The CRTC, The beast with two heads...

So I spent the better part of this weekend, (in between fixing computers for family members and spending quality time with my beautiful wife) trying to dig into this Usage Based Billing (UBB) that some many are up in arms about... so much so that our gov't actually stepped into the fray... something that in my experience, Canadian gov't rarely does (listen to the people).  But I didn't want to just wade into this argument unarmed or uneducated.

The first things that came to mind was;

1. That damn CRTC is at it again, I'm not a huge supported of many of their past decisions. 
2. We are already overpaying for Internet services compared to European countries.
3. The CRTC should be protecting us from corporate giants like Bell, Telus and Rogers.

 This was the frame of mind that I was in when I started googling for all I was worth... Boy was that an exercise in frustration.  First thing I went to prove was how expensive Internet is here compared to Europe... well the best I could does was find some price comparisons that went back to '07 and '08...  but they don't seem to pay for Internet in the same way we do.  All pricing was per MB/s of speed per second of connection time (or that was how best I could decipher the numbers, see for yourself here, or here)

Once I figured that wouldn't work (without a year of work and a Ph.D.) I thought lets see what teh CRTC's mandate really was, again this was no small bit of work since (who knew) the CRTC traces it's roots back to the Canadian Railway Act... but eventually I did see this: "Today, the CRTC supervises and regulates Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications while remaining independent – so it can serve the needs and interests of Canadian citizens, industry and government. It reports to Parliament through the Minister of Canadian Heritage."  Well That sounds reasonable, somehow they are suppose to keep an unbiased view and protect us the Citizens, the Gov't and Industry. No sure I believe that are managing but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. 

So after all this I figured meh... let's see what I can make of the media's reporting on this situation... The first thing I noticed was the very polarized quotes the media was using, from a Bell Employee (VP level) stating that it's easy to give away bandwidth when you don't have to pay for the infrastructure (this targeted at small discount ISP's that provide unlimited bandwidth usage) to a student stating that we would all end up with 25GB caps, which was only enough to download one game per month.  Wow well if this is what are being used as reference points I should be called as an expert witness!

Okay, well I've set the stage but will stop here for now to keep this posting but busting my bandwidth cap! :)

I will post my conclusions later this afternoon.