Democracy at its best

by with No Comment SocietyThe Interwebs

Disclaimer

I’m not a member of any political party and I don’t have the intention to join, or be affiliate with any of them

My MP’s answer

A few weeks ago, Canadian Internet users were terrorized by a CRTC decision to approve Usage Based Billing of the Internet. At that time I expressed my concern by all means I could: I tweeted about this, posted stories on Facebook, I signed the petition, blogged about it and I even wrote an email to my MP.

I did not used the template offered by Open Media, I preferred to send Stéphane Dion a personalized message.

Over the days, the number of petition have grown with speed and, our MPs’ inboxes were flooded with emails asking them to stop the CRTC. Our politicians have listened and unanimously asked the CRTC to reconsider their decision.

To my surprise, I got today an email from the Administrative Assistant of Mr. Dion, with two PDF documents, with the following content:

Canada Coat of Arms
The Honourable Stephane Dion, P.C., M.P.

Saint-Laurent, February 9, 2011

Mr. Adam Sofineti

adamsofineti[a]gmail[.]com

Dear Mr. Sofineti,

Thank you for your email concerning usage based billing for the Internet.

Today, the Liberal Party of Canada issued the following statement regarding the CRTC’s decision on usage based billing.

We do not agree with the CRTC’s decision on usage-based billing, and we will bring the fight for an open and innovative internet environment to Parliament,” said the Liberal Industry, Science and Technology Critic Marc Garneau.

Canadians who want to take action and join the Liberal opposition to the usage-based billing decision can get involved through the Liberal Party website at http://lpc.ca/ubb.

Citizens’ groups and small telecom providers are upset that the CRTC has allowed usage-based billing to go ahead, which allows large internet service providers to raise rates and reduce download limits for consumers.

The CRTC’s decision limits competition and choice for consumers, said Liberal Consumer Affairs Critic Dan McTeague. Places like Ontario will now face 25-gigabyte (GB) download caps, compared to the U.S. which enjoys caps of 250 GB.

The CRTC decision will limit Canadians’ ability to use services like Netflix or watch the news streamed over the internet. This shows yet again that under a Conservative government, CRTC has come to mean ‘Consumers Rarely Taken into Consideration.'”

The second document is signed by Jocelyn Decoste, Riding Executive Assistant:

Liberals believe in more internet competition, not less,” said Liberal Heritage Critic Pablo Rodriquez. “Canada needs more investment in high-speed internet and we believe more competition will increase that investment. We are calling on the government to review this decision.”

In 2009, Liberals joined with the Consumer’s Association of Canada to call for the federal government and all parties in the House of Commons to support measures that will increase cell phone and internet competition, such as net neutrality.

I hope that the above clarifies the matter for you.

It did clarified it, and even more. Yesterday, apart from celebrating St-Valentines as everyone else, we also celebrated our fourth anniversary of becoming Canadian citizens. I feel lucky and proud to live in a country, where as an ordinary citizen not only I can speak my mind, but I might even find a listening ear and a politician willing to take action.

Consequences of Usage Based Billing of the Internet

by with One Comment RantingThe Interwebs

The CRTC has decided that it’s OK for Internet Service Providers (ISP) to bill their customers, depending on how much Internet they use. Here is the summary of Telecom Decision CRTC 2011-44:

In this decision, the Commission determines that usage-based billing rates for an incumbent telephone carrier’s wholesale residential Gateway Access Services or equivalent services, and for an incumbent cable carrier’s third-party Internet access services, are to be established at a discount of 15 percent from the carrier’s comparable usage-based billing rates for its retail Internet services.

For you and me, the regular Internet user, it means that there will be a certain limit imposed on how much we can download or upload. If we exceed that, we’ll be charged somewhere between 2$ and 5$/GB. My ISP is Bell Canada and my contract with them stipulates that, I can download 60GB of data. So far, I did not came close to that limit, so why should I worry?

I should worry, because the decision does not defines, what should be the minimum limit, meaning that next year Bell can tell me, the limit now is 10GB, take it or leave it.

It can also affect the price of long distance telephony, because these days most of it happens online trough VoIP. I never really understood Bell charging so much for long distance, when they could provide VoIP easily, but now they seem to keep going in the opposite direction, instead of introducing a service priced realistically, they are busy destroying their competition.

With all these rules, forget Netflix and other products that might appear in the near future. The impact of this decision goes beyond entertainment, it can affect research and even the economy of Canada in general (see Many to suffer from usage-based billing).

The good news is that this time online petitioning seems to be working. As of today 357.700 have signed the Stop the Meter petition and the politicians start to react. If you did not signed it yet, I encourage you to do it.

Not just the Liberals and the NDP, but according to the latest news even the Government is contemplating to overturn the CRTC decision.

I’m tired of hearing that we have to pay way more for cell phones and have slower Internet because of the size of the country. Yes, Canada is the second largest country in the world, but the telecommunication network is far from covering every corner of Canada. It’s a lame excuse, since inhabited areas are not that large and are mostly concentrated in the South, near the border with the US.

This afternoon, il capo of CRTC  will face the Commons committee, let’s hope reason will triumph over greed.