Legal Research

CRTC Usage Based Billing Timeline

By Michael Lines

The CRTC has released its timline for consultations on Usage-Based Billing (UBB). We’ve been following the story at Slaw here and here. A good source for updates on the issue is Lindsay Pinto’s blog at Open Media.ca, and of course Michael Geist is providing excellent commentary.

The whole issue is particularly interesting because of the strong reaction the proposal has provoked in Canadian consumers. If I had to guess, I’d say that UBB is irksome to Canadians mainly because of the unreasonable caps proposed, and the transparently anti-competitive character of the caps (and this on multiple fronts). Most of the commentary I’ve seen focuses on the limitations that caps impose on “access to content” and the opportunity to “consume” media. However, any bandwidth caps also limit participation in online culture. This point is central to Tim Wu’s Guardian column yesterday. It is a great introduction to what Mr. Wu calls “a critical period for the internet.”

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on March 18, 2011 (boomark / email).