Life on the Broadband Internet
The role of technology and policy in transforming online culture – chronicled by David Ellis
Why is the CRTC auditing the gamers instead of Rogers? (4)
123 days
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Welcome to the CRTC’s Office of Consumer Complaints. Please be seated.
The CRTC is now doing everything in its power to prove that its phony-balony complaints system will harm – not help – consumers. As I’ll explain below, its handling of the CGO complaints (plural) against Rogers for breaking legitimate online applications (esp World of Warcraft) has become theatre of the absurd. But first, some catching up. (more…)
Results of CRTC fact-finding on our Netflix agony: there are none!
124 days
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"I've come to suck the soul out of your culture and take your money too"
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Agency fails to find any real bananas on banana hunt – only “inconclusive” bananas
When a public agency tries to scam its way to the conclusion that Canadians need to be protected from the heroin drip of US programming, especially the cheap, innovative online kind, then shit is bound to happen. Or so you might have thought after reading my scary posts from June entitled “Get yer grimy paws off my Netflix: Ottawa’s big OTT scam” (here and here). (more…)
Playing games: CRTC’s non-questions, Rogers non-answers (3)
129 days
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You can have any answer you want except the one you’re looking for
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[Update... OMG. I just finished this post and boom! - I got the CRTC's letter to Jason and the CGO, released late this afternoon. After all the blood, sweat and tears, the Commission has the nerve to ask the CGO to provide "more specific information" relating to their recent complaint - whereas the Rogers reply says absolutely nothing about any of the technical details. And just to rub a fistful of salt into the wound, the Commission is insisting on getting the CGO reply on Thanksgiving - because 10 days is now the required response time! See below for the many problems with the Rogers letter. And stay tuned.]
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Let’s review the bidding.
On Sept 16, i.e. before the new complaints guidelines were released, the Commission sent a kind of warning letter to Rogers. This letter (pdf) may look like the regulator’s getting tough – except that we’re now less than three weeks shy of the 2nd anniversary of Canada’s network neutrality rules (Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2009-657 – pdf). And a lot of consumer-unfriendly things have happened in the interim (notwithstanding the updates to the guidelines issued by the Commission under the heading “How to make a complaint about Internet service”).
Games, throttled: complain about Rogers, blame the CRTC (2)
131 days
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Complaints resolution flowchart, as appended to Rogers’ Sept 27 letter to the CRTC
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[Includes correction to the "plot" timeline]
As the news breaks (see petition link below)
I was just finishing this post (#2) when Jason Koblovsky sent me the much-anticipated response from Rogers to last week’s “warning” letter from the CRTC. 
The letter, which runs about 1200 words, was addressed to the CRTC’s Joanne Baldassi over the signature of Ken Thompson, Rogers’ Director of Copyright and Broadband Law. Get your red-hot pdf here.
The Rogers letter is an exquisite piece of evasion, obfuscation and self-congratulations. It indicates to me that when you put together the Commission’s ass-backwards approach (consumer complaints are first and foremost the consumer’s problem), along with Rogers’ business philosophy (the customer is always wrong), then the use of end-user complaints as a policy tool under the new guidelines won’t change a damn thing. The plot so far:
CGO fights Rogers, CRTC over WoW for 2+ yrs > CRTC issues warning to Rogers (Sept 16) > CRTC issues new complaints guidelines (Sept 22) > Guidelines get tepid reception (esp from CGO) > Rogers responds to CRTC warning (Sept 27) > CGO issues statement (“something doesn’t smell right”) > Petition launched at OpenMedia.ca (here).
Jason K sends the following correction: “The World of Warcraft case is almost a year old. It’s been ten months since the complaint was handed into the CRTC in January 2011. The CAIP and myself brought up the issue of misclassification prior to the WoW complaint in 2008. The CRTC has known about this misclassification problem now for over 3 years.”
I’ll parse the Rogers’ letter in the followup post, along with any early reactions from the blogosphere. Meanwhile, please have a look at the following comments from some of the usual suspects (including me) on what the new guidelines do and don’t do for consumers.
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Subscriber, heal thyself
The CRTC’s new “guidelines” on the handling of ISP complaints landed last week to decidedly mixed reactions among those who care about consumers (Telecom Information Bulletin CRTC 2011-609). PIAC counsel John Lawford dropped me a comment (see prior post) in which he expressed satisfaction with the general direction:
“Not a model of total clarity but a start. CCTS-like procedure, some transparency requirements and some threats of sanctions. I am concerned the actual online complaints form is not prepopulated with the requirements for this type of specialized complaint – nor the requirements the CRTC will be looking at to judge the complaint (see paras. 13-14 of the Information Bulletin).” (more…)
Game throttled? Complain about Rogers, but blame the CRTC
138 days
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“Rogers is not aware of any problems with online games.”
– Rogers’ spokeswoman Carly Suppa, September 2011
“We are not a consumer-protection agency.”
– CRTC spokesman Denis Carmel, July 2011
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(A few minor edits and corrections added in this version)
Jason Koblovsky is a gamer, independent journalist and activist. He’s also the co-founder of the Canadian Gaming Organization, which at first glance seems to be little more than a Facebook page with a couple of hundred supporters.
In the last few weeks, however, Jason and his cohorts have been all over the news for their David-and-Goliath battle with Rogers Internet. Their complaint is that Rogers has been disrupting otherwise legitimate online gameplay, ostensibly in the course of managing traffic on its network – by throttling packets that might have any association with a peer-to-peer network.
In doing so Rogers may be in violation of both s.36 of the Telecommunications Act and the ITMP framework lashed together by the CRTC in 2009 (Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2009-657). In case you’d forgotten, s.36 captures the age-old principle of common carrier neutrality: “Except where the Commission approves otherwise, a Canadian carrier shall not control the content or influence the meaning or purpose of telecommunications carried by it for the public.” Good luck with that provision now that we’ve blurred the content-carriage distinction beyond all recognition. But that’s another story.
(more…)
Dumb things you can do with smartphones (1)
142 days
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or not…
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Personal messaging, king of the classroom
On campuses from sea to shining sea, it’s that time again. Your children are in a classroom somewhere, staring intently into the iPad you bought to improve their minds. You fondly imagine them looking up course terminology in Wikipedia while they listen to lectures, take notes and flip through coursekits. My kid, the multitasker, one step closer to law school thanks to Steve Jobs.
Dream on, sucker. Your kid’s on Facebook, not Wikipedia… or whatever messaging platform they prefer for keeping in touch with all their friends, all the time, no matter what.
LT, shown here using the Skyward grip, keeps the gf's happy with her lightning response times
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The inappropriate use of mobile phones and other digital devices is gaining attention. Last week FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski counselled a back-to-school gathering of students to be “moderate with digital media.” He cited research according to which the average teenager consumes 11 hours of media content a day, and sends a text every 10 minutes he or she is awake (reported by NYT; pdf of speech here). Genachowski mentioned the dangers of texting while driving, as well as less lethal practices associated with academic performance: “How many of you use the Internet to do things like check your Facebook page or play video games, which keep you from doing your school work?”
200 million: the number of text messsages Canadian mobile phone users send every day (source: CWTA)
That’s the first mistake made by well-meaning authority figures: assuming kids believe their “distractions” are actually distracting them from anything, schoolwork included. This is, after all, the age of multitasking and nobody has embraced that lifestyle choice more than teens and young adults. What they don’t know or won’t acknowledge is good research has shown convincingly that our brains don’t like multitasking. Chronic multitaskers who think they can message, compute, listen, socialize and watch TV all at once are living in a fool’s paradise, and we’ve got the brain scans to prove it. (more…)
To regulate, forbear or disappear: will the CRTC get starved out of existence?
180 days
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“There’s no such thing as summer any more.”
Michael Hennessy, Telus, June 30, 2011
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Over the months you may have noticed me finding fault with the way the CRTC does its job. Not only has the Commission demonstrated a highly skewed interpretation of the public interest. It has done so across an ever-expanding list of issues touching on consumer welfare: the new media exemption order, speed matching, ITMPs, UBB (times 2 or more), vertical integration, broadband target speeds, OTT content and Netflix, on it goes. It’s hard to gauge whether all this adds up to more than it used to be. Maybe it’s the writer’s cramp. A figment of my tired imagination? (more…)
The CMR: CRTC’s annual exercise in pseudo-science
186 days
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My local Prada outlet, where the $1,200 shoes are 100% accessible
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Last Thursday the CRTC issued its not-much-anticipated annual effort known as the Communications Monitoring Report (press release here – see if you can find the well-concealed and unidentified pdf download link). Peter Nowak wasted not a moment getting to his point this week: the Commission is peddling broadband Kool-Aid. (For you kids who’ve never heard of Ken Kesey or Tom Wolfe, here’s a hint: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.)
Peter argues the regulator’s rosy broadband picture is baloney – check. And their numbers are cooked – check.
My lingering concern is some people might think this year’s edition of the CMR is an aberration. On the contrary. The Commission has been cooking the numbers since it first combined its broadcast and telecomm reports in 2008. Not that many Canadians are likely to have noticed, since the CMR is strictly an inside job, the kind of compilation you’d have to be paid to read. That makes the contents well insulated from criticism. After all, the boys who gave us UBB on a stick aren’t likely to phone the regulator to say, no, actually our broadband blows.
Four years of the CMR confirm two things I’ve been saying in this space. First, all this effort is just so much marketing; it has no claim to be evidence-based reporting. Second, it belies the Commission’s self-appointed role not as guardian of the public interest, but as industry clearing house, where all that matters is keeping the supply-side machinery well greased. (more…)
