Internet Problems due to our laws...

[Scott Mayers]

I'm wondering if anyone else here experiences any difficulty with our present Internet capacity, laws regarding how CRTC behaves, and how some of us at least are experiencing a form of forced monopolies based on whether we rent or own.

I live in Saskatoon, SK, in an apartment complex and have had certain things I've noticed that others don't seem to be sufficiently aware of. I've tried to communicate this to others but it seems to fall on deaf ears. Let me explain:

A few years ago I was forced to switch my phone service to Shaw as the only one of two phone service providers when my SaskTel service was cut from within my building. I didn't know this at the time and had to contact SaskTel for help to get this fixed. It was the beginning of the weekend and I contacted them from a pay phone to ask them to fix this. They told me that I could have an appointment the following week on Thursday at the earliest. I thought this was not sensible since I couldn't even have access to anywhere like 911 even for emergencies. They told me that since I live in an apartment dwelling, this limits their concern to rush anything as it was likely something from inside my building and so was the responsibility of my landlord/owner.

I contacted my caretaker but was sloughed off as he asserted me this was SaskTel's problem, not mine. I agreed since it was them I was paying service in which I was liable to pay the bills to. I switched to Shaw at least to get a phone right away and have been with them ever since. But I notified the president of SaskTel at the time to which I was told that since the lines inside the building are a part of the single domain of the owner of the building, they, and not SaskTel was liable for immediate concern. Then he insulted me by apologizing that no one bothered to offer me an emergency service worker to come out AT MY EXPENSE!! (It was something like $50 or more dollars).

Now the rationale to me is that even if my building has telephone lines redirected to my suite, since I am the one responsible to the bill legally, why should I even require the trouble in the first place to have to go through my landlord regardless. If my landlord is responsible, should all of us renters not simply be able to transfer our liability to the owner of the building too? This is absurd.

I had noticed that the company my building was managed by (McC...) had a personal manager on my building that also had an administration association with a group called, SHRIA [saskatchewan Housing and Rental Industry Association]. So I looked this up only to discover some other related problems. First, this association was set up by conservative interests who originated this organization for the sake of completely deregulating rentals here in Saskatchewan. I also noticed that they had two corporate sponsors, one was the City police and the other was Shaw!!

Next I happened to learn of our conservative Brad Wall premier on the news discussing how the laws have changed to encourage rental place owners to sign up with this SHRIA. It was done by a law in parliament to favor those who signed up to be privileged to require only a 6 month notice to vacate as opposed to those who don't and require a full year. Obviously, such 'incentives' would actually demand compliance as it would be too penalizing not to.

Can you see what this implies here? Now add to that that in the same period, all apartments in Saskatoon had abandoned allowances to use any service requiring satellites, like Bell. I can't be certain but it appears that incentives were granted to owners to do roof-top repairs and upgrades. This was occurring all over the place simultaneously. Then, all of a sudden we were not permitted to have satellite services in apartments. Again, I can't be certain, but by looking around town, the only buildings you see with such satellite services now are condo dwellings and not rental places.

Just before this time, another issue was occurring. Namely, all the television stations across Canada acted as a union collectively and demanded that they want income revenue by cable companies and demanded something be done to allow this or they threatened real closure of many necessary stations. At the time, cable stations did not own the particular channels and appeared resistant. But the CRTC enabled the right of stations to take a fee for each channel on cable to which the cable companies conveniently were then permitted to buy up the networks here to "save" them!!

Our Conservative government also reduced funding to the CRTC and even while they are supposed to act independent, the leading officials of this department (I believe it is some cultural department not a communications one directly) will be able to act in ways that favor hiring of those they want in this body as well as to control funding which can act to prevent better oversight.

So, I wonder if others here has noticed these things too and are asking what we can do about the way it appears that our media outlets (Internet/phone/cable) have a true monopoly, not simply a virtual one? With the addition of our Conservatives to contrast with the American's problems with things like spying on their own people, by creating laws that allow them hidden allowance to all our computers, I feel that we have lost any democratic protections for communications AND what ones that do exist naturally favor very conservative interests by default. [note the small 'c' there]

As to my own services, I am only able to go through Shaw but wonder why those like SaskTel nor Bell (or any other?) services have complained or attempted to compete for services. The way our set up here is, all renters in apartments are subject to the interests of this SHRIA, and their sponsors, Shaw and city police forces with an unusual capacity that seems oddly suspicious. Like why, for instance would any police force be interested as corporate sponsors? This targets a subset of those of us in society who MUST rent to be subject to open violations of privacy over those who own.

Can anyone add to this, help critique my issue, or add suggestions? Note that I've already tried with CRTC but get referred to go to the industry standards groups created by these very media owners. They claim these problems are 'service quality' issues of which the CRTC is not mandated to concern themselves with. Thank you.

Reference to SHRIA: https://www.srhia.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=102

This page originally displayed the goal to deregulate of which I do not see now but still can be gleaned from it. Note that the list of members has grown but you can still see our police and Shaw at the bottom.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Scott Mayers

[-1=e^ipi]

Solution: merge with the USA and become a single country.

[Icebound]

Infrastructure... the wire .... should be taken away from the companies and handled by an arms-length company, possibly a crown corp. THEN you should then be able to contract whoever you want to provide your service on that wire.

On a similar CRTC issue, any cell phone from any company should work anywhere in Canada where there is service...again, the backbone should be arms-length from the providers. It is ludicrous that a visitor to Manitoba with an Alberta Telus phone has zero service. Same for a pre-paid Bell phone in Thunder Bay, etc.

[Scott Mayers]

Solution: merge with the USA and become a single country.

I'm not against this but even the Americans learned that it is best not to advance their original Manifest Destination idea because it is better to own another's economy without having to include their social/political infrastructure. That way they can take the benefits of those economies without having to worry about its people!

[-1=e^ipi]

I'm not against this but even the Americans learned that it is best not to advance their original Manifest Destination idea because it is better to own another's economy without having to include their social/political infrastructure. That way they can take the benefits of those economies without having to worry about its people!

I don't really understand the logic here. The United States would benefit from increased economies of scale and lower trade barriers.

[Scott Mayers]

I don't really understand the logic here. The United States would benefit from increased economies of scale and lower trade barriers.

No, they benefit better without being responsible to the people itself. As an example, not long ago, Target's American company was hacked and they likely only used the introduction of Canada's Target company for the sake of transferring losses to our economy in order to make up for it in theirs. This is due to how our countries have redefined "national" ownership to become "domestic". That is, before, a nation like Canada and the States could 'own' directly properties from each other and only require taxation based on their origin of nationality. Now, an American or Canadian company must be a function of the country they reside in. This means that even if an American company technically 'owns' some subsidiary here, they require founding a Canadian 'owned' version which must pay taxes to Canada. But it also means, they can create a company, like Target, here to purposely fall in a kind of "laundering" of losses. So when such a company goes bankrupt, it is the country it resides in that takes on the debt for this fall, not the actual controlling company of ownership in the States.

This is just one example and don't hold me accountable to my suspicions on this but the timing seemed only too coincidental. The point is, the Americans can gain better by having technical indirect ownership while not having to take on the losses even in investment capital they place here. So us as Canadians get to take on such debt. So why would America want us territorially? This would defeat this ability to do so as they can be held accountable if our people are also their political responsibility.

[Scott Mayers]

Interesting too is how the Americans were so concerned about their own government spying on them. Although they willingly abandon this directly, the advantage of having a distinct separate 'friendly' country like Canada is that they can just simply trade off their spying business. For instance, though domestically the U.S. cannot spy on their own citizens now, they simply will opt to do it indirectly through a country like ours who 'conveniently' has imposingly created laws that enhance our spy agencies powers in contrast. Note how it favors the States but not us....our OWN laws!?

[bush_cheney2004]

Solution: merge with the USA and become a single country.

Not going to happen....the USA does not want to "merge" with Canada. And certainly not over an issue like telecommunications services.

Why buy the cow when already getting its milk ?

[Scott Mayers]

Infrastructure... the wire .... should be taken away from the companies and handled by an arms-length company, possibly a crown corp. THEN you should then be able to contract whoever you want to provide your service on that wire.

On a similar CRTC issue, any cell phone from any company should work anywhere in Canada where there is service...again, the backbone should be arms-length from the providers. It is ludicrous that a visitor to Manitoba with an Alberta Telus phone has zero service. Same for a pre-paid Bell phone in Thunder Bay, etc.

I agree but had a funny incident. I called up SaskTel at one point who had a service personel who informed me that this "Crown" was merely a residual name. I believe that this person was American (by accent) and lacked an understanding of what we are assume is a "Crown Corporation". Regardless, SaskTel is actually Telus underneath and is privately controlled but appears only a public corporation.

We really do need to have a media infrastructure that is not owned by private concerns to even any partial degree AND have some means to prevent it from being affected in any way by our government parties in power. I see how our CBC, though supposedly independent, actually also have the capacity to be controlled by governments merely by clever hiring and financial controls. I'm guessing that the way PBS operates in the U.S. might be better as it isolates them even from government.

[Scott Mayers]

Not going to happen....the USA does not want to "merge" with Canada. And certainly not over an issue like telecommunications services.

Why buy the cow when already getting its milk ?

Exactly my point. Well said!

[waldo]

As to my own services, I am only able to go through Shaw but wonder why those like SaskTel nor Bell (or any other?) services have complained or attempted to compete for services.

just a narrow focused comment; the companies do/can have contractual agreements with each other... to the point where a consumer might presume on a lack of interest/competition - an example is an arrangement between Bell and Telus in regards to satellite TV service... Telus offers Bell satellite TV as a re-branded Telus product... in exchange for that, as I'm aware, in some provinces (perhaps all?) Bell has exclusive satellite TV rights in high-rise locations (condo and/or rental buildings).

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[Scott Mayers]

just a narrow focused comment; the companies do/can have contractual agreements with each other... to the point where a consumer might presume on a lack of interest/competition - an example is an arrangement between Bell and Telus in regards to satellite TV service... Telus offers Bell satellite TV as a re-branded Telus product... in exchange for that, as I'm aware, in some provinces (perhaps all?) Bell has exclusive satellite TV rights in high-rise locations (condo and/or rental buildings).

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This is why I'm concerned in this respect. When companies share arrangements because they benefit by agreeing to specific areas of competition, in a sense this can act as a form of inevitable conspiracy (not necessarily spoken) to which they agree NOT to compete which establishes their shared monopoly by doing so. We need an infrastructure independent of private interests if only to prevent these companies from 'owning' up the media and enable them to frame our politics in their favor. Private interest will always act at least to conserve their interests. And since our system of private ownership is based on the profit motive, such media will tend towards favoring politics that favor their survival. We will lose our capacity to be democratic if our communications are all required to be done through media that is allowed to be manipulated by the media owners.

I believe we've reached out limit on technology that allows us freedom in our medium between people other than direct person-to-person communications.....unless, we can find a means to mind read, perhaps. Yet even the air we breathe to speak between each other may become a commodity to be sold and traded. Then we may even lose this.