Jesse Brown: Is Canada becoming a digital ghetto?
Thursday, November 27, 2008 | 07:42 AM ET
By Jesse Brown, CBC technology columnist.
Here are three things that suck about being Canadian right now.
- Last week the CRTC sided with Bell against a group of small internet service providers who want to offer their customers unthrottled connections where what they download is their own business and not subject to interference.
- In last week’s throne speech the Conservative government renewed their intention to “modernize” Canadian copyright law. Their effort to do so last session was Bill C-61, a woefully unbalanced and retrograde piece of legislation that led to the greatest citizen backlash to any proposed bill in recent memory. Yet there has been no indication from new Industry Minister Tony Clement that a much-needed public consultation will take place. The best he has offered is the possibility of a “slightly different” version of the bill.
- Twitter has just announced that it is killing outbound SMS messaging in Canada due to exorbitant and constant rate hikes from Canadian cell providers (former Industry Minister Jim Prentice vowed to get tough on SMS price gouging, then backpeddled). Cellphone rates in Canada are among the highest in the world, and the result is that mobile penetration is pathetically low and that emerging new cultural platforms like Twitter are being hobbled.
This growing list of backwards policies is already creating a sense of digital isolation: Canadians can’t stream the videos Americans stream, download the files Americans download, remix the media Americans remix, or tweet the way Americans tweet.
With the election of Barack Obama, digital culture in the U.S. hit a tipping point, where a robust online public sphere proved itself capable of changing the world.
Meanwhile, here in Canada we’re approaching our own tipping point, where a series of ignorances and capitulations threaten to turn our country into a digital ghetto.
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Comments
paul shields
toronto
Canada's cellular rates are high because we have a relatively small population, spread out over a lot of land; so coverage means lots of towers..
but also: land infrastructure was established here long ago, and so competes with and therefore slows roll-out of cellular.
Combine this with: companies that laid fibre are having trouble recouping the cost. BCE privatization awaits proof that it is solvent. Well, what if it isn't?
If I have a contract for bandwidth that stipulates service guarantees no matter what traffic I carry, that contract had better be honoured by the provider, or it's in breach.
Monopolies seem to want to dictate that they can make unilateral service changes to such contracts. It's Hobson's choice, ie: take it or leave it; I have no choice if there is no other provider. This, then enables a monopoly to exert unfairness -- which it seems to believe is necessary because it still has to make payments on that expensive infrastructure roll-out.
So, what's economically viable in the great white north? It wasn't designed to be a digital ghetto, we just have to come up with solutions.
Posted November 27, 2008 04:04 PM
Bruce Hearns
Toronto
One vital and ignored aspect of the economic design of our industrial system is that those who have monopolistic, or oligarchic, access rights make the greatest profits when they use up, as fast as possible, any resource in short supply (e.g. ore, oil) and to choke off and limit as much as possible any resource in infinite supply (e.g. human creativity, imagination, information). Hence the continuously-increasing "intellectual proprty" restrictions that kill art and literature, all of which is derivative; the throttling of unpaid-for internet content (free information and unfettered inspiration) and, as a corollary, spiraling phone fees. Even land-lines now charge 'system access fees' and for other "extras" like being able to call emergency services and touch-tone dialing. The nickel-and-dime charges more than double the nominal fees for every phone.
Government almost always sides with big players, and 'twas ever thus. So please do not be surprised at the continuous attempts to push monstrous copyright restrictions through legislature and the many CRTC decisions.
Even the most honest discussion gets skewed when 90% of presentations are by bogus organizations set up by the big three telecommunications giants to overwhelm the legitimate objections of fewer, underfunded, genuine citizens groups.
Posted November 28, 2008 10:00 AM
Shifty Calhoun
paul shield:
Remember the System Access Fee?
That little beauty (dropped by the government a decade ago but still charged by most carriers) was established to build that large network of towers. All the the carriers pay for now are the maintenance and land usage fees for the towers, a reasonable operating cost and peanuts compared to the profits brought in by bloated fees.
The cellular companies are equivalent to the banks...posting billions in profits each year but still overcharging their customers.
Posted December 1, 2008 10:59 AM
kelvSYC
Calgary
"Becoming" a digital ghetto? I would suggest that it IS already a digital ghetto. Right now the fact is that Canada is a technologically backwards nation, whose digital policies have isolated itself from the rest of the world. The only reason why we get any new technology is because we're so close to the US - and even so, we don't know how to use the technology that is given to us.
Posted December 6, 2008 12:02 AM
Patrick
Vancouver
Though it may be true that Canada adopts technology at a considerably slower pace than our counterparts down south, I hardly think it appropriate to label ourselves a ghetto nation in respects to technology (or one that is slowly becoming a tech-ghetto). Canada is still one of the most internet- (and computer-) savvy countries in the world.
In response to the three things that suck about "being Canadian right now" I would say:
1. Though Bell, Rogers, and Shaw continue to throttle internet connections, Telus has always kept an open policy to the way in which they control the internet: no ISP compression and no throttling regardless of peak usage.
2. That Apple and Amazon have expressed plans to eventually remove DRM from their music offerings renders Bill C-61 moot. It has also becoming increasingly unnecessary in this technological age, for music, movie and tv-lovers to actually download any content whatsoever. Sites like Grooveshark, Last.fm, Pandora, and Favtape make it unnecessary for anyone to upkeep their own collection when whole playlists can be generated, shared, and transported freely.
3. There may be no equivalent alternative to twitter but there is a freely available method to send free SMS messages to cell phones. The process involves sending texts from one's email address to specific phone numbers. Each carrier has this system in place. For example, to send a text message to a fido customer, simply send an email to the address: xxxxxxxxxx@fido.ca (where the 10 digit number of the recipient would precede the "@" sign.
Lastly, it is possible to stream content from US-exclusive sites such as Hulu or ABC by way of VPN software called Hotspot Shield. The free download allows anyone in Canada (or any other country) to adopt a US IP address to cloak their current location, allowing them to enjoy that content as if they were within the US. For more info on how that works simply google "hotspot shield troubleshooting blog".
Posted December 13, 2008 05:35 PM