p2pnet news | Freedom:- “Bell is Canada’s largest telephone and telecommunications company,” it says. “We provide consumer and business customers with phone and other communication services.”

But it fails to point out its services are shackled and it’s been treating its users more like peons than valued customers.

It’s those damned P2P file sharers! - it says.

Ma Bell in Canada and Comcast in US have been caught red-handed using traffic shaping (throttling) to make sure Net Neutrality never becomes a reality, and to dictate to users —- including smaller ISPs —- what they can and can’t do with services they’ve paid through the nose for, p2pnet posted recently, going on:

“So intense is public feeling that in Canada, executives have received death threats.”

Bell Canada is desperately hoping the throttling scandal will go away, we said in another story, continuing, “But unless Bell admits it was wrong, seriously revamps its policies and business plans and starts treating its customers with care, it ain’t gonna happen, not as long as Ottawa Gal, who first broke the story last year, is around, keeping both eyes open for herself and other Net users.”

With two complaints to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission already lodged and more in the wings, Bell continues to steadfastly refuse to accept the fact the game is over and it had better start paying attention to customer concerns or accept that it’s about to be toppled.

In the Montreal Gazette, Roberto Rocha confronts Mirko Bibic, Bell Canada’s chief of regulatory affairs, asking him to, “defend its position and answer questions from third party ISPs and customers affected by its decision”.

Rocha kicks off with, “Why does Bell manage the bandwidth of its third-party resellers?”

Bibic responds, “Those who are complaining aren’t leasing lines from Bell. They are buying a white label service from Bell Canada which is essentially a wholesale product they resell. So they’re not in control of the network. If they were to lease the lines that go from a house to our central office and install a simple piece of equipment in our central office called a DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer), which the CRTC allows them to do … they can control their own Internet, have their own speed, and manage or not manage their traffic. They don’t want to do that, because they don’t want to invest in anything.

“What they do instead is they buy a wholesale, end-to-end Internet product and put their brand around it. Then they don’t have the ability to manage their own network. It’s the same network shared between retail and wholesale. Those ISPs that bothered to invest in their own infrastructure, this problem doesn’t affect them. The use of the term “leased lines” isn’t quite accurate and I see that in a number of newspaper articles It’s a very, very important point.”

Bibic makes the by-now hoary claim that 5% of “heavy P2P users” are spoiling things for everyone else, and says Bell isn’t the only company which has adopted restrictive practices.

Then Rocha asks him to explain Bell’s deep packet inspection system.

“I know a little bit about it,” says Bibic, claiming he’s not at liberty  to “share who uses it or how it works”.

“I don’t think we need to get into that kind of detail for the purposes of this interview,” he says.

The Q&A goes on >>>

Rocha: Tell us about Bell’s deep packet inspection system.

Bibic: I know a little bit about it, but I’m not at liberty to share who uses it or how it works. … I don’t think we need to get into that kind of detail for the purposes of this interview.

takes investment very seriously. But at some point you have to recognize that there has to be a return on that investment.

Rocha: But if you have this deep inspection system, doesn’t it affect congestion, since the data has to be analyzed by a computer?

Bibic: The technology we use doesn’t add congestion. We manage to redistribute 50 per cent of traffic at peak periods so we free up capacity of the vast majority of online applications.

Rocha: Are there problems with false positives? Are there packets that are not P2P but are flagged by Bell’s system as P2P?

Bibic: We reached out to wholesale customers and if they have any concerns or evidence of that, they should pick up the phone and speak to us and we’ll examine it and investigate it and address it.

Rocha: If a small, independent ISP can make a profit providing unlimited, unthrottled Internet access, why can’t Bell?

Bibic: Bell is the entity that is investing hundreds of millions in network infrastructure and is ultimately one of the underlying facilities providers in the country. We’re faced with issue of managing exploding bandwidth use. It comes back to the first thing I said. If these folks build and lease a line, they’ll have complete control over their Internet.

Rocha: Now that Bell is offering a limited service at times, does this present a challenge in justifying rate increases?

Bibic: I’ll stick to the reasons we’re implementing network management initiatives, and they’re very compelling reasons: so that the 95 per cent of users who don’t consume inordinate amount of bandwidth aren’t held hostage.

Rocha: This whole issue of throttling was brought to light when some customers who have the tools to measure their bandwidth noticed changes in their speeds. That’s when the third-party ISPs brought it up. Why didn’t Bell advise the ISPs of these changes?

Bibic: The answer to that is in the letter from our senior vice-present of carrier services to his customers. I know that letter has been floating around in the blog universe.

Rocha: But that letter didn’t explain anything. It just apologized for not warning ahead of time.

Bibic: Well, there’s the answer.

Rocha: But that’s not an answer. It doesn’t explain why they weren’t notified.

The tariffs we have in place under which these customers buy services do say Bell is entitled to take reasonable network management initiatives to improve performance of the Internet. We’re always open to having a dialogue with our wholesale partners, and we’re having those.

============

UPDATE: 

“Post your questions for Bell as the Chief is being questioned on CBC RADIO ONE MONDAY!” – comments p2pnet reader Deejay here.

“Next week’s episode of Spark is all about ‘Access’,” says the CBC, going on:

“On Monday, April 14, Nora will interview Mirko Bibic, Bell Canada’s chief of regulatory affairs. Their topics will include:

“Net neutrality
“Unlimited internet plans
‘The last mile in Canada

‘Do you have questions about these for Mr. Bibic? Leave your (on-topic) questions in the comments below or email them to spark@cbc.ca. We’ll do our best to include as many as possible in the interview.

‘We’ll post the full unedited interview here on Monday afternoon, so check back then to hear it. A shorter, edited version will then air on Spark on April 16 and 19.”

============

We’ll definitely be tuned for that.

Slashdot it!

p2pnet – Stop throttling users, ISPs tell Bell: CRTC doc, April 4, 2008
another story – Bell Canada – ringing in the spins, April 7, 2008
first broke the story – Bell Sympatico P2P Black List, November 3, 2007
already lodged – New Bell Canada CRTC complaint, April 9, 2008
Montreal Gazette – Internet throttling defended, April 11, 2008

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Freedom, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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