Gamers Welcome CRTC’s UBB Decision But It Falls Short

The Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO) welcomes the CRTC’s decision today to scrap data caps on independent ISPs. CGO co-founder Jason Koblovsky says that usage based billing (UBB) schemes have a direct impact on how much media consumers can purchase.

“Many game consoles now offer media services as well as games. Due to these consoles now becoming ‘entertainment’ centers, usage based billing severely limits the consumers buying power. One movie downloaded for rental off the PS3 store, could very well take up a large amount of allocated monthly bandwidth. The online purchase of games can sometimes require three quarters of the amount of bandwidth allocated by Bell and Rogers. ” Koblovsky says.

“It is unfair to put restrictions like this on a marketplace in which most Canadian ISPs are media distributers as well. While we welcome today’s decision, we believe the CRTC has for far too long ignored net neutrality policy surrounding the use of throttling and UBB as a means for these ISPs to control network traffic rather than invest in more capacity. We’re glad the CRTC has taken somewhat of an understanding of that in the wholesale UBB decision. These scheme’s according to CRTC policy are to be used as a last resort.”

Koblovsky added that he was a bit puzzled with the CRTC Chairmen Konrad Von Finckenstein’s remarks on how the retail sector isn’t regulated. “Under net neutrality policy which governs all ISPs in Canada, the CRTC quite clearly has the obligation here to look further into the retail use of UBB especially with the new evidence that was presented to the commission during the wholesale UBB hearings.”

CGO landed Canada’s first net neutrality decision last month, when the CRTC found that Rogers Communications was not abiding by the CRTC’s net neutrality policy by throttling video games. Koblovsky stated that CGO is still awaiting a response from the CRTC on what enforcement measures will be taken.