have some of the most restrictive caps anywhere in the world, and the government didn't lift a finger on the issue until there was a massive grassroots outcry.  We're seeing no initiative from any party on the issue of internet caps or the broader issue of telecommunications (which is in dire need of reform here in Canada), which makes me afraid that a reworded version of the plan that just got vetoed will slip through shortly after the election

It's called a "cartel"

Look at the options we have in pricing models and services, and compare them with what's available in other countries.  We do not have adequate competition.  At all.

I hope it will, but suspect it won't.  None of the parties cared about the issue before the grassroots movement, they made a little bit of rhetoric during the height of the firestorm to show they were listening, and once the issue was no longer in the spotlight they moved on.

We really need an overhaul of our entire telecommunications sector, but there's no indication we're going to get it. 

We also have the same problem with the ones that offer phone services and Skype.  They are terrified that television and telephone are going to go the way of the radio; rendered mostly irrelevant by the new medium.  This is about shackling the internet to prevent it from competing with these services, plain and simple.

Even worse is the "video on demand" services, which use the same network resources as Netflix does, but are not subject to any bandwidth caps.  This is blatantly anti-competitive, and these guys should be taken to task for their current policies, much less the abomination they're trying to impose.

Now this, I disagree with.  A corporation's purpose is to maximize shareholder value.  Telling them "we trust you, don't abuse it" puts them at a conflict of interest between their commitment to shareholders and commitment to society that you've just thrust upon them.  The people charged with enforcing the rules and ensuring fair practices are followed should be independent from the corporations who must follow those rules.  Anything less is a conflict of interest, and just asking for trouble.

If the regulations/regulators are redundant, outdated, or just ill-conceived to begin with, then by all means do away with them.  If they fulfill a necessary role, don't get rid of them at all.  It's like firing all the referees from a sports league and telling the coaches that they're in charge of calling penalties against their own teams.  That's just plain silly, no matter how mature you think the coaches are. 

I'm not sure about every company, but the ones I've had any experience with have had data caps since before 2000, and have only been increasing them this entire time.

For what you are saying to be true, data caps would have to have been introduced when Netflix came out, and had been going in the direction of lowering service.

This is not what is happening. At least (once again) not in my experience.

From my knowledge on this, it's because North America has ISP backbones that were developed as the technology was being invented. Many, many other countries in the world have only just now started getting an economy to handle installing an internet infrastructure, so they are implementing an infrastructure that is made entirely out of the latest technology.

In an environment where older tech backbones (copper) are privately owned by people who can't afford to upgrade to the latest technology, you end up having a rich, 1st world country that has a poor, hodge podge infrastructure compared to even 3rd world countries that have just caught up with internet service.

This would be a major reason why service levels can handle much better bandwidth and speeds compared to North America.

I mean, to compare, South Korea has 1% of the land mass of Canada, but 10 million more population. They don't need to string out their lines as far to reach all the population (less cost overall for all the new tech).  Going by pop density, not as many people don't live in "hard to reach" areas, compared to Canada. They don't have areas of "mostly copper infrastructure". They built from scratch, instead of building on top of an older weaker base.

They can get more fiber for cheaper, and don't have to deal with old systems that refuse/can't upgrade. I'm not sure how this isn't the main factor here.