Canada lags behind in Internet innovation

The Canadian Internet providers lag behind in service – no surprise there. Having experienced low speeds at the studio for the past few days I ran some tests, and found that currently Canadian users rank in 38^th and 39^th place based on download and upload speeds alone. This data is drawn from hundreds of thousands of users performing speed tests on SpeedTest.net.

What’s more disappointing is that with our current DSL connection that is ran by a smaller provider we have to pay about $10 on top of the basic fees to Bell every month just for the privilege of not having a land-line – a dry loop connection. A fee of $10 a month for data to travel through lines owned and maintained by a former monopoly, Bell. As landlines are slowly disappearing from our households, this will become a very common fee for a lot of Canadian consumers and businesses. In Canada, telecommunication monopoly, limits on foreign ownership and bad CRTC decisions have lowered the amount of competition needed to encourage new and better service offerings. Rogers, Bell, Shaw, Telus and Videotron control roughly 81% of the broadband market. Unfortunately, limits on foreign ownership and inconsistent CRTC decisions have lowered the amount of competition needed to spur new and better offerings.

According to recent OECD rankings Canada tumbled to 28th place in 2009. Canada was 24^th of 30 for speed, 14^th for cost and ninth for penetration. Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard ranks Canada 19^th in the world based on price, penetration and speeds.

As governments around the world are making their data available to the public online, equal and untethered access to it has never been more relevant. The Canadian federal government proposed some funding (~$250 million) to rural broadband access research and improvement in its recent Economic Action Plan, but I had trouble finding any specifics or outcomes based on the studies mentioned.

More recently, the federal government mistakenly sent out letters claiming that it will be cutting Internet public access funding to 93% of the sites and quickly reversed its decision after widespread backlash. The federal broadband funding allocation strategy seems poorly put-together and its importance to our leaders is obviously lower than should be.

The Internet provides access to jobs, new technologies, cutting operating and marketing costs across all industries. It empowers consumers, small businesses and brings transparency to corporate and political process. Canadian policy-makers do not seem to have much vested interest in the Internet infrastructure and there is no clear sign on improving regulation policies of the industry. As a result we face some of the highest information currency exchange rates and speed inflation compared to the rest of the world.

Information democracy and Internet literacy may be our best chance at making the world a better place, and as Canadians we are falling behind.