CANARIE user community rejects connection fees

The CANARIE user community has given an overwhelming thumb's down to the concept of introducing connection fees for linking to the organization's high speed research and education network. The feedback was received following the distribution of a discussion paper on the issue, augmented by conference calls and a summit held in Ottawa last month.

The rejection comes as CANARIE prepares a Cost Recovery Business Plan for Industry Canada. It says it will include the latest feedback into the plan which will be reviewed by government officials before the end of the current FY.

Connection fees are part of a larger package of proposed actions designed to reduce the organization's reliance on government funding and increase revenues to make up for the shortfall in the latest funding award of $62 million over three years (R$, August 31/12). The proposed actions are in response to a government request to "develop cost-recovery options. Specifically, the government has requested a plan that features how CANARIE will, as much as possible over the three-year period from 2012-2015, recover its Eligible Project costs resulting from Eligible Projects".

"We were asked to implement cost recovery where possible and where it made sense," says CANARIE president and CEO Jim Roche. "We don't anticipate any shortcoming in deliverables. We're well funded although we could be doing more if we had more … It's a decision for government to invest in infrastructure."

Feedback from users offered a range of reasons why they rejected connection fees, including: institutions are already paying their respective Optical Regional Advanced Networks (ORANs) for access to the CANARIE network; institutions facing fiscal pressures may choose to opt out of the network, weakening its overall integrity; and, the leverage effect of big science facilities will be lessened if institutions or regions opt out.

"If any large institution, cluster of small institutions or an entire province were to disconnect from CANARIE, it would undermine the network effect and damage the value we deliver to others in the network," says Roche, adding that CANARIE has presented the government with other cost recovery options.

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