Charlie Angus slams Bell over traffic ‘throttling’
p2pnet news | Freedom:- NDP spokeman on digital issues Charlie Angus (right) has slammed Bell Canada for throttling Net traffic.
“Net neutrality is a cornerstone of an innovative economy,” he declares.
“The consumer and the innovator need to be in the driver’s seat. Not Ma Bell. Not Videotron. Not Rogers.”
Accusing industry minister Jim Prentice of allowing telecom giants such as Bell to choke off Net traffic from smaller third party competitors, consumers and innovators are, “at the mercy of a few large Telecom empires,” Angus told the House of Commons yesterday, going on >>>
“Consumers who have paid for access are being ripped off.
“Badly needed competition is being stifled and most of all, this government is sitting back while a few Telecom giants are given free reign monkey wrench with the flow of ideas.”
Angus says industry minister Jim Prentice apparently doesn’t understand the importance of maintaining a fair and ‘neutral’ net that allows the free flow of all information.
“This government’s hands off approach to hands on interference is bad news for Canada’s innovation agenda,” he states.
“The telecoms have no right to decide which ideas are pushed into the fast lane and which ideas are left on the back roads.”
Prentice is failing Canadians when it comes to ensuring a innovation agenda for Canada, he adds.
‘… it’s not them, it’s you …’
p2pnet last year broke the story, uncovering the existence of a Bell-Sympatico P2P blacklist in Canada.
“In the States, users have people trying to look after their rights and interests, but there’s no one doing that in Canada,” we posted, going on:
“If you’re signed on with Bell-Sympatico and you’ve been unsuccessfully trying to coax a little more speed out of your suddenly sluggish computer; or, if you’ve been calling Bell-Sympatico support only to be told it’s not them, it’s you —- it isn’t you.
“It’s traffic shaping and throttling.”
Now, “Its MY network and you can’t play with it!” – says Ottawa Gal, continuing >>>
Following the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) decision that phone and internet access to 3rd parties (wholesalers) continue to be regulated by fixed tariffs (set costs), and after “a comprehensive review of our approach to the wholesale services provided by traditional companies,” said Konrad von Finckenstein, chairman of the CRTC. “We have now set out clear rules that are consistent with competition policy and current market conditions, and that will facilitate increased competition.”
Bell argued they should be allowed to charge wholesalers whatever they want.
Bell Canada et al. proposed that parties should be permitted to negotiate their own commercial arrangements “off-tariff” for services in all six service categories.
The CRTC argued this could, “result in unduly preferential or unjustly discriminatory arrangements and undermine the regulatory regime for wholesale services established by the Commission in this proceeding”.
In addition, the CRTC “revised its definition of an essential service. To be considered essential, a facility, function or service must”:
- “be required by competitors to provide a retail telecommunications service”,
- “be controlled by a company that could use its market power to lessen or prevent competition”, and
- “provide a functionality that would not be practical or feasible for competitors to duplicate”.
So in effect, the CRTC said wholesale services such as the Net and phones are essential services and must continue to have mandated tariffs.
In what can only be described as a move to completely defeat any competition that exists in the internet and phone market, Bell Canada, “filed a leave to appeal with the Federal Court of Canada to overturn a decision made by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in early March on what the regulator considers essential services”.
In it, Bell says such regulation, “is no longer necessary now that there is enough competition in phone and internet markets”.
Hmm… Wait a minute —- “now there is enough competition in phone and internet markets”?
Bell is already controlling what little competition there is by “throttling” the competition, such as Ontario’s TekSavvy.
Now they’re saying there’s enough competition and want to be able to increase all the costs across the board!?
It’s no secret Bell recently did away with ceiling prices, lowered the bandwidth sold to Net users and throttled them.
It’s no secret Bell’s pricing will now be of the “the sky’s the limit” variety, effectively making your Net bill look like a cell phone bill with charges galore.
And as the new billing cycle approaches for Bell-Sympatico users, we confidently expect to hear cries of outrage since Bell hasn’t even given notice of this to their users!
Bell has been cross-training reps to deal with what they envision to be a big stink when the users get their new bills, and has opened a new “bandwidth usage department”.
The company has physically gone into the facilities to install boxes to effectively stop the competition from offering a superior internet service in relation to Bells own internet service!
Now they say there’s enough competition?
Will they now go to court to try to have new regulations written to allow them to control wholesale prices, which will in turn affect how much you pay your DSL wholesaler?
Will Jim Prentice continue to ignore what’s happening while he plays pong on his new install of MS-DOS 6.2?
Or will he listen to Charlie Angus and Canadians?
The CRTC has already stated this would undermine the regulatory regime for wholesale services and could lead to unjustly discriminatory arrangements.
What could possibly be the strategy here?
We already know Bell plans to:
- Prevent users from leaving by throttling the competition by the 7th of April,
- Cross-train the reps to B.O. by the 8th of April before “it hits the fan”.
- Sell a new limited B/W insurance plan,
- Remove the ceiling cost of bandwidth,
- Introduce, “the sky is the limit” billing of bandwidth,
- Inform the public that calls into Bell that all ISPs are doing this in Canada (though we know better).
- Fight for the removal of CRTC mandated tariffs on wholesalers so they can charge as they see fit without being regulated, which will cost all Canadians more for Internet service.
Does anyone else see how Bell in milking us for all we’re worth, at the same time stifling the competition and trying to increase the cost of what you pay EVEN if you don’t use Bell as a service provider?
As NDP spokesman Charlie Angus says, “Consumers who have paid for access are being ripped off. Badly needed competition is being stifled and most of all, this government is sitting back while a few Telecom giants are given free reign monkey wrench with the flow of ideas,”
Nor are consumers alone in being ripped off.
Bell is also targeting wholesalers and trying to force their costs up in order to rip us off more EVEN if we don’t use Bell.
This will ensure that Bell’s own service looks comparable to the competition (which’s its not).
It’s very clear that Bell is also taking advantage of people’s lack of understanding into the issues above and is trying to move fast, very fast, before people realize.
DON’T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT!
[Ottawa Gal is a long-time p2pnet reader and comment poster who'd rather remain anonymous. She says she works in the University, likes her cat, reality TV, and Doctor McDreamy. Her favourite web sites are the Michael Geist blog and p2pnet.net. 'Privacy on the net is also important to me,' she says. "I need a tinfoil hat 
" She's also the mother of, "two darling little girls who tore down my ceiling fan thinking it would be fun to hang from it." So she advises parents to, "never have an armchair around from which little ones can reach fans". (No one was hurt 
) ]
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