The always-serious Heritage Foundation thinks that our freedom requires that Internet oligopolies be free of the onerous burden of net neutrality. Luckily, this glorious social experiment is already unfolding in Canada, where their weak version of the FCC, the CRTC, recently green-lighted ridiculously low Internet caps.
Unlike their world leadership in universal healthcare, corn whisky and one dollar coins, Canada’s communications market has always been high-priced and uncompetitive. The two biggest telcos (Bell and Rogers) are cable, Internet, cellular and phone providers with a vested interest in restricting video delivery over the Internet. Their rent-seeking behavior has led to situation where some ISP customers are having their bandwidth cap cut from 250 GB to 25 GB.
25 GB is enough to watch a few movies, or download Grand Theft Auto once. Canadian ISPs will charge $2.00 for every GB over the cap, even though they pay at most $0.02 per GB wholesale. With the cap, it will probably cost more to stream a movie on Netflix than to rent it from the cable operator’s on-demand service, which is the goal of this whole exercise.
If this is the future they want for the US, the Heritage think tankers might want to devote a some gray matter to perusing the Globe and Mail, because this whole mess has been nothing but bad press for the Tories, who are signaling that they will overrule the CRTC. But if Heritage had any brain power, they’d understand the difference between a government-sanctioned oligopoly and a free market in the first place.
Comrade Mary
Aaaaand … as of this morning, Tony Clement, the Industry Minister, is playing Good Cop and is telling the CRTC to reverse that decision. It’s not because he’s Neutral Good: it’s because there’s a hint of an election in the spring.
We weren’t always high priced and uncompetitive, though. There was a brief, glorious period in the 90s when we were cheap and fast, like all good things, but then the CRTC caved to the big boys, and we started lagging behind everyone.
All together now: “TekSavVYYYYYY!”
(Yes, even our black hockey players have French accents. Well, one of them, anyway.)
TomG
Very good post, mistermix.
Most so-called conservatives these days don’t believe in a truly free market. The Heritage Foundation probably never did.
leftwinger
Nicely stated. However we’re into rye whisky….never corn :)
burnspbesq
What do you expect from an agency headed by someone called Konrad von Finckenstein? To my ears, that sounds exactly like Snidely Whiplash.
Dave Ruddell
It’s better than Doodle von Taintstain.
AB
My favorite image/thought experiment to come out of this has been this one:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrismenning/a-cheap-alternative-to-canadas-expensive-internet
Yes, someone did the math and figured out that at least for transfers inside Canada, buying brand new solid-state disks, filling them with data, overnighting them to their destination, then throwing them away is cheaper than paying the rates they’re charging.
DecidedFenceSitter
My favorite was a piece that discussed how it now cheaper, post-cap to buy a Solid State Drive, load whatever you need to transfer onto it, and ship it across the country.
Edit: Bah, Ninja’d.
Which reminds me of the Africa trick where it was faster to mail a hard drive then it was to upload and download the same file.
Yaco
Thanks for this. And nice use of the hip.
Anya
The Heritage Foundation is a racket. They’ll argue for anything that benefit big business, and they don’t even have to try to present any convincing argument.
Linda Featheringill
They do know the difference. I have to believe they just don’t care.
BigHank53
The really funny part is that all those degenerate elites that live in big cities may actually have enough competition to get reasonably priced access. All those Real Americans in suburbs and the rural heartland had better get used to bending over the table…
cleek
@AB:
that’s a classic computer science algebra game.
i calculated a while back that it’s faster to drive a 1 GB SD card an hour and deliver it by hand, than it is to transfer that data over a 1Mbps cable connection.
and the bandwidth of a Honda Pilot fully-loaded with hard drives is something like 6 Petabytes / hr . that’s tens of thousands of times faster than a cable modem.
TomG
Update:
According to the Toronto Star, Ottawa is saying “not so fast”:
Ottawa to reverse decision?
Villago Delenda Est
“Never underestimate the bandwidth transfer capacity of a 747”
ChrisS
The creeping government/corporate control of the internet really gives me the willies.
The telcos have been making an absolute killing at selling people more bandwidth than they could use and now that technology is allowing for more bandwidth use (also in a way that could impact their other revenue streams, eg canceling cable for internet video streaming). The iphone data plans are an example of what telcos would love to see implemented.
mistermix
@leftwinger: It’s mostly corn, but I take your point. I should have just used “poutine”.
Emma
The Canadians also have something we don’t. Effective opposition parties (and if you’re Canadian, don’t whine about your deficiencies; just read the WaPo and be happy). Our Democrats don’t seem to be able to translate any Republican/conservative idiocy into effective PR for our side.
Villago Delenda Est
Heritage is a tool of corporations that utterly loathe competition of any type. They say they’re for the “free market”, but a free market would kill these dinosaurs in their tracks. They endlessly seek to erect as many barriers as possible to any actual innovation. The Internet itself would never have been developed without government initiative…the old Ma Bell had no interest at all in it, when DoD first approached them about nationwide data communications back in the 60’s.
Jane2
You might have mentioned that not all Canadian telco/cablecos are deciding (nor pushed) to adopt the North American model of cellular/wireless price gouging. Canadian governments have invested heavily in broadband and wireless infrastructure (unlike the weaker US), and are more and more considering broadband provision to be a basic service. As such, they will do precisely what the federal government has done, which is tell CRTC to knnock it off.
El Cid
@DecidedFenceSitter: It’s really pathetic, but there were a couple of circumstances in which that would have made more sense (at least for a big flash drive / card) than various fiddling about with uploads / downloads / burned discs, and we (my company) honestly didn’t think of it. We were complete idiots.
El Cid
Comcast’s mobile internet service offers service ‘nationwide’. Here’s the value for this nationwide roaming coverage.
Hope your e-mail doesn’t have an attachment. Like a spreadsheet or something.
MattMinus
This is the kind of issue that gets peoples attention, but the Dems will find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and be worse than the Republicans on this.
mm
I’m in Canada and was stunned to learn that I’m about to lose my unlimited account. I will definitely have to cancel Netflix if this doesn’t get overturned. And get used to avoiding YouTube from now on.
El Cid
A 25GB cap, if it were based on current pricing, would basically undercut much of my use of the interwebs.
You’d like to think that one of the available WiMax services (Clear, etc) would then up their game by offering a much higher limit at the same prices; but I’m sure that by that time they’ll have been bought up by the big boys anyway.
low-tech cyclist
You’d think even the pricks and dummies at the Heritage Foundation would realize that an open, neutral Web would be better for the vast majority of businesses, and for business growth in general.
Zifnab
I’ve been linking like mad about this on Facebook (we can’t all run our own blogs :-p), so it’s good to see the whole mess getting a bit more publicity.
http://www.canadiandownload.com/
My personal favorite response site so far.
terraformer
Restricting information flow and/or speed via tiered structure for revenue, plus the ability to muzzle the free exchange of information and ideas. Win/win!
toujoursdan
Huh? Weak? The CRTC has powers the FCC can only dream of.
It looks like the government is going to override them in this case: CBC: CRTC must reverse internet usage ruling: Clement
giltay
To be fair, we’re not exactly world leaders in universal health care. Ours is better than the US’s, but that just means we have the second-worst (and second most expensive) system in the developed world. However, we are a leader in bimetallic two-dollar coins.
I’m not surprised that the CRTC is allowing this: they’re very friendly to corporations at the expense of citizens. I am surprised at Harper and Clement’s declaration that they’ll seek to overturn it. For once, I’m glad of the Conservative centralization of power toward the Prime Minister’s Office and away from independent organizations. Just this once, though.
Also, I second that Teksavvy. It’s the best ISP I’ve ever had.
Evinfuilt
@low-tech cyclist: They can only picture short term profit and instant gratification on the stock market
joes527
@Villago Delenda Est: The correct quote is:
tapes? what are tapes you ask? GET OFF MY LAWN.
jcricket
net neutrality is one of those great issues that shows “Libertarians” (as represented by think tanks and most of their other pro-business counterparts) are full of shit.
They don’t care about freedom, competition or free markets -all of which net neutrality, enforced by the government, would enable.
They only care about the freedom for big corporations not to be encumbered by rules that would interfere with their short-term profitablity.
It’s like Libertarians go, “there’s an instance where the government is actually the only thing that can promote liberty?” and their heads simply ‘splode.
Useless fuckers.
RobertB
@El Cid – Sprint and Clear are unlimited in their WiMax/4G coverage areas. I think Clear is $60/mo and I _know_ Sprint is $70/mo. All the other 3G/4G usb modem solutions are capped on throughput (Virgin, T-Mobile) or ruinously expensive once you use up your monthly allowance (ATT, Verizon).
I read somewhere that you could use up your Verizon LTE allowance in less than an hour. No more Ruling the Air for you.
Comrade Mary
So I stay up AAAAAAAAL night so I can be first to comment on the reversal. but I get ignored or echoed. It’s OK, I’ll just pout over here.
Buck
@low-tech cyclist: Nope. Less For More™ is where it’s at, baby!
Barb (formerly Gex)
The fiscal conservatives in this country hate nothing more than a competitive market. We seem to hate competitive markets and regulated oligopolies. We will continue to celebrate collusion and price fixing as the fruits of a market economy.
Martin
The cable operators can see the future and they aren’t in it. Wireless speeds are catching up very quickly to wired to the home. Most people have high-speed internet rates that will be rivaled by the next round of 4G, and certainly the round after that. Cheaper to build out, better coverage.
Cable TV is struggling as well. People want on-demand content and there’s not much room for them in that market so they’re routing around the cable companies.
The smart ones are going to suck every penny out of people now and work to transition to a different business model and market – this one has a limited lifespan. And when it dies, it’s going to die surprisingly fast.
jayackroyd
TomLevenson Thomas Levenson
Canada foreshadows end of net neutrality: it’s cheaper to ship downloads on SSDs overnight than use the ‘net: http://bit.ly/f4pNIE
On my twitter stream
And the Horse He Rode In on
@burnspbesq:
Actually Stephen Harper is Snidely Whiplash
Thanks for the Tragically Hip reference
Sentient Puddle
Well, the good news for our Canadian friends is that metered Internet looks like it’s getting shot down. So you don’t have to worry about buying SSD futures anymore.
Yukoner
$2.00 per GB over the cap? Try $10.00 per GB here in the north. No, I am not joking.
mds
@Comrade Mary:
I sympathize, Comrade, especially as I suspect that there will be at least twenty more comments linking to the same fargin’ “shipping SSDs overnight” bit before this thread is done.
@joes527:
Ah, yes, the classic “write once, read never” backup solution of an earlier generation. (How many users were bitten by the fact that no one had verified that data had actually been written to the tape?) To be fair, though, the ads I’m getting for storage/backup servers often include tape drives even now. They’re still okay as an archive of last resort. Just don’t drive them across Canada in your car.
cleek
@joes527:
96? i heard it from a CS teacher in 89 or 90, and it was old even then.