The CRTC needs to speak for us
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 11 December 2019 05:44
- Written by editor
PAOV
As you read this, telecom giant Bell and other ISPs are petitioning Prime Minister Trudeau to cancel the CRTC's order that lowered the cost of Internet access.
This is just one of the ways Bell and the rest of the Big Three are widening the digital divide in Canada.
If we don't fight back, we could see Internet prices driven even higher, and rural and impoverished areas of the country will be left out altogether. The new government promised digital rights in 2020, and OpenMedia is holding them accountable.
OpenMedia has been on the frontlines fighting the corporate takeover of the Internet for more than a decade.
We were instrumental in the CRTC's decision to set fair broadband rates, forcing the Big Three to lower the wholesale prices and pay back what they had been overcharging.1
And that's not all. When Bell came out with a sweeping plan to censor and block websites, we stopped it.2 When the music industry lobbied to tax our phones and our Internet usage, we fought back with ads and pushed thousands of public comments to Parliament.
And we're winning. In the recent election, digital rights and affordable Internet access were on the platforms of every major party.
Now that we have a new government in place, we're going to submit our proposals for how it can follow through on promises to close the digital divide between the poorest and wealthiest of us, and we're fighting for our own digital platform to protect our privacy and free speech online.
But Big Telecom isn't going down without a fight. It's going to be a long battle to stop that powerful lobby. But affordable Internet is at stake, and we're going to fight with everything we've got.
Thanks for all that you do,
Laura at OpenMedia
Footnotes:
[1] Execulink Telecom lowering internet plan prices, introducing unlimited usage: MobileSyrup
[2] Canadians rally against Bell's plan to censor the Internet: blogTO
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