This past week the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications (CRTC), Canada’s national telecom regulator, was asked to stop imposing a previous decision for a controversial usage-based billing (UBB), or metered Internet bandwidth usage, when Jean François Mezei filed a formal petition.
The CRTC’s claim that the imposition of the same retail rate structure onto all ISPs is competitively neutral needs to be short-circuited and taken immediately to Melanie Aitken of the Competition Bureau who has just been through this with organized real estate in Canada.
News of these proposed market controls, which I first heard of on Facebook, led me to: http://openmedia.ca/meter, and since I believe I pay enough to my Internet Service Provider already to deliver the bits via their network, I promptly signed the petition. I’d invite you to do the same if you want continuing free and open Internet access.
I watched the “High Greed Internet” video (and borrowed the title for this post) of CBC’s Strombo. George calls it like it is, “Bullshit”, which gets a big “LIKE!” from me.
The value of the CRTC for Canadians is called into question again. Accessibility to Canadians will effectively be limited to those who can afford these new user-fees. This changes the market dynamics and puts Canada behind a large majority of other countries offering unlimited Internet. That should help us remain competitive in a digital economy, NOT!
It’s amazing what TV streaming competitors investing in Canada, bring out in these ISP network providers, and almost as if they are trying to limit the competition, hmm? Silicon Valley giant Netflix Inc. expressed concerns of being “definitely worried” about its future in Canada with Internet download caps.
This reeks of “Big Business” (as in Bell) trying to take out some of the smaller third-party guys to gain a larger share and exclusive foothold of the market.