A discussion on broadband shouldn’t be constrained to a narrow perspective.

I noticed a reading list on another communications policy blog that supposedly represented a “wide range of commentary and articles”; a quick scan shows that the “wide range” is reminiscent of Henry Ford’s wide range of colours for the Model T.

Here is a first attempt at a broader range of views on broadband billing:

• Make the heaviest online users pay their fair share, by University of Calgary Haskayne Business School Dean Len Waverman
• The public is right to be cynical of Internet usage regulators, by editor of The Tyee David Beers
• It’s time for foreign competition in Canadian telecommunications, Globe and Mail 
• Why not a metered Internet?, by Iain Marlow of the Globe and Mail
• Internet usage debate, Part 1: The real myths, by Teksavvy’s Rocky Gaudrault
• Internet usage debate, Part 2: $8B to keep pace, By Bell Canada’s Mirko Bibic
• Counterpoint: Net users will pay a lot more, by ACI’s Michael Garbe
• Pay for usage, by Bell Canada’s Mirko Bibic
• The 25-gigabyte Internet myth, by National Post’s Terence Corcoran
• Billing reversal risks bad policy,  by National Post’s Terence Corcoran
• Usage-based billing. And cooing, Globe and Mail editorial
• Paying by the megabit, National Post editorial
• Fake competition, Michel Kelly-Gagnon & Martin Masse of the Montreal Economic Institute

I am happy to augment this list as readers write in – or send your additions through the comments to this post.

Thank you to my readers who suggested these pieces that I missed in the first listing:

• Second guessing the CRTC comes at a price, by former CRTC vice-chair Richard French
• Bits, bytes, bills and Bell, Rita Trichur of the Globe and Mail
• Seeing Red Over Metered Internet, by Jamie Sturgeon of Financial Post
• Hey Brother, Can You Spare a Gig, by Matt Hartley of Financial Post
• Paying so much for bandwidth, getting so little, Tim Wu in Globe and Mail
• New Digital Divide? Internet caps far higher in Western Canada, by Jamie Sturgeon of Financial Post
• Rocky’s myths, Letter to Financial Post by James Cripps
• UBB, wholesale or retail, is dead, by Greg O’Brien of Cartt.ca
• Incumbents fire back at UBB critics, by Dave Webb of itWorldCanada
• UBB fairest way to price Internet use, Bell says, Matt Hartley, Financial Post
• Telcoms tell MPs usage-based billing is needed, by Julian Beltrame of The Canadian Press
• Tolls on the Information Highway, Video of February 10, 2011 episode of TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paiken
• The Internet should be fair – not free – to everyone, Macleans Editorial

Over the past week, some pseudo-engineers have been sending me “fan-mail” saying that telco aggregated connections can’t ever be blocking because the ISPs pay for a certain peak rate bandwidth and should be able to use this however they want. These folks are forgetting a number of aspects of internet traffic, perhaps having been sheltered from having to actually operate a real internet access network.

Gather round. This is what we call a teaching moment.

The most important lesson is basic network engineering economics: services are kept affordable by sharing the same network facilities among mutiple customers. The level of sharing is determined by making usage assumptions in order to avoid congestion. To the extent things change from these assumptions, new engineering and network reconfiguration needs to take place. [Note: when you are sold a circuit capable of a specified data transfer rate, there are assumptions that you will not use that circuit around the clock at that speed.]

The wholesale price for aggregate ISP customers connections is kept low by combining the access network with the traffic of other internet access customers. Since the ISPs aren’t specifying the peak traffic requirements of each customer or each switching centre, it is quite possible for one customer to use a disproportionate share of the capacity, again driving a need for re-engineering of the internal network.

This brings us to the current debate, which has nothing to do with retail usage based pricing.

When the price of the wholesale aggregated internet service was developed, there was some kind of assumption made about the average load being generated per end user. This was used in the production of the tariff for Gateway Access Service (GAS) in the order of $20 per month, which covers the carriage of the end user traffic to the network interconnection point of the choosing of the ISP.

The size of the pipe between the telco and ISP varies with the amount of traffic, but this can increase in two ways: by adding more customers, or by each customer using their service more. The phone company gets fully compensated if the increase comes from more customers who have a traffic profile that corresponds to the engineering assumptions; the problem arises when the average traffic has different characteristics from the engineering assumptions.

This is why the CRTC needs to revisit its Usage Based Billing decision and set a threshold based on the loads presumed in the engineering for GAS, with the tariff incorporating appropriate adjustments for aggregate traffic loads that exceed these assumptions. 

I note that some ISPs had requested an ability to gather their traffic on a more localized basis and I wonder whether this would have have pre-empted the current wholesale disputes.

For the communications industry, it was a wild run up to yesterday’s game.

Between the uproar over the application of usage based billing to some wholesale internet accesses and the Federal Court ruling on Globalive, there was a completely different focus on the CRTC from that which usually dominates the week leading up to the Super Bowl.

As I mentioned last week, most years, the media run stories about why Canadians don’t have access to the multi-zillion dollar commercials that run south of the border. The CRTC hearings into Bell’s acquisition of CTV had trouble getting any attention. After the opening round of remarks for that proceeding, I didn’t get a chance to listen into the webcast.

After all of the media interviews last week on UBB [such as Newstalk radio, FP Podcast, Globe Online Chat], it would be nice if this week gets back to normal. 

Still, it shows the passion associated with communications policy and regulation in Canada. It may be the reason that our regulatory panel has been an annual highlight of The Canadian Telecom Summit. We should fnd a few issues to talk about this year.

There are just 3 weeks left to register at our discounted early bird rates. Join us for Canada’s leading industry event, May 31 to June 2.

On Wednesday, I took the unusual step of banishing comments from a reader after warning him that he was welcome to send his viewpoint, but that I would not tolerate personal attacks. I appreciate that I am not one to shy away from issues that attract passionate opinions. But, in my view, there is no reason to criticize the person when you are advocating your point of view. 

I wrote:

it must be comfortable for you hiding in anonymity taking ad hominem pot shots at folks – like my son – while not using your own identity. Take notice now: if you make it personal, I won’t give you the privilege of posting on my website. Fair deal?

I allowed his comment to post, with the warning as a reply.

His next attempt to post a comment attacked the people, not the ideas, so I wrote him an email entitled “Bye bye” and I have not approved his comments for posting here since then. Late in the day, he decided to try another comment and then out of desperation defamed me in a series of tweets and bulletin board postings, complaining that I am actively silencing dissent. 

I didn’t think I have that kind of power.

In my view, he is free to spew his venom – subject to usual Canadian legal restrictions – but not on this site. Anyone who looks at the comments from Wednesday’s post can see that I am happy to share diverse viewpoints.

We can debate the ideas for as long as you want, but if you want to attack me or anyone else, find another schoolyard for your bullying.

The hype on usage based billing demonstrates the ability to whip up a crowd to stir political action.

The independent ISPs have developed tremendous social media skills, cultivating a loyal following which begs the question: Where are the alternate voices?

The CRTC has a Twitter account that it opened in November of 2009. It has tweeted exactly twice (actually, just one message but delivered in both official languages). As of yesterday, the CRTC follows only the Privacy Commissioner, although it is followed by 225 people.

On the other hand, the Privacy Commissioner has been on Twitter since March 2009, follows 108 others, has almost 2,000 followers, has posted more than 750 updates and maintains a blog as well.

The FCC joined Twitter in August 2009, and has more than 380,000 followers and close to 1000 tweets.

Among the carriers, very few of the traditional players have leveraged social media other than to monitor their brand reputation or promote products. Yesterday, Rogers provided reassurance to its customers (on its RedBoard blog) that they were not impacted by the UBB decision.

Not enough people are engaged by the CRTC’s conventional regulatory processes and means of communications. Although we’re in the communications industry, it seems that help is needed to ensure that means of conversing evolve, leveraging the technology and applications that have supplanted conventional media for the emerging power generation.

Last November, in a post called Effective blogging, I pointed to an irreverant blog maintained by the Senior Cruise Director of Carnival Corporation. It is not only tolerated by Carnival, but it is also encouraged and assisted by their communications group. Be sure to check it out – unless you have a thin skin.

Will other companies or agencies have the courage to allow the degrees of freedom needed to attract an audience and engage with the public?