In good news for small wholesale-based ISP’s, the Supreme Court has today said that it won’t hear an appeal by Canada’s biggest telecoms of the wholesale rates the CRTC lowered back in August 2019. Those are the rates that are charged to independent ISP’s that use the infrastructure of big telcos. This decision not to hear the case basically puts an end to this case.
I asked for a comment from independent ISP Distributel in relation to this development and got this back:
“This is a positive development,” says Matt Stein, CEO of Distributel. “We support our court system and we trust in the system, and we’re very glad to see an end to this case. Canadians deserve affordable internet access, especially now when so much of our lives has moved online by necessity. Connectivity is so important right now– our average customer has increased their internet usage by 24 per cent since the pandemic hit – yet for many Canadians it’s just not affordable, especially given the global crisis we’re in.”
One thing that Distributel pointed out to me is that when the CRTC released its original rate decision in August of 2019, Distributel immediately passed the benefits on to Canadians. The company also moved to increase internet speeds for the majority of its customers at no extra cost, and launched competitive new retail pricing for bundled and stand-alone products and services.
Now I fully expect the big telcos to come up with some new way to avoid having to do what they should have done in 2019. Which is to lower wholesale rates as per the CRTC decision. I see scenarios where they use stalling tactics or threats to get their way because the big three have proven that they are unwilling to do what is right by Canadians.
UPDATE: I just received a statement from independent ISP Teksavvy. Unsurprisingly they are happy with the decision. Here is their statement in full:
TekSavvy Solutions Inc. (TekSavvy) welcomed today’s decision from the Supreme Court of Canada declining to hear appeals by Canada’s largest telecom and cable companies (such as Bell Canada and Rogers), who seek to overturn a key 2019 CRTC decision lowering the wholesale Internet rates the large carriers charge smaller competitors.
The Supreme Court’s ruling ordered the large carriers to pay TekSavvy’s legal costs, following an earlier, unanimous decision from the Federal Court of Appeal rejecting the large carriers’ appeals with costs, noting the large carriers’ arguments were of “dubious merit”. The Supreme Court’s decision was issued amid growing frustration and demands by Canadian consumers for federal action on affordable internet.
The CRTC’s August 2019 Final Rates Order is the result of an extensive four-year regulatory proceeding that confirmed the large carriers systematically deviated from the CRTC’s rate-setting rules to grossly inflate their costs of providing wholesale access to their networks. The CRTC condemned the large carriers’ rate-fixing as “very disturbing” because it would drive smaller competitors out of business. The large carriers appealed the 2019 Final Rates Order to the courts, the Federal Cabinet and the CRTC itself.
Even after the Federal Court of Appeal’s complete rejection of the incumbents appeals, the CRTC issued a new decision declining to implement its own order. The CRTC instead allowed the large carriers to continue charging grossly inflated rates until the CRTC decides on Bell and Rogers’ further requests to raise prices and keep the overcharged amounts. TekSavvy is challenging the CRTC’s stay decision, calling it “flawed and unreasonable”.
Denied rate relief and refunds for overcharged amounts, TekSavvy was forced to raise its prices. In addition to the prospect of further price hikes, TekSavvy warned that the CRTC’s failure to act is hostile to independent investment, warning “the single greatest threat to TekSavvy’s quarter billion dollar investment plan is the CRTC’s delay in implementing its 2019 final wholesale rate order”. The company said it is currently reviewing its business plans in light of the continuing climate of extreme regulatory uncertainty.
TikTok Agrees To Settle 21 US Federal Lawsuits Related To Privacy
Posted in Commentary with tags TikTok on February 26, 2021 by itnerdTikTok has agreed to settle 21 separate US federal lawsuits related to privacy. The lawsuits accused the company of “theft of private and personally identifiable data,” some of it from children as young as six years old. But before you say that this is a win for the little guy, it isn’t. NPR reports that the agreed amount of compensation for the privacy breaches is $92M, working out at a little over one dollar per user before legal costs. #Fail:
TikTok has agreed to pay $92 million to settle dozens of lawsuits alleging that the popular video-sharing app harvested personal data from users, including information using facial recognition technology, without consent and shared the data with third-parties, some of which were based in China.
The proposed settlement, which lawyers in the case have called among the largest privacy-related payouts in history, applies to 89 million TikTok users in the U.S. whose personal data was allegedly tracked and sold to advertisers in violation of state and federal law.
“First, it provides compensation for TikTok users, but equally as important, it ensures TikTok will respect its users’ privacy going forward,” Katrina Carroll, one of the lawyers for TikTok users, said. “Social media seems so innocuous, but troubling data collection, storage, and disclosure can happen behind the scenes.”
The settlement is the result of 21 federal lawsuits filed mostly on behalf of minors — some as young as 6 years old — that claimed the company engaged in the “theft of private and personally identifiable TikTok user data.”
TikTok for its part released a statement that really doesn’t require me to say much of anything:
“Rather than go through lengthy litigation, we’d like to focus our efforts on building a safe and joyful experience for the TikTok community,” the spokesperson said.
I’ll say something anyway. That statement reads like “let’s pay as little as we can to sweep this under the rug and pretend that this never happened”. But maybe that’s the cynic in me making an appearance. One good thing to this settlement, TikTok has to alter its behavior:
Under the proposed terms of the settlement, TikTok will no longer record a user’s biometric information, including facial characteristics, nor track a user’s location using GPS data. TikTok also committed to stop sending U.S. users data overseas and the app said it would no longer collect data on draft videos before the content is published.
This still has to be approved by a judge, but while I am not a lawyer, I expect that to happen without drama. The fact is that TikTok settled this for pennies. The reality is that they really needed to be punished for their actions for more severely because you shouldn’t be allowed to take users data and do whatever you want with it. In short, TikTok got away with this.
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