The role of technology and policy in transforming online culture – chronicled by David Ellis
Internet
Standing corrected: Stats Can on the Internet Use Survey
242 days
CIUS analyst Ben Veenhof provides feedback on my analysis
On Monday I posted part 3 of a 3-part series on what’s wrong with the CRTC’s broadband target. While the CRTC’s specifics – especially the 5 meg downlink, 1 meg uplink, and 2015 target date – have been grist for the pundit mill, my take is a little different. In a word, the CRTC’s regulation of retail Internet access, as well as its inability to understand how the Net works, have rendered the target meaningless.
You’ll undoubtedly want to read the posts for yourself. But it’s easy to pull out my biggest issue with the Commission’s ivory-tower approach: they’re way too stuck on the geography problem to have any time for the affordability problem. In other words, where residents happen to live in Canada should be playing a much smaller role in Internet regulation and broadband development than how much money Canadians make – or don’t make. (more…)
Misguided assumptions behind the CRTC’s broadband target (1)
266 days
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A colleague of mine emailed me recently. He was responding to my April post on Rescuing Consumers from the Scourge of Netflix. He was amused. Then came this sobering thought: “Maybe things will change. Maybe. Keep pushing that rock up the hill.”
Thanks a bunch. Lately the soliloquies posted here have been sounding like a broken record and, yes, playing Sisyphus is a lot less fun than 
it looks. Why the annoying repetition? The problem has something to do with certain misguided policy assumptions that simply will not die – like those behind the CRTC’s May 3 decision, Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2011-291. As the press release says: “CRTC sets speed target for broadband Internet and maintains obligation to provide basic home telephone service.”
Here it is, one more time: having access to broadband and being a broadband adopter are from different planets (as I explained in 2 previous posts, here and here)
Reactions to the broadband target dwelt mainly on a) why aren’t we doing more for our poor compatriots in rural Canada; b) what particular speeds to target; and c) who’s gonna pay for any buildout. I was disappointed PIAC’s Lawford stayed mostly with the rural ethos, leaving too much room for the interpretation that broadband is all hunky-dory in urban centres:
“If there is no rural broadband now, there will not be any more thanks to this decision,” PIAC counsel John Lawford said in a press release (Wire Report, May 6). (more…)
The Cancon Cabal: Rescuing Consumers from the Scourge of Netflix
286 days
by David Ellis
in data caps, gatekeeping, Heritage Committee, innovation, Internet, Netflix, TV, UBB
by David Ellis + Alexandra Birukova
(Get in on the fun while cutting your reading time by 40%: check out the abridged version of this story posted at the Wire Report on April 26. Any similarity to real life entirely intentional.)
Let’s say for the sake of argument you have near-monopoly control of Internet access in millions of homes. All your retail rates are deregulated, because the regulator has identified a force that faithfully eliminates any market distortion: vigorous competition. And yet, paradoxically, you can use your market power to eliminate competitors on the application layer of your network, since the regulator isn’t sure what unjust discrimination and undue preference might look like. You can also cap customer bandwidth any old way you prefer, which not only drives out competition but adds a nice chunk of change to your bottom line from the overage charges that none of your subs could possibly understand, especially after reading the formulas some math nerd provided in your online FAQ.
Recently renovated office of CRTC Chair, with series of tubes (on left) providing connectivity to global series of tubes. Meter not shown.
Internet 101 for election candidates: some talking points
300 days
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1 – The Internet is not TV on downers. Nor is it a one-way delivery system for professional content, to be regulated for the sole benefit of Canadian producers, program-makers, performers and their fellow travelers. They deserve to eat too, but not at the cost of a) raising protectionist barriers in cyberspace based on demonizing foreign content; b) rescinding the new media exemption order so everyone who transmits “broadcast programming” online has to pay the Cancon trolls; and c) perpetuating a supply-side framework for content policy that ignores what end-users want.
Breaking news (to me anyway): And a slap in the face to media junkies and couch potatoes from sea to shining sea. Last week at the CRTC broadcast licensing hearings, Norm Bolen of the CMPA said his members need more public funding to counter… “the heroin drip of American programming”! Marx must be spinning in his grave. The contempt these guys have for the great unwashed public – not to mention market demand – is breathtaking. (more…)
IANA out of IPv4 addresses – this week
377 days
by David Ellis
in Internet
A story published Monday says IANA will be out of addresses by the end of this week. The message comes from the IDG News Service via Computerworld.
This isn’t exactly breaking news, although it’s hard to believe the long-predicted address exhaustion is finally upon us. As of this writing (Tuesday, Jan 25), the exhaustion counter to the right says we’ve got 7 more days and about 29 million unique addresses to go. Alas, the story is a lot more complicated than that. For one thing, the five RIRs, which get their address blocks from IANA, have some stockpiled. Still, tensions are mounting…
As luck would have it, I just sent in a version of the story as my monthly “comment” for Telemanagement, due to be published in a few days. See below…
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- IPv4 vs IPv6 traffic via Whois, DNS, Web (April 2010, source: ARIN)
Is There An IPv6 Crisis?
<340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456>
In case you hadn’t heard, IPv6 is coming. But it’s not coming quietly. To paraphrase that old adage about psychotherapy: IPv6 will set us free, but first it’s going to make us miserable. (more…)
Tips and tricks in “broadband” data analysis
417 days
Stats Can analyst Ben Veenhof weighed in recently with further comments about how to interpret – and not interpret – broadband-related data. His email comes in response to a question I had about drawing parallels between a) CIUS respondents who report they’ve never used the Internet and b) respondents (from a U.S. Dept of Commerce/NTIA study ) who say they do not have broadband in their homes. The results of the 2009 Canadian Internet Use Survey were released in The Daily, May 10, 2010 – here.
I noted in my Nov 27 post that the Stats Can Internet analysts had shown a gratifying willingness to field my questions, and not spare the details. It’s terrific that the staff of such a highly respected institution are able to offer outreach of this kind. Certain other federal bodies could learn a thing or two about conveying quality information to the taxpaying public. It would also be very gratifying if the CRTC took note of how Stats Can handles the naming issue, i.e. sorting out broadband and high-speed when talking to those taxpaying and much confused Canadians. (more…)
Internet literacy in Canada: the missing policy (cont’d)
436 days
by David Ellis
in Internet
(This post is the second half of the Comment piece for Telemanagement, revised and updated where appropriate.)
We don’t need no broadband, thanks
Earlier this year, the NTIA, part of the U.S. Dept of Commerce, issued a paper entitled Digital Nation, devoted to the Obama administration’s goal of providing fast, affordable broadband to all Americans. The work, covering the responses of 129,000 individuals, was undertaken in conjunction with the U.S. Census Bureau. The authors describe the paper as beginning “the process of developing a factual basis for sound policymaking to expand the adoption of and access to Internet technology, particularly broadband” (p.15).
The paper wastes no time in getting down to the barriers that worry US policymakers:
“Despite the growing importance of the Internet in American life, over 30 percent of households and 35 percent of persons do not use the Internet at home, and 30 percent of all persons do not use the Internet anywhere. Those with no broadband access at home amount to more than 35 percent of all households and approximately 40 percent of all persons, with a larger proportion in rural areas in both categories.”
Internet literacy in Canada: the missing policy
446 days
by David Ellis
in Internet
- Artist’s rendering of Ottawa’s long-term strategy for universal broadband – more wires!
This post, and the next, are pre-prints of my monthly Comment for Telemanagement magazine (Dec-Jan issue: a shoutout to publisher Tim Wilson for his support). As usual, I’m taking liberties with what I submitted, updating some things, fixing others and changing my mind here and there. One change in terminology upfront: I’m using “Internet literacy” instead of the more conventional “digital literacy,” since the big issues concern the use of the global public Internet, rather than resources like consumer electronics (cameras, big-screen TVs, etc). Of course, IPv6 will further blur the distinctions between networked and standalone devices, but we’ll cross that convergent bridge in due course.
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Over the last year or two, the CRTC and its political masters have been backing away from their claims about Canada’s world leadership in broadband. They were chastened no doubt by serious studies like the Berkman report to the FCC in February, which invoked many measures of success other than household penetration among the G7. And then things became even worse.
Some thought we could now get on with the crucial issues Ottawa kept ignoring, speed and affordability 
being near the top of the list. No such luck. The framing of Canada’s online problems shifted from who actually has broadband to who theoretically has access to broadband, i.e. access to an ISP drop or satellite signal.
“Access” is a necessary but far from sufficient condition for getting onto broadband at home. This year a number of provincial politicians and officials shifted the self-congratulatory talk from penetration to access – with several provinces claiming their citizens now have “100% access” to broadband. Meanwhile, I saw no sign of any of our governments talking about why, with 100% access, millions of Canadians are still not adopting broadband. (more…)
