Michael Geist has been reminding us that, with other issues like net neutrality (among others) grabbing people’s interest, the scourge of spam is perhaps forgotten but hardly gone away.

My ISP uses two different filter systems to try to minimize the amount of spam I receive. Last week, the ISP successfully blocked 835 messages, perhaps costing me the opportunity to save a lot on prescriptions from Canada and leaving my wife without the benefit of me purchasing chemical performance enhancements. My PC filtered another couple hundred messages.

I am actually far more concerned about filters blocking legitimate mail – I had 10 messages blocked that should not have tripped the filters. Ten people who thought I was ignoring their urgent requests for information. To them I say – sorry. I promise, if I want to ignore you, I’ll do it to your face.

How do we address spam in legislation? Defining it is one problem. Effectively stopping it, instead of simply chasing the spammer off-shore, is another. As I wrote last week, we shouldn’t legislate etiquette. I think that a democracy gives you the right to be merely offensive and annoying – otherwise, my brother would say that I should have been put behind bars years ago.

Where would you draw the line?

I was just minding my own business, surfing around various blogs in a lonely search for voices of reason when I tripped across a blog hosted by Xanga.com: the self-proclaimed “Weblog Community”. The site came up with the following message:

Seriously! This was really posted.

Now, when I first saw this message, it didn’t have the correction to the original 4 pm target for restoration, nor the ‘P.S.’. And I don’t know if the 7 pm time is going to be met.

But, hello Xanga: This is no way to run a hosting service!

Your operations team has actually wasted a lot of effort in moving out of your old location. Hopefully, you no longer have a space problem. Any of your customers with half a brain have left and found a service provider that actually takes their clients’ needs into consideration.

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Update: As of 5:15pm, Xanga appears to be back in service. The Xanga.com home page has a note that appears to have been posted yesterday, warning folks that the service would be down until 2 pm.

I’m guessing that most of their customers are on the free service. And they are getting exactly what they are paying for in service quality. But I’m willing to bet that they support Net Neutrality!

I had hoped to take a longer break from the theme of Net Neutrality, but a piece on Om Malik’s blog by Daniel Berninger seems to be screaming for a reply. Berninger hails from Tier 1 Research; his credentials show a close association with Jeff Pulver’s Free World Dialup, and hence a piece that is sympathetic to the ‘Save the Internet‘ movement.

His legalistically styled piece attempts to suggest that, in the absence of conformance to network neutrality principles, telephone companies will lose their common carrier status and therefore should lose their access to low cost rights-of-way. Good try, Dan.

He defines network neutrality as

If that is the legal definition being proposed, then I think we have no problem. Telecom carriers on both sides of the border (and generally around the world) are used to non-discriminatory provisions in their Telecom Acts.

The problem, I think, is that most Net Neutrality advocates aren’t really interested in just non-discrimination. They are really looking for non-differentiation.

Non-discrimination means that every similarly situated user has an equal opportunity to purchase a given product with a given grade of service or quality.

Non-differentiation would mean that every bit of traffic has an equal opportunity to go through the network without any ability to differentiate or apply priorities. All bits would be treated the same.

Non-differentiation clauses can’t be found in any Acts. They make no sense.

I think that we want more than just vanilla flavoured internet. Some of us want extra-rich and creamy internet. Others want cheap, store-brand no-frills internet. I like soft-serve chocolate internet (in a cup, not a cone – it’s the low-carb thing). Non-discrimination means that everyone has a right to buy the same kind of ice cream that I can buy. But nowhere does it say that you get to buy extra-rich ice cream for the same price as no-frills. Nor does it say that my grocery store can’t get an incentive in order to offer premium ice cream for the same price.

I think that we want our electronic financial trading transactions to have higher priority than our movie and music downloads. If you (or banks or brokers) don’t want to pay a little more for that kind of service – no problem. But you are then choosing to take the risk associated with those bits getting slowed down by traffic jams. Why can’t we pay for access to the express lanes?¹

If my bank or broker wants to provide me a better quality guarantee for their website as part of their service, why is this evil? They should be able to buy the telecom services to support their objectives. Same for any other content provider.

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¹ Tim Wu’s metaphor of having express lanes reserved solely for GM cars is extreme. The better metaphor is a toll road versus a freeway – many cities have them. You can bet that not all the users are paying the tolls themselves – their employers want them to get to work or between jobs faster. That isn’t discrimination – anyone willing to pay the price can ride in those lanes, regardless of who pays. And if GM or an oil company wants to offer a subscription to the toll lanes as an incentive to buy their products … ?

The CRTC issued its Public Notice on the reconsideration of VoIP regulation this afternoon.

Interesting accelerated timetable in the PN, driven by the requirement to report back to Cabinet within 120 days (ie. around Labour Day). Comments are due on June 5 and reply comments are due June 15.

The Public Notice is especially interesting in revealing the text of the actual Order of the Governor in Council. The recitals in the Order reveal that Sending VoIP back to the CRTC was ordered in part out of a recognition of the recommendations of the TPR (no surprise), but also considering the recent Local Forbearance decision. Despite the fact that there has not yet been a Cabinet appeal, it looks like Cabinet is expecting it any day now:

Cabinet is going to be busy with telecom issues. The deadline for appealing the Deferral Account decision is coming up on Monday. We expect at least one party to file by then. Local forbearance has about 6 weeks more to go on its timer, but Bell has already announced its intent to appeal.

The Order indicates that the Governor in Council is contemplating what changes to implement in the wake of the TPR panel report.

June 15 is a great day to close off the CRTC’s public process. It just happens to be the day after The Canadian Telecom Summit closes. June 13 will see the regulatory department heads from all the phone companies square off. It will be a tag team event, cablecos versus telco incumbents with MTS Allstream as the spoiler!

That session immediately precedes the keynote address by Industry Minister Maxime Bernier, who is expected to talk about the implementation plans for the TPR. He’ll be followed by keynote addresses from TELUS CEO Darren Entwistle speaking at lunch on on Tuesday and Bell CEO Michael Sabia on Wednesday.

Videotron Chief Robert Depatie speaks on Wednesday afternoon and the final word belongs to CRTC Chair Charles Dalfen, who closes the conference.

Twenty years ago, I worked for a guy at AT&T Bell Labs who told us not burn ourselves out by working crazy R&D hours. He told us to take time out to go to the theatre, get involved with little league, various community groups, family things. In his view, it was good business. After all, he wanted employees who would still have energy in 5 years; he knew that all of our neighbours were potential AT&T customers. Doing good for employees and the community was doing good for AT&T. There was a time that the ‘telephone company’ was held in such esteem across the country. In the monopoly and early competitive days, there was always a lot of community involvement, from the employee and pensioners’ association, the Telephone Pioneers and corporate giving.

Tuesday evening, Darren Entwistle was in town as TELUS launched its Toronto Community Board. TELUS has set a goal for itself to become Canada’s premier corporate citizen. I think it is a symbol of TELUS’ commitment to be a permanent force across the country, not just in their home base: the western ILEC region. In addition to funding various community initiatives, TELUS plans to have a national community activity day – a day of volunteerism for its employees. Congratulations to those involved.

We hope that Rogers, Shaw and Bell will feel competitive pressures to match and ‘up the ante’. Such involvement by the industry will hopefully return a little lustre to our industry that has seen reputations tarnished by accounting problems, stock market losses and controversy over internet access issues.

Our communities will benefit and the goodwill will be returned many times over.

Joe Natale cited Margaret Mead in his introductory remarks: “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

At the cocktail reception at The Canadian Telecom Summit on Monday June 12, we will be featuring a silent auction to benefit the alliance of Big Brothers / Big Sisters and Boys & Girls Clubs of Canada. It’s got a high tech twist to it – bidding will done by SMS text messaging using a software application being developed just for this event.

TELUS’ launch on Tuesday evening was a good reminder for all of us. You do the right thing, because it’s the right thing to do.