Wirelessnorth.ca

The answers so far are no, yes and maybe. Depending who you ask.

Brush up on the announcement and initial reactions here: Peter Nowak has excellent coverage today of the CRTC call (long time coming) on net neutrality in Canada. Michael Geist and Ars Technica offer some balanced opinion.

What everyone seems to agree on is that CRTC’s framework is reasonable, and is highly progressive relative to where the debate was just a year or more ago. We’ve argued in the past for economic solutions to ISP capacity which is what the CRTC is also stressing.

When it comes possible dirty tricks with packets, the problem will be in enforcement. It’s not clear that the framework will result in ISPs changing any of their current practices (other than increased disclosure). For those of us on teksavvy connections, now perhaps stuck for all time at 5MBps and throttled during all waking hours, that doesn’t sound too hopeful.

Under the framework if there are violations, it’s up to consumers to make a complaint. In the event of a complaint it would then be up to the CRTC to take however long it might take to follow up (for example, it’s now taken about 3-4 years since the ISPs started toying with throttling/DPI for the CRTC to address the issue of net neutrality) and when the CRTC makes a ruling they may side either way. The ISPs have a fair degree of leeway in deciding when traffic management is “needed”.

The current framework also does not apply yet to wireless. The CRTC is promising a separate ruling on wireless. This concept concerns us. If you believe in a principles-based approach to policy, it confuses us how exactly the carrier’s particular choice of last-mile technology should have bearing on that.

Remember that the end game for true innovation in Canada will be the day we can all access fat pipes with a level playing field for voice, video, data and any other service across those pipes whether they be wired, wireless or any combination.

The real problem for now that we consumers want it both ways. We enjoy our convenient cable and dsl broadband, infrastructure which is in fact heavily cross-subsidized by the economies of scale and scope of the digital tv, home phone, video on demand etc. services that your carrier delivers through that same last mile connection.

What we want is our cheap, low-up-front-cost connection to be super fat and completely open without having to watch all those stupid adds on regular tv, or pay the ridiculous cable charges or inflated home-phone fees.

There’s only a few ways we can think of around that dilemma.

a) Either someone goes out and builds a net-new fibre to the home/office at an epic scale (with either public or private investment or both, and note that some cities/municipalities have acheived this sometimes with spectacular success). We’ll defer to Mark Surman on this one (Director of the Mozilla Foundation) who told us once “listen, if you really love the net don’t protest about it, if you want the net to be awesome, don’t expect/demand/ask everyone else to make the net awesome for you, go make it awesome yourself!”

b) We learn to suck it up and pay the full cost of open connectivity infrastructure in exchange for the benefits it brings us (Think a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per home for fibre depending on density). Think of it as part of the capital value of realestate, after homeowners and landlords pay full freight for furnaces, roofing, water heaters etc. internet is just another.

c) Live with our status quo. The CRTC’s new framework is reasonable, if it can be enforced. Increased service transparency may yield more aggressive competition on consistency of service speed and quality. We shall see.