With all of the attention on bigger news releases today (see Bell’s announcement on Aliant and Toronto Hydro’s WiFi plans), it might have been easy to miss an important filing by Vonage, complaining about Shaw’s VoIP tax.
This is an old issue that doesn’t seem to be going away. Joe Parent first raised the issue at The 2005 Canadian Telecom Summit on May 30, 2005. Today, Vonage filed a formal compaint with the CRTC, in part claiming that Shaw’s “quality of service enhancement fee” is:
part of a bigger issue of network neutrality and who controls how Canadians use their Internet service
So, the issue of Network Neutrality is now being moved to centre stage at the CRTC. It will be interesting to see if the Commission keeps the focus narrow or will it use this Vonage filing as the opportunity to launch a broader public process.
The issue of Network Neutrality was raised by some presentations to the Telecom Policy Review panel, but it merits a close examination on its own. This is an issue being examined broadly by regulators and politicians in Canada’s closest trading partners.
Thanks to Vonage, it is now time for the CRTC to hear from Canadians about who controls how they use their internet access services.