Greg O’Brien of CARTT tweeted recently, “The amount of misinformation and utter ignorance about the CRTC and what it does that you can read on the web is stunning.”
He may have been referring to the fascinating engagement that Michael Hennessy stirred up in his refutation of the Dump the CRTC crowd.
The comments on the When Dogs Ran Free postings and Dissolve the CRTC websites seem to confirm Greg’s observation. Items like:
- CTV and Bell are both owned by Globemedia – posted by Anonymous;
- All infrastructure that Bell has installed to bring telephone lines into our house – i.e. the only point at which Bell actually “owns” between a wholesale ISP and a consumer, was paid for by taxpayers. That’s our infrastructure. We paid for the poles, the cables, the installation, the digging and the construction – also by Anonymous;
- And the CRTC is letting them do it because it is staffed with ex big telecom executives who still have a vested interest in seeing this happen – by Gerry;
- the real problem… is that the CRTC is run by former Rogers & Bell Execs! – by Tammy on Dissolve the CRTC [Facebook];
- In the case of Bell, they actually own several media properties including television, internet, they have magazines, newspapers. So, it’s pretty bad to have one company control everything – Dissolve the CRTC founder Michael Lerner, interviewed on CHQR [mp3].
A number of people, including the founder of the Dissolve the CRTC campaign on his CHQR interview, echo a theme that the CRTC is dominated by telecom industry insiders. There are 13 Commissioners and their biographies are on the CRTC website. I am hard pressed to see a preponderance of telco or cableco jobs on their resumes. Where did this perception originate?
At the core of these percolating urban legends I am sensing a failure on the part of the telecommunications establishment – and I use that term in its broadest possible sense – carriers, ISPs, industry associations, regulators, consumer groups, academics and commentators. We are failing to adequately inform.
These voices are students and business people, taxpayers, voters and above all, consumers. They pay all of our wages. Many suffer from being part of a generation that confuses crowd-sourced consensus for true information.
If these impressions are widespread, what is the root cause? How do we address the palpable frustration shared by these voices outside the “system”?
Look beyond the misinformation that these people share. How have we failed to better inform the general public? How do we create a more actively aware and involved populace?
How can policy makers and leaders do better, while resisting the temptation to simply respond to the noise?
There is indeed a lot of misinformation being spread online. I commend you for not dismissing these citizens out-of-hand.
It would not be wise to trivialize our concerns as merely 'noise' generated by an uninformed public. Do not assume that many would be swayed if you could only cure them of these urban myths.
At the core, we face a lack of any meaningful competition in the telecom space. Sure, we may have Bell and Rogers/Shaw/Cogeco duking it out on minor points, but at the end of the day, consumers don't see enough competition.
The recent order regarding usage-based billing (2009-484) doesn't pass the smell test, and consumers are right to be angry. I'm not against UBB in general, but this implementation is anticompetitive on many fronts.
When it comes to the network management issue, consumers don't understand why the process takes so long. They see decision 2008-108 as endorsement of Bell's position, and Katz' interview with CBC only strengthened that opinion.
Consumers feel out of the loop and ignored, in an age when they are beginning to feel entitled to be heard. When over 6000 spoke out against Bell's UBB proposal, and the CRTC didn't even acknowledge the issued raised by consumers in their decision, we felt ignored, and with good cause.