Canada a ‘broadband leader’. Oh, rilly?
p2pnet news view P2P:- Consultants Mark Goldberg and Giganomics released a new report this week on the state of Canada’s broadband infrastructure. Commissioned by Bell Canada, Bell Aliant, Cogeco, Rogers, SaskTel, Shaw, and Telus, it states as its purpose to “confirm or disprove whether Canada faces a real problem in terms of broadband infrastructure.”
Given the sources, there is never much doubt that it will conclude that Canada is doing well and that studies that reach a different conclusion must surely be flawed. Indeed, the report claims that “we are a broadband leader, scoring in the top ten or better for most international broadband rankings or measures, despite facing greater geographic challenges than most others.”
Yet reading the report, you are hard pressed to find anything resembling a leader. For example, on broadband speed (download only, the report does not address upload speed), it points to reports from ITIF (10th), Akamai (14th), and OECD (25th). On price per Mbps, it cites reports from the OECD (which it argues is flawed, 28th) and ITIF (21st).
On broader e-readiness, it points to reports from LECG/NSN (7th), the Economist/IBM (9th), and the ITU (19th). There may be varying definitions of leadership, but I’m pretty sure none would qualify Canada as a leader based on these reports.
Michael Geist – Michael Geist’s Blog
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist @ uottawa dot ca]
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
October, 2009
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October 12th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
yeah, in all honesty our choices for services are crap to start with and it all really could do with a make-over so to speak. if an accurate test ( not just PR one) was done i’d be surprised if we were in the top 20.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
I’d say hard pressed to get to 30 freenet.Especially if bhell is involved.They are the ones keeping broadband in the most populous place’s behind the times.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
goldbooger is also on the board of directors of Barret xplorenet
and also reg’d with the Canadian gov a a lobbyist.
what does that tell you about the report?
October 12th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
I’m not surprised they didn’t mention anything about upload speeds. In the province I live there are only two broadband choices. Of those two, one uses DPI and throttles. That leaves me with the other one, which I’m still not 100% sure about with regards to their throttling practices. My upload speed? One one-hundredth that of my download speed. To say broadband sucks here is an understatement. Hopefully fiber will change all that someday, though I’m not holding my breath.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:41 am
“Iâm not surprised they didnât mention anything about upload speeds.”
Yeah, that would certainly be another can of worms they wouldn’t want opened!
Seems all Canadian ISPs are strangling the upload to the almost dysfunctional 80 KB/s and below.
They’re perfectly aware that most filesharing systems demand the users keep up their share ratios, and that the shitty upload speed makes it nearly impossible to seed at a rate anywhere near what they’re downloading at. (It also causes trackers to constantly ban uploaders from certain swarms, when they can’t answer all the handshakes in a reasonable amount of time.)
I’m sure this serves 3 purposes for big providers:
1) Reserves upload bandwidth for their own content services and for “business” accounts.
2) Inflates congestion figures by making everyone seed longer.
3) Gives them the semblance of being “P2P unfriendly”, should they have occasion to put that feather in their cap, without having to disclose what they’re doing to their customers.
October 13th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Not to mention the fact the I still can’t get internet in any way except dial-up at my house… bastards
October 19th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
The big problem here in North America, including Canada, is that governments are depending too much on lobbyists. Be it in Health Care through the pharmaceutical industry, or in communication through the various ISPs etc. Lobbyists are producing reports by which politicians are notoriously governing themselves. At the same time there’s nobody who can / will argue with them, because, “we, the people”, nor most politicians are really in a position to knowledgeably dispute these reports, one way or an other.
Some time ago, US Senator John Kerry, put it really in perspective. While in a hearing with top-officials of the FDA, he questioned one of them on whether they had acquired any independent reports on any related issues, to counter reports offered by those same lobbyists. Embarrassingly the answer was “No”. Subsequently JK commented that the FDA was doing the American public a great disservice by not doing so!
As we already knew and this fact was again brought to light again by way of a report from Britain, that the actions / accomplishments of Canadian diplomats / politicians, with very few exceptions, are “deeply unimpressive”. All our politicians and their inadequate handyman / women are looking out for, is # 1. Practical examples are readily available: Chalk River, eHealth, OntarioHydro, etc. People like Messrs. Ignatieff, McGuinty, Ruby Dahla etc. are only interested in their own interests and well-being, i.e. greed / money / power. So, whether we are talking about Canadian Broadband (be it Internet speed / charges, mobile-phones charges), Canadian content on TV (watch for those additional taxes coming soon) or the new proposed anti-spam bill, like always, âwe the peopleâ are pulling the short-end of the stick. Politicians are only interested in what âBig Businessâ, i.e. the pharmaceutical industry, the large ISPs etc. through their lobbyists, have to say.
My point; According to a recent Harvard study, âCanada rates poorly compared to peer countries when measures such as national broadband adoption, network capacity and prices are taken into accountâ. And guess what â¦â¦â¦â¦., immediately following this report, Ma Bell and sisters Cogeco, Rogers, SaskTel, Shaw, and Telus filed their own report. They argued that they are doing as well as others, or point out that other details of the Harvard reports were flawed! Did we actually expect anything different?
As Michael Geist in his blog points out correctly: âThere may be varying definitions of leadership, but Iâm pretty sure none would qualify Canada as a leader based on these reportsâ. Do we need to say more? Maybe itâs time to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
But than again, we Canadians are so polite. We wouldnât dare!