How the CRTC is proposing to change how you use the Internet and Innovative Technologies




by Schnee Wolfe on Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 8:57pm

On Wednesday,January 26th, 2011, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission issued a decision to allow incumbent Media Oligarchies (controlling Cable TV services and stations, Telephone - both wireless and cellular, Internet, and various other news and public affairs services) to charge Usage Based Billing that raised the costs charged to small ISPs that lease bandwidth on the networks of Bell and Bell Aliant, mainly in Ontario and Quebec. This led DSL Internet Providers, like Teksavvy, to issue changes to plans effective March 1st, that started at 25 gb bandwidth, down from the 200 gb for the same price, of 32 dollars a month. The result is that the costs more than doubled.

The regulator has also recently issued decrees that allowed large incumbents to shape ISPs’ network traffic (slow it down). This weekend and the past two days, I immediately saw a change in my service speed and availability, even while simply using a browser to surf the internet; lag of graphic intense sites increased, and the number of times warnings came up that the web page was taking too long to load, and would I like to reduce my browsers ability to load graphics. This is intolerable, this is not competition this is abuse of the consumer in the name of monopolistic practices to close down competition.

This is not about Internet Traffic, this is about control of the Information Highway, and how the Consumer Accesses it, and who he pays for the information. In the long run, this may not mean much as technology will always leap frog legislative regulations. But in the short term, it will throttle our ability to compete in the Global Market, and show case our abilities to develop and deploy innovative technologies and data.

If each mail, freight, bus and courier company had had to develop it's own infrastructure to deliver services to the consumer, then Canada would now have been covered in roads and various airports. This analogy suits the existing infrastructure for telecommunications in that the wires, radio waves and cables should be owned and operated by the people of Canada, allowing open access to all. Placing them in the hands of a few Media Oligarchies does not serve my interests, nor my children's. Instead of debating who owns the "roads", lets put them in the hands of their rightful owners, in a way that ensures that they are used for the good of the Country as a whole, and use our time and energies to improve those "roads" with Fiber Optic to the Home and Access for Rural Canadians of more than just the basics.