Telecom Regulation

Tired of Being a Digital Peasant!

By Mark Evans in Telecom Regulation, VOIP Services, Competition 25 Comments

Skype
It wasn’t that long ago that Canada was considered to be on the leading-edge of the Web.

We had the highest penetration when it came to high-speed access, and the regulator – aka the CTRC – had decided not to regulate the Internet.

Today, Canada is falling behind and, in the process, we’re becoming digital peasants.

Perhaps the most frustrating is our inability to access cool new services. You want to listen to music using Pandara? Forget about it; not available in Canada. You want to watch TV using Hulu? Forget about it; not available.

The latest slap in face is the fact Canadians won’t be able to use Skype on their iPhones. So for all of you excited on Skype’s new foray into the mobile world, forget about it; not available.

Chaim Haas, a public relations representative acting on behalf of Skype, told the CBC that the application is available in every country in which the iPhone is on sale and in which Apple has an iTunes Store — with the exception of Canada.

Haas said this is because of patent-licence restrictions but would not elaborate except to specify that it is a patent issue related to Skype, not Apple.

Personally, I don’t care about patent issues. What I care about is using leading-edge and innovative services, and the lack of Skype is just another example of how Canada is becoming an online backwater.

Technorati Tags: ,

Regulate the Internet? Ha!

By Mark Evans in Telecom Regulation 9 Comments

Can you regulate the Internet? Or, perhaps, should you try to regulate the Internet?

That’s the question Canada’s telecom and media regulator (aka the CRTC) is hoping to answer during hearings that kicked off today. It’s a contentious issue with strong viewpoints on both sides, pitting content makers vs. ISPs, and the federal government vs. the people.

Since 1999, the CRTC has not regulated new media on the Web. At the time, it was the right decision, and today it still is the right approach.

The concept of trying to regulate the Internet to support national agendas – even if it’s dripping in good intentions – is misguided. The content genie is out of the bottle, and there’s no way to stuff it back in.

Rather than regulate content on the Internet, perhaps the focus should be on encouraging more competition within Canada’s high-speed Internet market. As it stands, the Canadian market is an oligopoly controlled by cable and telecom companies such as Bell, Telus, Rogers, Shaw, Videotron and Cogeco.

Despite efforts by competitors to get into the business by signing wholesale deals with the existing high-speed players, the market is still tightly controlled. This explains why high-speed penetration rates have stalled within Canada, and why Canada keeps dropping down the list of countries with the most high-speed penetration. At one time, we were second behind South Korea. Now, not so much.

The lack of competition has meant that high-speed prices continue to climb. After all, why not raise prices if you’ve got a captive audience willing to pay and pay. The profits made by the high-speed ISPs have clearly caught the attention of Canadian content producers who believe they should get a piece of action given they’re producing some of the content being consumed.

Whether they can convince the CRTC to see their point of view is left to be seen but, hopefully, all the talk about broadband in the coming months will shift the spotlight to the high-speed market and its competitive dynamics.

Technorati Tags:

Canada’s Do Not Call System Good but Flawed

By Mark Evans in Telecom Regulation 5 Comments

Do Not Call
Canada’s much anticipated Do Not Call system (aka The End of Telemarketers) finally launched earlier this week as two million people registered during the first 60 hours.

The response was so enthusiastic that the Web site, which is operated by Bell Canada, crashed. And while people who managed to register their telephone numbers should be pleased, it does not mean the end of telemarketers calling you.

This is because the exemption list seems to be a mile wide and a mile deep. It includes:

- Canadian registered charities;
– Political parties, riding associations and candidates; and
- Newspapers of general circulation for the purpose of soliciting subscriptions.

You’ll also continue to get calls from organizations that you have a relationship. This includes companies that you have:

- Purchased, leased, or rented a product or service in the last eighteen (18) months from the telemarketer;
- You have a written contract with the telemarketer for a service that is still in effect or expired within the last eighteen (18) months; and/or
- You asked a telemarketer about a product or service within the last six (6) months.

And, there’s more. Telemarketers can still call you if they have:

- Your permission on a written form, electronic form, or an online form; or
- Your verbal permission.

So, if you think that eating dinner will involve fewer interruptions, guess again!

Technorati Tags: , ,

Canadians Are Wired

By Mark Evans in Telecom Regulation 5 Comments

According to eMarketer, more than 22 million Canadians, or two-thirds of the population, will have regular access to the Internet this year. By 2012, that number will rise to 25 million.

While the number is impressive, it will be far more interesting to see how Canadians use of the Web will be impacted if the proposed – and evil – new copyright legislation is enacted, and how (if?) the federal government does anything to address Net Neutrality.

With enthusiastic adoption of high-speed access, Canadians have been enthusiastic users of the Web but you will excitement and usage decline if there are restrictions on what you can do with it. Another issue is how the copyright bill and Net Neutrality could impact innovation.

Those are much more interesting and bigger issues than the Internet population.

Picture 3-26

Technorati Tags: ,

Canada Needs an Arrington!

By Mark Evans in ILEC News, Analysis, Telecom Regulation 5 Comments

It has been interesting to watch Michael Arrington (aka the “Wizard of Web 2.0″) launch a tsunami of outrage against Comcast in California after his high-speed connection was cut off on Friday night, and Comcast failed to provide him with a sufficient response. As Jeff Jarvis notes, Arrington is one guy you “don’t want to piss off”.

What I found particularly interesting about Arrington’s high-speed temper tantrum is how much Canada needs a Michael Arrington – someone to lead the charge against high-speed ISPs that operate sweet profit machines in a market where consumers increasingly get the short end of the stick.

If you’re a high-speed customer in Canada, your troubles include:

- Steadily higher prices, although the ISPs contend you also get faster download speeds (in theory, I would argue).

- Bandwidth shaping/throttling – something the ISPs argue they need to do to “manage the network” to battle all those evil P2P. This includes Bell Canada throttling its wholesale customers that re-sell Bell’s high-speed service.

- Bandwidth caps (They’ve been around for several years, although didn’t get much publicity until recently.

- An unfortunate lack of competition. In most markets, there are only two players but price is never used as a competitive tool. It didn’t help that the Canadian government let Rogers and Bell acquire Inukshuk, our only national Wi-Max player.

- A federal government with no willingness to explore network neutrality, even though it’s becoming an issue that could impact our ability to compete and innovate

Canada needs something who’s willing to lead the charge, wave the flag and make it clear that I the consumer is “mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore! Maybe, it’s Michael Geist or perhaps the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, which recently filed a complaint with the CRTC asking it to direct Bell Canada to cease and desist from throttling its wholesale Internet service.

We need an Arrington to galvanize our high-speed discontent into a loud and vocal rebellion. The time has come.

For more on the throttling issue, check out Wayne MacPhail’s story on Rabble.ca.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

AT&T’s Big Brother Plans

By Mark Evans in ILEC News, Analysis, Telecom Regulation 1 Comment

Orwell
This sounds crazy but an AT&T executive James Ciccioni has raised the idea of monitoring every single packet traveling over its Internet network to see if intellectual property violations are happening.

Slate’s Tim Wu picked on this bizarre notion – something he described as Orwellian. Since when did AT&T start to position itself as an IP policeman? Has it started to cave into pressure from the music and movie industrial for tighter regulation on how people use the Internet?

Along with Time-Warner’s plans to charge for broadband service by how much traffic you generate, it’s difficult not to sense that the broadband market in the U.S. is changing as ISPs look at new ways to impact how their customers use a service that has evolved into a utility.

Maybe AT&T thinking is not unlike how electrical utilities monitor usage, and how they can sometimes work with the police if they determine that a household is, for example, using an extraordinary amount of power (An indication of a grow-house being operated).

Is it time for broadband to be regulated? – as much as it pains me to suggest the idea. If ISPs are monitoring how customers use broadband, maybe there’s a need for someone to be monitoring the monitors.

More: Boing Boing’s Joel Johnson calls AT&T idea “retarded”, while CNet has an extensive analysis story.

Technorati Tags: ,

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 »