The Dawn of Net Neutrality in Canada?
While the Net Neutrality has raged in the U.S., it's been quiet in Canada….until now. Yesterday, Videotron CEO Robert Depatie said the federal government should levy a “transmission tariff” on content providers so they can support the cost of building and maintaining networks. “If the movie studio were to mail a DVD . . . they would expect to pay postage or courier fees,†he told Canadian Press. “Why should they not expect a transmission tariff?”. Depatie said he also concerned “Canada lags behind in pricing competitives and technology because the regulatory regime discriminates against new providers like Videotron”. If there was ever a public shot across the bow of the federal government and telecom regulator, Depatie just delivered a one-two punch. In a sense, his move is a positive because it could compel the CRTC (Canada's telecom and media regulator) to finally get involved in the Net Neutrality issue/controversy. So far, the CRTC's standard response to inquiries about Net Neutrality is it won't act until it receives a complaint, which is hardly pro-active or forward-thinking. It is somewhat interesting to see a cableco push forward the Net Neutrality issue given it's the carriers who are losing customers and revenue as cablecos get deeper in the local telephone business. Then again, the cablecos are being forced to make large investments in their networks to stay competitive with increasingly-desperate carriers so the interest in external “help” is hardly a surprise. As for Depatie's contention the CRTC discrimminates against providers such as Videotron, that's just off-base given Canadian cablecos are barely regulated while carriers are still in regulatory shackles. I wonder my what my friend, Mark Goldberg, thinks about Depatie's comments.For more, check out Rob Hyndman, who describes some of Depatie's statements as “bizarre”, and Michael Geist, who runs with the Net Neutrality theme.
November 2nd, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Unfortunately, the Globe and Mail report didn't do justice to the speech. As a result, pepole are taking potshots based on the report, not the position put forward.
Videotron opened up an important issue for discussion and debate, but it would be helpful if people would critique what Robert Depatie actually said. You can find my views here.
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:04 pm
The cablecos have a real conflict of interest here in that their cable television operations directly compete with much of the content on which they want to place a delivery tariff. Raising the price of competing products is to their benefit.
While there may be other factors at play, it is perhaps not surprising that Rogers places monthly bandwidth caps on their internet customers, while Bell does not. Moreover, Rogers engages in active traffic shaping on its IP networks and has been accused of throttling the bandwidth for P2P users, notably for traffic associated with bittorrent, a key method of sharing movies and television programs on the internet.
Clearly, we cannot let parties with such conflicts determine the openness of our networks. There is definitely a role for government to more proactive on this file.