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Canada Upholds Net Neutrality Rules In Wireless TV Case
An anonymous reader writes Canada's telecom regulator has issued a major new
decision with implications for net neutrality, ruling that
Bell and Videotron violated the Telecommunications Act by granting
their own wireless television services an undue preference by
exempting them from data charges. Michael Geist examines
the decision, noting that the Commission grounded the decision
in net neutrality concerns, stating the Bell and Videotron services
"may end up inhibiting the introduction and growth of other mobile
TV services accessed over the Internet, which reduces innovation and
consumer choice."
But doesn't Canada know that Net Neutrality is going to equal government censorship and all the telcos will immediately stop any infrastructure investments? Verizon, AT&T and Comcast said so and they would never lie about anything like that.
It's the Time Machine Quantum Experiment!
They were playing with forces no human being should meddle with!
Reality is unravelling!
The more money you have here in the States, the larger your voice is with our government.
There's a country that has a government where this isn't the case?
Elections are coming up, that's what. We should have elections every six months, then politicians would always make the right decisions.
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I think it was just demonstrated that Canada isn't totally in the hands of its corporations. (The oil industry notwithstanding because of the current Conservative gov't)
They're forcing Bell to play fair, which ultimately is good for Canadian citizens as it limits the power of the telecom oligarchy. I would agree that it's far from "common sense" though. Drowning an industry in regulations rather than curing the underlying problem is lazy and short-sighted. If you want my 2c, the entire telecom infrastructure needs to be appropriated and put into the public domain. Maintenance and access to it can then be contracted out, much like we do with traffic infrastructure.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Hey now, normally the CRTC is as corrupt as they come. This is a group that has been heavily infiltrated by big media, who tried to institute 1996 level data caps, and who's outgoing president whined that the internet is their biggest obstacle to controlling what Canadians watch.
I'm actually somewhat baffled by what seems to be a series of decisions on their part which appear at face value to be in the interests of the Canadian public and not their telecom friends.
The person who brought the challenge to the regulator's attention was a graduate student. I don't think he has very much money, just training and time.
Trust me, we're quite jealous of what the FCC does down there as well - for we're often screwed up here.
For example - take cable services - we're required to buy a set top box from the provider - provided through the provider or a reseller, and that box cannot be moved to another provider even if they use the same equipment. Effectively, we're forced to buy equipment we can only use with the provider. We can't buy used equipment (except if it was originally sold by the provider), so no going to the US to buy cheap boxes, no going to another province, etc. Your box is locked to the provider, no one else in Canada will activate it. And if your box doesn't match any serial number the provider bought, they won't activate it either.
This includes stuff like broadband modems for internet too - if you're not happy with the cable modem your provider gives you, too f'in bad - you can't buy a different one because they won't activate it.
And it's only been a few years now that we've had cellphone number portability, and only within the last year that 3 year cellphone contracts have been eliminated, providers have to provide unlock codes for SIM locked phones, and no more surprise roaming charges and other stuff.
So for this one ruling, Canada's still a place where the telecommunications firms rule. Your FCC does a lot right in comparison.
The CRTC isn't corrupt, although they can sometimes get a skewed view of reality. They sometimes give too much weight to incumbent filings or taking on faith that the cost studies submitted by incumbents are accurate.
It's difficult to examine the cost studies, because they're filed under seal, so when Bell files a cost study that defines the tariff rates that independent ISPs have to pay, nobody can challenge the cost study.
Ironically, in one of the rare instances where Bell did expose a small part of one of their cost studies, it was found that they were costing out huge routers and then assuming a tiny usage of them. I think the specific case was Bell would include a 48 Gbps router in their cost study, and then claim that they only used 1Gbps of capacity on it. This meant 48x the cost for that part of the study, letting Bell charge more.
The CRTC did correct Bell's costs for that instance, but that is just the rare public thing we know about. How many other instances of fudging is there in cost studies that nobody ever gets the opportunity to challenge because they're filed in secret?
The independent ISPs have been asking for years to get the right to examine incumbent cost studies and other things that are filed under seal. The indies have proposed restrictions that would protect incumbent privacy, such as nominating a tiny number of people to see the data (such as a lawyer for the indie ISP), and to be under a nondisclosure agreement... the CRTC still hasn't done anything about it though. As a result, incumbent ISPs charge absurdly inflated costs for capacity to indie ISPs. I think Videotron is charging $23 per megabit for capacity on their last-mile network, and that's on top of all the other fees they charge like the cost of the DSL or cable line itself.
What do you mean, we "took"? Céline Dion was born in Québec, which last time I checked is part of Canada.
And as a Canadian, I can assure you that those of us north of the US border are quite happy with how it worked out. Really. You can keep Celine Dion and Justin Beiber as long as you want ...
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
What's news-worthy is that, despite releasing these reports, the government refuses to actually do anything about them.
That's not true at all. The current government been undermining Statistics Canada since taking office. Soon the quality of data surrounding these issues will be so poor that they can just say the problem doesn't exist anymore.
Still a fucking miracle with Harper and the current CRTC. The major players had a lot of victories in recent years.
Sorry but how is it a miracle? Have you not seen the commercials from the Harper government about changing the wireless industry in favour of the consumers? Did previous governments even attempt to reform the CRTC or how the wireless industry treats consumers? The answer is no so why the anti-harper rhetoric? Previous governments either did nothing to improve the industry for the benefit of consumers or made it worse by appointing industry cronies to the CRTC board. If you want to blame why it was bad, look at previous liberal governments.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.