[cal5k]

This is EXACTLY what regulatory capture is all about. Bell knows the game and played it masterfully.

Ask for the moon - ask for really ridiculous things, but expect to only get half of those things. The CRTC, wanting to seem "reasonable" and "balanced", meets Bell halfway. Unfortunately, halfway towards Bell's ridiculous agenda is still absolutely terrible for consumers, a perspective that the CRTC has utterly failed to consider.

This is a classic problem, one that recently contributed to the Gulf oil spill as well (and resulted in the disbanding of the regulator, just as the CRTC should be disbanded or, at the very least, stripped of its ability to regulate the internet).

[forensic]

The fact that the CRTC is stacked with former Bell and Rogers employees and NO ONE to represent the public or small ISPs also helps.

The CRTC is just a stooge pretending the play the part of opposition, while they are actually a collaborator.

[JimmyL]

Are they? From http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/about/commissioners.htm, the backgrounds of the Commissioners:

von Finckelstein (Chairman) was the head of the Competition bureau and implemented NAFTA.

Katz (Vice-Chair, Telecommunications) was at Bell and Rogers until 2001.

Morin (Secretary-General) was a career bureaucrat.

Cugini (Ontario) was with Alliance Atlantis, a film and TV company.

Lamarre (Quebec) was with the CBC.

Duncan (Atlantic) comes from various small players in the Cable TV industry.

Molnar (MB and SK) comes from Customer Service and Regulatory Affairs at SaskTel.

Menzies (Alberta) ran the Calgary Herald, a large newspaper.

Denton was on the board of CIRA and was the solicitor of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (the industry group of independent ISPs).

Patrone, Morin, and Poirier were journalists.

Simpson was an ad exec.

If you're counting obvious (perceived) biases there, you'd say Katz is representing Big Telco and Denton is representing independent ISPs. Molnar would count as a half-vote for Big Telco (as SaskTel is an ILEC), but it's a minor one. The rest, as I see it, have no obvious perceived biases in this case.

As for the high-ranking staff, that's a lot harder to figure our their backgrounds - although most of them should be civil service positions, which means they're relatively impartial.

If we check out our lobbying disclosures (always interesting when it comes to this), we see that in the past year there have been 18 registered conversations between lobbyists and the CRTC on the issue of Telecommunications - and of those, I'd guess that the two from Bell and one from SaskTel were probably focused on Internet-related issues, whereas the Quebecor/Globalive/Shaw/CMPA ones weren't.

[cal5k]

Okay, here's another ponderous question then: How many of those individuals have any qualifications whatsoever that would indicate they are in any way knowledgeable about digital media and the internet?

Why are we allowing broadcasters, journalists, former telecom execs and bureaucrats to rule on a topic and culture they clearly don't understand?

Furthermore, where are the consumer advocates? Clearly the companies they're regulating are well represented. Where's the other side of the picture?