The Financial Post Tech Desk has posted its weekly podcast, which features an interview with me on the return of the usage based billing debate.
Post Tagged with: "usage based billing"
Usage Based Billing Panelists Turn To Op-Ed Pages
Two panelists at the CRTC’s usage based billing hearing have published op-eds on the regulatory issues. Steve Anderson of Open Media writes Canadians have spoken against a metered Internet in the Ottawa Citizen, while TekSavvy CEO Marc Gaudrault is the author of The telecom-policy quadruple play in the Financial Post.
Why Net Neutrality and Usage Based Billing Are Two Sides of the Same Coin
The UBB hearing comes immediately on the heels of my report last week on two years of failed enforcement of the net neutrality guidelines, known as Internet Traffic Management practices. My report has received wide media coverage (Montreal Gazette, CBC, Wire Report, GeekTown) as well as responses from both the NDP and Liberal parties. While net neutrality and UBB are ostensibly separate issues, it is important to recognize the clear linkage between them. As the title of this post suggest, they are two sides of the same coin.
The numerous violations of net neutrality (and make no mistake, over one complaint per month when the burden is exclusively on the shoulders of individual Canadians is significant) and the near-universal use of UBB are both a function of the lack of competition within the Canadian market and the inability (or unwillingness) of the CRTC to play a more proactive regulatory function in the absence of robust competition. For the dominant ISPs, they jointly provide the means to erect barriers to competitive services by rendering such services either unusable (throttling speeds) or more costly (data caps).
Shaw Shakes Up Broadband Market With Bigger Data Caps
Shaw has announced new broadband plans that offer far more data, faster speeds, and better pricing than comparable plans at competitors such as Rogers, Bell, and Telus. Shaw says the plans will be rolled out over the coming months and offer far bigger caps (including some unlimited plans). While the […]
Shaw Planning to Implement UBB This Summer
Shaw executives told an analyst call last week that the company plans to move forward with usage based billing plans as early as this summer.