Metered broadband billing has become a volatile regulatory question in Canada. It has also become a political issue, with that country's Conservative, Liberal, and New Democratic parties taking stands on the question of whether big telcos like Bell Canada can sell wholesale network access to smaller ISPs via a metered or usage-based-billing (UBB) system.

Over 21,000 Canadians have co-signed Liberal industry critic Marc Garneau's commentary to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, calling for a more expansive debate over not only how to charge independent ISPs for data use, but how frame the problem.

"The fundamental building blocks of this issue encompass more than one single remedy such as UBB," Garneau wrote to the CRTC. "The debate must be broadened to encompass a greater understanding of Internet services and the premise behind the need for competition and wholesale access."

These parties aren't just debating ISP billing policies, they're arguing over how to understand and define Internet use.

Bread and butter

Before we get to that broader debate, let's recap the immediate one first. Late last year the CRTC gave the green light for Bell Canada to apply metered data billing to smaller competitive ISPs like TechSavvy, with a discount of 15 percent. These companies depend on the telcos and cable giants for network access.

The smaller ISPs don't have a very large market share—around six percent, representing about 550,000 mostly residential subscribers. But the issue very quickly exploded into a metaphor for the general anxieties Canadians feel about the future of their Internet, with Bell Canada bringing in traffic shaping and cable ISPs like Rogers lowering their data caps on consumers.

One percent of Canada's population signed a petition denouncing UBB. The New Democratic Party went to town on the issue, insisting that Canadians would "lose out" with the policy.

"We've seen this all before with cell phones," warned NDP Digital Affairs Critic Charlie Angus, MP for Timmins-James Bay. "Allowing the Internet Service Providers to ding you every time you download is a rip-off. Canada is already falling behind other countries in terms of choice, accessibility and pricing for the Internet."

Ditto declared the Green Party. The Conservatives got the message and pulled the plug on the policy, just as it was poised to go into effect this month.

The CRTC "should be under no illusion—the Prime Minister and Minister of Industry will reverse this decision unless the CRTC does it itself," a top Conservative official told newspapers, doubtless with the nod of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. "Frankly, a decision like this is clearly not in the best interest of consumers. This is a bread-and-butter issue."

Cars or joules?

But in testimony before Canada's Parliament assuring the government that UBB would be put on ice, CRTC Chair Konrad von Finkenstein promised that the agency would still look for ways to "discipline the use of the Internet."

"All ISPs advertise their rates, bandwidth caps and the additional usage charges that apply," von Finkenstein explained. "Consumers can shop around for the plan that best meet their needs. Internet services are now sold like other public utilities, such as water, gas and electricity."

And it is here where the Liberal Party statement parts company:

We fundamentally disagree with the Commission's description of the Internet as analogous to a utility or the provision of electricity or water. Electricity and water are both limited resources. The transfer of electricity and water are limited both by supply of the good and size of the pipe. Data over the Internet however, is unlimited. While the size of the pipe may be constrained, the amount of data is not. A more appropriate analogy is a highway, in this case an information highway.

In pursuit of this way of looking at the problem, Garneau's letter emphasizes that Internet congestion problems should be solved by more build-out, rather than via a crude "congestion toll" on "all road users across Canada."

"The first question must be: is there congestion?" his statement asks. "If not, the solution is simple: the toll is unnecessary. If highway traffic is congested but only in Toronto between the hours of 7-9am and 4-7pm, should congestion tolls be appropriately applied to all roads, at all times? If congestion occurs only in Toronto should users be forced to pay congestion fees in Sudbury, Wawanesa or Nunavut?"

It's important to note that there is agreement between the Conservatives and Liberals. The Conservative led CRTC's von Finckenstein also says that build-out should be the first solution to congestion.

But in the new public comment proceeding that he launched, he reiterated his water/electricity based framing of the dilemma, asking for feedback on the principle that, as a general rule, "ordinary consumers served by Small ISPs should not have to fund the bandwidth used by the heaviest retail Internet service consumers."

The question is whether CRTC policy opponents can split the difference on these perspectives, agreeing to some means of handling traffic that recognizes discepancies in subscriber data use.

All parties must submit comments to the Commission by April 29. But if the very framing of the UBB question has become a political issue, it's unclear whether any decision that stems from this proceeding will be accepted by the Conservative Party's main rivals.

"Don’t give the CRTC a second chance to make the same mistake," the Liberal Party petition warns.