| Konrad W. von Finckenstein | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 4, 1945 Germany |
| Occupation | Public servant |
Konrad W. von Finckenstein, QC (b. April 4, 1945 in Germany) is the current Chairman of the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). He has held the post since January 25, 2007 and his term is scheduled to end on January 24, 2012. von Finckenstein previously served as Justice of the Federal Court from 2003 until his appointment to the CRTC. As a judge, von Finckenstein held that uploading music tracks over the Internet is not in itself a violation of Canadian copyright law.[1] Before that, he had been the head of the Competition Bureau since 1997.
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He received a Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) from Carleton University in 1967,[2] and a Bachelor of Laws from Queen’s University.
The CRTC's ruling on a proposed usage-based billing system regulatory update resulted in an outcome that is believed to ensure that large telecommunications companies such as Bell Canada and Rogers Cable would have protectionist measures in order to compete in the internet service provider marketplace. Many believe this is because, as of 2011, a large amount of customers of any ISP transfer a lot of data through their internet connection due to the explosion of HD video streaming options (e.g. YouTube, Netflix, shows on demand via any TV network website that has obtained such licensing for online broadcasting, etc.) and ISPs claim that such large amounts of data transfer places a strain on their networks. Experts have argued that this is not a valid reason to implement a pay-as-you-go style system to cover costs as each ISP has enough network infrastructure to handle each customer maximzing their bandwidth rate per second simultaneously, and each gigabyte of bandwidth used per customer has a cost as low as $0.03 CAD according to Teksavvy, a third party ISP. This regulatory change was very negatively received by the public, as over 460,000 signatures were gathered by OpenMedia.ca, which protested the decision. All three major political parties in Canada have spoken out against the ruling, and implementation has been delayed for 60 days, pending further review.[3] Pending the outcome of this 60 day delay to review the decision once more, the proposed usage-based billing system could still be forced upon all independent ISPs that use another company's existing infrastructure. The ruling on hold would have resulted in customers of those independent ISPs (also known as 3rd party providers) facing monthly bandwidth caps of 25GB, and additional charges for each gigabyte of data transfer used as set by the larger ISP renting out their infrastructure and passed onto the customer at the same rate by their independent ISP as required by the regulatory change.
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| Preceded by Charles Dalfen |
Chairman of the CRTC 2007–2012 |
Succeeded by incumbent |