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According to the CEO of the Canadian Internet service provider (ISP) TekSavvy Solutions, Canadian ISPs have “just become a collection agency for the monopolies”. On January 25th, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) gave the go-ahead to allow Bell Canada to charge Usage-Based Billing (UBB) to local Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Any data over your cap will be penalized with extra charges. According to an employee of TekSavvy, bandwidth costs to your ISP are “1 to 3 pennies per gig”. Your local ISP is now obligated to charge you $1-4 per GB, more than a 10000% markup, and pass that money directly to Bell.
This is a disaster for anyone who is currently using the Internet. Internet bills will certainly increase; not just for home users, but for businesses, hospitals and educational institutes alike. It is trivially easy to pass the 25-50 GB caps that will come into effect. Watching a low-end HD movie on the Internet can consume roughly 4-6 GB, a single television show episode can be as much as 1.5 GB, and streaming just 30 minutes of 720p videos on YouTube every day could use over 30 GB. In addition to the above, necessary software and operating system updates for your computer can amount to several GB of data.
So why the sudden push to impose UBB? The reason is Netflix Canada, an online DVD-rental and movie streaming service that has recently become available. Bell is the owner of the CTV television network and offers monthly television subscription services. It is apparent that Bell has decided that the best way to deter online television and movie service is by making online streaming too costly by over-charging for bandwidth. The high costs will ensure that you do not cancel your television service, as watching programs online will be unaffordable. UBB is limiting our access to Bell’s television competitors - this is clearly anti-competitive. It is also a conflict of interest to allow our ISPs (who are also our television broadcasters) to restrict our ability to switch to their competition by making them cost prohibitive.
For the CRTC to ignore such a huge conflict of interest is shocking. It is clear that the CRTC’s members are unfit to regulate the industry they are beholden to. Not only will UBB restrict our access to competition, it will also kill innovation in Canada - it will kill online storage service, it will cloud computing and it will prevent Canadians from utilizing the latest technology that businesses and societies rely on.
Questions that should be asked, and answered are:
• How did the CRTC justify these decisions?
• The CRTC's duty is to the public; how was the conclusion made that this is the best decision for the public?
• Who regulates the CRTC to make sure they are honouring their duty to the public?
• Is the CRTC accountable to anyone? If so, who?
• If the CRTC stands by its decision, how can they justify the public outcry that has been created as a result?
There are several possible solutions that can be implemented to stop our Internet access from dropping to third-world levels. Two of them are outlined below:
1. Disband the CRTC and replace it with an organization directly responsible to parliament, fill it with members who won’t rubber-stamp every anti-competitive request made by our monopolies.
2. Adopt a system similar to the one in Japan, where the owner of last mile infrastructure (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) was broken up into competing companies. They were also forced to lease their lines to smaller competitors at wholesale rates. Thanks to government regulations mandating competition, Japanese citizens now enjoy un-capped 160 Mbps Internet speeds for $60 a month, speeds unheard of here in Canada, at any price.
For all the reasons mentioned above, we respectfully ask that you do everything in your power to spread the word and help protect an affordable and efficient Internet in Canada. We ask that you inform the public and help grow the opposition against Usage-Based Billing by running a story about the effects this will have on our society, economy, and our wallets.
For more information, please visit:
- CBC Coverage on CRTC Ruling - http://www.cbc.ca/technology/
- TekSavvy’s (affected ISP) Message Re: CRTC Ruling - http://www.teksavvynews.com/
- CRTC Ruling - http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/
- How Internet Infrastructure Affects Businesses – http://www.financialpost.com/
Your concerned constituent and citizen,
Dennis Yip
Markham, ON
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Dennis Yip
Email: yip.dennis@gmail.com
Web: https://sites.google.com/site/
3 comments:
Excellent letter! If you don't mind I'll borrow some pieces of it to put together my own letter.
While it is true that Netflix is going to be playing a role in percentage of bandwidth use in Canada. The majority will be from changes in norms and the way we communicate. Providers such as Hulu and other network broadcasters are enabling internet users to access programming online. As for the different ways we communicate, we are definitely seeing a change towards video calling, especially for individuals with far relationships.
The other major bandwidth consumers is BitTorrent. Although BitTorrent is used for piracy, it is used by many companies to facilitate updates, like Blizzard for example. BitTorrent will also be releasing their live streaming protocol in the summer, so that will provide a whole new level of entertainment and bandwidth consumption not seen today.
I think disbanding the CRTC is a little too drastic, rather we should try to improve it or make it more open to allow for more ideas from different parties to speak their case towards the subject.
A good article on the other side of the argument in the National Post today:
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/02/02/national-post-editorial-board-people-should-pay-for-the-internet-they-use/
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