OpenMedia.ca Joins Call for an Expanded UBB Proceeding, Announces Intent to Participate

OpenMedia.ca and CIPPIC Question Assumptions That Led to Internet Metering in Submission to CRTC

February 17, 2011 – Pro-Internet group OpenMedia.ca has made an official submission to the CRTC via the Samuelson‐Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), calling on the regulator to widen the scope of its hearing on usage-based Internet billing.

CIPPIC and OpenMedia.ca’s submission questions two key assumptions that led to the decision to add new fees Canadian Internet users’ bills:

• Equating ‘heavy Internet use’ to ‘excess’, and
• Assuming a correlation between usage and actual congestion. This information is currently held exclusively by ISPs.

"Canadians know UBB is just the symptom of larger structural problems with telecommunications in Canada. This review is an opportunity to start to fix those larger problems," said OpenMedia.ca’s national coordinator Steve Anderson.

“It is time for more transparency, both from the CRTC and the major telecom companies that control the Internet market. If the CRTC will go so far as to impose a pricing structure that so clearly favours big industry over citizens’ interests, we will not only fight that decision, but also demand to know the reasons for it.”

The submission asks specifically for an expanded proceeding that will allow for evidence, interrogatories, an online consultation, and a public hearing.

-30-

Contact

Lindsey Pinto
Communications Manager, OpenMedia.ca
778-238-7710
[email protected]

About OpenMedia.ca

OpenMedia.ca is a national, non-partisan, non-profit public engagement organization working to advance and support an open and innovative communications system in Canada. Our primary goal is to increase public awareness and informed participation in Canadian media, cultural, information, and telecommunication policy formation.

About Stop The Meter

In October, Canadians were outraged by the news that the CRTC had decided to allow Bell and other big Internet service providers (ISPs) to impose new fees on independent ISPs – usage-based billing. Now every Internet user in Canada is likely to feel the sting of a less affordable Internet, and a less competitive Internet service market. Recognizing the importance of this issue, OpenMedia.ca launched the Stop The Meter campaign.

Since its inception, this multi-platform petition, based at http://www.StopTheMeter.ca and in French at http://openmedia.ca/compteur, become a record breaker and a game changer. Nearly half-a-million names have now been added to the website, Facebook, Twitter, and in print.