Local Forbearance

The CRTC has now confirmed that its long awaited Local Forbearance decision will be issued on April 6 at 4pm. There will be a lock-up from 2-4 for those people who just can’t wait to get the word out onto the news wires.

What does it all mean? There are a number of questions being addressed in this proceeding. Most importantly, it is the first CRTC Decision to be released since the release of the report from the Telecom Policy Review panel. It will be interesting to see if any aspects of the reports recommendations find their way into next week’s Decision. Watch for rulings on ‘Winbacks’ and use of Competition Law terminology.

Watch this space next Thursday, April 6, for late breaking news and analysis. Film at 11.

Update:
You know, I find it interesting that Aliant filed its original application on April 7, 2004. You could call it more of a plea for mercy, asking for relief from the pain being inflicted by Eastlink. Is there something in the CRTC’s choice of a date, 2 years less a day, for the release of the Decision?

Bamm!

meshSometimes, I feel like Emeril cranking it up another notch.

We have just received word that ADM Michael Binder will be stepping to the sidelines at The Canadian Telecom Summit to make room for his boss, Deputy Minister of Industry Canada Suzanne Hurtubise, to moderate the panel looking at the future of telecommunications and next generation networks.

Bamm!

Taming the wild west

Tom Evslin adds another voice to those who are on a lonely quest to try to partially tame the anarchy of the internet. In his entry, he notes that:

If the Internet is a law-free zone:

  1. Governments can do whatever they want there including spying and blocking. It’s naïve and illogical to think that governments are governed by law in a free fire zone when no one else is.
  2. Monopolies can do whatever they want including blocking competing services.
  3. Malicious people are free to attack not only other sites but the structure of the Internet itself including its routers and domain name servers.
  4. Threats, libel, and fraud gain immunity from investigation and prosecution by being carried out on the Internet.
  5. The Internet becomes a river in which any conspirator can wade to avoid the bloodhounds of law enforcement.
  6. There are no laws PROTECTING privacy in a law-free zone.
  7. SPAM is as legitimate as any other activity.

For a couple years now, I have been campaigning on a similar platform, especially concerned about Evslin’s item 5.

We’ll be looking at this issue in a special session at The Canadian Telecom Summit in June. Speakers include D/Sgt Paul Gillespie, one of the world’s leading experts in law enforcement tactics to combat child exploitation. You can also check out an earlier posting about this subject.

It’s the money

There is a story in today’s Star that continues the discussion of Net Neutrality. Today’s entry cites Tim Berners-Lee, who is called “chief architect of the World Wide Web” and he is said to be ‘very concerned’ about talk from phone and cable companies about their desire to collect tolls from content suppliers.

A couple points come to mind. First off, Berners-Lee may have been the inventor of the Web, but to suggest that there is a ‘chief architect’ implies that there has been an orderly design to the Web and its evolution. I think that the power of the Web has been enhanced by its chaotic evolution. Innovation has been added without the need to work through an office of the Chief Architect.

Which brings me to the concern of charging tolls. My brother once told me that in his first litigation class in law school, the professor said that whenever people come into the office and say “it isn’t the money, its the principle of the thing” that a good lawyer will recognize that it really is about the money.

I just can’t get past the feeling that so many of the free access advocates are just plain cheap. They want someone else (like the government) to pay for their stuff. Whether it is stolen intellectual property like music or movies or software, or government funded fibre.

I wonder if these same people know that supermarkets collect fees for shelf space and companies pay money to have their products placed in movies and TV shows.

VoIP revenue is Broadband revenue

In what appears to be a contradiction to its previous policy, the CRTC now says that Voice over IP is a new broadband internet service, at least for the purpose of calculating the broadband subsidy. This seems to contradict its VoIP decision that said VoIP is just a new technology delivering plain old telephone service.

In a letter to ILECs [not available for on-line viewing] as part of the follow-up to the Deferral Account decision, the CRTC told ILECs that their calculation for broadband revenues should include: retail broadband Internet service revenues, wholesale broadband Internet service [Gateway Access Service/High Speed Access] revenues, broadband backbone service revenues (e.g. dark fibre), and other retail broadband service revenues, such as Wide Area Network, Voice over Internet Protocol, and Internet Protocol Television (specify).

If VoIP is really just a new way of delivering plain old voice service for regulatory purposes, why wouldn’t the revenue from VoIP be excluded from broadband revenues?

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