On Dec 10, 2015, at 17:49 , Jean-Francois Mezei <jfmezei_nanog@vaxination.ca> wrote:
On 2015-12-10 13:07, William Kenny wrote:
"Verizon is reportedly set to begin testing a sponsored data program that would let companies pay Verizon to deliver online services without using up customers' data plans.
In Canada, the Telecom Act 27(2) states:
Unjust discrimination
(2) No Canadian carrier shall, in relation to the provision of a telecommunications service or the charging of a rate for it, unjustly discriminate or give an undue or unreasonable preference toward any person, including itself, or subject any person to an undue or unreasonable disadvantage.
So if this Verizon scheme were to happen in Canada, one could challenge this if the rates charged to Netflix for 1GB of data are different from the rates charged to anyone else, including residential customers as this would be an undue preference.
What if the rate charged is the same? Wouldn’t it still be problematic if: I pay VZ $15/Gigabyte for all data I use except Netflix which gets billed automatically to Netflix instead of me?
Bell Canada's wireless service lost such a challenge earlier this year because it ended up giving 10 hours of its own TV service for $4.00 while the same 10 hours on competing services would end up costing something like $40 in normal usage charges. (Bell Canada is current at Federal Court seeking the CRTC's decision be invalidated, stating its TV service is "broadcasting" and not subject to the Telecommunications Act despite being delivered over a telecommunications service using IP technology.
Telephone companies… Any belief that they are communications companies is purely coincidental to their business model. In fact, they are law firms. Owen