Emma Brooks | Digital Media Enthusiast

To further the point I made in my blog post “CRTC Hates Fair Competition”, I have signed a petition requesting the dissolvement of the CRTC and a new commission formed.

The petition states the following:

Dear Minister of Industry,

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was created for the purpose of ensuring broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public and ensure that Canadians have a wide variety of options to create and view works of media or communicate across the country and the entire world.

We, the undersigned, believe that the CRTC has become a burden on the Canadian public and are failing to perform their duties in the interest of the Canadian public and that of a fair and unbiased telecom policy.

In the last 3 years, we have seen the CRTC give undue preference in the interest of commercial entities and their preference for traditional business models over competing models that would create competition and help ensure that new business models can be created to entice and prosper original Canadian productions.

In the case of Bell Canada vs CAIP, involving the use of deep packet inspection (DPI) on Bell wholesale clients, the CRTC ruled in favor of Bell Canada to allow them to continue the use of deep packet inspection activities on wholesale customers without their permission or consent regardless of the implications for the end user customers. We believe this action greatly impacts the Canadian public’s choices, competition in the broadband market and may violate privacy laws based on the Privacy Commissioners findings.

In the case of Cybersurf requesting to match speeds of that for Bell retail customers, the CRTC ordered Bell Canada to produce a new tariff to match speeds for wholesale customers. Bell submitted a revised tariff to the CRTC, however the revised tariff did not fulfill the requirements as set out by the CRTC in Telecom Decision CRTC 2008-117. Bell proposed to offer lower speed tiers and introduce UBB (usage base billing) in lieu of matching speeds. The CRTC decided to accept the tariff on an interim basis with no logical explanation. This is not only anti-competitive but shows a clear bias towards Bell Canada.

These are only two of several instances in the past few years that show the CRTC is incapable of upholding the telecom act and the interest of the Canadian public. We demand that the commission is immediately dissolved and a new commission created and appointed based on the following criteria:

1) The commission members must not be appointed solely based on their career history
2) The commission members must not only be comprised of ex-telecom employees
3) The commission should be more transparent to the Canadian public about regulatory issues
4) The analysts should be more involved in the regulatory process to ensure that decisions are handed down in a fair and balanced manner

We hereby request that the CRTC be dissolved and a new commission formed immediately to ensure that the regulatory process and competitive environment remain in tune with the needs of the Canadian public.

Sincerely,
The undersigned

If you feel strongly about this like I do, please go here to sign the petition. You will have to confirm your signature via email within 3 days but that is it.

At the time of signing, there were 3,613 signatures. Please help in making this number as big as possible. Hopefully in doing so, they will hear us.

“Someone needs to step in and audit how these lawmakers come to their conclusions as predatory tactics, which last I checked were not allowed in Canada, are being allowed to march through the regulatory gates without any resistance, all while laughing in the face of both Joe competitor and Joe public.”

– Rocky Gaudrault, CEO of TechSavvy

This article, highlights the issues Canadians have been facing for some time in regards to net neutrality and fighting the “Big Boys of ISPs”. The state of Canada’s landscape is absolutely ridiculous. We pay more for internet and face more restrictions than most developed countries.

In France, you can get an 18 MB/S connection with no cap PLUS 70 TV channels PLUS Unlimited VOIP for $66 a month. And if you’re under 26? Go ahead, take another 10% off.

Compare this to Canada: For $60 a month, you can get 10Mb download speed with a 512kb upload speed and a 60GB cap. Wow. What a steal! (Thanks to @ehacke for the information on this.)

Now the CRTC has agreed to approved a request by Bell to implement a pay per usage of $0.75 for every GB over 300GB their users use. What this basically means? They’ve taken away the ability for smaller ISPs who are renting portions of Bell’s infrastructure to differentiate themselves from Bell’s service.

It seems the CRTC is against fair competition and an open marketplace. Rocky Gaudrault’s call-out to the CRTC and higher ups in the government to take an in-depth investigation into how these decisions are made is fair and I support this 110%.

As Canadians, we should really take a stand and let these bullying ISPs know that we are NOT pleased and this is NOT okay. Please email your local MP to let them know that you are pissed off that this is happening. You can find out who your local MP is here.

I wish we didn’t feel so powerless as paying customers though. Capitalism, you have failed YET AGAIN.

Did a blog post YouTube style tonight. Let me know what you think in the comments guys. If I sound out of it, it’s because I did this post-NeoCitron. Might be feeling the efftects…. zzz.

What is GOING on with the internet today?

I’m hearing reports from various top-secret sources (aka me and my friends) that not only is Twitter down (which greatly upsets me), but Amazon Canada is down, LiveJournal is down, Facebook & Facebook Chat are being uber glitchy, PayPal isn’t working properly, EventBrite.com isn’t working and many more.

I’ve actually resorted to using MSN to talk to people. I KNOW!

The worst part? I can’t complain! My ability to tell everyone how much the internet is sucking today isn’t possible because NOTHING IS WORKING.

Check it:

and:

So, thus, without being able to actually trend this topic on Twitter, I am doing so on the only available platform I can: WordPress! (Insert angelic and heavenly music here.) I declare today: #InternetFAILDay

Love it. Use it. Pass it Along. Let’s make it work, folks.

I feel like Chicken Little too, by the way, running around screaming about the sky falling. The internet is falling! Run for your lives! The Day of Doom is hereeee!

Edit: According to Mashable, Twitter has been defending against a DDoS attack. Looks like Twitter is back up though… for now!

So I spent a long time last week perusing clothes on eBay trying to decide if I wanted to buy a dress for Fake Prom 2009 from it. (What’s that? Haven’t heard about Fake Prom? Oh, well, it’s nothing much: Only the BEST THING EVER.) I’ve actually recently purchased something on eBay with a brand spankin’ new account.

And it got me wondering… In 2005, I swore of eBay for ever and ever, never again! Never again was I going to use eBay or PayPal or any of those horrid, horrid sites because I had been screwed over one too many times. In fact, I believe I had a run of about 4 purchases in a row that ended up in consumer hell and me out of money. And with PayPal and eBay doing everything but helping me with those, I just gave up.

I declared a life-long personal ban on them. And yet, I’ve used PayPal about 5 or 6 times in the last 6 months to transfer money overseas. I recently bought something on eBay for my roommate. I am considering another purchase from eBay. What happened?

Did the great giants of online bidding and money transfers woo me back with more efficient, better services? Have I learned to forgive them?

The best answer to these questions seem to be: “Hahahahahahaha. Yeah. Right.”

Ask anyone who has used PayPal in the past: their opinions of these companies are pretty bad, to put it mildly. As for eBay, well, I can’t say I’ve really heard any fantastic stories. So clearly eBay and PayPal haven’t improved their services.

I know I’m not the only one who has returned to a vendor’s site after saying they’re never going to use it again. Many of my friends have slumped back to a hated vendor’s site and grudgingly given over their hard-earned money. So are we forgiving?

I don’t think so, personally.

It’s just that these companies offer a service no one else can really compete with, sadly. Can you think of an eBay alternative? I confess I can’t. Bank e-mail money transfers definitely took over any money transfers I would normally do, as they were easy, worked and I didn’t feel like my soul was dying a little bit every time I used it. But for the overseas money transfer, from an Australian bank account to a Canadian – I’m not aware, as a consumer, of a viable alternative to PayPal.

So we don’t forgive. We don’t forget. We just don’t have a choice. Thanks capitalism, for sucking when I needed you the most.

So what do you think? Are consumers forgiving? Can a company ever redeem themselves? Please let me know in the comments!