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What Canada Can Teach the US About Net Neutrality
blottsie writes If there are two ways in which the Internet is similar in the United States and Canada, it's that it's slow and expensive in both places relative to many developed countries. The big difference, however, is that Canada is looking into doing something about it. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission—the northern equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)— is examining how the wholesale market, where smaller Internet service providers (ISPs) use parts of bigger companies' networks to sell their own services, should operate in the years ahead. The industry reaction to this proposal provides insights to the potential consequences of re-classifying broadband in the U.S. as a Title II public utility.
No net neutrality legislation please.
You can't teach those who refuse to learn.
Could someone (who is preferably a frequent contributor) explain what this article is about in no less than 20,000 words?
Thanks.
This isn't a matter of lack of knowledge or understanding. The US doesn't need to be taught, or led.
The US is currently on the divide between protecting consumers from potentially abusive practices or allowing businesses to run rough-shod over them. It's a debate regarding priorities between business, consumers, the economy, and social welfare, and despite my strong feelings on the subject, on a national level, there's no silver bullet answer that 'fixes it', especially since Canada hasn't actually done anything either, but commission a study.
In fact, studies of the sort that are being done in Canada have already been done in the US, at several different points in time, and the recommendation they had then was one of non-interference. With the inability for congress to act in any way other than to block action, that's likely how it's going to go.
What we could use is a surefire way to figure out how to light all the democrats and republicans on fire, and replace them with politicians that actually care more about the people they're meant to represent than their next elections, party, or party politics. If you've got one of those, let us know, cause THAT's what we're in dire need of.
No posting on Slashdot about Net Neutrality without including what you think Net Neutrality is.
It is many things to many people. Most wrong.
What is it? I don't know. Tell me.
The US of A was the world's first nation in implementing broadband, to pave the road for the "Information Highway". That was a few decades ago
Now, the US of A trails behind Korea, Japan, Estonia, and a few other countries in the availability of TRUE BROADBAND that is affordable for the masses
The US consumer not only have to pay through their noses for broadband, and what they got are miserably slow, in compared with what the Koreans (for example) are getting
US of A should learn from other countries to find out how to remedy and rectify the current pathetic situation
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I wouldn't wish Rogers on anyone. I game with Canadians. I know exactly how they feel about the "broadband" they pay for.
LOL
No. Just no.
We're better off continuing to ignore canuckistan and figuring this out on our own.
The government builds the pipe, and the companies can manage the routing, with no monopoly contracts allowed. It has to be open to anybody. Until we can circumvent it with wireless mesh neural networks, this is the best we can ever do.
...has done some decent things for Canada.
Unfortunately some strikes against them are not forcing the cable companies to support BYOD (CableCard) and the mandating of playing a Justin Bieber and/or Drake song every 17 minutes on Canadian pop-music stations.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
In Canada there are 5 "main" companies.
Telecom: Telus, Aliant,
Cable: Shaw, Rogers, Eastlink
Much like the US, you will never have overlapping Cable service, and Telus and Aliant don't compete with each other either.
You missed the largest phone company in Canada. You must live out west. (I do too, but I still know who the biggest phone company in Canada is). Well - technically Aliant is part of it, but is just one regional phone business of several. Bell is the name you're looking for.
I don't want a country that elects crap leaders like Harper to teach me anything.
There is only one correct definition and the rest is noise. Net neutrality is the idea that all packets get equal treatment, regardless of source, destination, or anything in the packet's payload (especially in layers 4+).
Net neutrality has _absolutely_nothing_ to do with usage-based billing or unlimited rates or flat throttling of all traffic after reaching some threshold. This is where I think all the confusion is.
Basically, it's the principle of treading network traffic as a dumb utility like water, where the only metric which should be used to make any sort of decisions (and bills) is the volume; the number of bits moving in and out of a port.
Former VP signed 5 year deal for 10/10 Mbps for $1350 a month that includes a class C subnet with Telus.
Current price from them, $900. Current price for 30/10 is around $1400/month.
Current price for TWO 50/10 from third party is around $300 with /8 IP block. EXACT SAME CIRCUIT.
FUCK TELUS.
My understanding is the FCC already regulated virtual networks onto cell phone companies. I suppose this is different in that the third party companies will be adding physical infrastructure.
It's not a bad idea. Make it so that ownership of the physical infrastructure doesn't matter. Municipal governments could own it (or private companies such as when Google bought a fiber network in Utah). Applied to cell phone networks, anyone could put up a cell tower and patch into the network (only one tower in each zone, like a McDonald's franchise). That means CDMA will likely go away (since GSM already has tons of third-party device support and whatnot).
Merging all cell networks together would probably mean AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, & Sprint would become co-owners in towers. Commonly, a tower would be 50/50 owned by AT&T and Verizon, but sometimes it could be 25/25/25/25 among all four. (Someone familiar with investments and finances could probably give a better idea of how the split should work.)
The last legislation we had. That only did not pass by a toenail. Was a law for forcing all resellers to charge whatever Bell told them to charge. Basically it was a law that in all but name dismantled every competitor of Bell and made future competition illigal. It would of more than quadrupled my monthly bill, and put my ISP out of business.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
What the US Can Learn From Canada's Internet Policy
Nice to hear from you, Mr. Haselton! ;-)
The CRTC is the lap dog of Bell and Rogers.
Any national comparison of "Broadband," without citing size difference, is absurd. You're listing countries the size of small-ish states, geographically, and comparing them to the nation at large. It's apples and oranges to a massive extent.
I believe we are missing the main reason of the Govt wanting Title 2 of the Telecommunications Act enforced on broadband... its a nearly limitless source of taxes! They can choose if it is by bit, byte, time, content, political leanings, and so on. This could actually hit the economy harder than raising the national gas tax! Net neutrality is just the guy saying: "Ignore that man behind the curtain... I am the Great Oz"
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
Take New York. Even the state rather than the city has a massively higher population density than nearly any other region of about the same size or population number.
Yet it is still third world class internet there.
FFS, *AUSTRALIA* beats the USA. But of course there you'll "point out" how there are huge tracts of land with bugger all people in it, right?