Making net neutrality law redundant: telecom execs

TORONTO — If there was a single point of agreement among panelists representing both small and big internet service providers (ISPs) on a panel discussing regulatory issues at the Telecom Summit in Toronto, it was on what they said is a redundancy in imposing net neutrality as a guiding principle in the telecommunications and broadcasting acts. The motion that recently passed in the House of Commons “is simply a restatement of the existing statutory framework; you don’t have to do anything,” Ted Woodhead, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs at Telus Corp., said on the Tuesday afternoon panel focusing on regulatory issues in the industry. That motion was put forward by Liberal MP John Oliver, and requests that the government consider net neutrality as a guiding principle of the upcoming Telecommunication Act and Broadcasting Act review, which should consider potentially enshrining it into the law. Just before noon on Tuesday, the government announced the launch of that legislative review and, effectively, the adoption of the motion to have net neutrality as the guide. “It isn’t necessary; move on to something that’s important,” Woodhead said, suggesting Canada has some of the strictest net neutrality rules already. “Let’s focus on things that matter.” Panelists who represented both big and small service providers agreed that the existing legislation is rugged enough to maintain the principle, even if it does not explicitly mention it. Specifically, they argued that section 27 and 36 of the Telecom Act, or the unjust discrimination and undue preference provisions, are robust enough, and anything more is a redundancy. Samer Bishay, president and CEO of Iristel Inc., suggested “we seem to always want to overcomplicate things.” He referenced preferential treatment Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron gave to certain music services by exempting them from data caps, which the CRTC banned in a later decision on zero-rating services. Representatives from the big three previously sat before the House of Commons ethics committee studying net neutrality and, despite agreeing with the importance of net neutrality, said that there needs to be flexibility in the principle to accommodate 5G technologies and internet of things (IoT). David Watt, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs at Rogers Communications Inc., reiterated that point Tuesday. “It’s undeniable that in the 5G world, when we have applications that require different latency...not every byte will be treated the same.” Codifying net neutrality into the act would make it too prescriptive, Watt added, taking into consideration contingencies with applications coming many years down the road. Bishay suggested perhaps a points system could be implemented to rank importance for certain things that may be a public safety issue, including the use of autonomous cars. BCE Inc.’s senior vice-president of regulatory Robert Malcolmson, however, said you could codify the principle under section 7 of the Telecom Act, which governs telecom policy, but said the existing rules that allow regulators to see net neutrality violations on a case-by-case basis make “perfect sense.” How to approach such a move to potentially codify the principle was addressed by Andy Kaplan-Myrth, vice-president of regulatory at TekSavvy Solutions Inc. Despite agreeing that the current system is working well, he said if lawmakers want to put the principle into law, they should should make it a characteristic or property of the network, rather than a rule, per se. The conversation was preceded by one about CRTC report released last week, called Harnessing Change, that effectively recommends that the government bring all players — internet service providers and over-the-top (OTT) services — who benefit from content to help sustain it. Rogers and Bell, the vertically-integrated (VI) players, said the report was a reasonable approach to the situation, whereas the non-VI players on the panel were more critical of it. Watt did acknowledge, however, that the recommendations would “put some burden on internet service.” The panel also discussed the Competition Bureau’s announced study of broadband competition, which Kaplan-Myrth hailed as an opportunity for smaller players to tell their story, while Malcolmson said it was “a bit of a head-scratcher” partly because of what he said are low barriers to entry due to mandated wholesale access rules. — With reporting by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Making net neutrality law redundant: telecom execs

Broadcast | June 5, 2018

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Making net neutrality law redundant: telecom execs

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