Shaws’ New High Speed Internet Regime: Iron Fist vs the Velvet Glove

Shaw announced plans to implement a new regime for its Internet Access services this week. There is much in the announcement to be commended, and much still to rail against.

First, the much welcomed headline news is that Shaw’s new plans basically double the bandwidth caps for its Lite and High Speed services, while the caps for the Extreme service will be increased from a 100 GB cap to 250. The prices and the speed for each service will remain the same. Nice start!

Second, Shaw is promising much needed investment in broadband networks over the next year and a half and to convert all of its television channels to digital. As the company notes,

In making this move we will triple the capacity of our network, freeing up space for more Internet, HD and On Demand programming.

Third, the new pricing regime makes available some of the fastest and most generous high-speed Internet services in North America. It will most certainly, as Michael Geist, Peter Novak and others have noted, put pressure on the rest of the ‘big 5 ISPs’ – Bell, Rogers, Quebecor, Telus and Cogeco – to fall in line.

Shaw’s new bandwidth caps will be between two (vs Rogers) and five (Bell) times as great as those of the other dominant ISPs, as the following table illustrates.

The commitment to invest heavily in a “major upgrade of our network”, and to convert all its channels to digital, in order triple the capabilities of its networks is good news.  It would seem to bring Shaw closer into line with global trends (and ahead of standards in most of the United States).

The emphasis on network upgrades dovetails with ‘hierarchy of priorities’ set by the CRTC in its Network Neutrality decision too, or as it prefers to call it, the Internet Traffic Management Practices decision. Regardless of terminology, the basic idea is that Network Investment is the preferred method to deal with any congestion that exists. Shaw’s proposal appears to be in line with that idea.

If it acts as a spur for greater investment by the other major telecom and ISP providers, all the better, but we should not hold our breath. Their feet will have to be held to the fire.

Iron Fist Replaced by the Velvet Glove?

But now for the odious bits of Shaw’s intended course of action.

First, the highest speed services with the most generous bandwidth caps, or no caps at all, are only available bundled with either of Shaw’s Legacy TV or its Personal TV model. And these services will also only become available over the next 18 months as its networks are upgraded.

The bundled, highest performance Internet offerings offer speeds of between 50 and 250 Mbps and genereous bandwidth caps of between 250 GB per month and a voluminous 1 Terrabit (TB), as well. The caps are removed altogether in some cases. This is a good thing and appears to bring Shaw’s offerings closer into line with ‘global best practices’.

But tying the highest-performance Internet service to its ‘legacy’ television services is a blatantly protectionist bid — a first line of defense for Shaw’s Global television network, massive cable and satellite distribution system, and big suite of cable and satellite television channels. Enrolling you in its Internet services enrolls you unwittingly into the Shaw Business Projection Plan for all these other services. Your tail wagging its corporate dog.

The fact that Shaw is able to leverage control over its networks to influence the channels of communication flowing through them is not surprising. It is a problem as old as Roman Roads and Venetian Canals. It is a problem of the first order, for all that, and to be resisted now as much as in the past.

In 1910, the long lost precursor to the CRTC, the Board of Railway Commissioners came to a conclusion that would be startling if it happened today. As the BRC found in the ‘double-headed telegraph news monopoly’ case, Cdn Pacific Telegraph Co. and Great North Western Telegraph Co (the latter under ownership control of Western Union) had exclusive distribution rights for Associated Press news services in Canada. Cdn Pacific Telegraph was charging its

. . . subscribers for the commodity, viz., the news, delivered at a flat rate; . . . while in the case of rivals [Western Asssociated Press] the payment . . . was for the transmission, and not the commodity. . . . [T]elegraph companies could put out of business every newsgathering agency that dared to enter the field of competition with them” (BRC, 1910, pp. 274-275).

The bundling of ‘connectivity’ and ‘content’, as Shaw does in its new plans under one corporate umbrella is one of the biggest problems with vertical integration. Always has been, always will be.

Theoretically, the CRTC can do something about this after its upcoming vertical integration hearings next month. It can be taken for granted, however, that Hell will freeze over before anyone seriously considers divestiture of Canada’s big 5 integrated telecom-media behemoths — Shaw/Global (Corus), Bell/CTV, Rogers/CityTv, Quebecor (TVA), Cogeco (Radio).

The government could set up a competitor entity, the Canadian National Broadband Co (CNBC), just like the Australians. That’s not likely to happen either, the price tag of $40 plus billion being only one among many economic and ideological deterrents.

The CRTC should give serious consideration to imposing ‘functional separation’ requirements on the big 5; it would be a good compromise. Not to hot, not too cold — the Goldilocks solution to vexed Internet policy issues.

Just to be churlish, we can also note that Shaw’s plan to convert analog tv channels to digital ones is not a bright, new idea. It is long overdue and coincides with the mandatory switch over to digital broadcasting for the rest of the broadcasting system in August 2011. Shaw’s acceptable use policies are also just as abhorent as they have always been, setting out

• restrictions on what people can and cannot do with their Internet connections.
• broad assertions of its authority to act on behalf of copyright claims a
• its right to make ‘editorial judgments’ about all kinds of content hosted on and moving through its pipes.
• and to own user created content.

Shaw has moved the ball forward and we should not only hope, but push to have at least the minimum bar it has set met by the remaining ‘big five’ ISPs in Canada that control access to roughly 95 percent of Canadian subscribers: Bell, Rogers, Quebecor, Telus and Cogeco.

The advances so far did not come from the good graces of Shaw. They came from an extraordinary confluence of pressure that has been put on Shaw and all of Canada’s ISPs with greater and greater intensity over the past four to five years.

The three most significant pressures shaping the flow of events are probably:

• Open Media and the massive public that it helped to mobilize;
• the ‘tweet’ in the night by then Industry Minister Tony Clement scolding the CRTC for its UBB decision in January of this year and the upcoming hearings to be held by the CRTC this July into the matter which have ensued partially as a result;
• and crucially, the pressure from investment bankers, who saw mounting public anger and the threat of regulation as a potential danger to Shaw and the others’ bottom line and their ability to raise capital.

Ultimately, while we should appreciate what Shaw’s announcement has put on the table, this should not divert our attention from the fact that much remains. Nor should it give Shaw a free pass when it comes to the CRTC’s upcoming hearings on vertical integration.