Tag Archives: canada

Random Thoughts

CRTC Trying to Impose Usage Based Billing – Talk About a Step Backwards

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In 1989 Marty McFly and Doc Brown gave us a glimpse at the future. It might be a bit scary to think that ‘future’ they visited is just a few years from where we are now. I’m personally looking forward to flying cars since I think driving with 4 tires on the ground is just so passé.

There are actually a lot of things Back To The Future II got correct. (View the list here)

While I don’t think we’re just a few years away from flying cars, I would assume that the world, overall, is moving in a consistent direction when it comes to technology…. FORWARD.

This is why I think it’s crazy that the CRTC is trying to send Canadian internet users back to the stone-age. (Well, maybe not the stone-age since there weren’t many cavemen on Facebook, but this is definitely not forward progress.)

Stop The MeterA new decision from the CRTC will allow Canadian ISPs to charge per byte, similar to what they do for smart phones. This will result in Canadian paying a lot more for internet access. Canadian consumers already get gauged on their internet services way more than their American counterparts and now it’s all about to get worse.

A couple years ago I was in Thailand where I was literally sitting in a hut with no air conditioning, bugs flying around, and no paved roads in sight, but I was on the internet with a fast connection. I wonder if that hut is going to get better internet rates than someone in Toronto?

I have no idea what the CRTC is thinking or how they are justifying their actions, but Canadians must raise their voice and say this is ridiculous.

To have your voice be heard, sign the “Stop The Meter On Your Internet Use” here: http://openmedia.ca/meter

Email Marketing, Online Marketing

Canada’s New Anti-Spam Legislation is Facing Some Opposition

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As email became an integral part of our daily lives, so did the issue of spam. One thing that everyone at Elite Email is always monitoring are the new spam laws being implemented in various countries. The most popular of the laws is the Can-Spam Act, which was signed into law by George W. Bush on December 16, 2003 (Wikipedia). It has been amended since then and remains a key regulator of email marketing activities in the United States and also largely establishes a benchmark for email marketing regulations.

In Canada, Bill C-27 (A.K.A. the “Electronic Commerce Protection Act”) was introduced last spring (by Industry Minister Tony Clement) and has steadily made its way through the legislative process. The Standing Committee on Industry is likely to conduct it’s ‘clause by clause’ review this week.

The proposed law has similar limits to the laws already in place in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

There are, however, a growing number of business groups who have mounted attacks against the proposed law claiming that it will create new barriers to doing business online in Canada.

While the final rules in the law remain to be seen, Canadian’s have been down a similar road before with the “Do Not Call List”. The original proposal of the Do-Not-Call List was so gutted by the time it was passed that the end result is that the majority of telemarketing calls are still perfectly legal, even though there is a huge amount of numbers on the do-not-call list.

Since all of our Elite Email clients are sending permission-based messages adhering to email marketing best practices, this new legislation will likely not affect us. But, as always, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this as the story develops.