It is fitting that Michael Geist’s column is published in The Toronto Star, which has a reputation as being the official news agency of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Yesterday’s column reflected the leftist bias that inspires many academics so thoroughly. It is a wonder that university graduates can become functional in the capitalist environment that greets them in the real world.

There are just too many critiques of Michael’s piece to address while keeping this posting manageable. I’ll touch on just a few.

Although he tries to find inspiration in the report of the TPR to support his populist campaign against a ‘two-tiered internet’, Michael continues to quote the text out of context – in exactly the same manner that he did last November. In the interest of space, I’ll advise you to simply look there. The TPR explicitly permits ISPs to “take into account any reasonable technical constraints and efficiency considerations related to providing such access,” no matter how much Professor Geist tries to ignore the plain text. If you repeat a half truth does it become whole?

He suggests that the FCC imposed net neutrality conditions on AT&T – when the reality was that these were AT&T;’s voluntary commitments in order to sway the minority Democrat commissioners. The FCC itself has consumer protection principles that are comparable in effect to what is set out in the TPR and are have been generally upheld by CRTC practice.

The article complains on one hand about “steady price increases” from DSL and cable providers, but on the other hand, net neutrality advocates don’t want these ISPs to develop alternate revenue sources in order to keep prices for internet access affordable. Indeed, most comments on his site argue that the carriers should just charge more to people who want faster downloads. Well, I’m confused. Which is it? Charge more or avoid price increases? Should the carriers lose money when they invest in your infrastructure?

The article charges that the Minister is “burying attempts to establish a national broadband infrastructure,” ignoring the fact that there are already numerous national broadband backbones owned, maintained and continually upgraded by a number of carriers operating in a competitive environment. The last thing we need is a government initiative competing against or replacing private sector corporations. It seems that we are seeing a call to nationalize the internet backbone – returning to central planning and control by government.

Life would be simpler that way – one benevolent crown corporation carrier with all of our best interests always in the forefront of their planning. Sorry to say that the era of PTTs has largely become a distant memory. I seem to recall that we found that those government monopoly phone companies ended up restraining innovation and charging way too much for lousy service.

Of course, the PTTs had decent wages and great pensions for employees. Those were the good ol’ days.

One of the commenters on my posting last week about Parliament’s INDU Committee asked

Why were the Conservatives opposed to the Committee conducting an in-depth study of the issue of deregulating telecommunications and reporting back to the House of Commons? Do they have something to hide?

I can’t speak on behalf of the Conservatives. But I can speak as a taxpayer. I think we already paid for that ‘in-depth study’ – it was called the Telecom Policy Review – and it was a non-partisan project, launched by a Liberal government and delivered to this minority Conservative government.

Maybe the Conservatives opposed the Committee expending time and energy studying something that we collectively paid experts to study. Having members of the industry summoned to Ottawa to testify on matters that have already been extensively reviewed.

I would find it comforting to see leadership from our elected officials (from all parties) – leadership that drives the INDU Committee to focus on studying the legislative changes needed to implement the study that they already have in hand.

Enough talking about telecom reform. Anybody else ready for some action?

In case my post from Thursday interested you in examining the more entertaining regulatory decisions, I have another set of three dissenting opinions (in a single order) to share with you for your reading pleasure.

In one of the final Orders of the year 2006, the CRTC authorized Northwestel to withdraw local service from a small town on Baffin Island, presumably because it was too costly. This despite the fact that the costs were underwritten by the contribution subsidy payments.

I am sorry I missed this story when it was fresh last December.

From this day onward, the concept of basic service as a given in Canada and the notion that established phone companies have an obligation to provide such service to Canadians may be gone forever. My reading of the message underlying the majority decision is that access to phone service is only a given if companies are confident it can be provided profitably. In my view, that is not good enough.

A regulatory colleague tipped me to this CRTC Order, in which Stuart Langford’s dissent can be summarized as:

The nearest hospital is 1200 km away and it’s dark all the time up there this time of year. Still, the majority figures there’s no obligation to serve. No wonder Canadians shake their heads over the value of regulation.