OTTAWA - Canadians across the country have spoken out against last week's CRTC decision that laid the groundwork for usage-based billing by Canada's largest internet service providers.

While this may seem like a fair policy at first glance - i.e. you get what you pay for - it is far from a 'fair policy.' In fact, usage-based billing (UBB) unfairly targets small businesses and gouges consumers. Fairness goes out the window when you consider the anti-competitive nature of the UBB's terms. Canada's largest ISPs, Bell and Rogers, were clearly seeking to deliver a one-two punch with this policy - they were seeking to limit the services offered by their competitors and seeking to increase costs to consumers.

Canadians are increasingly sensitive to these manipulations in the telecom/internet industries. When internet and cell phone service in Canada remain prohibitively high, one cannot help but look questioningly to many developing countries that enjoy better, cheaper services than we do. Some commentators warned that Canada risked becoming a 'digital backwater' if these proposals moved forwards.

Thankfully the PMO and the Industry Minister have responded to these issues and indicated their intention to overturn the CRTC decision - that is, if the CRTC doesn't overturn it itself first. The Head of the arm's-length CRTC, Konrad von Finckenstein has been called before the Industry Committee to explain his initial decision, which should make for an interesting showdown.

Under the proposed UBB scheme, initially approved by the CRTC, consumers would have seen their data usage caps reduced by up to 90% in some cases. Unlimited use plans would largely be a thing of the past, and most plans would offer a paltry 25 gigabytes in their place. Consumers, of course would be charged additional rates for using more data.

In a world of skyrocketing utility bills, consumers do not need another monthly bill that they fear to open.

As more and more consumers turn to the internet for their media needs and other rich content, the insidious nature of our cable/telecom/internet industries become clear. The problem is that our internet providers are also our largest cable companies and so forth. They would not like to see consumers getting their media/entertainment from cheaper online sources that stream content over the internet - our cable companies would prefer if consumers continued to pay their already-inflated cable rates. Indeed, cheaper, online services such as the new-to-Canada Netflix threaten the monopolistic stranglehold that our major cable/internet companies have established.

Under the guise of fairness, these major corporations are seeking to increase costs for consumers and make it impossible for their competition to ever challenge the existing status-quo.

This is precisely the danger that results when a select few companies are also the owners of essential infrastructure. Emerging internet providers have mused about pooling resources to establish their own competing networks, but for the time being this is not a viable alternative.

This issue places our country between a rock and a hard place. Is the right answer the regulate the major corporations who have spent the money to establish these communications networks? Generally, this would be a dangerous, interventionist precedent to establish. In this case, however, consumers need to be put first - at least in the short term. Polling data this week has certainly indicated that the vast majority of Canadians wanted the CRTC usage-based billing decision overturned. What to do next, in order to establish real competitiveness, is much less clear.