Vancouver city council will vote on a motion Tuesday (December 14) calling on the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to reverse a decision that allows usage-based billing for Internet service.
Vision Vancouver councillor Andrea Reimer said allowing customers to be billed for each minute or hour they’re using the Internet could lead to unequal access to information and services.
“The less money you have, the less ability you have to access information, to access analysis of that information, and to access all those services,” Reimer told the Straight by phone today (December 13).
“You try and imagine your life without the Internet, or having to calculate how much time you’re going to spend each day based on how much money you have to pay to access it, that would be a very different world for all of us.”
Reimer said she decided to bring the motion forward when she heard about the CRTC decision and became concerned about the potential for an uneven playing field for Internet users and for small Internet service provider companies.
The May decision allows Bell Canada to bill independent Internet service providers based on usage, a model which Reimer said translates to increased costs for individual users, particularly when it comes to certain forms of high bandwidth information, such as audio or video.
The organization OpenMedia.ca has been collecting signatures in an online petition calling for a reversal of the decision.
“The more I learned about it, the more concerned I was about what kind of an impact it might have on individual internet users, as well as the smaller ISPs and the tech companies in town that depend on some fair level playing field access to the Internet to be able to come up with innovations and different creative projects that they’ve been working on,” said Reimer.
The councillor said that while the city doesn’t have any jurisdiction over CRTC decisions, they can participate in an appeal process that is open until the end of January.
“As an elected official in this city, there are times when it makes sense to use one’s voice to draw attention to an issue that affects residents and the citizens but over which we don’t have direct control as a council,” she said.
“I would hope that by drawing attention to it, people take the time to write to the CRTC and let them know how they feel about it.”
The motion calls on council to reverse the telecom decision CRTC 2010-255 and to “prevent incumbent ISPs from imposing usage-based billing on the independent ISPs that purchase wholesale broadband”.
You can follow Yolande Cole on Twitter at twitter.com/yolandecole.
