Is 50 cents too much to pay for a local phone call?

Last week, Industry Canada published details about the cabinet appeals of the CRTC’s price cap decision (Decision 2007-27), focusing on pay phone rates doubling to 50 cents.

PIAC‘s appeal has been supported by Louise Thibault, the independent MP for Rimouski, the National Anti-Poverty Organization and Union des consommateurs.

The appeal acknowledges the CRTC’s original rationale:

The Commission recognizes that pay telephone rates have not increased for most ILECs for almost 25 years. The Commission considers reasonable the position of the Companies that the costs of providing pay telephone services have increased since the last increase in rates in 1981

PIAC is concerned about the social aspects surrounding continued pay phone availability and affordability for low income Canadians and those who do not have subscriptions to wireline or wireless phones.

PIAC has asked cabinet to refer just the portion of the Decision dealing with pay telephone rates back to the CRTC for reconsideration.

Comments on the appeals need to be filed this month.

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PIAC, pay phones

Alec Saunders asks “How many nines, RIM” in respect of RIM’s network outage on Friday.

Email messages to my Blackberry were off the air for about 3 hours, and it took another 16 hours for the backlog to catch up: first in, last out apparently.

It helps raise the question of “What is a reasonable service to expect from our IP applications?” Alec asks “Should we have the same expectations for reliability from the BlackBerry service as phone service?”

Let me extend that question: should we have the same expectations for reliability for new voice applications as we did for traditional phone service? Didn’t early generation cell phone service help condition us for less than pin-drop crystal clear connections? [remember those ads?]

Admit it. Haven’t you ever hung up on someone and blamed it on the network? “Sorry, must have been a bad cell hand-off.”

Are we being demanding enough or expecting too much?

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RIM, Alec Saunders

I had some random thoughts running through my mind over the course of my drive back from Montreal last weekend. Let me tie together a few thoughts for you.

1. Alec Saunders and I had bantered last month over the issue of open access – facilitating the use of any device, any application over a network;
2. AT&T; launched a new parental control service for managing the use and cost of kids’ mobile devices;
3. Through the weekend, I wrote about my frustrations with a wireless carrier’s customer service IVR;
4. And, earlier in the week, I wrote about the availability of unlocked phones.

What link is there between these thoughts?

Perhaps it is the issue of controlling the cost of customer service.

How does a wireless carrier provide customer support for phones that aren’t part of their authorized list? When a customer buys an unlocked device on eBay and tries to activate a new application, where will they turn for help? I’m going to guess that many will call their carrier. How will the carrier support these customers?

ISPs have similar, but different challenges, supporting a wide range of IP enabled devices, but with fewer operating systems and user interfaces to support. On the other hand, look at the range of menu options within a single cellular handset manufacturer, let alone between suppliers. Developing technical support screens is part of the process in adding new phones.

Who will a customer call for help in transferring their address book, or uploading a picture?

Maybe it’s because my mind is still on vacation mode, but I had a hard time reading and deciphering the CRTC’s decisions last Friday. That is why it has taken a couple extra days to write this piece.

The Commission reviewed its ethernet orders that were released in January (see “CRTC driving wholesale access to NGN“). It reaffirmed parts, but reversed itself on some of the most contentious parts.

When the original ethernet access orders were released, I wrote:

There is an underlying subtext that needs to be explored at another time. The CRTC found that wholesale ethernet and ADSL are non-essential services, yet the Commission is imposing rates and terms that differ from those initially proposed by the ILECs. Contrast this to the Minister’s direction that requires the CRTC to determine the extent to which regulation of non-essential services should be phased out.

Among the issues considered in last week’s decision is the matter that there is a major Essential Services proceeding underway that could impact all of the competitor services that were under consideration in the January orders. The ILECs complained that the net effect was the possibility of subjecting certain services to three different regulatory regimes in an 18 month period – hardly consistent with the Policy Direction to ensure that regulation is minimal, efficient and proportionate.

The CRTC agreed, in part, that “there is substantial doubt as to the ongoing correctness of its determinations with respect to new services and new rates that are the subject of the review and vary applications.”

My colleagues and friends at Privacy Laws and Business in the UK are pointing to a recent release by Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office to help understand the limits on privacy expectations. The document is designed to help data protection practitioners decide whether data falls within the definition of personal data in circumstances where this is not obvious.

The information guide is especially timely, given last week’s release of a report on the April 16 Virginia Tech shooting rampage by student Seung-Hui Cho. According to news reports,

Virginia Tech officials missed numerous indications of Cho’s problems because they misinterpreted federal privacy laws as forbidding any exchange of a student’s mental health information.

Understanding bounds on personal privacy rights and expectations is critical for individuals and business alike.

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privacy