There is a Hasbro children’s game called Operation that zaps players who touch an edge when removing a game piece from the game board. Winning requires hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills to carefully keep from venturing too close to the edge.

As I read through a report from the European Investment Bank yesterday, the game of Operation came to mind. Why?

The report examined the total investment required to implement Europe’s Digital Agenda. My first thought was – Europe actually has a Digital Agenda! My thought was that we in Canada are playing a game of Operation, but we’re playing in the dark. We’re guided only when the buzzer sounds without being able to know what the playing field looks like.

Canada has shelves filled with reports from Commissions and Panels without action plans implementing the recommendations; we have had consultations but we have been slow to act in reaching conclusions. For example, last year’s consultation on relaxation of restrictions on foreign direct investment should have resulted in a policy statement and legislation last fall. Instead, the government decided to re-open the issue as part of the 700 MHz consultation. This issue was also studied by a number of expert panels prior to the auction of AWS spectrum, with no action. It took the buzzer sounding on Globalive’s ownership structure to force Cabinet to weigh in. They said that it may look like Globalive strayed close enough to the edge, but we don’t think so.

The policy response to usage based billing for wholesale internet access was just the latest demonstration of buzzers sounding in response to crossing the line. Hopefully, this election will result in the lights being turned on a national digital strategy. It is too serious a game to be played in the dark.

Bell Canada has done another about-face on its wholesale internet plan, replacing Aggregated Volume Pricing (AVP) with Pay Per Click (PPC). Under the new plan, users will have unlimited download capabilities but will pay $1 for 10,000 clicks. The plan is said to be an upstream traffic management plan.

Rogers has historically throttled only upstream peer-to-peer traffic. That’s where we got the idea to charge for clicks. PPC allows users to download all the movies and TV shows they want. It will encourage everyone to learn to be more effective in their search terms because it rewards people who use fewer characters. Similarly, Canada’s gaming community will become world leaders because the more shots you need, the more you will have to pay.

Typically, internet connections are asymmetric, with far more download capacity than upload. PPC is designed to help reduce congestion on the upstream path. Bell does not plan to charge users for clicks on their Fibe TV remote control, as long as the channel is being changed to a CTV station.

We asked why Bell was abandoning AVP less than a week after it was introduced. In an emailed statement, Bell’s spokesperson said that it was time to focus on the real bottleneck.

Enough was enough. Some people were clicking away and using up the entire upstream capacity. Especially the gaming community with all that shooting. We need Canadians to aim better. The new pricing will not affect many people and we have a deal with Open Media to buy their mailing list, offering a special affinity programme to their 400,000 signatories. So everybody wins.

Bell expects PPC to get people to renew their support for the Open Media initiative, unless they realize this is some kind of April Fools Day joke.

Yesterday, two papers critical of usage based billing were released.  Both papers were sponsored by Netflix and neither of them appear to have been filed with the CRTC by the March 28 deadline for the Wholesale Internet Pricing proceeding.

Michael Geist released a paper looking at Usage Based Billing Around the World. The paper includes an estimate of the costs incurred by ILECs on a per gigabyte basis and has views on “what should come next” including a proposal for new guidelines for retail usage based billing: IBUMPS – Internet Billing Usage Management Practices.

If UBB is to remain part of the retail Internet access landscape, the transparency and public disclosures must improve. The CRTC should adopt similar requirements as those found with ITMPs to ensure that consumers are better informed about the benefits and limits of their capped services.

There is also a paper released by Bill St. Arnaud, called Myths and Fallacies about Usage Based Billing.

Hopefully, these papers will be filed as part of the CRTC’s proceeding (2011-77) that is reviewing usage based billing. In this way, the assertions can become part of the evidence examined and tested by the Commission. There are a number of phases remaining in the CRTC proceeding, but one has to wonder about the coincidence of two papers sponsored by the same corporation just happened to be released less than 48 hours after the deadline for submissions.

Netflix is registered as an interested party to the proceeding. I doubt that many of the other parties will object if Netflix files the submissions a few days late in order to ensure that these materials don’t miss the opportunity to be tested in the interrogatory phase of the proceeding.

I noticed that Australia is continuing to press forward with its government-led NBN project, pumping about AU$36B of government funding into a project that hopes to have fibre to the home for 90% of the population.

The NBN plan is said “to promote sustainable retail-level competition, and fair pricing of wholesale services for all Australians.”

What is meant by fair pricing? $36B works out to about $5000 per household in upfront spending. That upfront government cash adds about $50 per month to every Australian households’ tax burden. Korea’s national broadband network is also the result of massive government involvement.

When looking at international broadband pricing, should comparisons include these hidden costs?

Yesterday, the initial filings were due for the CRTC’s review of wholesale internet pricing (PN 2011-77 as amended).

Even before Bell had filed its comments, Open Media was quoted by the Post as endorsing the filing [its press release can be found here]. The Globe and Mail quoted Industry Minister Tony Clement as unimpressed. Bell waited until nearly 9:00pm before releasing its new Gateway Access Tariff for Fibre to the Node [Filing, Tariff Page, Economic Study]. Bell has asked for interim approval (see page 4 of the filing), which will allow independent ISPs to begin to offer services at the new speeds as of May 29, with the rates retroactively adjusted once the CRTC completes its deliberations.

For those who would like to actually read the filed comments prior to expressing an opinion, here is what I have seen:

• PIAC / Consumers Association
• Rogers
  • University of Calgary economics professor Jeffrey Church
• MTS Allstream
• Cable Carriers joint submission (Cogeco, Videotron, Rogers)
• CNOC
• Distributel

There may be others that will be available on the CRTC website in the coming days. Reply comments are due April 29, and parties may ask questions of each other on that date as well. Answers to these interrogatories will be due on May 24.

All of which leads to good discussion material for The 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit: May 31 – June 2, in Toronto.