Please hang up and try again later

One day after work many years ago, I hopped on the bus that I thought would take me to my downtown meeting. But after a while, I realized that, while I had taken the correct bus number, I had chosen the northern extended route instead of the direct-to-downtown route. The ride took forever and, by the time I arrived at my destination, the meeting was over. During the time of my unexpectedly long ride, I had been incommunicado with the outside world, as this was in my pre-cell-phone-owning days. I eventually called my colleague from a payphone in a hotel lobby to explain my absence at the meeting. Sheesh. What a way to end a long workday!

I’m sure that many people experienced a similar feeling of being lost in time and lost to their colleagues and loved ones when, last week, the Rogers network went down right across Canada: No cell service. No Internet. No contact. And, maybe worse, no way to pay for their morning coffee, either: Many vendors could take cash only, as both debit and credit lines were out of service, too. Quelle horreur! But the real horror was that medical and emergency services were also stalled.

As a result, I’ve been thinking about the wonder of the internet, the disappearance of pay phones, and the concept of online capacity as a public good — that is, as something “beneficial for all or most members of a given community.”

The internet is a modern-day wonder, and most of us rely on it for more and more day-to-day services. While I remember as a youngster trudging to the bank to deposit a cheque or to take out cash via the human teller, I love the convenience of online banking and e-transfers. And what about emails? You maybe curse them as much as I do when they pour into your in-box, but I doubt any of us can imagine returning to the days of snail mail and rotary-dial phones without caller ID.

As the ownership of cell phones has risen (about 86 percent of Canadians own one), the existence of pay phones in public spaces has declined: about 36,000 pay phones existed across Canada in 2018, down from 55,000 just two years earlier. And more are decommissioned each day.

In New York City, public pay phones are being replaced with LinkNYC kiosks that provide free access to wifi, charging for digital devices, and a 911 emergency call button. In addition, you can make a phone call from the kiosk (no personal device needed) to anywhere in the United States — free of charge. In NYC, leaders have recognized that access to high speed internet is a public service, and they are providing it on more and more street corners; the LinkNYC service is funded through advertising revenue, not taxes.

However, in most of our communities, public pay phones are disappearing and not being replaced with an equally accessible option: Public convenience is ignored and public safety is put at risk. With the Rogers network down for a full day last week and hardly any public pay phones on street corners anymore, Winnipeg police informed the public they would need to find a landline — somewhere, anywhere — if they needed to make an emergency call for help.

Canada has only three major telecommunications companies — Rogers, Telus, and Bell, with the next tier consisting of only three others — Shaw, Quebecor, and SaskTel. Competition in this country is seriously limited and, unless the proposed merger between Rogers and Shaw has been jeopardized by the recent outage (which was the second one in two years for Rogers), it is only going to be more limited in the future.

How can this be? It is shocking and, dare I say, dysfunctional, for something as important to our daily life as the internet has become to be in the hands of a few privately held (i.e., for-profit) companies. Surely, our online lives should, at the very least, have a public (government) agency as backup for when the private for-profit companies go down. This is not a trivial matter. It is not a personal concern. It is a political issue.

There is no getting around it: We have evolved (or is it devolved?) into an internet-dependent culture. Access to the internet might have once been a personal privilege, but it has become a core essential for civic participation. Whoever owns the means to provide that access must commit to delivering their service, at least in part, as a public good. And we, the consumers, must hold our politicians to account to ensure this happens. If we don’t, the already gaping digital divide in Canada will grow only wider and deeper.

Note 1: The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) is a not-for-profit organization that represents consumer interests in the provision of regulated services in Canada, including telecommunications. Contact info here. 

Note 2: The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is a public organization in Canada with mandate as a regulatory agency for broadcasting and telecommunications. It is “dedicated to ensuring that Canadians have access to a world-class communication system that promotes innovation and enriches their lives.” Contact info here.

Note 3: This link takes you to a Change.org petition aimed at the CRTC, regarding the high costs Canadians pay for internet access. Relative to other countries, the prices we pay are extraordinary.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash