The (Mobile) Information Tax

 

According to the wiki a shenanigan is “a … deceitful confidence trick, or mischief causing discomfort or annoyance.” And that is exactly what the Bell has done with their new ‘$7 Unlimited Data Plan’.

The recent story about a man being billed the equivalent of a luxury car for using his mobile phone as a modem is a exemplar of using consumer confiedence to trick the user into overuse. It is true that the plan is explicit to mobile internet, but many people see the internet as such without distinction of it’s delivery. I assert it is any service provider’s due diligence(1) to warn when a customer might be accruing a large tab – just as a good bar tender would warn a patron when he has had too much to drink.

Fundamentally there is something very disheartening about this. Inferring from to Thomas Purves the CRTC has sat idly by as the telecom giants have made Canada a technological third world country out ranked by such great nations as Rwanda. What justifies a $85,000 fee for moving data from one computer to another. To reitterate:

“We are paying huge sums of money to have our largely user generated data transfered from one machine’s memory banks to another on largely automatic systems.”

To put this in perspective wih this single cellphone bill, my service provider could pay a full time technician a healthy sallary to operate only for me, and still keep a profit in the tens of thousands of dollars.

We are paying a fee to get the same data received through land lines transmitted wirelessly. Additionally, how the data is used is once again taxed dependent upon how it is used. Why should my service provider have an knowledge of how I use my data. If I am going to pay $7 for a largely automatic system to send me data then I should own that copy of the data, no mater its content or intended use as soon as it enters my memory banks.(2)

The Anarcho-Liberalist revolution stands on the pillars of a free and open internet; don’t let it be controlled.

I highly recommend you all email your representatives and demand better consumer advocacy from the CRTC.

1. I assert serious finanical harm to a individiaul still quallifies as harm, albeit intangible.
2. It can be argued that the maintenance fees justify a higher costs; however, I argue that the sheer number of people making use of these networks pay for any maintenance many times over. Though, I would be interested in seeing some kind of cost analysis.