OpenMedia.ca in the News

From CBC News

Bell internet customers will no longer have their file sharing uploads and downloads deliberately slowed down.

Bell Canada and Bell Aliant will stop using equipment to selectively slow down file sharing applications on their networks starting March 1, the companies said in a letter to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Monday.

That will affect both the companies' own retail internet customers and the customers of independent internet service providers who rent wholesale access to Bell's network in order to connect directly with customers' homes. Read more »

Interestingly, Arstechnica points to questions that were raised 130 years ago regarding the telephone industry and its implementation of metered billing. Sound familiar? Like those who protested in 1886, the pro-Internet community is striving to encourage policy-makers to re-imagine the web. This article cleverly links the (once feared) universality of the telephone with our current concerns of advancing an open, accessible Internet. If we keep it up, we can be the history-makers of our time. Onward! Read more »

Why is everybody freaking out about Lawful Access right now? Why is the "I've got nothing to hide" argument missing the point? And why are the experts (Privacy Commissioners, academics, and public interest organizations) so concerned?

Listen to Tamir Israel of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) on the CBC Tech Podcast to find out why. Read more »

By Mark Hasiuk for Vancouver Courier

Cyberspace. The final frontier.

Back in 2003, Barrett Lyon, a computer scientist from California, embarked on the most ambitious cartography project since David Thompson. Using computer graphics, Lyon mapped the Internet, connecting network to network, power source to web server, in a human-created universe of infinite possibilities. At first glance the completed work, on display at Boston’s Museum of Science and New York’s Museum of Modern Art, resembles the Milky Way. Celestial. Divine. But like all things manmade, and every earthly frontier before it, the Internet courts corruption. Predictably, quests for money and power pose the greatest threats. Read more »

By Jason Magder for Edmonton Journal

Canadian Internet providers have purposely or accidentally slowed down the speeds of its customers dozens of times in the last two years, and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has done little to stop this practice, an industry researcher has found. Read more »

By Anthony Gabryluk for Telemanagement

Consumer advocates have told the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that big telecommunications companies should address the issue of internet congestion by investing more in their networks. Read more »

By Howard Solomon for itWorldCanada

The telecom regulator begins a hearing to hone its unpopular decision on usage-based billing and set wholesale pricing for independent Internet providers so they can offer high-speed access equal to big carriers. Read more »

From Mediacaster

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's public hearing into wholesale high-speed Internet access services began in Ottawa today. Read more »

By Stefania Moretti for Toronto Sun

Regulators drilled BCE Inc. executives with questions Monday ahead of a decision on wholesale usage-based billing (UBB) amid criticism the whole process is a waste of time because it ignores the wider problem of retail data caps. Read more »

By Iain Marlow for Globe and Mail

The second day of crucial CRTC hearings into the future of Internet pricing in Canada continued on Tuesday in Gatineau, Que., with a lively and at-times adversarial back-and-forth between two groups and the assembled regulators. Read more »

By Sean Buckley for Fierce Telecom

Canada's telecom regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), will hold discussions with incumbents, competitive service providers and industry groups on usage based billing (UBB) and broadband service wholesale pricing issues. Read more »

By Jameson Berkow for Financial Post

Hidden deep within the federal government’s comprehensive bundle of crime legislation lies a bill that opponents claim will rob Canadians their right to online privacy as well as their cash. Read more »

From CBC News

Advocates for internet users and civil liberties groups have launched a petition against proposed laws that would give police in new powers to monitor and intercept internet communications in Canada. Read more »

By Andrea Macpherson for News 1130

Some are calling it "lawful" access while critics call it warrantless, invasive, costly, and poorly thought-out. There's now a plan to force phone and Internet providers to surrender our personal information to "authorities" without a warrant. Read more »