All I can say is wow! Apparently the Prime Minister is going to reverse the CRTC usage based billing ruling if the CRTC doesn't, according to the Toronto Star.
The opemedia stop the meter campaign has climbed to over 350,000 people in less than two weeks.
What makes this so exciting is that this was clearly a case of corporate greed run a-muck, a regulatory body making rules to benefit big business at the cost of Canadian citizens, and when it all came out in the wash it turns out that our government actually does listen to the people and will take the side of the people over big business.
This also goes to show the power of PR... because without the 350,000+ petition signatures and associated media coverage... if Canadians had simply sucked it up and walked away quietly (like we do with gas prices for instance)... I doubt anyone would be looking at reversing the CRTC's decisions.
If the ruling is reversed the next question has to be what is to be done with the CRTC? I don't think you can simply reverse the ruling and let the CRTC remain as it is, with the same people who took the side of big business remaining in charge. I expect there will be a public outcry for heads to role over there. Hopefully after some changes they will also allow Skype to have Canadian phone numbers (another CRTC ruling that has protected Bell and Rogers at the cost of Canadians).
As for Rogers and Bell, they will be looking at perhaps the worst PR crisis in their history. What they've essentially done is give independent ISPs millions of dollars of free advertising. I know lots of people who are using Roger and Bell because they think that's who you have to use. Yes, there are independent ISPs, but a lot of people are afraid to do business with them thinking they are some rag-tag operation with no customer service and who knows what you'll actually get (and they don't even know who they are).
But now.... not only will people feel comfortable doing business with them as a result of identifying them as companies who are not trying to rip their customers off, a lot of people will switch over to them simply in spite of Rogers and Bell (who have now utterly trashed their brands and made it very clear to all their customers that they will seek to bill as much as humanly possible even if it be so egregious as to border on immoral).
These PR situations are what I love to talk about on this blog.
So what should Roger and Bell do now, from a PR perspective?
Should they fight the reversal?
Should they continue to play the victim and keep pushing the message that they can't afford exploding bandwidth usage by their customers?
If I had to guess they will probably take the 'live to fight another day' strategy. So they'll reiterate their reasons for wanting usage based billing (UBB) and then let the whole issue fade away and take another kick at the can down the road.
If they take this route, which I suspect they will, I think it will be a giant PR blunder.
I think they are about to lose a lot of customers and they've got a very small window to try and keep those customers by containing the damage of this fiasco.
Their best PR strategy is to come out and apologize to Canadians for trying to implement UBB. I know, no one likes to apologize for anything, and no one likes to appear weak. But the reality is that not apologizing will only fuel the fires of dislike for the incumbent carriers.
So you can either apologize right away OR you can wait a few quarters and watch your customer base flee before you realize how badly you've ruined your reputation in the market. At which point you will then be forced to slash your prices to the bone in hopes of luring customers back.
All the Canadian people want to hear is that Roger and Bell have learned their lesson and understand what their customers want (and that they won't give their customers cause to leave them down the road as a result).
Anything less than demonstrating this will simply further entrench these companies as giant corporations who seek to leverage their customers to the absolute fullest. To be fair, this is what businesses are suppose to do (maximize profits), but carriers aren't normal businesses operating in a normal competitive environment. They have a monopoly and as such have a responsibility not to abuse that dominant position (it's the abuse of that position in the pursuit of excess profits that requires them to apologize).
And we as the Canadian public have to also realize that these carriers are in the initial phases of dying. The Internet is going to eventually kill them (or at least most of their profits). Companies that are dying have to take drastic actions to maintain profits for their shareholders, which is what they did. It may not be moral but it's the world we live in. Which is why I equated this scenario with the financial crisis in the US, because there too, the underlying driver was greed and attempts to maintain and grow unsustainable profits in order to appease shareholders.
What is amazing is that it back-fired on them and public outcry actually won.
Like Bob Dylan once sang... the times they are a changing.
And that they are. Tonight we may be witnessing industry giants for the first time being put in their place by the people. It will be interesting to see what happens to Bell's stock price and Roger's stock price over the next week. I wouldn't be surprised to see a major sell off as investors realize that the CRTC is no longer in their back pockets, which means the government is not going to protect Bell and Rogers from uprising competition in the future (if anything, they'll do the opposite and encourage such competition).
The opemedia stop the meter campaign has climbed to over 350,000 people in less than two weeks.
What makes this so exciting is that this was clearly a case of corporate greed run a-muck, a regulatory body making rules to benefit big business at the cost of Canadian citizens, and when it all came out in the wash it turns out that our government actually does listen to the people and will take the side of the people over big business.
This also goes to show the power of PR... because without the 350,000+ petition signatures and associated media coverage... if Canadians had simply sucked it up and walked away quietly (like we do with gas prices for instance)... I doubt anyone would be looking at reversing the CRTC's decisions.
If the ruling is reversed the next question has to be what is to be done with the CRTC? I don't think you can simply reverse the ruling and let the CRTC remain as it is, with the same people who took the side of big business remaining in charge. I expect there will be a public outcry for heads to role over there. Hopefully after some changes they will also allow Skype to have Canadian phone numbers (another CRTC ruling that has protected Bell and Rogers at the cost of Canadians).
As for Rogers and Bell, they will be looking at perhaps the worst PR crisis in their history. What they've essentially done is give independent ISPs millions of dollars of free advertising. I know lots of people who are using Roger and Bell because they think that's who you have to use. Yes, there are independent ISPs, but a lot of people are afraid to do business with them thinking they are some rag-tag operation with no customer service and who knows what you'll actually get (and they don't even know who they are).
But now.... not only will people feel comfortable doing business with them as a result of identifying them as companies who are not trying to rip their customers off, a lot of people will switch over to them simply in spite of Rogers and Bell (who have now utterly trashed their brands and made it very clear to all their customers that they will seek to bill as much as humanly possible even if it be so egregious as to border on immoral).
These PR situations are what I love to talk about on this blog.
So what should Roger and Bell do now, from a PR perspective?
Should they fight the reversal?
Should they continue to play the victim and keep pushing the message that they can't afford exploding bandwidth usage by their customers?
If I had to guess they will probably take the 'live to fight another day' strategy. So they'll reiterate their reasons for wanting usage based billing (UBB) and then let the whole issue fade away and take another kick at the can down the road.
If they take this route, which I suspect they will, I think it will be a giant PR blunder.
I think they are about to lose a lot of customers and they've got a very small window to try and keep those customers by containing the damage of this fiasco.
Their best PR strategy is to come out and apologize to Canadians for trying to implement UBB. I know, no one likes to apologize for anything, and no one likes to appear weak. But the reality is that not apologizing will only fuel the fires of dislike for the incumbent carriers.
So you can either apologize right away OR you can wait a few quarters and watch your customer base flee before you realize how badly you've ruined your reputation in the market. At which point you will then be forced to slash your prices to the bone in hopes of luring customers back.
All the Canadian people want to hear is that Roger and Bell have learned their lesson and understand what their customers want (and that they won't give their customers cause to leave them down the road as a result).
Anything less than demonstrating this will simply further entrench these companies as giant corporations who seek to leverage their customers to the absolute fullest. To be fair, this is what businesses are suppose to do (maximize profits), but carriers aren't normal businesses operating in a normal competitive environment. They have a monopoly and as such have a responsibility not to abuse that dominant position (it's the abuse of that position in the pursuit of excess profits that requires them to apologize).
And we as the Canadian public have to also realize that these carriers are in the initial phases of dying. The Internet is going to eventually kill them (or at least most of their profits). Companies that are dying have to take drastic actions to maintain profits for their shareholders, which is what they did. It may not be moral but it's the world we live in. Which is why I equated this scenario with the financial crisis in the US, because there too, the underlying driver was greed and attempts to maintain and grow unsustainable profits in order to appease shareholders.
What is amazing is that it back-fired on them and public outcry actually won.
Like Bob Dylan once sang... the times they are a changing.
And that they are. Tonight we may be witnessing industry giants for the first time being put in their place by the people. It will be interesting to see what happens to Bell's stock price and Roger's stock price over the next week. I wouldn't be surprised to see a major sell off as investors realize that the CRTC is no longer in their back pockets, which means the government is not going to protect Bell and Rogers from uprising competition in the future (if anything, they'll do the opposite and encourage such competition).
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