The Hill Times covers the growing lobbying effort in Canada around the net neutrality issue with news that Amazon.com has regularly visited Ottawa to discuss the issue, Rogers claims it doesn't block packets (it might have noted that it limits bandwidth for applications though) and Bell Canada implausibly claims that […]
Post Tagged with: "rogers"
The Canadian Net Neutrality Debate
My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) discusses the recent revelations that Industry Canada is highly skeptical about the need for net neutrality legislation. I argue that the need to prevent a two-tier Internet in Canada has never been greater. The Canadian competitive landscape is dominated by a handful of companies, with the top five providers controlling 84 percent of Canadian Internet connections. Indeed, Canadian consumers who have access to broadband networks (many communities are still without access) invariably face steady price increases and service limitations from the indistinguishable choice between cable and DSL.
Leveraging their dominant positions, Canadian telecommunications companies have been embroiled in a growing number of incidents involving content or application discrimination. Over the past two years, Telus blocked access to hundreds of websites during a dispute with its labour union, Shaw attempted to levy surcharges for Internet telephony services, Rogers quietly limited bandwidth for legitimate peer-to-peer software applications, and Videotron mused publicly about establishing a new Internet transmission tariff that would require content creators to pay millions for the privilege of transmitting their content.
The government documents uncovered last week confirm that Industry Minister Maxime Bernier is aware of the situation.
Rogers Listed as Top 10 Phish Host
New data from the PhishTank, a leading source on phishing information, reports that last month Rogers Cable ranked as the number nine host worldwide for phishing sites, with 419 hosted phishing sites. While that number is far below the South Korean leader, the inclusion of any Canadian ISP on this […]
Consequences of Uncompetitiveness
While the stock markets were focused yesterday on comments to a conference from Google’s CFO, Rogers VP Finance was telling another investor conference about Rogers’ take on the broadband marketplace. John Gossling said: "The good news, I think, on both is that there is actually some pricing power. Unlike the […]
CCTA To Shut Down
The Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association, Canada's leading cable association, announced today that it plans to shut down after 50 years of operations. The CCTA had been hit by several major defections in recent years (Shaw and Videotron being the most prominent) as the key industry players seemingly agreed on less […]