Recently I was involved with the 40th annual Physics Balsa Bridge Building Contest in my school. Strange as it may sound, that got me thinking about Canada’s recently introduced Code of Conduct for mobility and internet service providers and the present federal government’s attempts to drive down communications costs.
Since 1997 the bridge building contest, a daylong event that stretches into the evening, has been livestreamed. To put that in perspective, that’s going back to a time when the term “livestream” didn’t even exist. Webcams were just starting to appear a few years after the very first live webcam, a unit aimed at a coffee pot at Cambridge University.
So, what does that have to do with a code of conduct for Canada’s mobility providers? Well, I arrived at school the day of the bridge-building content only to discover internet service was out and had been since the day before. There was no prospect of livestreaming the event, the first time in 23 years.
Internet service is a staple in modern education. So much classroom work, particularly at the secondary level, depends on stable, reliable internet delivery to teacher and student desktops. Our only solution was to livestream via an internet hotspot created by my mobile phone. Fortunately I had a service plan that was good for 10 GB of data.
So around 10 a.m. we began livestreaming via my mobile. Knowing that a video feed is data-intensive I kept an eye on usage. I could also tell the phone was working hard as it became quite hot in my jacket pocket!
By 3 p.m. I was becoming concerned as the data usage, measured on the phone, was approaching 8 GB. Since it was early in my monthly billing cycle, I wanted to keep a buffer of 2 GB or so for my own use over the remaining three weeks.
I decided to call my provider, Telus, to enquire about the purchase of a few additional gigabytes to ensure that the livestreamed contest remained active. It was at this point that I began thinking of the code of conduct. Yes, I could purchase a few extra gigs – $21 for an additional gigabyte, or $30 for two. Outlandish I thought. This is exactly the kind of nonsense that the big providers have been heaping on Canadians for years.
My Telus representative tried upselling me to a 20-GB plan, but I’ve always been skeptical of changing plans, even though mine is a Bring Your Own Device plan. I signed up for the 10 GB/$65 plan back in December 2017 when all the telecoms engaged in a brief price war. The $65 figure was stated as a “forever” price, but of course that only lasted a year or so!
One of the present Liberal government’s planks during the last federal election campaign was a nebulous promise to drive down cell phone service costs by 25 per cent. Needless to say, the telecoms want no part of such a promise, vaguely issuing releases that they’d already lowered rates and that further reductions would harm employment and development of new technologies (see previous column on this).
Minister Navdeep Bains seems ready to do battle with the telecoms. He reiterated March 5 that while the companies may claim they have lowered some pricing plans, he expects them to lower plans that offer 2 to 6 GB of data and Canada-wide calling – so-called mid-tier plans – by the aforementioned 25 per cent, and within two years. The minister’s news release suggests this will result in a family of four saving up to $720 a year, a savings of $180 per user, or $15 a month.
Back to that code of conduct for a moment. As the phone continued to run hot in my pocket carrying the contest live stream, I wondered why I was not being warned that I was approaching my data limit. The phone itself (not the provider) issued a warning, noting that the level of data usage was unusually high for me.
In any case, I’d decided to stop streaming when the phone indicated it was at 8 GB. I found a colleague who had received a “five free hours of data” Fido promotion, and we were able to finish out the streaming with that, although we learned from the fine print that it was not a block of five hours but rather limited to an hour a day. Fortunately that proved just enough to complete the contest day.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I received a note from Telus that data usage was at 80 per cent, a requirement of the new code of conduct. It appears the phone and the company differ slightly in how data is measured.
Watch for the federal government to ramp up publicity about how Canadian mobility, and perhaps internet service plan rates, compare with those in say the other G7 nations. This is a showdown of sorts.
As for the Code of Conduct itself, check it out here: https://tinyurl.com/r4xyuhf.
Drones and regulations
Want to fly a drone but don’t want to get involved in the red tape of registration? An unexpected corollary to new rules is the arrival of high-quality drones that weigh in at just a gram or two below the 250-gram weight restriction, above which registration is required. For instance, check out the DJI Mavic Mini, priced around $460.
Coronavirus/COVID-19 and schools
As school closures occur in other parts of the world you can be sure teachers here are thinking about how they can remain in touch with students should the same happen in Canada. Tools such as Google Classroom and Zoom Teleconferencing may prove to be valuable assets, and many tech companies are temporarily suspending fees for access to some of their subscription services.
At the time of writing, almost 300 million students around the world were out of school due to COVID-19.
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