Shaw has Netflix in its crosshairs
money.canoe.ca
Shaw Communications Inc. has announced that its upcoming video-on-demand service will be exempt from its data caps, prompting allegations the company is treating customers unfairly.
REUTERS/Todd KorolFor $12 a month, Shaw Movie Club members will get unlimited access to hundreds of movie titles on their TVs and computers. The service is designed to rival online streaming giant Netflix.
But unlike Netflix programming, Shaw's Movie Club won't count toward monthly data caps, which means users won't have to worry about bill shock due to hefty fees for exceeding download limits.
Canada's big telecom companies began introducing data caps in earnest last year ahead of Netflix's arrival to Canada in an effort to keep heavy downloaders from clogging up the Internet during peak traffic hours. The caps, however, worked to shield cable companies from subscriber losses and boost Internet revenues, critics say. The trend forced the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to open a public debate on issues of neutrality and usage-based billing.
Friday's announcement by Shaw is a blatant attempt to gain an unfair advantage over competitors, online advocacy group OpenMedia.ca said Friday.
"It's unfair for Shaw to restrict access to competing services by making them more expensive to use than Shaw's own services," Open Media executive director Steve Anderson said in a release.
Technically, Shaw may not be violating the rules, because regulators do allow service providers to manage Internet traffic, University of Ottawa professor and e-commerce chair Michael Geist said on his blog.
Still, Shaw does appear to be giving its service undue preference, which goes against the Telecommunications Act, Geist said.
-¦ It would seem that a CRTC complaint is a certainty and the pressure will be on the Commission to demonstrate that the law against undue preference in Canada has some teeth," he wrote.
The regulator has put its foot down in the name of net neutrality lately. The CRTC warned Rogers Communications just this week to stop "throttling," or slowing down, World of Warcraft users by Monday or face a public process.
stefania.moretti@canoe.ca |
