Score one for the little guys.

Internet users who get their connection through service provider TekSavvy got an early Christmas present this week.

The company began sending emails to its customers on Monday telling them their internet charges will be going down starting in January.

“Usually when you get an email from a company it’s some sort of spammy holiday offer these days,” said Ian McDougald, a TekSavvy customer for four years.

“But it was just super refreshing to get an email saying your rates are going down,” McDougald said.

The lowered rates are thanks to a Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission ruling from October that cut the rate big telecoms like Rogers and Bell are allowed to charge independent providers like TekSavvy, Distributel and others for access to their networks.

Some of the savings from that change are now being passed along to TekSavvy customers in proportion to the size of their internet packages.

McDougald said he is on a relatively small plan, so he’s only saving $5 a month. Other customers saw between $1 and $10 chopped from their monthly bills.

“Any time the price is going down, that’s a good thing. Over the course of a year or two it adds up pretty quickly,” McDougald said.

“I’m just a young professional, so I’m squeezing dollars living in Toronto and renting. Every dollar counts when it comes to utilities,” he said.

TekSavvy CEO Marc Gaudrault said the changes affect hundreds of thousands of his company’s customers.

“I think everybody could use a little extra cash in their hands during the holidays,” Gaudrault said.

Gaudrault said that he considers the new prices his company is setting to be permanent, despite the fact that the new CRTC rates are only in place on an interim basis.

“Obviously whatever the CRTC ends up doing, we’re subject to those changes, but in my opinion these rates are permanent and hopefully they’ll improve, if anything,” Gaudrault said.

The regulator isn’t likely to release its final rates until sometime next year, said Matt Stein, the vice-president of the Canadian Network Operators Consortium, which represents independent ISPs.

That means any company that locks in new prices based on the interim rates could be taking a risk, he said.

“Let’s say the old rate was $10 and it got lowered to $2. It’s possible that it should have been $6. I highly doubt that, but it’s conceivable,” Stein said.

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If that were the case, and companies adjusted their own rates now, it could leave them in the lurch once the final rates come back.

“It could be very scary for your business if you’re wrong,” Stein said.

Stein is also the CEO of Distributel. He hailed the CRTC ruling as a win for independent ISPs like his, saying it goes a long way to helping level the telecom playing field.

Back in 2010 the CRTC told incumbent telecoms like Rogers and Bell that they must allow independents access to the bigger companies’ networks at cost, plus a 10 per cent mark up.

In March of this year, expecting a reduction in overall costs, the regulator asked the telecoms for updated rate proposals, Stein said.

But the proposed rates that the big telecoms came back with were higher than what was currently being charged, and the CRTC rejected them and imposed its own, lowered rates.

“Canadians’ access to a choice of broadband internet services would have been at stake had we not revised these rates,” CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais said in a statement at the time.

Stein called that move “unprecedented.”

“For a couple of years now the rates were set at such a height that it really handcuffed us. Some of the rates we were being charged were higher than the cable companies were charging in retail,” Stein said.

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