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UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

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Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#41

Post by pyre »

rfugger wrote: post #37
pyre wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can reference the diagram in my post here (and the more detailed one in the response to my post): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158888 This was mostly about Bell's ability to bring UBB to bear on the 3rd party ISPs that are leasing their lines (and thereby forcing all of those ISPs' customers onto a usage-based-billing model). Thought if you read that full thread you'll see that there's was a bit of debate…

Right, so this decision changes nothing for Bell's own customers, who will still face UBB, unless competition from 3rd party ISPs forces Bell to change its billing structure.

Right. But by allowing Bell to force UBB on 3rd party ISPs, it is effectively forcing UBB on everyone, not just Bell customers. Now it's just limited to Bell customers.

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#42

Post by noibl »

rfugger wrote: post #36
gamble wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know what they're doing. The problem is that they're biased. It's fundamentally the same issue that plagues financial regulation. The people who are the most qualified to understand the technological and regulatory issues are the most biased, because almost by necessity they're products of the same industry they're supposed to regulate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

On reading more about this I was depressed to see very little in the way of proposals to avoid the phenomenon, except (surprise! it's Stigler) don't regulate.

But I did find some interesting ideas at the end of this paper: http://www.icgg.org/downloads/Boehm%20-%20Regulatory%20Captu... (pp. 23-24)

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#43

Post by yuhong »

cal5k wrote: post #15
Caligula wrote: post #3

This is wonderful news. I was planning to attend my first 'rally' on saturday to protest UBB. I was shocked at how even non techies cared so much about this issue. I hope the monopolies(rogers&bell) don't try less subtle ways to achieve their goals.

Non-techies cared, in this case, because it was pretty easy to see how this would affect you personally - you would have to pay more. Period. If you asked the average person who is opposed to UBB (read: practically everyone), very few could actually present a nuanced argument as to why it's bad for a number of reasons. Instead, they can simply equate UBB to paying more, which it turns out is good enough for collectiv…

To be more precise, it would actually be paying more if you are on an indie ISP, by reducing competition.

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#44

Post by lurchpop »

cal5k wrote: post #13
9oliYQjP wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bureaucrats (CRTC) were the ones who tried to force this on the population. Elected officials decided to reverse the decision. The Conservatives first said they would send the decision back for "reconsideration" and then Harper chimed in with a more definitive reversal stance. The Liberals came out earlier saying they were against UBB. The New Democrats have always been fairly progressive about the web and are al…

I think it's safe to say that, with two major reversals in a year, the CRTC has lost any credibility it may have had (although it did not have much to lose). My vote would be for dissolution - maybe then they can create a regulator that actually employs people who understand what they're regulating.

See "regulatory capture" wiki link below. What'll happen is what always does in the US. They'll assume the only people who know what they're doing are the regulatED, and there's your revolving door.

Pretty sweet choices: idiocy or corruption.

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#45

Post by redthrowaway »

cal5k wrote: post #13
9oliYQjP wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bureaucrats (CRTC) were the ones who tried to force this on the population. Elected officials decided to reverse the decision. The Conservatives first said they would send the decision back for "reconsideration" and then Harper chimed in with a more definitive reversal stance. The Liberals came out earlier saying they were against UBB. The New Democrats have always been fairly progressive about the web and are al…

I think it's safe to say that, with two major reversals in a year, the CRTC has lost any credibility it may have had (although it did not have much to lose). My vote would be for dissolution - maybe then they can create a regulator that actually employs people who understand what they're regulating.

I don't think they need to be disolved, as in theory they perform a necessary function. Instead, merely sack all of the directors and hold parliamentary hearings for their replacements. Make it open and accountable, and you won't see the kind of patronage happening.

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#46

Post by iwwr »

veb wrote: post #28
tjmc wrote: post #27

Woohoo - Australia's back on top!

You mean New Zealand, right?

New Zealand is rather isolated geographically, it's expensive to build infrastructure on the periphery of the network. This is true for the South Pacific islands in general.

This is a snapshot of the current undersea infrastructure in the Australia-New Zealand area: http://i.imgur.com/K1t4y.png

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#47

Post by redthrowaway »

charlief wrote: post #4
zachallaun wrote: post #2

Thank God. Seriously, this restores some of my faith in bureaucrats. [edit] Interesting information from replies. I'll not be so quick to restore faith in the future.

The Liberals may be forcing an election soon, and after tens of thousands of complaint emails, the decision was an easy way to gain a couple percentage points in the polls. This was a no-brainer for the incumbent Conservatives, but their swiftness in resolving the issue was really impressive.

They weren't particularly swift. Every other party had come out strongly against UBB while the conservatives would only say they would be "paying close attention" to the ruling. This was simply such a wildly unpopular decision that it would have been political suicide to support it, and once every other party had come out against it the Conservatives couldn't be the only ones not to do so. The Conservatives are well-known for being anti-regulation and pro-big business, which aren't very popular sentiments in most of Canada. They couldn't afford to wear this albatross around their neck.

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#48

Post by redthrowaway »

memetichazard wrote: post #31

I'm annoyed that I didn't even know about UBB until earlier today, when I stumbled across Reddit Montreal and saw something about the organization of a protest. Then again I'm getting all my news from here and Slashdot these days - haven't watched any TV in ages. My ISP already posted up new rates conforming to UBB - if it does get overturned, I hope they'll return to the old rates: $29 a month for unlimited bandwidt…

HN is fairly anti-reddit because a lot of the people on here were early reddit adopters who left when it ceased to be programming and tech-centric, and when the site got big enough that the quality of the average comment dropped. That said, there are some great subreddits on there, you just have to cut out most of the main ones. I dropped r/pics, r/atheism, r/worldnews, r/gaming, and r/reddit.com. I added r/humor, r/netsec, r/python, r/java, r/math, r/depthub, r/truereddit, and a few others. It's a much improved experience, now.

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#49

Post by Joakal »

Unfortunately for Canadians, I believe it's far from over. Business/Politics are known to make ambit claims [0] that are hard to fully remove as there's a tendency of the well-meaning of compromising is exploited. Examples can easily be seen with Obama administration with the Republicans [1] .

Canadians would have to ask for more than a reversal. It might be an overhaul of the organisation due to widespread assumptions of regulatory capture [2] that's serving the needs of monopolistic industries over the public interest.

As long the department continues to exist even though they had the sheer audacity to implement it despite public submissions; this issue is not going away.

Well done. To me, it's a small step however.

[0] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ambit_claim

[1] http://i.imgur.com/1ULKE.png

[2] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Regulatory_ca...

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#50

Post by AgentConundrum »

Joakal wrote: post #49

Unfortunately for Canadians, I believe it's far from over. Business/Politics are known to make ambit claims [0] that are hard to fully remove as there's a tendency of the well-meaning of compromising is exploited. Examples can easily be seen with Obama administration with the Republicans [1] . Canadians would have to ask for more than a reversal. It might be an overhaul of the organisation due to widespread assumptio…

Believe me, many Canadians are well aware that Bell's move was an ambit claim (a term I've just now learned because of you, so thank you for that).

I've read a number of claims on reddit, even before Minister Clement made his comments, from people who were fearful that the government would smack down this decision only for Bell to come back with a slightly less bad offer.

It remains to be seen what we'll eventually get out of this deal. At this point, however, we have the three largest political parties in the country against this, and I've heard (but haven't seen citations) that the other two major parties have stated their opposition. The Prime Minister has personally come out against the issue[1] as well, so it looks like there is a fair amount of political resistance to UBB in general.

The CRTC needs to be disbanded. This will be the second government overruling of their decisions in as many months[2], so perhaps it will make them a little more measured in their approach should they again approach the UBB issue. If the CRTC constantly needs to be kept in check by the government, then perhaps it will incentivize the government to disband the CRTC as the government will already be doing their job for them anyway.

[1] http://twitter.com/pmharper/status/32526091855863808 [2] http://news.gc.ca/web/article-eng.do?crtr.sj1D=&mthd=tp&...

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