A petition calling for the dissolution of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, says the regulator has become a burden on the Canadian public, and should be replaced with a new regulator.
The original online petition, at dissolvethecrtc.ca, was started by Mike Lerner, a 23-year-old Ottawa software company employee, who says he's frustrated by a decision to allow Bell Canada to institute usage-based billing on its wholesale Internet customers.
The petition reads, in part:
"The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunicatins Commission was created for the purpose of ensuring broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public and ensure that Canadians have a wide variety of options to create and view works of media or communicate across the country and the entire world. We, the undersigned, believe that the CRTC has become a burden on the Canadian public and are failing to perform their duties in the interest of the Canadian public and that of a fair and unbiased telecom policy."
A spokesperson for the CRTC declined to comment on the petition.
The petition has more than 2,500 signatures at last count. Lerner intends to deliver the petition to Heritage Minister James Moore, who is responsible for the CRTC, if it reaches 10,000 signatures.
The CRTC has come under fire from many sides recently, including consumers and providers of media services.
Television providers like Bell and Rogers, for example, have encouraged consumers to express their anger to the CRTC over a 1.5-per-cent increase in their bills, set to take effect on Sept. 1. The new charge is inteneded to help broadcasters pay for local programming in small communities.
The Commission stated that on average, subscribers paid $3.57 more per month in 2008, an increase of 7.2% over the previous year. It said the increase can be explained by higher monthly fees, a greater consumption of pay and pay-per-view services, and consumers upgrading to digital or high-definition television services.
The CRTC has recently reported that revenues from Internet services increased by 9.4%, growing from $5.7 billion in 2007 to $6.2 billion in 2008. In 2008, the number of residential Internet subscribers increased by 5.6% to 9.8 million, or 74% of all Canadian households.
The CRTC notes that the majority of Canadians favoured faster Internet services, as 52% of all households subscribed to a broadband service that offered speeds of at least 1.5 megabits per second.