No Pandora For Canada
It appears that Pandora will not be comming into Canada for quite some time.
In a letter to the Financial Post, Pandora founder Tim Westergren stated that the music streaming service has shelved their plans to expand into Canada because “the rates that have been proposed by the Canadian music rights societies are simply uneconomic”.
The Financial Post had previously published a story about the viability of web radio, resulting in this response by Pandora, a service that features over 80,000 artists, many of which are independent.
One of the few services that have made it’s way north is Rdio and Slacker, services from which music can be streamed from the web to personal computers for $4.99 a month.
An Interesting Link On The Anti-Spam Law
A short article on the new Canadian anti-spam law can be found here.
Maclean Magazine Scorns Canadians
Appearently Maclean believes that Canadian consumers are being unfair about usage based billing, and that we all want free access to the internet.
This Rogers Communications owned publication thinks that because they believe average users aledgely only use 16 gigabites per month that anyone going over this amount should be subjected to higher fees, just because some 2% of users download “hundreds of gigs worth” per month.
Is this what they call “Fair” ? And where did they get that 16 gigabite per month figure ?
My average use is at about 40 gigs per month at the moment because of Youtube and i’m sure Netflix users have a similar rate. I am not an “average user” ?
It’s obvious that legitimate online television and film content streaming have resulted in a hike in average use and that 16 gig figure will not cut it.
There are already hundreds of internet ready devices, including televisions and blu-ray players, that enable families to view film and television from the internet. And these devices are getting more and more affordable each day so the “average” use will likely surpass 50 or 60 gigs per month soon, if it hasn’t already.
Cloud computing will also drive some of these transfers up, as more and more people use this new technology from their home, so usage based billing is no response.
Canadian Anti-Spam Bill Comes Into Force
Bill C-28 came into force yesterday.
As a member of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email for over a decade and participating member of the Task Force On Spam, I had waited for years for anti-spam legislation to pass in Canada. But of course the proposed bills appeared to have major issues until now.
Hopefully the spammers will leave Canada in response to this legislation, like they did in Australia, the U.K and USA when those countries passed anti-spamming legislation. And yes, this legislation covers those costly text spams, unless these are non-commercial solicitations (charities/political parties).
Additional information on this new legislation can be found at the Industry Canada web site.
Bell Internet Usage Error
Bell has found a fault in their online internet usage meter that caused 0.1% of their customers to get overcharged.
I had suspected there was a problem because my router’s usage data never matched the usage data provided by Bell.
In a statement to the CBC, Bell stated that they will fix the problem “certainly before the end of the week” and credit the accounts of those who were affected.
Such errrors of course place usage based billing in doubt as errors can occur resulting in unsubstantiated overcharges.
The CRTC has decided to review their usage based billing decision and this incident will probably be mentioned as a reason why usage based billing is questionable.
Public Consultations on UBB
Both the CRTC and Shaw are holding public consultations on Usage Based Billing :