UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/932571--ottawa-to-reverse-crtc-decision-on-internet-billing?bn=1

by ashchristopher • 15 years ago

191 82 15 years ago

thestar.com

zachallaun• 15 years ago

Thank God.

Seriously, this restores some of my faith in bureaucrats.

[edit] Interesting information from replies. I'll not be so quick to restore faith in the future.

charlief• 15 years ago

The Liberals may be forcing an election soon, and after tens of thousands of complaint emails, the decision was an easy way to gain a couple percentage points in the polls. This was a no-brainer for the incumbent Conservatives, but their swiftness in resolving the issue was really impressive.

redthrowaway5• 15 years ago

They weren't particularly swift. Every other party had come out strongly against UBB while the conservatives would only say they would be "paying close attention" to the ruling. This was simply such a wildly unpopular decision that it would have been political suicide to support it, and once every other party had come out against it the Conservatives couldn't be the only ones not to do so. The Conservatives are well-known for being anti-regulation and pro-big business, which aren't very popular sentiments in most of Canada. They couldn't afford to wear this albatross around their neck.

9oliYQjP• 15 years ago

The bureaucrats (CRTC) were the ones who tried to force this on the population. Elected officials decided to reverse the decision. The Conservatives first said they would send the decision back for "reconsideration" and then Harper chimed in with a more definitive reversal stance. The Liberals came out earlier saying they were against UBB. The New Democrats have always been fairly progressive about the web and are also against UBB. Even the separatist Bloc Quebecois and Green Party were both voicing concern with the decision. There was no major political party in favour of the decision.

We get into these kinds of messes because the CRTC is a bunch of unelected bureaucrats playing musical chairs in and out of executive positions at Rogers, Bell, Telus, etc.. It is most perplexing because if you've dealt with other bureaucrats in Canada, most of them at least care about their jobs and try to look out for the public good. We can joke at their expense about how they have all these perks and what not. But most do uphold the laws and regulations they're sworn to. And since they tend to outlast elected governments, these are the people that actually keep programs that we depend on, like health care, running. But the CRTC? It's the lone hold out of the bunch. I pretty much have nothing good to say about that organization. I would not be sad in the least if they were dissolved.

cal5k2• 15 years ago

I think it's safe to say that, with two major reversals in a year, the CRTC has lost any credibility it may have had (although it did not have much to lose).

My vote would be for dissolution - maybe then they can create a regulator that actually employs people who understand what they're regulating.

jefe78• 15 years ago

I wouldn't get too far ahead of myself. I'm a former employee of the CRTC. We had one guy who was ~60 years old making decisions on what the definition of Broadband was, having no prior experience using said service. He was happy with his dialup back home...

As far as he was concerned, the Bell/Telus/Rogers Mobile internet devices were MORE than adequately priced and provisioned for in the broadband category.

Edit: My point is, anticipate more decisions like this.

Caligula• 15 years ago

This is wonderful news. I was planning to attend my first 'rally' on saturday to protest UBB. I was shocked at how even non techies cared so much about this issue.

I hope the monopolies(rogers&bell) don't try less subtle ways to achieve their goals.

ashchristopher2• 15 years ago

I hope it leads to change in the future. We still have the fundamental flaw that third party ISP's need to piggy back on the big 3.

cal5k2• 15 years ago

Non-techies cared, in this case, because it was pretty easy to see how this would affect you personally - you would have to pay more. Period.

If you asked the average person who is opposed to UBB (read: practically everyone), very few could actually present a nuanced argument as to why it's bad for a number of reasons. Instead, they can simply equate UBB to paying more, which it turns out is good enough for collective action.

So democracy wins, but only because this can be framed as a pretty black-and-white issue in the eyes of most Canadians.

yuhong• 15 years ago

To be more precise, it would actually be paying more if you are on an indie ISP, by reducing competition.

jeffreyrusso• 15 years ago

In some ways, I'm envious of Canada's swift reversal of this horrible idea. In the US, we wouldn't have the populist outcry to force action, and even if we did, it would be met with only a token change to the legislation that would succeed at shutting most people up.

jbrennan• 15 years ago

Yes we CAN.

bentlegen• 15 years ago

It strikes me that a somewhat-comparable public outcry occurred late last year concerning enhanced TSA patdowns, but, we all know how that turned out.

reedF211• 15 years ago

No need to be envious, threat of an election is a powerful motivator. Liberals are itching to bring the government down and have a new election, there are rumors that the opposition is gonna bring the government down in late-march/early April. Conservatives don't want to be on the wrong side of the public opinion on a populist issue like this going into a potential election. This is pure politics at work. I hate to be cynical but if an election did not look imminent I doubt the government would have acted so quickly.

gamble3• 15 years ago

The second half of this article reads like it was written by Bell or Rogers.

The problem with UBB is not caps, per se, but the fact that the caps were absurdly small and overage fees grossly exceeded the cost of bandwidth. Not to mention that they were introduced at the same time as Netflix launched in Canada, and the providers' own TV-over-IP services were exempt.

I dumped my $120/mo Bell Expressvu subscription last month in favor of Netflix and AppleTV. Why should I pay over a thousand dollars a year when I don't watch 98% of what it provides? UBB is just Bell saying 'screw you, we'll get that pound of flesh one way or another.'

AgentConundrum6• 15 years ago

The second half of this article reads like it was written by Bell or Rogers.

Indeed. There were a few lines which particularly stood out to me as having been written by someone who doesn't really get the situation:

> To encourage competition, major telecom operators that have spent heavily on infrastructure are required to lease bandwidth on their networks to small providers.

I get that the system is maintained by these large companies, and I'm sure they have spent a lot on the infrastructure, but (and correct me if I'm wrong) I believe the system was built largely with taxpayer dollars, and it continues to be heavily subsidized by same.

> Although critics say the CRTC ruling will lead to lower download limits and higher rates, major Internet service providers say usage-based billing based is fair because it means heavy users pay more than those who just surf the web and use email.

There are two problems with this. First, internet isn't like electricity. Electricity must be generated at a cost, and those who consume more cost the generating company more (perhaps not directly, since unused electricity is simply lost, but at least indirectly by requiring higher generation to accommodate peak usage). With the internet, however, the lines are already laid and it's merely a matter of sending the information down the wire. There is almost no additional cost associated with higher usage (see next point).

Second, the 'incremental cost" of bandwidth appears, from what I've read recently, to be somewhere around a penny per gigabyte, if any exists at all. Let's give the companies the benefit of the doubt and say that it's actually 2.5 cents per GB. Now let's give them a 100% markup to be nice. So now we're calling a "reasonable markup" on this service to have a price of 5 cents per GB. Bell wanted $2 per GB for folks who go over their limit. They wanted 40 times what I just gave as a reasonable number. Even if you want to use the most conservative estimate I found, which was the CEO of TekSavvy who said maybe it could get as high as 30 cents per GB, then Bell would still be asking us to pay 666% (<obvious joke here>) of the actual cost. That's one hell of a markup.

Also, and again using the 30c/GB estimate, Bell's offer in Ontario of a 25GB limit would equate to a $7.50 cost? Anyone want to take a guess at how much the service actually is actually priced at? I'll give you a hint: it's not $7.50.

Sorry for the rant, but I've been worried about this decision and I have a lot of pent up anger about it. It's nice that the government has actually stepped up to support the small, reasonable ISPs and the consumer.

rfugger3• 15 years ago

I agree that the caps were low and the overage rates seemed high, but it's not actually about the incremental cost of delivering the next gigabyte, it's about the cost of building an infrastructure that can handle hundreds of thousands of people using Netflix all at once at peak capacity. That's an entirely different calculation.

Also, at Bell you can buy 40GB extra for $5 if you pay in advance, which equals $0.125/GB.

http://www.bell.ca/shopping/popups/personal/internet/usage_e...

apenwarr• 15 years ago

A random nitpick that you might find interesting: in fact unused electricity is not "simply lost." Where would it go? Because of the law of conservation of energy, it would have to go somewhere, and we're talking about what might be a lot of energy.

Electrical systems actually must generate exactly the required amount of electricity at all times. One particularly interesting tidbit I learned in one of my engineering classes: hydro dams are like giant capacitors. If you can't "push" more energy into the power grid, then you also can't push more water through the turbines; it gets harder to turn the turbines due to electromagnetism. And so the dam starts to fill up, more or less automatically, because of the laws of physics.

noibl2• 15 years ago

Very succinct analysis, thank you. Living in Australia, which has an entrenched monopoly cable co. and a steadily consolidating comms market, I find this whole story very relevant. Let this be a warning to anyone who thinks integrated media distribution and network infrastructure companies can self-regulate.

Cyndre• 15 years ago

I definatly agree, wrote an article about it already - http://adamdomoney.posterous.com/bandwidth-problem-metered-g...

To sum it up - Extra bandwidth does cost money, but $2 a gig is outlandish. If the crtc is to be involved, it should be involved in regulating the price - maybe a $20 access fee and $.25 per gig.

ergo986• 15 years ago

Not to mention that they were introduced at the same time as Netflix launched in Canada, and the providers' own TV-over-IP services were exempt.

Caps were in place on the vast majority of Canadian connections (meaning direct customers of Bell, Telus, Rogers, Cogeco, etc) long before Netflix came to Canada. The UBB decision impacted a very small number of customers on services like TekSavvy.

Not saying it's right, but just want some context in there.

Further, I hope you can appreciate how a provider's own internet services don't carry the same demands and costs as an outside source. Though perhaps they should be forced to allow Netflix to colocate a distribution server in each of their distribution points to deal with that.

nuclear_eclipse• 15 years ago

If I recall, Netflix already colocates their servers with ISPs in advantageous nodes all over the US, and we still have that count against our bandwidth usage while the providers services are still granted free passage...

gamble3• 15 years ago

The UBB decision is separate, but the major providers have coincidentally decided to start enforcing the caps simultaneously. The two are linked since they can now charge whatever they want for bandwidth without worrying about competition.

DanLar75• 15 years ago

Well if that isn't a ray of sunshine in a turd-sea of announcements regarding the state of the Internet.

warrenwilkinson• 15 years ago

I don't understand what happened. Why was the government able to set internet rates at all? Is there a monopoly here or not? Why weren't we (I'm Canadian) paying per usage before -- was it a law or did a flat rate grow from convienience?

latch• 15 years ago

From what I know, the CRTC didn't set any rates - they approved a request to adjust rates/use a new model. They are a regulatory body which oversee a highly regulated industry.

The industry is regulated, I would guess, because (a) it has been (and might still be) heavily subsidized, (b) it's an essential service and maybe even because (c) there's an extremely high cost of entry for a new player, thus little competition.

edit I'm not suggesting they were doing what they are supposed to do, which I would describe as balancing what's right for consumers and what's right for the industry (not always the same thing). And I'm certainly not saying that, in this case, they made the right decision. I'm merely trying to describe the process, from my limited knowledge, with respect to the parent's question.

adambard• 15 years ago

The big providers in Canada own the "last-mile" network infrastructure connecting residences and businesses with the internet backbone.

The decision being overturned is the one that allowed the big providers, who were leasing the last mile to independent ISPs (because the CRTC set regulations compelling them to do so), charge said independent providers by the gigabyte at the same rate as charged to customers. The regulation was later amended to give the independent providers a 15% mandatory discount - still a whopping markup of well over a thousand percent.

The big providers are still allowed to charge more or less whatever they want to customers, and will continue to do so.

FreeKill2• 15 years ago

Yeah, the main issue here is that a few big telcos and cable providers own the majority of the infrastructure for broadband in Canada. As a result, it was mandated that they had to have "wholesale" rates available to any smaller competitors who wanted to utilize their networks (since many of the networks were paid for with tax payer dollars anyway).

The big telcos wanted the ability to enforce the same rules they put on their own clients onto the wholesalers, which meant restrictive caps and lower speed packages. That would have effectively pinched off what little competition there was already...

pyre2• 15 years ago

You can reference the diagram in my post here (and the more detailed one in the response to my post): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158888

This was mostly about Bell's ability to bring UBB to bear on the 3rd party ISPs that are leasing their lines (and thereby forcing all of those ISPs' customers onto a usage-based-billing model). Thought if you read that full thread you'll see that there's was a bit of debate over exactly what part of the infrastructure most of the 3rd party ISPs are leasing from Bell.

I'm of the mind that so long as the ISPs aren't going over Bell's peering connections to the wider internet (meaning that they have their own), then Bell shouldn't be able to force usage-based billing onto those ISPs. If any of those ISPs want to use Bell's peering connections to the internet.... then I don't know.

Of note is that Bell is the only one allowed to lay new last-mile phone lines. So if a 3rd party ISP wants to hook-up customers with their DSL, they have to go over Bell's last-mile lines (to the DSLAM at least).

rfugger3• 15 years ago

Right, so this decision changes nothing for Bell's own customers, who will still face UBB, unless competition from 3rd party ISPs forces Bell to change its billing structure.

ergo986• 15 years ago

Your diagram there was unfortunately wrong. Swannie's variation was actually correct.

The issue here is not about the last mile. I'll say it until I'm downvoted to oblivion, but people keep restating this incorrect statement.

jedsmith• 15 years ago

At the risk of being pedantic (and maybe too American), isn't this a promise from politicians that it will be overturned? The title might be masking that a little bit...

(The important words in my question being "promise" and "politicians," for hopefully self-evident reasons)

FreeKill2• 15 years ago

Yeah true, but action is set to happen in parliament tomorrow, so if they are just lying it will be evident very soon.

3pt14159• 15 years ago

In Canada you would never come out and say that a highly disliked legislation piece is going to be overturned and then not overturn it. You would be incinerated at election time.

danudey• 15 years ago

If it were a big enough issue you'd just get recalled by your constituents and then you've got to justify it to try to get re-elected.

DannoHung• 15 years ago

I wish there was UBB that was remotely based on the transfer cost as opposed to some number that a C-Suite jackass picked out to make their profits SOOOOAAAAAAAR.

crjvice• 15 years ago

Sometimes you have to ask yourself who are those people in charge? How did they get the job?

brk2• 15 years ago

Depending on which people-in-charge you're referring to, generally by false-promises, cooperative back-scratching, and a proven ability to squeeze dollars from sand.

It really shouldn't be so surprising, all things considered.

MikeCapone• 15 years ago

I'm very happy, and I hope that a lesson has been learned and that people will not only be more vigilant about caps, but also realize that Canada is far behind when it comes to broadband (speed, prices, competition, etc).

tjmc• 15 years ago

Woohoo - Australia's back on top!

veb• 15 years ago

You mean New Zealand, right?

iwwr• 15 years ago

New Zealand is rather isolated geographically, it's expensive to build infrastructure on the periphery of the network. This is true for the South Pacific islands in general.

This is a snapshot of the current undersea infrastructure in the Australia-New Zealand area: http://i.imgur.com/K1t4y.png

jay_kyburz• 15 years ago

Switch to TPG unlimited.

memetichazard• 15 years ago

I'm annoyed that I didn't even know about UBB until earlier today, when I stumbled across Reddit Montreal and saw something about the organization of a protest.

Then again I'm getting all my news from here and Slashdot these days - haven't watched any TV in ages.

My ISP already posted up new rates conforming to UBB - if it does get overturned, I hope they'll return to the old rates: $29 a month for unlimited bandwidth (soft capped at 100GB). I'm due for renewal at the end of this month, so there's not much time to figure out if I need to be switching to TekSavvy.

Somewhat offtopic - I never visited Reddit except when it was linked via posts on Hacker News, and I'd always heard complaints that HN was becoming Reddit, but finding out today that they have forums for my city and other interesting things like a fitness subforum - why did I never go there earlier?

redthrowaway5• 15 years ago

HN is fairly anti-reddit because a lot of the people on here were early reddit adopters who left when it ceased to be programming and tech-centric, and when the site got big enough that the quality of the average comment dropped. That said, there are some great subreddits on there, you just have to cut out most of the main ones. I dropped r/pics, r/atheism, r/worldnews, r/gaming, and r/reddit.com. I added r/humor, r/netsec, r/python, r/java, r/math, r/depthub, r/truereddit, and a few others. It's a much improved experience, now.

cryptoz• 15 years ago

r/coding is an excellent place to hang out too :)

dhughes• 15 years ago

> HN is fairly anti-reddit

I don't get that impression here at all, quite often you'll see Reddit articles on HN linked back to Reddit. I agree HN is more industry focused and professional and Reddit a lot more laid back but still can be professional at times.

HN and Reddit are similar but also quite different, I go to both and sometimes even digg (I know!) and whatever else I can find, I don't get this mentality that you're only allowed get to choose one social news website to view.

jasonlotito• 15 years ago

Yeah, the sub-reddits are what make Reddit great. If you are stuck reading the default front page, you're doing yourself a great disservice. Browse through, there are a lot of excellent sub-reddits.

dstein• 15 years ago

I have to wonder if the whole thing was just a big political maneuver to make the Conservative Party look good right before calling an election.

tcwd• 15 years ago

After an Egyptian protest in internet petition form, I'm glad the Canadian government had some sense in them to hold on to a future in tech innovation in Canada.

I can only imagine what kind of immediate effect this would have had on tech startups.

Joakal• 15 years ago

Unfortunately for Canadians, I believe it's far from over. Business/Politics are known to make ambit claims [0] that are hard to fully remove as there's a tendency of the well-meaning of compromising is exploited. Examples can easily be seen with Obama administration with the Republicans [1] .

Canadians would have to ask for more than a reversal. It might be an overhaul of the organisation due to widespread assumptions of regulatory capture [2] that's serving the needs of monopolistic industries over the public interest.

As long the department continues to exist even though they had the sheer audacity to implement it despite public submissions; this issue is not going away.

Well done. To me, it's a small step however.

[0] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ambit_claim

[1] http://i.imgur.com/1ULKE.png

[2] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Regulatory_ca...

AgentConundrum6• 15 years ago

Believe me, many Canadians are well aware that Bell's move was an ambit claim (a term I've just now learned because of you, so thank you for that).

I've read a number of claims on reddit, even before Minister Clement made his comments, from people who were fearful that the government would smack down this decision only for Bell to come back with a slightly less bad offer.

It remains to be seen what we'll eventually get out of this deal. At this point, however, we have the three largest political parties in the country against this, and I've heard (but haven't seen citations) that the other two major parties have stated their opposition. The Prime Minister has personally come out against the issue[1] as well, so it looks like there is a fair amount of political resistance to UBB in general.

The CRTC needs to be disbanded. This will be the second government overruling of their decisions in as many months[2], so perhaps it will make them a little more measured in their approach should they again approach the UBB issue. If the CRTC constantly needs to be kept in check by the government, then perhaps it will incentivize the government to disband the CRTC as the government will already be doing their job for them anyway.

[1] http://twitter.com/pmharper/status/32526091855863808 [2] http://news.gc.ca/web/article-eng.do?crtr.sj1D=&mthd=tp&...

bane• 15 years ago

Considering how bone headed the original caps were, I have a feeling this isn't over.

nomad_man• 15 years ago

This has not been overturned yet! I hate misleading titles.

mrcharles• 15 years ago

Dear Hacker News Canadians:

Please continue to write your MPs. This is far from over, and we need to keep on top of it. We can't stop now that it looks like it will be overturned, because Bell will fight back. I urge every one of you to write a letter to your MP (or another one if you already have).

If we show any slowing in activity against Bell et al, they will just swoop in and come up with something just as bad.

UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

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