Bell accused of charging Canadians more for competitor services

It’s shaping up to be a tough winter for Bell’s media division, what with Rogers’ announcement Tuesday of a blockbuster agreement that will give the rival company rights to all national NHL games for the next 12 years. But before that kicks in next season, it’s looking like Bell is going to have to deal with a complaint that its mobile television service is violating Internet fairness rules.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is currently taking comments from the public on the complaint, filed last week by University of Manitoba student Ben Klass. The application, which is known as a Part 1 Proceeding requesting a full CRTC investigation, accuses Bell of unfairly selling access to its own television content at a lower cost than regular Internet video options such as Netflix or YouTube.

Bell is offering wireless customers 10 hours of viewing for $5 a month that doesn’t count against monthly data usage caps. According to the filing, that amount of regular Internet video would use up the equivalent of $40 of data, meaning that the company is charging subscribers eight times more for using services others than its own.

Klass says this is a violation of the CRTC’s net neutrality rules, established in 2009, which prohibit Internet providers from favouring one type of traffic over another for reasons other than preventing network congestion.

“This is not fair. There are other services and apps that customers may prefer and they’re essentially being charged way more for them,” Klass says. “If they can make money offering you their Bell TV for $5 a month, why can’t they sell you the other stuff for $5 a month too? This whole thing kind of stinks.”

Under CRTC rules, all members of the public – including Bell – have until Jan. 9 to submit comments to the application, after which there will be a 10-day response period. The commission will then decide whether or not to launch a full investigation into the matter.

Bell isn’t saying much about the complaint as of yet and is not indicating whether it will comment on it. “We’d be happy to respond to any CRTC inquiries on Bell's mobile media products,” a spokesperson says.

Klass’s filing has already attracted support from the Ottawa-based Public Interest Advocacy Centre consumer advocacy group. PIAC is looking to both expand and reduce the application’s scope – the investigation should include the likes of Rogers and Videotron, which are similarly selling mobile video that is exempt from data caps, PIAC says, but also not delve into some of the larger media and network issues that Klass brings up.

“We don’t want to go wandering off into the fields of whether the whole broadcasting system can support the model that Bell is using and whether it’s the right way to solve the ‘Netflix problem,’” says PIAC executive director John Lawford. “This is a very specific thing. He did an okay job, but it’s best to be laser focused.”

While the inevitable showdown has all the trappings of a David-versus-Goliath fight – a university student who says he sacrificed a lot of sleep over the month it took to prepare his filing, versus the wealthy corporate behemoth – it actually highlights a problem with the CRTC’s net neutrality rules, some observers say. When the regulator enacted its framework four years ago, it opted to put the onus on consumers to point out misdeeds rather than taking on that responsibility itself.

“The commission isn’t really set up to be a policeman, they are more like a judge in a dispute,” writes York University professor David Ellis on his blog. “Thus it’s the role of people like Ben and others to raise issues when they believe the rules have been broken, and then it’s the role of the CRTC to reach a finding on the alleged violation.”

Klass doesn’t necessarily mind that set-up. “It’s somewhat unfortunate that it’s not institutional, but it does show there’s a human element to all of it,” he says. “They need this input from people. There’s the political interest from the top, but for this sort of thing to function there really needs to be interest from the bottom as well.”

Net neutrality has been a hotly debated topic in both Canada and the United States in recent years. Proponents have argued that Internet providers must be prevented from unfairly interfering with traffic in order to preserve competition and innovation. Network owners, however, have argued that traffic needs to be managed in order to keep everything working smoothly.