Increasing deregulation fuels rise in customer discontent, claims consumer advocacy groups

Two consumer advocacy groups say the increasing number of actions against the country's telecommunications service providers demonstrates they are losing touch with their customers. One of those groups - the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Centre (CIPPIC) - goes so far to suggest regulatory intervention where market forces are failing to protect consumers.Last month's Net Neutrality rally on Parliament Hill, the introduction by NDP MP Charlie Angus of a private members' bill calling for more transparency and neutral network management two days later, and last week's private member's bill from Liberal MP David McGuinty calling for the elimination of the system access fee demonstrate that consumer discontent with the service providers is gaining momentum, consumer advocates warn. These are in addition to the Canadian Association of Internet Providers' appeal of Bell Canada's Internet traffic management practices as well as the Union des consommateurs launching of a class action suit against Bell over its throttling. CIPPIC director Pippa Lawson blames marketing departments for targeting human frailties and vulnerabilities. "The marketing people know very well how human beings behave: we don't have time to read all the terms and conditions, that we make choices on the fly and that we stay with companies that we hate because we don't really feel we have any other options," she says. John Lawford, counsel at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), says it's frustrating to see carriers increasingly become deregulated yet give nothing substantive in return to their customers. "They are getting all their goodies, like local service deregulation, and they're not quid pro quoing on being nice ," he says. The Internet throttling issue has been a lightening rod for consumer backlash, yet this has not been enough to force Bell to alter its traffic management practices, and this, according to Lawson, shows the market is anything but competitive. "That is not something a company would do in a competitive market," she tells Network Letter. "That to me is very nice evidence, very clear evidence that we do not have a healthy competitive market. I mean case closed."Bell sparked the Internet throttling issue after its practice of slowing download speeds of its customers using peer-to-peer filing sharing applications such as music downloads was expanded in March to include the Internet traffic of its wholesale customers. The Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) responded with an appeal to the CRTC and recently l'Union des consommateurs and Quebec consumer launched a class action suit against the ILEC over its traffic management practices. Both Lawson and Lawford finger the federal government for the current situation, blaming a federal policy direction to the CRTC as tying the hands of the regulator. "The government has directed them to deregulate and to rely on market forces. The problem is market forces don't always work," Lawson says. Lawford contends the carriers are missing an opportunity to show they are addressing consumers' concerns by more effectively using the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS). "I don't think they know the value that they could get out of the complaints body because I think it would really grease the wheels for them being able to say ‘Look how well deregulation is working.'"There is unlikely to be a near-term solution, but hope is that public pressure will yield some results. "We've got a growing movement among Internet users and I think politicians are waking up to the issues and hopefully that will help," says CIPPIC's Lawson. "I think we've got to take action and market forces clearly are not disciplining companies in the way they are supposed to and so it's time for regulators to get involved."

Increasing deregulation fuels rise in customer discontent, claims consumer advocacy groups

News | 06/09/2008 4:54 pm EDT

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