Canada’s Internet is dangerously adrift. OpenMedia’s letter to new CRTC chair Vicky Eatrides urges her to put us back on track.

Our “Minister of Collapse” must undo this affordability disaster of his own making.

OpenMedia’s mobile billboard ads are demanding positive change in downtown Toronto.

This week, experts at the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) – the body that oversees Canada’s .ca domain – released their 2014 Factbook, which chronicles Canada’s advancement on Internet issues over the past year. The Factbook investigates how well-positioned Canadians are in the areas of access, cost, and usage. The report shows Canada continues to slip further behind our global counterparts. For example, Canada has crashed from 2nd place in 2001 on broadband penetration amongst industrialized nations to 16th place in 2014.

Telus has announced plans to cut back on user bandwidth for its Internet service starting early next year. This Internet disservice comes after Telus met with OpenMedia to state that they were wanting to make amends with Canadians. Now is the time for Canadians to take action in making the switch to Distributel, TekSavvy or another independent ISP at OpenMedia.ca/Switch. Help us keep Big Telecom on their toes by making a contribution to OpenMedia at OpenMedia.ca/Allies. Article by Daniel Tencer for The Huffington Post Some Telus customers are upset after the phone and internet service company started sending out notifications that it is reducing upload and download limits on its home internet service. The change, which comes into effect on Feb. 1, 2013, affects only Telus customers who use the company’s land-line internet service, which is available in Alberta and British Columbia. Users of the Telus High-Speed service will see their upload and download cap reduced to 100 gigabytes per month from the current 150 gigabytes. Users of its highest-level service — Telus High Speed Turbo 25 — will see their download caps halved, to 250 gB from the current 500 gB. (A complete list of the new bandwidth caps is available at the Telus website.)

A CRTC decision came down on Friday for more transparency to how Big Telecom assigns wholesale rates and pricing. This is another sign of progress for the +500,000 Canadian citizens who spoke out through StopTheMeter.ca. Use our online tool at OpenMedia.ca/Switch to find independent providers in your area and read more about the CRTC transparency decision.

Big telecom companies across Canada are continuing to employ 'usage-based billing', an punitive billing practice that restricts data allowances. Though many of you fought back against UBB via the Stop The Meter campaign—you prevented it from being imposed across the entire Internet service market—Big Telecom continues to use it to price-gouge Canadians. Tell the CRTC that we want a full and comprehensive review of Big Telecom's Internet rates and hidden fees at PriceHike.ca. Together, we can put an end to this deceptive data pricing. A recent study suggests that some 10 per cent of Canadians now use the streaming video service Netflix. But the company evidently believes it could be doing better — and providing a better service to Canadians — were it not for Canada’s internet service providers. Article by Daniel Tencer for Huffington Post Canada “It’s almost a human rights violation what they’re charging for internet access in Canada,” Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos told a conference in Los Angeles last week, as quoted by GigaOM. “The problem in Canada is … they have almost third-world access to the internet,” he added in an interview a day later. At the heart of the matter for Netflix is "usage-based billing," or limiting the amount subscribers can download per month, a practice some Canadian ISPs put into place at roughly the same time that Netflix was preparing its move into the Canadian market. Some ISPs that already had caps lowered those limits in response to Netflix's arrival.

Canadian citizens are being price-gouged by Big Telecom even as their costs seemingly go down. We're paying more but falling behind and getting less than our global counterparts due to restrictive data caps that are becoming increasingly prevalent. We've seen how Big Telecom has avoided being transparent about their pricing procedures before, but data is calling this secrecy further into question. Tell the CRTC that we want a full and comprehensive review of Big Telecom's Internet rates at http://PriceHike.ca/ and together we can put an end to deceptive data pricing. Article by Phillip Dampier for StopTheCap.com Prices to move data across the Internet continue to decline throughout the world. According to new data from TeleGeography’s IP Transit Pricing Service, price declines in most locations accelerated over the past year, at an accelerating pace. But none of those savings are showing up on customer bills. In fact, while providers have been increasing broadband prices over the past three years, their costs to provide the service continue to plummet.