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.

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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?

As I mentioned yesterday afternoon, it is unlikely that we will see the elimination of usage sensitive pricing for the aggregated wholesale services that many internet services providers use to reach their customers. Usage is an efficient and fair cost allocation system for shared resources, as suggested in the National Post.

However, the currently mandated approach of applying charges on a per-user basis may need to give way to some form of aggregation in order to provide ISPs with sufficient flexibility to offer consumer increased choice among price plans.

A number of times, I have referred to the all-you-can-eat buffet metaphor. The local restaurant tolerates the football team because there are enough other customers that don’t eat quite as much. The challenge is that the current user-based pricing mechanism charges excess fees to the heavy eaters, even if there are lighter users who don’t consume their maximum.

So under the current regime, we could have a situation where an ISP has two customers, one who uses 30 GB in a month and another who uses 5 GB. Under the current plan, the ISP will pay excess usage for the customer who exceeded the 25 GB threshold. Another ISP may have two customers who each use 20 GB, putting a total load of 40 GB on the wholesale access network, but there are no excess usage charges. If UBB is supposed to help manage traffic loads, it is difficult to reconcile this anomaly.

This is where we could see a directive from the government that allows a resolution to the problem, but continues to preserve the economic efficiency of usage based cost allocation. My long time colleague, lawyer and friend, Ed Antecol, who heads up regulatory affairs at Globalive, believes the key to resolving this could be found in the third paragraph of the dissent to Decision 2010-255 by Commissioner Molnar.

I would note that I am not convinced that the Bell companies’ proposal to apply UBB charges based upon end-customer usage is the most effective Internet traffic management practice (ITMP) approach. Nor am I persuaded at this time that an aggregated usage model, if properly structured, would nullify the potential effectiveness of UBB as a means of managing network usage. Certainly, an aggregated usage model would have provided ISPs that subscribe to the Bell companies’ GAS (GAS ISPs) with greater flexibility to manage end-user pricing/service solutions.

Usage based billing across an ISP’s entire base of customers makes sense. The non-facilities based ISPs will be able to offer flexible service plans, including unlimited service, by balancing their customer base with innovative pricing models and services.

Along these lines, an aggregated model will help drive the alternate ISPs to possibly develop innovative solutions to attract people who are not yet internet users, because such users may start with lighter loads to help balance the overall traffic levels. This will contribute to increasing broadband adoption rates, and dovetails nicely with my drive to increase digital connectivity among lower income earners.

An aggregated usage regime enables the smaller ISPs to continue to be a source of competition, driving the entire industry to provide creative products and improved service, while preserving the incentives for continued capital investments by all industry participants. 

It is a solution worth careful examination by the Industry Minister.

Of the statements issued by three major Canadian political parties on the subject of usage based billing, I thought the Liberal’s is the least credible and most opportunistic.

The NDP critic, Charlie Angus, has been unwavering in his position that the internet needs to be regulated with intervention on the technology, network management and pricing. So his statement on UBB follows along that consistent theme.

The Industry Minister, Tony Clement, cautiously couched his language in his statement to say that it will study the issue carefully to ensure “that competition, innovation and consumers were all fairly considered.”

In their statement, the Liberals took what I believe was an unfair swipe at the people at the CRTC. Other than pandering, what was the value of the line “CRTC has come to mean ‘Consumers Rarely Taken into Consideration.’” I think it was a slur targeting public servants who, in my experience, have never acted in a manner that warrants such a cheap shot.

Where does the issue go from here? The history of the issue ties the hands of the government in how it might approach a solution to the public outcry.

The reality is that there are limited options for selling shared network services other than usage based pricing. Will the Minister send last week’s decision back to the CRTC to reconsider the pricing level? For example, the government could indicate that it wants the service to be priced on the basis of cost plus rather than as a discount off retail.

That could change the level of the caps and costing of exceeding those levels, increasing the pricing flexibility for ISPs that rely on wholesale aggregated services. But banishing usage based wholesale pricing is not a likely outcome.

I’ll have a possible way out for the government in tomorrow’s blog post.