Small ISPs urged to get organized, apply pressure for better rates

TORONTO—Independent Internet service providers (ISPs) should work together to pressure the CRTC to lower wholesale Internet access costs and ensure they can offer IP-based broadcast distribution services, broadcasting and telecom consultant George Burger said. In a speech Monday at a conference called the Canadian ISP Summit, Burger said that, through Internet protocol TV (IPTV) services, small ISPs have an opportunity to offer more bundled products and could help them drive up revenues. Burger, who works with IPTV interface supplier VMedia, said commission decisions over the past year have made it easier for smaller, independent ISPs to offer IPTV, including its decision to leave over-the-top, online TV services exempt, and its ruling last month to block BCE Inc.'s $3.38-billion bid to buy Astral Media Inc. Those decisions will make it easier for small or independent IPTV providers to secure content rights to distribute channels and compete with the incumbents, Burger said. “This particular decision does give us some hope that we can achieve this kind of a technological future,” he said of the CRTC's decision to block Bell’s bid for Astral, which would have given Bell ownership over more specialty channels and programming rights. “However, all is not rosy.” Small ISPs, which lease network infrastructure and capacity from the large, incumbent cable and telecom companies, can also operate broadcast distribution services through IPTV. Following an earlier, controversial CRTC decision to move to a wholesale usage-based billing regime in 2010, some independent providers said the regime could prevent them from offering IPTV, which requires more network capacity. The commission subsequently revised that decision and last year created a new capacity-based billing regime. Burger said small ISPs seeking to offer IPTV services must be “vigilant” in their efforts to secure equal access to specialty channels and programming rights by also leveraging the rules the commission established last year for large, vertically integrated companies that own broadcast and broadcast distribution assets. Those rules set out new guidelines for channel carriage negotiations and disputes. ISPs must work together to pressure the CRTC to lower wholesale Internet access rates established last year. Those rates, released with the commission’s decision for a capacity-based wholesale billing regime, are now subject to eight separate requests for reviews, including one by the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC), which represents small Canadian ISPs. “We have to push forward even harder, because at this point we have to re-energize ourselves and take advantage of the fact that there’s a potentially much more welcoming environment,” Burger said in the speech. “I think it’s important for the ISP community to think very, very hard about how it deals with this issue going forward and the degree of aggressiveness, forcefulness, with which it puts its case forward,” he said. nkyonka@thewirereport.ca

Small ISPs urged to get organized, apply pressure for better rates

Broadcast | November 7, 2012

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