p2pnet news | Freedom:- Once upon a time, the customer was always right. Then along came corporate organisation and customers were replaced by consumers, mindless entities expected to do what they’re told and consume, consume, consume.

But that’s changing and thanks to the Net and 21st digital century communications such as IM, cellphones, chat, texting and blogs, the customer is returning, forcing the companies to start realising they depend on us, not the other way around. And nowhere is that more evident than in Canada and the US where ISPs unilaterally decided it was time to put a cap on bandwidth.

Consumers? We can handle them, they thought.

The principal villain of the piece in the US is Comcast and data collected by the BitTorrent client Azureus suggest its deliberate breaches of trust might only be the tip of the iceberg, says TorrentFreak, stating:

“Early findings show that customers from quite a few other Internet service providers experience an unusually high amount of TCP-resets.”

Here Bell Canada, the largest provider, has had to acknowledge it’s been deliberately tampering with customer services, imposing ‘traffic shaping’.

But it isn’t getting away with it.

Canada’s Big 3 service providers are being told by customers from all sides, including client ISPs, which way is up.

And, “While Bell and Rogers have attracted much of the Canadian net neutrality attention in recent weeks, a study conducted Vuze, an online video site that uses the BitTorrent protocol, has placed another Canadian provider - Cogeco - in the spotlight,” says Ottawa law professor and Net commentator Michael Geist.

“To better track ISP network management techniques, Vuze created a plug-in that allowed users to measure network interruptions,” he says. “Interruptions - referred to reset messages - might occur in the ordinary course of network activity or might be the result of false messages used to hamper peer-to-peer file sharing.

“Vuze managed to collect an enormous amount of data - 8,000 users worldwide generating over a million hours of data.”

‘Dear Sir /Madam’

Public pressure is mounting, backed by political pressure from the New Democratic Party with digital culture spokesman Charlie Angus leading the way.

“If you’ve been following the Bell Canada scandal and thinking you’d like to contribute, now you can, thanks to Marc Bissonnette of Canadian ISP.com,” p2pnet posted last Friday, going on to point out Primus Telecommunications Canada had just become the third entity to file a letter of support for CAIP (Canadian Association of Internet Providers).

CAIP filed a submission with the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) demanding Bell Canada be ordered to cease and desist, and it was followed by Vaxination Informatique.

The p2pnet post explained how Canadians could make their thoughts known to the CRTC, including a brief letter they could post online, and instructions on how to do so.

However, it’s a certainty a lot of people told the CRTC exactly what they thought, in their own words, and in detail.

One of them was p2pnet reader Invictus (right).

“The ignorance of people claiming that traffic shaping is consumer friendly leaves me speechless,” he said in a Reader’s Write, continuing >>>

I have send the following comment to the CRTC:

Dear Sir / Madam,

I have posted the following comment on the CBC website. As a former communications specialist I am appalled by the nonsensical approach of Bell Canada. Ultimately, this is not about the internet but the monopoly that both Bell Canada and Rogers Communications want to exercise in distributing contents. I further urge you to have specialists on your panel that are familiar with the rules and practices in other countries, especially countries in the EU, where traffic shaping of ANY sort is illegal and is being treated as anticompetitive and, in most countries, as an invasion of privacy, and therefore a criminal offense. Should Bell Canada be successful in maintaining traffic shaping, Canada, as far as I know would be the only country that legally allows this degrading of service. Under the threat of being re-regulated, Comcast in the US has abandoned the practice.

Canada has the third highest internet rates in the world, and measured by speed, is dead last in Broadcom services of any industrialized country……SHAMEFUL!!!!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I have rarely been that steaming mad, but enough is enough.

I not only worked for Bell, but have also lived in a number of countries. Every one of these countries has a superior internet service, and traffic shaping is AGAINST the law!

Year after year, Canadians have swallowed the nonsense dished out by Bell and Rogers. Why? BECAUSE WE ONLY LOOK AT NORTH AMERICA. WAKE UP PEOPLE! You don’t have to believe me, just Google for ISP’s in Europe, Japan, and Korea etc.

Here is my suggestion: abolish the CRTC. Get on the next plane to Berlin, Germany and pick up a copy of the European rules and regulations. Implement at once.

Here is what you will get:

Complete net neutrality.

Speeds of 16mb/s (NORMAL SPEED NOW, 19.95 Euros per month)

Speeds of 40mb/s will be implemented be the end of next year.

Combined Cable TV, VoIP incl. long distance, Internet 25mb/s, unlimited downloads, for 49.95 Euros (appr.75.00) per month.

The same can be had all over Asia, although the Asians decided to go wireless, and wireless speeds (satellite excepted) are not as high.

In all the above, countries found themselves in the same position as Canada is in now with Bell and Rogers. But here is the difference: Most of the people on the government side are communication professionals, not part time, dare I say it, politicians. In Europe, you must have your credentials, or you just don’t get the job. As well, these government departments make an effort to be informed of the latest technology. No wonder Bell and Rogers are so successful with the CRTC.

Here is something else to consider: In most developed countries, the governments impose the standards as they realize that they cannot allow the county to be left behind in communications, just look how far ahead MANY countries are with their cell phone service. Heck, I can get 3G service in Thailand, and they already are working on 4G all government imposed. Despite all that, companies are profitable.

You cannot replace a copper cable in Europe with another copper cable…it must be fibre optics, as the copper cables do not meet the new standards.

Bell has no such standards imposed on it.

So take my advice, don’t believe a thing you hear from these guys, they are lying through their teeth. You can confirm all the above on the net.

And just for the record, I was a tester with Bell. In the Toronto High Park area, they had central office switches build in 1918 running as late as 1975. Of course we were sworn to complete secrecy………

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 6:44 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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