Life on the Broadband Internet
The role of technology and policy in transforming online culture – chronicled by David Ellis
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…)
Beyond UBB: why Canadian content is the next Internet battleground
309 days
America wants you, Canuck!
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The story so far…
- Commons Heritage Committee wants CRTC to regulate Netflix et al. (March 9).
- Harper falls (March 25).
- Bell reverses on reseller pricing (March 28).
- Netflix cuts its default bitrate by 70% (March 28).
- OpenMedia.ca outs Bell’s pricing “reversal” (March 31).
- DE has late night call with 2 Netflix staff, ends up being about Microsoft’s Silverlight platform (April 2).
Some links and teasers
1) The Commons Heritage Committee report on private TV ownership and new viewing platforms is here (surely anything called “Heritage Committee” or “Heritage Canada” lacks credibility as a forum for determining Canada’s digital future; so apparently Netflix is a bigger threat to our welfare than letting three companies own most of our broadcasting system). Canada’s media establishment is warning policymakers and politicians we need:
- more Canadian content on more platforms;
- more concentration of ownership;
- more protection from foreign services (e.g. Netflix), which are sucking the life’s blood out of our struggling vertically integrated conglomerates;
- more regulation. (more…)
Hitler gets Netflix, hits data cap on Rogers…
341 days
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If UBB Canada needs anything, it’s comic relief. This video is comic alright, yet the whole scene seems so plausible. A+ on the issues homework. (Please skip it if you’re offended by parodies of this kind. Warning #2: This video contains in-frame advertising. Information still wants to be free, but monetization rules.)
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D.E.
Clement, arm’s length and really bad broadband policy
343 days
Artist's rendering of Canada's residential broadband system: deck chairs not shown
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Business as usual?
In the last two posts, I made the hopeful case that, this time, the conflict between the evil gatekeepers and the rest of us will be different. In 30 years as an observer of the industry, I’ve never seen anything quite like the furor over UBB.
Consumers seem to have a voice now. We have opposition politicians who get it. Bell and the other incumbents are getting exposed for the greedy pigs they are – not just through angry rants on discussion threads, but in quality analysis like you find, uh, here. But never, ever underestimate the ability of an old incumbent like Bell to bring back the old days. Especially one that controls the last mile and has been been handed a blank check to be whatever kind of content provider it wishes – so it has the motive and the opportunity to abuse its market power.
(Btw, let me clarify what I mean by “greedy pigs.” I’m referring to means rather than ends. I regularly have to explain to my students, who write
papers denouncing the profit motive, that profits are just fine. Even big profits. Makes the world go round. What is not fine is the means used by the incumbents to keep money coming in. This problem takes mild forms, like the obsession with ARPU, which encourages carriers to develop services that add little value yet make monthly bills run high. It also takes much more obnoxious forms – like data caps.)
Despite good reasons for caution in our optimism, Bell has to live for now with two unsavory consequences of the UBB blowout. First, some of the action has moved out of the old boys’ regulatory tent and into the court of public opinion. Second, an awful lot of Canadians have been getting an education on what was once one of life’s great mysteries: the inner workings of broadband. As Tim Wu suggests, certain highly concentrated and poorly regulated industries like residential broadband have built a business model around customer ignorance and apathy. So the more consumers know about what they’re buying, the less likely they are to be abused. Or that’s the theory. (more…)
UBB Canada: CRTC, Bell still demonizing the Hogs
348 days
We noted in the previous post that, back in January, Bell’s VP Regulatory Law expressed annoyance with the resellers for what he saw as a perverse attempt to delay the UBB proceeding. Fast forward to von Finckenstein’s appearance before the Standing Committee on February 3 and this revelation from his prepared remarks:
“Our decisions [on UBB] were set to take effect on March 1, 2011. We have since received from Bell Canada a request that we delay the implementation date by 60 days. A party from our last proceeding, Vaxination Informatique, has also filed a request for a delay. In light of these requests and the evident concerns expressed by Canadians…”
One minute Bell is chafing at the cash register, the next it’s first in line to persuade the Commission to put everything on ice. The question is: why? (more…)
A Conspiracy of Incompetence: How Bell Blew UBB
350 days
Sometimes, the more things change, the more they don’t stay the same. Much to the chagrin of those Masters of the Universe at Bell Canada.
The CRTC’s January 25 decision on usage-based billing (UBB) didn’t simply make a lot of Canadians hopping mad at Bell (been there, done that). In a more fundamental vein, it has had the entirely unintended consequence of busting open the fossilized rules of regulatory engagement in this country (see Telecom Decision CRTC 2011-44).
It’s difficult to predict whether the UBB uproar will some day lead to meaningful policy reform. One thing we know: the genie is out of the bottle. And Bell now has something a lot more serious to worry about than unbundling rules: a new threat we’ll call the educated consumer.
In its stormy aftermath, the decision has managed to get editorialists, politicians and mainstream consumers talking out loud about bandwidth, data caps and other arcane regulatory concepts. As Columbia Law prof Tim Wu noted in a Globe and Mail commentary on February 9: “It’s not every day that one sees national leaders weigh in on something seemingly as obscure as ‘bandwidth caps.’” Wu should know: he practically invented the concept of Net neutrality (Wu, 2003, “Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination”). (more…)
