jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
 ·ELECTRONICBOX
| reply to jfmezei
Re: UBB round 2 at the CRTC
Tuesday was deadline for parties to submit requests for Bell to release "confidential" information.
-Teksavvy
-MTS, (had to shorten file name to fit DSLR limits)
-A group consisting of:
Accelerated Communications
AOL Canada,
Cybersurf,
Egate,
Execulink,
MNSI,
Telnet Communications
Yak
CAIP
-Coalition of Internet Service Providers (CISP) (converted to .PDF)
-Union des Consommateurs |
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MaynardKrebs
Premium
join:2009-06-17
| said by jfmezei  :Tuesday was deadline for parties to submit requests for Bell to release "confidential" information. I really like the wording in the CAIP/YAK/CIA et. al. and the MTS submissions. |
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MaynardKrebs
Premium
join:2009-06-17
| reply to jfmezei
Here's a machine translation (with minor edits) of the Union des consummateurs submission. My edits may have not clarified things exactly, so could somebody who is a native French speaker please clean this up?
Overall, this Union des consummateurs submission raises some very well reasoned points in opposition to Bell.
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1. Regarding the request by Bell to treat as confidential certain information provided in this dossier, Union des consummateurs demand by this to the CRTC to require disclosure of certain information submitted.
2. Article 39 (1) of the Telecommunications Act states that: "(1) For the purposes of this section, the person who provides information to the Council may designate as confidential:
a) trade secrets;
b) financial, commercial, scientific or technical information that is confidential and is treated consistently by the person providing the information;
c) information whose disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause someone else or herself of loss or gain or affect its competitiveness, it would prevent negotiations from the other or person itself to contractual or other purposes."
3. The Act recognizes that the CRTC is not the person who deposited that makes the final decision when the confidentiality of such information, this designation by the party does in fact constitute a request for confidential treatment certain information. Paragraph 4 of Article 39 in fact allows the CRTC to require disclosure, despite the fact they have been designated as confidential by either party: "(4) The CRTCl may make or require disclosure of information designated as confidential provided under a case before it is of the opinion, after considering comments interested parties, it is in the public interest. "(emphasis added)
4. Paragraph 10 of Article 19 of the Rules of Procedure of the CRTC states that: "Where the Board believes, based on elements evidence at its disposal that the disclosure was unlikely to result from direct harm or that the public interest takes precedence, the document is released. "
5. The CRTC has in the past widely interpreted the concept of public interest also Notes from practice October 8, 1998 concerning applications for treatment confidentiality and requests for disclosure under state authority: "All things being equal, the magnitude of the specific harm that disclosure is likely to result is proportional to the intensity of competition in a market given. In assessing the public interest in disclosure in relation to direct injury particularly likely to arise, the Commission considers it appropriate to distinguish between markets that are competitive and those capable of becoming shortly.
Another factor allows the CRTC to establish the extent of injury, namely, the extent in which information relevant to parties to consolidate their competitive position. In this regard, the degree of breakdown of information causes account for many of these considerations. Generally, the Council believes that more information is generally less disclosure might be harmful.
The Commission also noted that to expect a direct injury may result from the disclosure does not, in itself, maintaining an application confidentiality. In some cases, the public interest in disclosure may still outweigh the harm from disclosure. "(emphasis added)
6. In this case, Bell has requested that treated most confidentially much of the information it provided. The conditions posed by Article 39 (1) of the Act which would allow Bell to ask for confidential information does are not met, this information is neither trade secrets nor financial, commercial, scientific or technical nature are confidential, or information whose disclosure could likely or cause loss or gain or prejudice the competitive position of Bell.
7. The information that Consumers Union calls for disclosure is general information concerns about the data in Tables 1 to 6 by Bell in response to question a), b), c) of the CRTC. This information can be used by competitors. However, nothing can bring to belief that such disclosure would prejudice the Bell Company.
8. The maintenance of confidentiality would also be contrary to public interest. In fact, without such information, it is impossible to corroborate or refute positions of Bell. We must also recognize that surcharge billing that Bell wants to introduce will be borne ultimately by the consumers. It is therefore vital that consumers are informed of the reasons which could eventually lead to the introduction of billing for use desired by Bell and whether it is justified or not.
9. In addition, information for which Consumers Union asked the Council to require production, identified below, are necessary for Union des consummateurs and the public can participate fully in the present procedure. Indeed, without access to this information, it is impossible to know whether applications for the Bell Company were justified, if the information in support of this application is true, if the company is trying, through the development of its new tariffs, discriminate against other ISPs, etc..
10. It is therefore more than obvious that the public interest to know whether tariff application of Bell is justified, and outweighs any considerations of confidentiality that could attempted to be invoked the company.
11. We therefore urge the CRTC, in the public interest, order the disclosure of data contained in replies to questions a), b) and c) document entitled "Response-to interrogatory The Companies (CRTC) 20Aug09-1 NT 242 & 7181, namely Tables 1 to 6.
12. These responses will help us more precisely:
1-Evaluate links between charging for the use and consumption in Gb at the users end - that is to say to check the contribution to congestion attributable to each category of clients and ensure that pricing for the use proposed by Bell and
subsidiary companies is the appropriate measure to contain the alleged congestion.
2-Evaluate efficacy and equity of charging for use, costs overrun and charge for excessive consumption for each tariff categories of users.
3 - Ensure that the packages offered by Bell and its subsidiary companies on the market do not cause large loss of flexibility in packages that may in turn be provided other Internet service providers to end users. This loss of flexibility would reduce the range of packages that could be rationally offered by the other Internet service providers, which reduces competition in this sector and would harmful to end users.
4 - Ensure that the offers on the wholesale market did not operate to promote cross-subsidization between different types of packages, which could harm thereby certain categories of end users.
5 - To check what would qualify as excessive consumption of 300GB.
6 - Ensure that the consumption charge imposed by Bell presents a real value in relation to network congestion.
7 - Verify the justification of charges for excess consumption beyond limits posed by Bell and consistency with their own packages.
13. In addition, Consumers Union also called on file a updated version of Table 7 (Retail & Wholesale Internet Services Gas Services) and all available updates for Tables 1 to 6, to help ensure that prices in the wholesale markets have sufficient margin vis-avis retail markets that other ISPs who are interested in entering this market have sufficient financial incentive to do so, to allow some form of additional competition. |
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olebiker
join:2008-04-16
Glenburnie, ON | I wonder if they will act on this or just flat out turn it down. |
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jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
·ELECTRONICBOX
| CRTC to Bibic:
Mirko, you know we want to give your your UBB. But there ids that pesky thing called process, and you'll have to drop trouser at east partially to please the peanut gallery and make it look like this was a bona fide debate with just enough number than people can't complain tt was an empty debate.
Bell has known this from the start. Some numbers will be released, but not all. |
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MaynardKrebs
Premium
join:2009-06-17
| reply to olebiker
said by olebiker :I wonder if they will act on this or just flat out turn it down. The latter more than likely. |
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Oinktastic
join:2005-08-24
Scarborough
·TekSavvy Solutions..
 ·3 Web
1 edit | reply to olebiker
said by olebiker :I wonder if they will act on this or just flat out turn it down. I'll think they'll turn it down by moving on it 
... but then they'll turn and move on us too, and not the sexy kind  |
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jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
·ELECTRONICBOX
| I am fairly confident that the CRTC will force Bell to release some information. After 484 was issued, I was told via email that the CRTC would issue a new process and that one of the goals was to allow the confidential information in the cost study to be released for a proper debate.
Remember that both the R&V and the federal appeals court processes used the argument that "there was no debate on the cost study" to show that the 484 decision is not "valid".
CRTC must allow proper debate on it (and the Bell responses to the interrogatory) if it wants to render a credible final decision that won't be challenged the day it is rendered.
How much information will be released is the question. |
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globus999
join:2008-05-15
| Hi jfmezei,
Much that I admire your stamina and optimism, my take, as usual, is that the game is fully rigged and the results were determined long time ago. This is just show for the masses. Bread and Circus. Will there be any release of info? Probably, and will also probably be useless. How sad.... |
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InvalidError
join:2008-02-03
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Videotron
| reply to jfmezei
said by jfmezei :How much information will be released is the question. Not complying with CRTC orders by submitting unrelated material seems to be Bell's modus operandi... so maybe we'll get detailed ExpressVu subscription stats, PPV revenue figures, etc. this time around.
/sarcasm
I would be surprised if Bell published a meaningful set of figures in the first public disclosure filing, I expect Bell to file the bare minimum it thinks it can get away with. As Allstream and others have said on that record though, there is no reason for Bell to claim potential financial harm from disclosing figures since there is no competition to speak of for GAS and individual ISPs already have access to their own respective aggregated figures so their respective subscribers' usage is no secret to them either even with Bell withholding global figures.
I could understand a fresh network builder wanting to hide its figures from public view due to its highly vulnerable position as a new entrant with insignificant market share but for a government-sanctioned regulated monopoly built upon decades of subsidies with practically zero risk, no excuses should be accepted. In order to guarantee the continued fairness of tariffs from a national monopoly, Bell should be required to disclose costs and any relevant statistics of regulated services on an annual basis so any tariff change can be assessed quickly using reasonably recent figures. Bell's added cost for this should be quite marginal since they should already be keeping tabs on costs and stats on a daily, weekly, monthly, etc. basis for their own purposes. |
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mazhurg
Premium
join:2004-05-02
Portage La Prairie, MB
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·MTS
| That they are not releasing the figures for public view has little to do with being harmed by competition; but much to do about the outcry if the real margins are ever revealed.
--
"Vision without funds....
is a hallucination" |
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mlerner
Premium
join:2000-11-25
Nepean, ON
·Rogers Hi-Speed
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| reply to globus999
said by globus999 :Hi jfmezei, Much that I admire your stamina and optimism, my take, as usual, is that the game is fully rigged and the results were determined long time ago. This is just show for the masses. Bread and Circus. Will there be any release of info? Probably, and will also probably be useless. How sad.... True, in this context it'll probably have no effect but once it gets to the Federal court they will have something to work with. |
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olebiker
join:2008-04-16
Glenburnie, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| reply to mazhurg
said by mazhurg :That they are not releasing the figures for public view has little to do with being harmed by competition; but much to do about the outcry if the real margins are ever revealed. That is likely closer to the truth than a lot of our guesses. |
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jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
·ELECTRONICBOX
| reply to jfmezei
CRTC has issued a secondary interrogatory to Bell. It is all about uncorelated charges.
The types of questions asked seems to indicate to me that they are starting to want to understand what PPPoE is all about. |
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hmm
@videotron.ca
| said by jfmezei :CRTC has issued a secondary interrogatory to Bell. It is all about uncorelated charges. The types of questions asked seems to indicate to me that they are starting to want to understand what PPPoE is all about. These questions touch on what we discussed in previous pages of this topic.
Guess someones eyes opened just a little tiny bit over there.
They didn't say anything about the ill suited AUP which states you can't run your own Email server with Ebox or TSI, plus more. I wonder if they will make reference to this as well. |
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mlerner
Premium
join:2000-11-25
Nepean, ON | Someone's eyes did indeed open, the thing I'm concerned with though is that once again Bell will spin this their way and put in as little technical information as possible. |
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An_Onymous
@teksavvy.com
| reply to jfmezei
The last CRTC question for the ISP:
>3. Comment on the feasibility and implications of an alternative approach whereby the Bell companies would charge each GAS-ISP, for each speed option, based on its end-users’ total aggregate usage (correlated and uncorrelated), averaged over its end-users.
While that one give the ISP a bit more breathing room to at least average out the usage of their customers, it is still bad for the end users.
I was hoping that the $10 cable/satellite TV carriage mess with the cabinet would make CRTC think twice about UBB, but seem to me that telecom side of CRTC is still bent on supporting the UBB. |
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Angelo_
The Network Guy
Premium
join:2002-06-18
1 edit | to me it seems like they are trying to push for a updated tarrif that would allow isps to still offer unlimited speeds with higher costs :/
the one question that should have been asked never was. |
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InvalidError
join:2008-02-03
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Videotron
| reply to An_Onymous
said by An_Onymous :
The last CRTC question for the ISP:
>3. Comment on the feasibility and implications of an alternative approach whereby the Bell companies would charge each GAS-ISP, for each speed option, based on its end-users’ total aggregate usage (correlated and uncorrelated), averaged over its end-users.
While that one give the ISP a bit more breathing room to at least average out the usage of their customers, it is still bad for the end users. I'll comment on the feasibility for you:
If Bell wanted to have aggregated pseudo-UBB, it could have applied for an AHSSPI review to increase the 1GbE AHSSPI rates from ~$1750/month to $5000/month, which would translate into an effective pseudo-UBB rate hike of ~$0.02/GB (~$0.035/GB total) assuming ~50% overall link utilization with none of the billing mess, uncertainty, caps, etc. |
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JunjiHiroma
join:2008-03-18
1 edit | said by InvalidError :said by An_Onymous :
The last CRTC question for the ISP:
>3. Comment on the feasibility and implications of an alternative approach whereby the Bell companies would charge each GAS-ISP, for each speed option, based on its end-users’ total aggregate usage (correlated and uncorrelated), averaged over its end-users.
While that one give the ISP a bit more breathing room to at least average out the usage of their customers, it is still bad for the end users. I'll comment on the feasibility for you: If Bell wanted to have aggregated pseudo-UBB, it could have applied for an AHSSPI review to increase the 1GbE AHSSPI rates from ~$1750/month to $5000/month, which would translate into an effective pseudo-UBB rate hike of ~$0.02/GB (~$0.035/GB total) assuming ~50% overall link utilization with none of the billing mess, uncertainty, caps, etc. Yeah,I agree to that |
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