Despite claims from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that it is reviewing its recent decision about usage-based billing on its own accord, the telecommunications regulator has bowed under government pressure to begin an immediate review of the Internet billing practice.

At issue is how Bell prices wholesale access to Internet bandwidth, utilized by most independent Internet Service Providers who resell that access to residential and business customers, often for a flat monthly rate.

The original CRTC decision would allow Bell to charge wholesale prices not based on annual contracts, but rather on the amount of usage consumed by their wholesale clients.  The CRTC ordered Bell to discount its wholesale rates by 15 percent earlier this month, but that amount was too small to stop providers from canceling unlimited use service plans across Canada.

The decision sparked a public outcry.  Hundreds of thousands signed a petition demanding the CRTC rescind its decision.  In fact, so many signed it broke all-time records for a petition drive.

Industry Minister Tony Clement announced last week that if the CRTC didn’t reverse its decision, the government would.  Despite an intransigent appearance before a Commons committee late last week, CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein has been moderating his position this week.

“The great concern expressed by Canadians over this issue is telling of how much the internet has become an integral part of their lives,” the chairman acknowledged in a statement issued yesterday.

The CRTC now says it is open to views from the public about Internet pricing as part of its review.

The commission will seek public comments until April 29 through an online form on:

• How to make sure ordinary consumers served by small ISPs don’t have to “fund the bandwidth used by the heaviest residential internet consumers.”
• How to ensure small ISPs offering “competitive alternatives” to large ISPs can continue to do so.
• Whether small ISPs should be required to buy a minimum amount of bandwidth per retail customer when purchasing network access wholesale from large ISPs, and, if so, what that minimum should be.
• Whether the CRTC should hold an online consultation as part of its review.
• Whether the CRTC should hold an oral public hearing as part of its review.

[flv width=”640″ height=”388″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CBC CRTC Reviews UBB 2-8-11.flv[/flv]

CBC News reports the CRTC will review its earlier decision that eliminated flat-rate broadband plans in Canada.  (2 minutes)

Netflix today released statistics showing Frontier Communications was America’s worst ranked wired Internet Service Provider, ranking at the bottom for quality and speed when using Netflix’s streamed content.

Only Clearwire, a heavily-throttled wireless provider scored worse than Frontier Communications.  This says nothing good about Frontier considering they are a wired provider.

Charter Cable scored highest — a surprise from a company that scores near the bottom in Consumer Reports broadband rankings:

Charter is in the lead for US streams with an impressive 2667 kilobits per second average over the period. Rogers leads in Canada with a whopping 3020 kbps average.

Canada’s higher speed performance comes even as providers claim they need to implement Internet Overcharging schemes to handle congestion on their networks — congestion not apparent from Netflix’s online video performance. Perhaps Canadians have been already grown accustomed to avoiding too much online video.

Netflix promises to release their streaming performance statistics on a monthly basis. Track your ISP from the charts below:

Netflix USA Speed Rankings

Netflix Rankings for Canada

(Our reader Paul sent us a news tip about this story.  You can send yours using the Contact Form linked above.)

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WFMZ Allentown Comcast NBC Universal Merger May Impact Comcast Customers 1-19-11.flv[/flv]

Now that the FCC has given the green light to Comcast’s merger with NBC-Universal, the headquarters of Comcast is moving to 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.

While Comcast is moving on up, customers’ bills may soon follow.

Critics warn Comcast’s standing as the leading Internet Service Provider combined with its unprecedented power over programming could change the face of broadband Internet, particularly where online video is involved.

Comcast’s efforts to protect its cable business could lead to additional fees for broadband customers who seek to use the Internet to watch programming they used to get on cable-TV.

WFMZ-TV in Allentown, not too far from Comcast’s old headquarters in Philadelphia, reports.  (2 minutes)

Commissioners of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), led by its chair Gamaliel Cordoba (middle, in blue shirt) preside in a public hearing Tuesday on the proposed circular requiring broadband data limit for consumers and minimum broadband speed for service providers. The event, which was held at the NTC main office in Quezon City, was attended by various industry stakeholders, including telcos, bloggers, and consumer advocacy groups. Photo by Melvin Calimag; Courtesy: GMANews.tv

Philippine consumers won a major victory this morning, successfully stripping language permitting Internet usage limits from a broadband reform measure before the country’s telecommunications regulator.

In a newly revised draft, this language written by and for some of the nation’s largest telecom providers was removed after a major consumer push-back:

“WHEREAS, it has been observed that few subscribers/users connect to the internet for unreasonably long period [sic] of time depriving other users from connecting to the internet; NOW, THEREFORE… Service providers may set the maximum volume of data allowed per subscriber/user per day.”

Consumer rights group TXTPower was instrumental in exposing the provider-written language and generating a groundswell of opposition to broadband usage limits.  The group’s leader Tonyo Cruz said Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps deliver all of the benefits to providers while limiting consumer access and increasing bills.

“The adoption of [usage caps] will destroy social media in the Philippines and affect businesses,” Cruz told commissioners at a National Telecommunications Commission public meeting attended by consumers.

Cruz compared broadband in the Philippines with a turtle race.

“Imposing caps would be like putting speed limits on slow-moving turtles,” he said.  “It is one thing for telcos to say that a small percentage of consumers abuse their networks, but is another and more important thing to know whether they actually deliver the promised services and whether they have at the moment or in the future the capacity to deliver them.”

Cruz says his group doesn’t oppose providers dealing individually with consumers who use their accounts to the point of creating problems for other users on the network, but a blanket usage limit punishing every Filipino was unacceptable.

The issue rapidly became a political hot potato when ordinary Filipinos contacted their elected representatives to protest the measure.

Kabataan Partylist representative Mong Palatino put the Commission on notice: “NTC’s draft memo [including usage caps] is clearly anti-consumer and regressive. It tramples on the rights of the consumers to get what they pay for in terms of a reliable Internet service,” Palatino wrote in a widely distributed statement. “By allowing telcos and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to limit Internet speed and connection, NTC seemingly wants the whole nation to regress to an Internet era that is much slower and highly unstable,” Palatino explained.

For Cruz, the entire argument for usage caps and the complaints about consumers using too much Internet service “ring weird.”

“The telcos who complain about over-use are the same companies actively encouraging consumers to use the Internet and become avid Internet users, to watch and upload videos and photos,” Cruz noted.

Cruz and other consumer activists want the Commission to hold additional public hearings, and stream them live over the Internet.

Your unlimited experience is about to hit a roadblock.

Sometimes being popular isn’t the best thing in the world.

When Virgin Mobile introduced an unlimited, prepaid wireless broadband plan in August, it created a small media frenzy and shocked an industry that assumed usage-capped wireless broadband was the only way to survive the incredible demand for wireless data.

The company’s introduction of a $40 monthly unlimited-use broadband plan, with no term contract and month-to-month billing was a dream come true for casual vacationers and business travelers who don’t need a two year contract for pricey broadband-on-the-go from one of the major carriers.

When the company unveiled the unlimited broadband plan, as Stop the Cap! reported last summer, the demand was so great it brought the company’s network to its knees.  The prepaid provider, a division of Sprint, has struggled ever since to keep up with customer demand.  This week they announced they were throwing in the towel, quietly notifying would-be customers in the fine print of Radio Shack ads effective with all renewals after Feb. 15, a monthly limit of 5GB would be enforced on its Broadband2Go service.  Several of our readers noticed, including Greg, Sam, Jenny, and others.

“Customers who use BB2Go for typical email, internet surfing and reasonable downloading will likely not be impacted/notice any difference,” Virgin Mobile’s Corinne Nosal told PC Magazine by email.

But those who manage to consume just over 200MB daily will notice when the network speed throttle kicks in for those who “use too much.”  Speeds will be slashed to as low as 256kbps.  If you can’t live with that speed, you can pony up an additional $40 to “renew your account” (even if your month isn’t up yet) and the speed throttle will be removed, until you hit 5GB of usage again.

“So much for Virgin Mobile — 5GB means the service is no better or worse than the other players in the market, and considering the problems Virgin has had with reliable service, I’ll probably go back to using Cricket,” writes our Buffalo reader Lance.

Virgin Mobile relies on Sprint’s 3G network which already gets quite a workout from existing Sprint customers, as well as those using Clearwire (and several “private label” wireless broadband services).  Cricket owns and manages their own network, exclusively for the use of its own customers.

“Cricket will also throttle you if you hit 5GB, but you rarely run into overwhelmed cell tower sites like you do with Sprint’s network,” Lance says.

PC Magazine’s Sascha Segan notes the new usage limits makes using Virgin Mobile broadband a difficult proposition if you love multimedia:

The problem comes if you like video or downloads. Streaming Netflix at 1000kbps (if you can get that speed on the Virgin/Sprint 3G network), you use up about 450MB per hour. Some Windows updates can be up to 200MB alone. Want a TV show from your favorite legal downloading Web site? That’ll be 350MB, thanks.

While there are some small wireless ISPs in some parts of the country, Virgin’s abandonment of truly unlimited high-speed data leaves Sprint 4G/Clear as the only remaining major player willing to take on the wired-Internet oligopoly with an unlimited high-speed, wireless solution.