The CRTC earlier this year couldn't be bothered to come to the defense of independent ISPs facing extinction due to Bell Canada's sudden throttling efforts, but the regulatory agency amazingly came alive this week to stop the entry of a new wireless phone competitor in Canada. A CRTC ruling has banned Globalive, a new entrant into the Canadian market, from doing business in Canada. Why? because it's 61% owned by Orascom, a telecom company that does ample business in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and South Asia.

Canadian regulation, lobbied for by incumbent companies, prohibits any telecom networks that aren't majority-Canadian owned. The entry of WIND would be the first major threat to Bell Canada, Telus and Rogers in more than a decade, so the companies lobbied the CRTC extensively to investigate and ban Wind's market entry. Wind Mobile has issued a press release saying that the ruling's odd, given another Canadian agency had already given them the green light, they were already allowed to purchase spectrum, and they were well into the process of employing 500 people and setting up operations:Canadian Law Professor Michael Geist blames the entire affair on outdated pseudo-patriotic regulation, being a bit too kind to the CRTC (stocked with phone industry executives) and Canada's incumbent phone giants (who lobbied for the original restrictions and initiated the investigation in the first place). Mike Masnick at Techdirt gets to the point, noting how such pseudo-patriotic moves are usually just another form of protectionism that ultimately winds up crippling competition and harming consumers, be it in the U.S., Canada, or Tajikistan.

While the United States FCC prepares to begin construction of new network neutrality rules tomorrow, users in Canada saw Canadian regulatory authority the CRTC issue some new network neutrality rules today. While the new rules don't prohibit Canadian ISPs from imposing the network management of their choice, they do force carriers to be wholly transparent with consumers, while giving retail customers thirty days and consumers at least 60 days before imposing any new traffic management.

The CRTC's involvement was of course triggered when Bell Canada decided to start throttling wholesale customers without telling them in the Spring of 2008. Independent Canadian ISPs complained the throttling was to prevent them from offering an unthrottled residential broadband alternative to Bell Canada's throttled DSL services.

Last week an FCC-commissioned report confirmed what most everybody but the FCC already knew thanks to countless other studies -- that United States broadband is a middle of the road performer, in part thanks to having no real broadband plan. Canadians are now taking note of the study as well, as it highlighted how Canada is lagging behind other industrialized countries in broadband speed, price and coverage. Of course none of this is particularly surprising when you note how Canada seems to have been mirroring the last decade of U.S. broadband policy -- which basically consists of a well-lobbied regulator doing whatever the wealthiest carriers tells them to do.

A few years ago, you'd be hard pressed to find a Canadian who knew what network neutrality was, despite the fact we've been debating about the idea here in the States since around 2005. The only reason Canadians hadn't been made aware of the issue is they weren't being shown clear examples of potential violations, like when AT&T CEO "Big Ed" Whitacre began mumbling about "free rides," Clearwire blocked VoIP traffic completely on their network, or Comcast began throttling upstream P2P services for all users regardless of congestion.

But everything in Canada changed last year, when Bell Canada decided to start throttling the traffic of wholesale competitors without telling them in order to prevent them from offering broadband service that was superior to Bell's own throttled DSL services. With the announcement by the FCC that they're beefing up network neutrality rules, Canadian regulatory agency the CRTC is facing increased pressure to create rules for Canadians as well:Of course with the CRTC stocked with former Bell and Rogers executives, they've consistently ruled against small business and consumer interests -- so the likelihood of any real rules seems slim for now. But they will be watching their neighbors to the south with great interest if it means increased political pressure. So will the independent ISPs and consumers who've been pushing for reform (and in some instances well, complete obliteration) at the CRTC.

With Canada doing their best to mirror the United States when it comes to telecom regulatory policy (the carriers with the money make the rules), Canadians haven't been very happy lately with Canadian regulatory agency the CRTC. The CRTC, as we've well covered, is stocked with executives from some of Canada's largest ISPs, and as such, has unsurprisingly been engaged in rulemaking that threatens to put smaller independent ISPs out of business.

23-year-old Ottawa software company employee and Broadband Reports user Mike Lerner ( mlerner) has been making waves with his dissolve the CRTC campaign, and has gotten 6,500 petition signatures and 2,000 Facebook friends who agree with him. Ok yes, online petitions are about as effective as fighting godzilla with poultry, and eliminating entrenched government agencies is usually impossible -- but Lerner's tapped into a growing irritation among consumers and small ISPs in Canada.