Does anyone understand the current political argument on use-based Internet billing? Does Industry Minister Tony Clement really understand it? The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) studied the question and ruled that there should be use-based billing so that the majority of the users would not be paying the price for a few users doing heavy downloading.
Clement’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach was to have CRTC Chairman Konrad von Finckenstein hauled before a House of Commons committee and the CRTC decision put in abeyance. Once more the CRTC has been told by the politicians what to think and do. It is what happens when politicians are planning for their coming election campaign.
The facts are that Tony Clement, who likes to pose as ‘with-it’ and ‘computer savvy,’ was the target of a supposedly viral Internet attack on the new billing policy. This is despite the fact that the larger Internet suppliers in Canada had the billing policy in place for years. There is nothing new about billing by the megabit. And it is largely meaningless until the thousands of megabits start to be counted as gigabits.
How do you think that the large suppliers such as Bell Canada or Rogers can offer users different levels of service? All data goes through the same modulation to go on to the Internet. It is all transferred to the basic little 53-byte packets that travel helter-skelter through Internet hubs to their destination. On the Internet, all packets are equal.
It is a very simple process for the Internet supplier to choke a customer’s service to limit their bandwidth—which determines how much data they can transfer. You can pay for 6 megabit bandwidth or you can pay for 20 megabit or more. It is the customer’s choice. If you want to watch streaming videos, you need the 6 megabit. If you do not want to watch videos, you might be happy with the Internet light service.
But all of this is bad news for Tony Clement. He was conned by a few Internet nerds who pulled his chain. He made the mistake in turn of pulling the CRTC’s chain. The CRTC is commissioned as an independent body that is supposed to know what is going on in telecommunications in Canada. Clement already made an ass of himself with Statscan. If he keeps going this way, he will convince the voters.
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