For whom does the Bell (Sympatico) sound?
p2pnet news | P2P:- For months, I’ve been asked repeatedly why net neutrality has not taken off as a Canadian political and regulatory issue. While there has been some press coverage, several high-profile incidents, and a few instances of political or regulatory discussion (including the recent House of Commons Committee report on the CBC), the issue has not generated as much attention in Canada as it has in the United States.
I believe this week will ultimately be seen as the moment that changed.
Starting with Rogers new pricing schedule without much needed transparency on its traffic shaping practices, followed by the CBC’s BitTorrent distribution of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister, and now the revelation that Bell has quietly revamped its network to allow for throttling at the residential and wholesale level, there is the prospect of a perfect storm of events that may crystallize the issue for consumers, businesses, politicians, and regulators.
The reported impact of traffic shaping on CBC downloads highlights the danger that non-transparent network management practices pose to the CBC’s fulfillment of its statutory mandate to distribute content in the most efficient manner possible.
This should ultimately bring cultural groups like Friends of the CBC into the net neutrality mix. Moreover, it points to a significant competition concern. As cable and satellite companies seek to sell new video services to consumers, they simultaneously use their network provider position to lessen competition that seeks to deliver competing video via the Internet.
This is an obvious conflict that requires real action from Canada’s competition and broadcast regulators.
The Bell throttling practices also raise crucial competition issues.
Michael Geist
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]
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March 27th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
and now the revelation that Bell has quietly revamped its network to allow for throttling at the residential and wholesale level, there is the prospect of a perfect storm of events that may crystallize the issue for consumers, businesses, politicians, and regulators….
Clearly Bell should give a vast proportional refund now to all it’s customers for their unacceptable reduction of their internet services for a start and Bell rightfully should be fined heaveily by the Courts for their unacceptable past false, misleading advertising of unlimted downloads too.
March 28th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Seems most are forgetting that the “Hogs” are paying for the service. The companies are ADVERTINSING HIGH BANDWIDTH, are setting monthly limits on downloads, and no matter if you are a downloader or a web surfer, we are paying for the same contract! If Bell and Rogers can’t keep up with their advertised bandwidths they should fix thier networks.
Also, look at who is telling us that downloaders are affecting web surfing, not web surfers, but Bell…
March 28th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Never mind P2P traffic, what happens to encrypted business-related traffic?
I use a 3rd party DSL line to work from home and I keep reading that VPN and Skype traffic will also be targeted by this policy of Bell. This would make it almost impossible to telecommute anymore.
Does anyone know if this is true? Does anyone know the technical details of Bell’s plan?
So, Bell are not just threatening P2P down loaders, they are threatening my livelihood and will force folks like me back on the highway.
March 30th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Don,
My PN connection is virtually unusable now since throttling started, they are targeting any encrypted traffic as well as P2P, since all VPN connections are encrypted , they have all become virtually useless. We’re going to fight this, Bell is not getting away with this.
James
April 12th, 2008 at 7:42 am
What are the options? Is Rogers better? Can a class action suit be initiated?