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The CanadianISP Stance on Network Neutrality

Competition

Since August of 2002, CanadianISP has taken pride in taking a neutral stance toward all ISPs, big and small, in order to promote a truly level playing field. Our goal has been to provide consumers the information and knowledge in their choices of Internet Service Providers - indeed we are often a stepping stone to awareness of consumers that they have a choice in providers.

Big or small, many ISPs serve different needs and comfort levels of consumers. It has never been up to us to dictate to you, the consumer who you should choose, but merely that you do indeed have a choice.

In the past two years, however, our industry has been facing a giant, dirty snowball effect of consolidation, stagnation, reduction in choice and lowering of speeds and quality of service. In a healthy, competitive environment, this simply is not possible: When one element of an industry begins failing, others step in with improved services and/or prices to compete to provide better service and make money.

In Canada, however, specifically in Ontario and Quebec, this isn't the case: Nearly all wire line ISPs must go through one company in order to provide service and "compete". Who is this one choke point in our industry ?

Bell Canada

Monopoly

When Bell was the sole provider of telephony services in Canada, the government-ensured monopoly was a good thing: It guaranteed, by legislation if necessary, certain basic services to most, if not all, citizens of Canada. It kept oversight on Bell Canada to ensure that prices were kept fair and affordable and their practises were more or less ethical.

No one but a neanderthal would argue that Internet access is an essential part of modern society. In wire line (meaning your computer is connected with a physical wire to the outside world, to your telephone or cable company) Internet provision, there must be a connection from your house, to the telephone company, to your ISP and then to the outside world. The key concept is known as the "last mile" - that is, the actual wire that connects your house to the telco and the rest of the world. For the vast majority of Ontario and Quebec, there is only one company that provides that service, which means all ISPs who wish to compete must pay for that access and that company is Bell Canada. It is utterly ridiculous to suggest that this last mile may be re-created by competing companies. Can you imagine five telephone poles in front of every house ? Can you imagine your streets being ripped up twice a year every time a new ISP starts up ? Can you imagine the costs this would require ?

Over the last two years, Bell Canada has been continually restricting access and service while raising costs for competing ISPs, while they compete themselves with their retail arm, Bell Sympatico. Bell has also announced downloadable movies and other digital content which, if their competitors are slower, will naturally make their own retail network more attractive to consumers.

Worst of all, in the utmost of anti-Canadian arrogance, Bell Canada has announced that it has "higher speed" capability, but refuses to comply with CRTC orders to make those speeds available to other ISPs.
(decision 2008-117 and order 2009-111 forcing Bell to comply).

Canada Falling Behind

Fellow Canadians, Canada, a short six years ago, used to be on the very forefront of high speed Internet access and penetration. We used to be an excellent destination for investment dollars because our workers had access to some of the highest speeds in the world available to residential and business consumers. So what happened to that ?

Right now, if you live in an urban, high-density area, you can get up to 16 megabits per second from your telco and perhaps 20-30 from your cableco. It's not cheap - not by a long shot, but it's there if you live in a very small number of areas in certain cities in Canada.
However, in many countries in Europe and Asia, a residential consumer can get 50 to 100 megabits per second for the equivalent of $30 to $50 per month.

This isn't super secret, cutting edge or just-off-the-lab-bench technology: Other countries have had this access and speed for over a year or more. Bell Canada and certain cable companies, however, keep your speeds artificially slow, especially while they get the CRTC to allow them by law to snuff out competition in order to benefit themselves financially and increase their market share.

Can you imagine if there was only Tim Hortons for coffee shops ? Or only McDonalds for fast food ? Or only Midas Muffler for car repairs ? All three of these examples are fine companies with excellent products and services, but we can choose to patronize them or we can choose to patronize their competitors. Equally as importantly, these competing businesses can choose to offer greater services, more products, lower prices and so on.

ISPs in Canada, especially in Ontario and Quebec, our most populous and profitable provinces do not have that choice.

False Arguments

Many of the arguments you are hearing from Bell Canada regarding the "necessity" of their actions are completely false, designed to mislead the less-technically inclined members of the CRTC in order to mislead them into allowing this reduction in competition. I would like you to take a look at the following and think about these points:

1. Bell Canada needs to throttle everyone in Ontario and Quebec because 5% of the users are ruining it for everyone.
   Think about this for a moment: The ISPs themselves have, before any of this throttling nonsense, upper limits to the bandwidth they can provide. In addition to raising their own costs if 5% of their own customers use 80% of their bandwidth, it also degrades the network performance for their own customers. The ISPs themselves were doing extremely well in controlling their own customers usages, dealing with abusive network behaviours and ensuring their own network management.
2. We need to control illegal activity
   Last time I checked, we have various law enforcement agencies and various levels of the judiciary to ensure that the laws of Canada are enforced. A company may be asked to cooperate with law enforcement on various issues (Something we at CanadianISP ourselves have done many times), but ISPs and telephone companies are not law enforcement agencies.
3. We are implementing caps to control network usage of everyone in Ontario and Quebec... However, we get to keep our own unlimited usage customers, which we will not allow competing ISPs to do.
   As stated above, ISPs have upper limits to the bandwidth they may use and re-sell. For Bell Canada to arbitrarily decide to modify the business model of all ISPs in Ontario and Quebec is the most blatant abuse of monopoly powers seen in years in this country. Can you imagine if Enbridge Gas told you you could only use 100 cubic meters of gas and after which your costs will rise astronomically ? How about if Ontario Hydro told you your limit was 100 kilowatt hours and after that, your rates would skyrocket ? Worse yet, Bell is doing this to the wholesalers themselves. Can you imagine, as a comparison, if Loblaws purchased 10,000 ears of corn from a farmer, but the farmer unilaterally told Loblaws that each consumer may only purchase two ears at 40 cents each - after that, an ear of corn was $1.50 ? You know what Loblaws' answer would be: "We're going to use a different supplier. Good luck with your corn stockpiles". Can you imagine if you drove up to a Petro Canada gas station and filled your tank at $0.93 a litre, but after 10 litres, the price went to $3.00 per litre ? You'd have an option, though: You'd simply go to Esso or Irvings or any number of other gas retailers and Petro Canada would wither on the vine within a week.
   Our ISPs do not have that choice. Bell has stated to them, quite clearly: "We have a business model for ourselves and a business model for all of you. We will offer faster and cheaper products to consumers and we will only resell to you slower and more expensive products. If you don't like it, you can go out of business (and we'll get your customers, too".

Lack of oversight

So the question begs to be asked - Who is preventing this blatant abuse of Canadian business and society ? It certainly isn't the CRTC, who is consistently ruling that Bell Canada and certain cable companies may take over more and more of the market at higher prices, lower speeds and lower qualities. Frankly, I do not believe that most of those sitting on the CRTC have the technical (and certainly not the ethical) competence to do the job of protecting an promoting Canadian telecommunications: Under their watch int the past several years, Canada has slipped in the telecommunications industry and certainly in the Internet provisioning industry.
What about our government ? We have seen zero action from the provincial or federal government in Ontario OR Quebec toward enhancing this industry. So when is someone with authority going to wake up before Canada becomes a high-tech wasteland ?

It should be pointed out that we, CanadianISP, certainly aren't left-leaning, tree-hugging, communist/socialist idealists. We believe very strongly in the value of the free market, capitalism and consumer choice. However in any - ANY industry where there is a monopoly or near-monopoly, it is the civic responsibility of those in power to ensure that said monopoly is not abused. We have seen Telcos and Cablecos for years either ignore or only sporadically obey decisions on ensuring fairness in our industry. We have seen the CRTC consistently rule against fair market practises and rule in favour of a government-guaranteed monopoly for years.

Time for change

Ask yourself this: What has your MP or MPP done to ensure fairness in this market ? I know mine hasn't done anything, but I'll keep bringing it up with her, especially since we'll be seeing another election sometime in the next year.

Copyright © 2002 - 2010 Marc Bissonnette / Internalysis

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