Bell is pulling out all the stops trying to defend its justification for Internet Overcharging through so-called usage-based billing.  In a published debate between the telecom giant and TekSavvy — a small independent ISP trying to preserve flat rate broadband service in Canada, Bell claims Canadian broadband is the third best in the world, ahead of the United States, all of Europe, and just barely trailing Japan and Korea:

At the same time, Canada has increasingly become a world leader when it comes to broadband. When it comes to actual download speeds, Canada ranks third in the G20, behind only densely populated Korea and Japan. And prices are low — in fact, for higher-speed services, lower than in both the U.S. and Japan.

Michael Geist, a popular columnist fighting against Canadian Internet Overcharging, scoffs at the notion:

I’m not sure where these claims come from – Canada does not appear in the top 10 on Akamai’s latest State of the Internet report for Internet speed and no Canadian city makes Akamai’s top 100 for peak speed. The OECD report ranks Canada well back in terms of speed and price as does the Berkman report.  The NetIndex report ranks Canada 36th in the world for residential speed. Moreover, the shift away from the OECD to the G20 has the effect of excluding many developed countries with faster and cheaper broadband than Canada (while bringing in large, developing world economies that unsurprisingly rank below Canada on these issues). While there is probably a report somewhere that validates the claim, the consensus is that Canada is not a leader.

Bell’s Magic Pony-stories are at best exaggerated and at worst, phoney-baloney from the telco’s government relations department.

Stop the Cap! compared prices across several providers and found no value for money in broadband plans from all of the country’s major phone and cable companies.  Without fail, all were heavily usage limited, most throttled broadband speeds for peer-to-peer applications, engaged in overlimit fees the credit card industry would be proud to charge, and simply were almost always behind their counterparts to the south — in the United States.  In fact, some consumers are importing their broadband from the USA when they can manage it.

“Bell can’t win the argument on the merits, so it is making things up,” writes London, Ontario resident Hugh MacDonald.  “I have had Bell DSL for years now, and there isn’t anything fast or cheap about it.”

MacDonald’s broadband service from Bell tops out at around 4Mbps.

Mirko Bibic, senior vice-president for regulatory and government affairs at Bell claims consumers have to pay more to fund infrastructure expansion, and even challenges our long-standing assertion that telephone network comparisons don’t apply:

Bell provides all our customers with the best possible Internet experience available — the result of heavy and ongoing investment to expand our network capacity both to meet fast-growing demand and to manage the congestion that threatens everyone’s Internet experience.

Internet congestion is a fact and it cannot be wished away. Network providers like Bell must, like hydro utilities, build our networks to handle the heaviest usage times, not just an average of usage over time. At 8:30 in the evening, demand is at its absolute peak. And we have to deliver based on the volume at that time.

Keeping up with growing volume obviously means these network investments are not one-time costs. Between 2006 and 2009, Internet usage more than doubled, and Bell has invested more than $8-billion in the last five years in network growth and enhancement to keep pace. Yet at the same time, the CRTC has found that the average price per gigabyte downloaded has actually declined by 20%.

That’s why the long distance analogy, so often used by those with an interest in confusing the issue, is fundamentally misleading. In the case of long distance, it’s the simple transmission of voice over long-established legacy networks.

But Bibic ignores several important facts and doesn’t disclose others:

What broadband network does not have to make regular investments to expand to meet demand?  Cable and telephone company DSL business models, in place for at least a decade, priced network expansion, infrastructure return on investment, and data transmission into pricing formulas.  While data demands are increasing, the costs to meet those demands are, as Bell openly admits, declining.

What amount of revenue and profit has been earned from selling broadband service to Canadian consumers and the wholesale market and how does that compare to the dollar amount invested?  Bell Canada’s financial report for the third quarter of 2010 shows the company will earn an estimated $3.5 billion in revenue from its broadband Internet division alone.  Bell’s capital spending numbers also include network investments for its fiber to the neighborhood service, Fibe.  Bell’s revenue from selling the video side of that service were on track to deliver an additional $1.5 billion in revenue in 2010.  Not including the enormous wholesale broadband market, Bell will earn at least $5 billion a year from its broadband division.

In fact, Bell’s financial report also openly admits much of its capital spending increases have been spent on deploying its IPTV network Fibe in Ontario and Quebec, not on Internet backbone traffic management.

What are some of Bell’s biggest risks to a happy-clappy shareholder report for investors next quarter?  To quote:

• “Our ability to implement our strategies and plans in order to produce the expected benefits;
• Our ability to continue to implement our cost reduction initiatives and contain capital intensity;
• The potential adverse effects on our Internet and wireless businesses of the significant increase in broadband demand;
• Our ability to discontinue certain traditional services as necessary to improve capital and operating efficiencies;
• Regulatory initiatives or proceedings, litigation and changes in laws or regulations.”

As for Bell’s claims about the “long distance analogy,” it’s only slightly ironic that a telecommunications company considers today’s voice networks radically different from data networks.  Analog transmission of voice calls went the way of the telegraph around a decade ago, with the last analog, step-by-step telephone switch in North America in Nantes, Quebec switched off in late 2001.  Today, telephone traffic is digital data, no different than any other kind of data transported across the country.

Bell cannot afford to have comparisons made between the telephone company’s move towards flat rate billing for phone calls and their broadband service moving away from it, because it torpedoes their entire argument.

Bibic then argues UBB is the right way to go because… major providers already charge it:

UBB has been the established framework for Internet services in Canada for years. Bell, for example, offers standard Internet service packages ranging from 25 gigabytes up to 75 gigabytes per month. As well, customers can sign up for 40 GB more for $5 per month, 80 GB for $10 or a whopping 120 GB more for $15. Keep in mind that 120 GB will get you 600 hours of standard definition video streaming or 100 hours of HD video streaming.

Not a bad deal when you consider average usage on our network is 16 GB per month and half of our customer base uses just five GB a month.

Most Canadians don’t see the “good deal” Bell says they will get from dramatically increased broadband prices. In fact, polls reveal the only groups in Canada that support such pricing are Big Telecom executives and the CRTC.

A new Angus Reid/Toronto Star poll illustrates what we’ve found to be true wherever ripoff “usage-based” pricing appears: people despise it, no matter how much Internet they use:

Bibic can relax as long as the current panel of commissioners at the CRTC, largely drawn from telecommunications companies, remain in place.  They continue to agree with Bell’s point of view and ignore the citizens they are supposed to represent.

Last week, Stop the Cap! compared prices from two Internet Service Providers — Rogers Communications on the western side of the Niagara River — in Ontario, and Time Warner Cable on the eastern side in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

The price disparity is no secret to one Canadian family who read our piece and let us know they import their broadband service, thanks to long distance Wi-Fi, from the United States.

The couple, Neil and Michelle (we’ve been asked not their reveal their real names) and their three boys have lived along the Niagara River, which divides the United States and Canada, for over a decade.  Jim has been fascinated with low power, long distance communications since his days in amateur radio.

“I’ve always been trying to see what stations I can pick up, especially low power ones,” Neil tells us.

That curiosity came with Neil to his interest in broadband wireless communications.  Living along the river, Neil was fascinated to see Wi-Fi signals make their way across the river from the United States’ side.

“Thanks to a clear shot across the river, and a lot of businesses located adjacent to the Robert Moses Parkway, it’s easy to pickup Wi-Fi signals from businesses on the American side,” says Neil.

Neil discovered many networks wide open for public use and began to consider the implications of “importing” his broadband service from the United States to escape Rogers’ high prices.

“For Canadians, the idea of escaping the country’s communications providers is not that unusual,” Neil says.  “Some already have ‘gray market’ satellite dish accounts with America’s DISH or DirecTV, and some even use American prepaid cell phones, which are much cheaper than our own services and get good local reception across Niagara Falls down to Fort Erie.”

“So I began wondering what would happen if we could install a decent Wi-Fi system high enough on the house to get a good signal from a partner on the other side of the river,” Neil pondered.  “We started by putting a test signal up and driving through some Niagara Falls neighborhoods on the American side and found some good prospects.”

A long-shot advertisement on a well-known “for-sale/trade” website paid off, when an American family responded, intrigued by the experiment.

“The fact we were willing to pay their cable bill as compensation didn’t hurt either,” Neil suggests.  “The chances appeared very good for success, because we can see some of their trees from our roof.”

Neil guessed right because today, with the help of two raised directional, roof-mounted high-gain Wi-Fi antennas that can literally “see” one another, the Ontario family enjoys its cable-TV and broadband service from Time Warner Cable.

“The signal is rock solid and the only time we get some speed problems is if someone in one of the bed and breakfast places nearby ends up on our channel,” Neil says.  “We can even watch television with the help of a Slingbox we installed on the American side which works perfectly fine on a Wireless N connection.”

Since the rise of Canada’s exchange rate against America’s declining dollar, the savings are dramatic. A comparable cable-TV plan with Rogers runs $80 a month for standard service, equipment fees, and HD service charges.  Add another $50 for broadband service with the modem rental fee and Neil would pay Rogers $130 a month before taxes for the two services.

“And we would be limited to just 60GB of usage per month before the $2/GB overlimit fee started making the bill even higher,” Neil says.

Time Warner Cable currently charges Neil’s adopted family $87 a month for television and broadband on a promotion.

Today, Neil’s conscience (and savings) led him to decide “borrowing” another family’s account wasn’t fair, so now he pays for -two- accounts with Time Warner, one for the New York family, the other belonging to him.

“Time Warner thinks of us as apartment renters and bills a post office box,” Neil says.  “The other family doesn’t care about cable-TV anymore so we’re just paying for their broadband account.”

The neighbors are certainly amused.

“When they come over, they call us ‘the American Embassy in Niagara Falls’ because of all the ads for Time Warner they see across the cable channels we get and because American cable systems ignore virtually all Canadian TV networks.”

Why go through all this?

“Now that we’re paying for two accounts, it’s a matter of principle,” Neil says. “I will not do business with a company that slaps usage limits on broadband, and now I don’t have to.”

In fact, now that the family’s sons are getting close to teen years, their Internet use is growing.

“We almost don’t care about the cable-TV anymore ourselves — we’re watching shows online, on-demand in this household,” Neil says.  “For my kids, they are growing up with the concept of television being always on-demand and it works around their schedule, not the other way around.”

Besides, Americans have access to Hulu, and Canada does not.

“Hulu is very important, and Netflix was even before it was sold in Canada,” Neil says.  “Now we can watch what we want, as much as we want, and pay a fair price for unlimited broadband.”

Neil can’t complain about Time Warner Cable, except for the fact it provides him with a U.S. IP address, which locks him out of a lot of Canadian online video-on-demand services from the CBC and other networks’ websites.

“They do a much better job than Rogers ever did with consistent broadband speeds and fewer outages, and we can live without replays of 18 to Life and Little Mosque on the Prairie,” Neil says. “I’m just glad you folks at Stop the Cap! convinced Time Warner to abandon the kind of pricing that is ruining the hell out of Canada’s broadband.”

Volusia County’s consideration of a community-owned fiber optic network has been scoffed at by incumbent cable provider Bright House Networks, which claims the network is “redundant” and unnecessary.

The proposed fiber project is being promoted by Jim Cameron, vice president of government relations for the Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce.  The organization believes a public-private fiber-optic network could do wonders for economic development across the Fun Coast.

But the idea of stringing miles of fiber to connect area businesses to a gigabit-speed network brought rolled eyes from the folks at the cable company.

“We have miles and miles of fiber-optic lines in Volusia County,” Donald Forbes, senior director of corporate communications for Bright House told the Daytona Beach News-Journal. “Where anyone is willing to do business with us, we can make it happen . . . You want it, we’ve got it.”

But area businesses supportive of Cameron’s initiative are mystified by Bright House’s secretive-fiber-network, because few ever heard of it before.

Jason Frederick, business development director for WorkSmart MD, a Daytona Beach medical billing company, was just one example.  The News-Journal reports Frederick was surprised when he was told that Bright House claims to have fiber lines in the county that can deliver Internet at one gigabit per second, about 200 times faster than average broadband service in the U.S., or faster.

“I haven’t heard anything about Bright House offering one gig, and my tech guy is laughing (incredulously) right now,” said Frederick.

In Search Of… Bright House’s Mystery Fiber

Bright House declined to quote pricing for access to their fiber network to the folks at the News-Journal, so Stop the Cap! called Bright House Networks’ Business Solutions department this morning posing as a new business customer looking for fiber optic access.

STC: We were calling to gather information about getting broadband service for our new Internet business.  Can you tell me what kind of broadband services you have available?

At this point, Bright House asked us a ton of questions about where the business was located, what we intended to do with the connection, how many employees we had, etc.  After feeding them answers, we got them to narrow down some basics, even as they tried to have a sales representative come out and meet with us (we explained they would have to fly to New York to manage that, and they should bring a shovel if they come.)

Bright House pointed us to their website for basic details, but stressed individual plans could be customized to meet our needs.  That was the invitation we were looking for.

None of these plans seemed at all fast enough for our needs, we explained.  The maximum plan on their website, 50/5Mbps, didn’t even come close.  Where was the 50/50 or 100/100Mbps plans?  What if we needed a gigabit?  Didn’t we read they ran a fiber network?

Bright House: We do run a fiber network, but it’s a special kind known as a hybrid fiber/coax network.  That is the most proven technology out there, installed to millions of homes and businesses across the country for more than a decade.

STC: Then all-fiber networks are unproven?

Bright House: In a way, yes.  But more important, they are enormously expensive.

STC: How expensive?

Bright House: We spent millions on ours.

STC: So you are saying if we wanted Bright House to deliver fiber to our business, it would cost millions?

Bright House: Probably not that much, but it would probably be a waste of money because it was so expensive.  We service business customers all over central Florida, and I’ll be honest none of them really need fiber — it would be a waste of money.  We couldn’t even give you a price for fiber because nobody ever asked us before.

STC: Wow, I am surprised nobody has even asked.  Our business would want symmetrical broadband so our upload and download speeds would be the same.  We also don’t want to pay an outrageous amount of money for it.  What would Bright House charge for a symmetrical connection?

Bright House: One of our account specialists would have to talk with you about that.  Our network was designed to deliver faster download speeds because that is what our customers want.

STC: Well, not every customer.

Bright House: I understand that, and it sounds like you are a special case.  I think you’ll find we deliver the best service in town for business customers, and we sure do a lot better than AT&T.  Have you spoken with them about their service?

STC: We don’t want DSL.

Bright House (laughing): I can certainly agree with you there.  AT&T is a good company for what they do, but I am proud to say we do better.  And we can give you cable television and business phone service in one package.

STC: Yes, but we’re probably getting ahead of ourselves.  How much would it cost for just the broadband service?

Bright House: Before we quote you a price, we’d really like to sit down with you or a representative of your company so we can explain our whole product line and the benefits we offer.  Is there someone down here we could meet with?

STC: Not yet, but I appreciate the information and we can always call you back.

(We did learn from another source 50/5Mbps business class service costs around $190 a month from Bright House.)

So Bright House fiber remains elusive, even after our call.  Connected Nation, which has direct ties to Big Telecom, couldn’t find any fiber across the area either.  That was surprising, considering the large telecom companies help manage their operations:

The Florida Department of Management Services is running Connected Nation’s efforts in the Sunshine State.

If the goal is widespread fiber-optic coverage, then Connected Nation’s map shows Florida sorely needs a fiber dietary supplement (Metamucil-optic?). Only a small portion of the state — around Orlando and to the south, and around Tampa and along the surrounding Gulf Coast — has fiber coverage, according to Connected Nation’s survey results.

Jessica Ditto, Connected Nation communications director, said the map only reflects spots where fiber-optic lines run to homes, and that Bright House might not have responded accurately to the survey. Bright House’s Forbes said he hadn’t heard of Connected Nation.

Another indictment for the useless work Connected Nation does for large sums.  If a major provider doesn’t answer the questionnaire, broadband from that provider apparently does not exist as far as Connected Nation is concerned.

Finding fiber is Daytona is turning into that commercial for Honey Nut Clusters cereal.  It’s got to be around somewhere.

The county director of economic development, Phil Ehlinger, suggests it is all around us even if we can’t see it at first glance.

“I am not aware of anyone (in the business community) who is unable to get the service that they want,” Ehlinger told the newspaper. “Bright House and some of the other folks, AT&T, they have been putting in fiber optic all over the county.”

But the important question left unanswered is whether or not you can access it.  For individuals, the answer is clearly no.  Bright House believes its network is plenty fast enough, and AT&T didn’t want to talk to us in time for today’s story.  But phone companies, already vulnerable in the broadband speed race, prefers to deflect the question, arguing you don’t need that speed anyway.

Fiber optics delivers the fastest broadband experience, period.  But when providers don’t sell or promote the service, it’s easy to suggest nobody wants it.

But not too far away, in communities like Chattanooga, and several areas in North Carolina, they -do- want it.  Even Verizon FiOS, a growing presence in the northeastern United States, has won over business and residential customers to fiber-fast broadband.  In many cases, the network sells itself.

But in central Florida, Bright House won’t sell the service to you even if you ask.  It’s apparently the best kept secret in Daytona Beach.

[Updated 2/4/2011 — Don Forbes attached a reply to a piece on Broadband Reports that quotes from our piece:

Bright House Networks does in fact provide Fiber to the Premise (FTTP) – or what is known in the business services market as “dedicated access” – to its business customers who want this type of bandwidth. We work directly with our business customers to provide solutions tailored to meet their specific needs. We currently serve more than 3,000 Florida business locations directly with fiber. We currently offer speeds up to 1 Gbps, although it should be understood most business customers do not require 1Gbps speeds. Residential customers, at this time, do not need the bandwidth offered with dedicated fiber – however, Bright House has led the industry in comprehensively deploying next-generation bandwidth services (DOCSIS 3.0) to its’ entire footprint in Florida – current speeds offered are 50 Mbps with the ability to offer much higher. We provision our network according to our customers’ needs.

As a private company, we do reserve the right to share specific proprietary details of our network and our business for competitive reasons. However, it is no secret that we offer the above services.

It apparently is a secret to the people taking calls at Bright House’s business services hotline at 1-877-424-9246.  That’s the number we called yesterday to inquire.  The results are noted above.  I’d make two observations:

1. The point of our piece was partly to confirm whether fiber is a big secret in the Daytona area, as was the implication.  In our experience, it was.
2. Once again, another provider — this time Bright House — has made the declaration that residential customers don’t need fiber to the home access, something Verizon and many municipal/community-owned networks would strongly disagree with.  We do as well.  As long as phone companies compete using DSL, cable companies can safely make this claim and it won’t harm their business.  But if a far faster fiber to the home network arrives in town delivering far faster speeds (at equal or lower prices), Bright House, and other companies like it, could be in trouble — especially if their new competitors market themselves well.

We stand by our piece, which documents our direct experiences with Bright House Networks business class customer service.]

Despite claims from Canadian Internet Service Providers that Internet Overcharging schemes like “usage-based billing” are about pricing fairness, paying for what one uses, and keeping prices down, comparing broadband prices across the west and east sides of the Niagara River tell a very different story.

We went shopping for the lowest possible prices for standalone broadband service from two cable companies serving the Niagara Falls area, on both sides of the border.

Here is what we found (prices roughly equivalent in CAD/USD at today’s exchange rate of $1US = $0.99CAD):

Niagara Falls, N.Y. — Time Warner Cable

$34.95/month

Road Runner Standard Service: 10/1Mbps
No Usage Limit
No Overlimit Fee
No Modem Rental Fee
No Contract Commitment

Niagara Falls, Ontario — Rogers Communications

$39.00/month

Rogers Express Service: 10Mbps/512kbps
60GB Monthly Limit with $2/GB Overlimit Fee
$14.95 Installation Fee
One Year Contract Required
(Price above reflects a one-year promotion that includes the monthly Home Gateway Rental ($4.50 value) for one year, $5.50 per month thereafter, effective 3/2011)

A major ongoing Internet Overcharging campaign by Canadian Internet Service Providers to extract more revenue from consumers has sailed under the radar for more than two years now in most of the Canadian press.  Although some newspapers have occasionally covered various telecommunications atrocities related to cell phone pricing, lagging broadband speeds, and an overall lack of competition in the country, specifics about efforts to curtail broadband usage (or monetize its claimed “overuse”) has been a topic mostly discussed on online forums.

No more.

As Stop the Cap! turns more attention to Canadian Internet Overcharging schemes, let this be an object lesson to our American readers about how the game is being played.  What starts in Canada could finish American flat rate broadband as well.

CRTC Ruling Lights the Flame

This week, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) finalized rules that will effectively end unlimited broadband service in the country.  Remarkably, the Commission’s ruling completely ignores the one group such “usage-based billing (UBB)” impacts the most: individual customers.

The game-changing rules, found in the obliquely-named “Telecom Decision CRTC 2011-44,” effectively establish false usage-based pricing on both the wholesale and retail levels.  No provider will actually sell broadband packages that charge only for what a consumer actually uses.  Instead, each provider will set arbitrary usage allowances — usage limits — on their broadband accounts.  Any remaining unused allowance is forfeit at the end of the month, but “overuse,” at the discretion of the provider, will be penalized with overlimit penalty fees running several dollars per gigabyte.

The CRTC acknowledges, and big providers admit, these Internet Overcharging schemes are all about getting consumers to change their online activities.

[Providers] submitted that UBB rates shape end-user behaviour and that different UBB rates would lead to different behaviours by carriers’ and competitors’ end-customers.

Perish the thought.  Without such pricing, Canadian broadband could ultimately offer an alternative to overpriced cable-TV and telephone packages sold by the very providers that advocate limited use plans.  Providers insist on predictable, uniform usage.  The Commission apparently agrees.

The Commission even acknowledges today’s unlimited use plans in Canada almost always recover the actual costs incurred to provide them, and then some:

The Commission also notes that the flat-rate component of the carriers’ retail Internet service rates recovers most, if not all, of the associated retail UBB costs. In the Commission’s view, this situation provides carriers with the flexibility to adjust or waive retail UBB rates on a promotional basis.

With this in mind, why the CRTC felt radical changes were warranted is only a mystery until you realize most of the commissioners were former employees of the various telecommunications companies themselves.

Birds of a feather….

All of the falderal about the merits of UBB aside, in the end the CRTC threw a small bone to independent service providers not affiliated with super-sized players like Bell, Rogers, Shaw, and Videotron — the Commission ordered they be given a “whopping” 15 percent price break off wholesale rates.

Major carriers were outraged even by this token amount, arguing that providers forced to charge correspondingly higher prices (higher than major carriers charge) could still eke out a place in the market by offering other services or better support.  They didn’t need, or deserve a discount.

But independent competitors warned without discounts approaching 50 percent, many will be gone within five years.  Many providers argued the major companies, some who received taxpayer subsidies to construct national telecommunications networks, would be able to set wholesale prices artificially high to drive them out of business.

Canada’s Media Reacts

The effective end of flat rate service across Canada finally sparked significant national media coverage of the imminent death of Canada’s broadband revolution, soon to be relegated to a nickle-and-dime metered pricing scheme that will give providers the monetary power to control usage, limit innovation, and have their hands into picking marketplace winners and losers.  Don’t like Netflix?  Slash usage allowances.  Want to protect your cable-TV revenue?  Exempt your own online content from the meter as long as you keep your subscription.  Want to drive down Canada’s broadband standing in the world?  Turn the marketplace over to a handful of companies dreaming of revenue opportunities afforded by monetizing broadband usage.

The Globe and Mail — A metered Internet is a regulatory failure: The CRTC has decided to allow Bell and other big telecom companies to change the way Canadians are billed for Internet access. Metering, or usage-based billing (UBB), will mean that service providers can charge per byte in addition to their basic access charges. The move is sure to stifle digital creativity in Canada while the rest of the world looks on and snickers.  […] So there you have it. Just as the world is ready to feast on what Canadians might cook up in the way of multimedia 3.0, Canada decides to meter the Internet, tilting the table sharply towards old-school TV networks and big corporations that can absorb the higher cost of doing business.

Canadian newspapers have covered the story in the greatest detail, but now — finally — Canada’s television news has discovered the story, which for many media critics mean the story is actually “real.”

“If you don’t see it on television, it didn’t really happen,” writes Jim from Halifax, Nova Scotia.  “A lot of Canadians don’t read newspapers, and the magazines certainly are not covering this story, so it has been an online-only event  until CBC, CTV, and Global put it on their newscasts.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CBC News Extra Billing for Internet 1-18-11.flv[/flv]

CBC Television reports on the Internet Overcharging controversy.  (2 minutes)

Some critics say much of Canada’s commercial media is already in the hands of a tightly controlled, vertically integrated empire.  Most of the cable and phone companies have ownership in many major commercial broadcasters, cable networks, and even newspapers and magazines.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Vertical Integration.mp4[/flv]

30 Rock’s Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy explore the concept of “vertical integration.”  Then see how it relates to Canada’s media.  (3 minutes)

But even a controlled media environment cannot stop outrage over UBB going viral, as ordinary Canadians realize they are about to pay much higher prices for a service they depend on more and more.

Outrage Commences

While these pricing schemes have been around awhile, now that they are getting well-publicized exposure, consumers have realized the implications of counting how many YouTube videos they watch.

Tens of thousands have signed Openmedia.ca’s online petition, others are complaining to the media and writing their members of Parliament, demanding action.

That will only get louder when consumers start receiving bills for double, triple, or even higher for the exact same quality of service they used to pay less to receive.

“There will be a huge wake-up call for many customers,” said Jared Miller, president of Youmano, a provider based in the Town of Mount Royal.

Charlie Angus, the NDP member of Parliament who speaks about digital issues, said he he thinks the entire pricing scheme is a ripoff that will lead to huge increases in customers’ bills.

“What we need to have is clear and transparent rules so it’s being used in a measured capacity, and it’s not just instituting the principle that every time you turn on the Internet, they can ding you for fees like they do with cell-phones,” Angus said. “We’ve seen this before; when we were told that deregulating cable rates would give customers a big benefit. We were paying 60-to 100-per-cent more in no time.”

“Canada is already falling behind other countries in terms of choice, accessibility and pricing for the Internet,” Angus added.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CTV British Columbia – Canadians rank among most enthusiastic web users 12-28-10.flv[/flv]

CTV British Columbia explores Canada’s love affair with technology and how its integration has dramatically changed the social lives of many families.  That’s no surprise, considering Canadians are North America’s most enthusiastic net users.  (2 minutes)