Ars Technica: Canadians demand that the CRTC protect citizen interests

By Matthew Lasar for Ars Technica

The dust has at least temporarily settled on Canada's controversial decision to let its biggest ISPs charge smaller, competitive ISPs on a metered, or Usage-Based Billing (UBB) schedule, a decision later suspended by The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission. Judging from a sample of the surly comments coming into the CRTC's new public proceeding on broadband billing issues, it's going to take a while before Canadians trust their telecommunications regulator again.

"I'm an unemployed 50 year old single father with a son and future daughter in law and a granddaughter to support and it gets harder every day," warns one writer to the CRTC. "There must be something done to guarantee the Internet which I would now liken to an essential service.

"The CRTC has been told BY CONSUMERS in no uncertain terms what needs to be done. Stop catering and making decisions in favor of Big Business (Bell & Rogers) and start looking after the interests of Consumers, such as your mandate states. If required, dissolve the CRTC completely as they seem to be useless in protecting the interests of Citizens and Consumers."

Stress on the Internet

To recap: in January, as UBB was preparing to go into effect, Canadians made it abundantly clear that the policy was completely unacceptable. Over a third of a million people (around one percent of Canada's population) signed openmedia.ca's petition against wholesale metered billing. In early February, Canada's Prime Minister heard the message, and told the CRTC to suspend the decision—or have it blocked from above.

This is a "bread-and-butter issue," an unnamed senior government official told newspapers as smaller ISPs began publishing their far more expensive UBB-based subscription rates. Read more »

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