KANATA, ON – The existing CRTC should be split into separate broadcasting and telecommunications regulators to help alleviate any perception of bias on the part of the Regulator, says a proposal by Internet Society Canada Chapter (ISOC Canada).
This was just one of eight recommendations made by the Ottawa-area organization, chaired by former CRTC commissioner Timothy Denton, in a proposal addressed to Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly and ISED Minister Navdeep Bains as part of the Broadcasting Act and Telecommunications Act review.
“The Internet has separated content and carriage and it is time for the regulation of same to follow”, reads the proposal.
“Broadcasting has been held traditionally to be more important than access to the Internet. It has been observed that Commissioners spend time discussing 3 millivolt signal contours between two adjacent radio stations (a $50,000 dollar issue) while access to the Internet (worth several billion) is relegated to after lunch. The very detail in which broadcasting is regulated – a scheme made necessary by the Broadcasting Act – causes Commission time to be absorbed in it, to the expense of knowledge, focus, and concern for telecommunications issues.”
The proposal further recommends that one Minister be responsible for content (broadcasting/digital content) and another for communications carriage, plus suggests that any review of communications legislation must include the Radiocommunication Act which the organization says has become “dissociated from the goals of the Telecommunications Act”.
It also proposes that cable operations be recognized as telecommunications common carriers, and no longer part of the Broadcasting Act.
“The day when cable was technologically distinct from other telecommunications enterprises are long past”, the proposal continues. “The digitization of networks and the capacity of virtually all cable operations to permit two-way communication and to carry internet content to cable subscribers demands a rethinking of the role of cable carriers. Their treatment as broadcasting undertakings is an artifact of a pre-Internet past.”
More information about ISOC Canada Chapter is available here.
