On today's episode of the Search Engine podcast, Jesse Brown talks to Konrad von Finckenstein, Canada's chief telecoms regulator -- the man who brought down the recent ruling allowing Canadian ISPs to throttle their users. In the interview, Commissioner von Finckenstein arrogantly dismisses Canadians who are threatened by this ruling as "Internet hogs" and pretends that he hasn't heard any of the research that shows Canada is badly lagging the rest of the developed world in Internet access, paying far more to get far less than others, despite the enormous public subsidy Canada's ISPs have received in the form of exclusive rights-of-way and access to taxpayer-built infrastructure. He also purports to know nothing of the existing abusive policies used by Canada's big ISPs. If this is the man running Canada's Internet policy, it's no wonder that Canada's net is in such sorry shape.
The Neutral Throttle? An interview with CRTC Chairman Konrad von Finckenstein
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"the enormous public subsidy Canada's ISPs have received in the form of exclusive rights-of-way and access to taxpayer-built infrastructure"
ISPs in Canada by number overwhelmingly have received no such thing. The retail and business internet services of a small number of incumbent phone and cable companies are presumably what you are talking about. The commercial advantage those incumbents have by virtue of their privileged access to taxpayer-funded infrastructure is what makes it so difficult for any green-fields competitor to fund an alternative network.
The fight that the CRTC has been asked to mediate has been widely couched as being between ISPs and Telcos. In that context, if ISPs had exclusive rights of way and effective access to taxpayer-built infrastructure, there would be no fight.
The phrasing of your post is misleading.
O Cory, here we go again...
Given the Canadian negotiation tactic of appearing conciliatory whether or not you are, and his previous rulings and decisions, Finckenstein (what a name!) is behaving correctly.
Yes, he allows throttling as a 'last resort', but by mandating notice he introduces a factor that will probably have a chilling effect.
Also, I plan to email him if I can about something that happened to me today -- I logged out of hotmail, to find myself at a Bell Sympatico-branded MSN page, which shouldn't have happened since I'm with TekSavvy. His previous political experience indicates that he wouldn't like that at all!
Of course, I would have preferred a stronger net-neutrality stance, or even settled for a little anti-Hollywood, but I'll take this overall. The next step will complete the process.
-- GimpWii
@ jabley
Other than "telcos", who are these other 'by number' ISPs you speak of? 'cablecos'? If not, I can think of just one. No, wait, two. And what about if you measure by number of subscribers?
Maybe I am just misreading your post...
Also, I think you are misusing the phrase 'exclusive rights' - do you not mean 'equal rights'? Or perhaps I'm confused again...
Anyways, I call BS on "ISPs in Canada by number overwhelmingly have received no such thing." If I'm wrong, please clarify who you're talking about.
He's either incompetant or he's dishonest. Either way, seems like a good reason for him to be out of a job.
So what exactly does an ISP do, other than lay cable? If the infrastructure is there, and if it's built by tax money, then what stops people from just...plugging in and using it?
I'm afraid I don't understand this very well.
The CRTC head is a political position. Not elected, but still political which means his real skill in life is networking. Actually knowing what he's talking about is always a happy coincidence with these jobs.
I went to school with a kid of his.
All I have to say is that I'm not at ALL surprised he's the sort of person who talks before he thinks and doesn't have a factual basis for most of what he says.
Hey everyone, if you haven't yet heard there's a petition that needs your help... we're almost at the goal of 10,000 signatures :-)
http://dissolvethecrtc.ca/
"So what exactly does an ISP do, other than lay cable?"
Well, I've worked at ISPs in various engineering functions for a good 14 years now, and we do a lot more than lay cable.
The cable bit, usually referred to as the last mile, feeds into switches, routers, and a backbone that has to be desinged, built, and managed. This takes a lot of work, and includes things like making projections of use so that when we need a 40-Gbps backbone, we have equipment and fiber that can handle it, and if a protocol or application is having problems making it across the backbone, we have a lab, the talent, and the relationships with the equipment and optical vendors to troubleshoot, isolate, and fix the fault.
Add to this the never-ending peering negotiations, so your traffic can get where it needs to without excessive latency, keeping DNS and IP information up to date and accurate, and getting all the installers, field technicians, sales engineers, and NOC/support staff trained on new protocols and equipment, and you'll see that the last mile problem is only a small issue with most ISPs, and why we usually let the LECs handle that.
If only the LECs would play fair with their taxpayer-funded infrastructure. Sadly, they tend to view other ISPs as competition to be destroyed, rather than partners in making profit.
1. The sensationalist headline on top of this article (borrowed from the interviewer's tweet, well ahead of the actual interview being available) is incorrect, if you actually bother to listen to the interview. KvF didn't call "Canadians" Internet hogs, he referred to "Internet hogs" as those who should pay more (rather than being throttled) in the event of network congestion.
2. The "I'm not aware of" line is misrepresented here. That was a sort of half-sentence where KvF starts to say one thing, realises where he's headed, and heads in another direction. It's clear that one of KvF's key concerns in this interview was to avoid being caught out saying anything that would subject him to a lawsuit later for having pre-judged a case that hasn't yet come before him. What he has seen or not seen in terms of research we'll never know, at least from the interview. He didn't finish the thought, and Jesse didn't press him on it (but tweeted it anyway).
3. He "purports to know nothing of the existing abusive policies used by Canada's big ISPs"? No, that's not true, either. He purported not to pre-judge a case until all evidence has brought before him. And guess what? He's a judge that runs a legal body -- for him to say anything else would amount to breaking the law and having him kicked off every case involving these matters in the future.
4. As noted by the poster above, the "enormous public subsidy Canada's ISPs have received in the form of exclusive rights-of-way and access to taxpayer-built infrastructure" is an urban myth. There has never been any such thing. Canada's telcos, in the days when they were monopolies -- is that what you were referring to? or some other secret subsidy plan? it's hard to tell -- were rate-regulated bodies. It was pretty simple. In the absence of competition, they applied to the regulator to have their rates set. The regulator's job was to set them at a "fair" rate of return: rate-setting exists to stand in for competition, to ensure that the monopoly doesn't get to abuse its position by earning an unfair rate of return, i.e. a subsidy. There was never any subsidy -- that's the whole point of rate regulation.
(Speaking of rights of way, good news -- you, too, can benefit from these mythical creates! It's in the law; they're at special low regulated rates, enforced by the CRTC against cities and building owners, who have taken the CRTC to court on exactly this point.)
5. The conclusion is off. No, this is not the man running Canada's Internet policy. If you listen to the interview, he is pretty explicit. Candada needs more bandwidth, doesn't have a digital strategy to invest in it, it needs one, and the CRTC can't do a thing about it except ask (as it has) the government to come up with one.
You have to understand the history of telecoms in this nation. Specifically speaking in Manitoba, much of our system was originally constructed by farmers and the rural municipalities after they got the shaft from Bell. Bell is only here because it purchased existing publicly owned systems from our governments over the last several decades. Bell promised to spend money, advance technology, maintain the systems and provide a fair priced service if they could have control of the existing hardware in exchange. That's what is meant by subsidized.
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/3/telephone.shtml
I must say I'm surprised and impressed with these earlier comments. I don't think I've ever seen anything other than rabid "GIVE ME MOAR BANDWIDTH 4 LESS PLZ K THX BYE" in any of these consumer activist discussions. This is a complicated issue in which cursory comprehension is no comprehension.
Finckenstein is quite likely a spin-doctor asshat. Hogs? Why are we using a communist system anyways - Why not pay for use like in Australia? Warning: way more expensive than in Canada. Isn't that the most equitable non-throttling solution?
Look, I want faster and cheaper Internet and cheaper text messages too. Unfortunately, Canada's a very large country with a complex regulatory structure and difficult history. For example, telcos are mandated to provide telephone service to *everyone, anywhere*. Try to imagine the costs involved for an exchange-listed corporation to lay and maintain copper to the Canadian wasteland. (Copper being, of course, a corrodible metal that's also quite valuable when stolen. I'm not kidding. This has happened in Vancouver.) As for taxpayer-built infrastructure, well, it's mostly been replaced by now otherwise we'd be running on state-of-the-art Internet from 1999 - 1mbit ADSL WHEE!!!
We can definitely do better. Both the regulatory structure and corporations are very inefficient when compared with global peers. Unfortunately, both the problem and answer are far more complicated than the current frothing-at-the-mouth hordes of political consumer activists care to know.
The Manitoba history link is great and worth reading, but it doesn't suggest any subsidy. The opposite: it starts out saying that entrepreneurs who wanted to start up phone companies (eventually the government bought them out) had higher costs because the government required them to buy franchises and provide free service to some people.
I like the CRTC's approach because it provides transparency of ISPs QOS policies and thereby creates competitive incentive to avoid abusive restrictions, with some fallback for adult supervision. It is not perfect, but maybe more realistic input from the Michael Geists of the world would have helped.
Traffic management is necessary because bandwidth is less than infinite. We would be further ahead if the putative heralds of the people would recognize this and stop declaring that the earth is flat.
My company recently implemented bandwidth guarantees for VOIP traffic on the fiber between our buildings because file transfers were causing drop outs on phone calls. In other words our routers throttle file transfers to provide decent QOS for voice. We have fewer people sharing way more bandwidth than is available in a cable/telco consumer setup.
I'm a moderately heavy bittorent (Vuze) user. My ISP is Rogers Cable, whose internet service is available in a number of speeds/caps/pricing from $25 to $150 per month. Rogers has been reasonably open about its traffic management practices and is on record as throttling bittorrent on the upstream (from the house) because this is a scarce resource. Problems for me - nil; obscure torrents with few peers/seeds run slowly, popular torrents download like sh** through a goose; surfing and Skype work smoothly even in peak periods. I left Bell Sympatico when my experience was the opposite.
I have kept a lazy eye on Von Finckenstein since he became head of the CRTC, and by and large, IMHO, he has kept the interests of the public high in his judgments. I don't think industry is any great fan of his, and let's face it, the telecommunications industry in Canada was divided up years ago into winners and losers by the government, and the industry would expect any of these regulating bodies to fall in line with the government prerogative. Technology has created faster than expected overlaps between the telcos and the cable/tv industries, and I give KvF full credit for trying to sort it out and still keeping the public in mind.
#14 You mean your company is throttling itself? My brain just exploded.
#16 I'm sorry for the carnage, I'll assume you can read this without your brain. Yes, we give priority to voice traffic b cau se s h rd to unde stan p ople when file transfers cause dropouts in voice calls.
hi COry - something is fishy here... all these neutral and CRTC-supportive cooments don't add up... if oyu go to discussions in Canada, they are rife with hatred for the collusion between the big3 and the CRTC. seeing all these 'informed' commenters here dissenting the norm makes me think it's a propaganda campaign. consider that boing is known to be a leading blog and that the clever PR folks for the big3 are not unaware of this (hipster Torontonians know all about 'kool') - it seems likely that they would swamp your comments with 'arguments' for the CRTC, in an effort to sway readers, and shut up the dissenters. I smell subtle smear, and they are using your site to do it. Harvard review says we are 23rd in the developed world in terms of internet service and bandwidth and living up to our abilities as a 'world reader', and everyone who knows will point out that the telcos here have been gouging inthis area and others for AGES, with the help of the govt. (and why no dispute in the CBC news articles? guess who pays for a lot of advertising on CBC tv? they prop each other up and the common man pays the tab)
#14 back again. Sorry #18; I'm not part of any secret conspiracy. Posted pretty much the same on /. BTW. Comments there pretty much broke out the same as here. take a look -- http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/21/2223229/CRTC-Issues-Net-Neutrality-Rules