Canada’s threat to internet radio
Posted on Monday, January 31st, 2011 at 9:32am. #
Of all the places I’ve been in the world, Canada has seemed the most friendly, quirky nation to go to. From the friendliness and scariness of different parts of Vancouver, to the French nationalism in Québec, the immenseness of Toronto, or the beer-café culture of Montrèal, Canada is everything to everyone.
And, according to The Tyee, Canada also is something else: the world’s biggest internet loser. Canada’s equivalent of OFCOM has allowed internet service providers to use “Metering, or usage-based billing (UBB), [which] will mean that service providers can charge per byte in addition to their basic access charges. The move is sure to stifle digital creativity in Canada while the rest of the world looks on and snickers.”
The magazine claims that Canadian ISPs are trying to force people to enjoy media on cable television rather than the internet: which, in my view, is giving too much intelligence to the ISPs, and also missing the real point. A campaign at Open Media claims it’s all about internet affordability; I doubt it’s that, either; I think it’s just network management.
However, what is clear is that per-byte charging for internet use is especially damaging to internet video and internet radio. We’ve always been accustomed to listening to the radio for free. Listening to the radio via broadcast is free, no matter how long you listen. However, listening to BBC Radio 3 over their website uses bandwidth. 144MB an hour of it, if we’re being accurate.
You can download a lot of web-pages and emails with a small cap on your internet: many people do quite well using only 1GB a month. But when you start consuming multimedia content, a per-byte charge starts to really hurt.
Another reminder, if one is needed, that the future of radio has to include broadcast radio (FM, or HD, or DAB) and not just the internet. Blindly assuming that the internet is the only future, and denigrating broadcast radio, is beginning to look very foolish indeed.
I think you are missing the point James. You will recall that AT&T in the US used to offer all-you-can-eat mobile data plans. That is until the iPhone traffic on their network exploded and they had to do something short term to prevent the network grinding to a halt. Same here in New Zealand where we used to be able to buy uncapped ADSL plans. Back then even an ADSL modem cost was a big deal. Now the DSL modems are given away and homes with DSL number a hundred fold more.
The all-you-can-eat plans are grandfathered. That is, lucky if you got one, but you can’t buy a new one.
BUT, fibre to the home is on it’s way. Soon the bandwidth to my home will be a hundred fold more and consequently much less per bit. I won’t give a shit if my radio streams are metered per bit or byte because the tariff will be tiny. I’ll be watching HD movies that download in real time.
The point is that we in countries lucky enough to have ubiquitous broadband of some kind are in a transition phase while the networks grow to a point that they can sustain all our bandwidth needs.
Case in point is 4G mobile, also on it’s way. Speeds of 500 to 1000 faster to your mobile than 3G within 5 years. But in the meantime before these new networks are built the network owners have to ensure the current networks remain usable for all.
I will accept that per bit metering can produce some undesirable behaviours for services like radio in the interim, but these are symptoms and shouldn’t distract us from the end game.