p2pnet news | Freedom:- Before the Net, it was almost impossible for ordinary people to make themselves properly heard, unless they were involved in a movement with a certain amount of clout, say, had access to the mainstream media, or were unusually aggressive.

But that was then.

Ottawa Gal had been posting comments to p2pnet for years, and I don’t think she’d be angry to be described as an ordinary person - a mother and a wife.

She’s also a dedicated surfer and one day, she decided she’d had enough of what she decided was completely unjustified traffic throttling on the part of Bell Canada.

So she wrote about it in depth and in detail and p2pnet published the results under Bell Sympatico P2P Black List.

The rest isn’t history quite yet, but it’s getting there because as a direct result, Bell and other major Canadian ISPs such as Rogers and Videotron are learning the painful, for them, lesson that in this era of instant online communications where people can talk directly to each other, bypassing the traditional media, it doesn’t pay to mess with your customers.

At government level, industry minister Jim Prentice dismissively passed the buck for dealing with corporate traffic “management” or “shaping” directly back to the ordinary people who’d elected him, telling them if they wanted anything done about Bell, they’d have to do it themselves: he wasn’t about to step in on their behalf.

Fortunately, however, another federal politician didn’t, and doesn’t, share Prentice’s views.

Charlie Angus is the NDP digital culture spokesman. He believes the ISPs are accountable, and he’s said so repeatedly and in no uncertain terms.

Ottawa Gal had a number of questions for Angus.

Here’s their virtual conversation >>>

Ottawa Gal: Below are the costs of the three major Canadian ISP competitors (hidden modem fees included):

• Bell-Ontario: 49.95$ - with 60-gig limit and pay for use bandwidth
  
• Rogers-Ontario: 47.95$ - with 60-gig limit and pay for use bandwidth
  
• Bell-Quebec: 43.95$ - with 30-gig limit and pay for use bandwidth
  
• Videotron-Quebec: 60.95$ - with 20-gig limit and pay for use bandwidth

Is this collusion — price fixing or bandwidth fixing, by the major players?

Charlie Angus: The NDP is very concerned about the issue of giant telecoms being able to price gouge consumers. This gouging could happen in a number of ways. First, the issue of throttling 3rd party ISPs raises serious questions about anti-competitive practices. If smaller, more price-friendly competition is removed from the market, the telecom giants would be able to set artificially high rates for internet service.

Another area that’s of great concern is the move towards tiered pricing for access. The NDP understand that a tiered pricing may be necessary to address high bandwidth use by certain consumers or businesses. However, such pricing needs to be transparent and competitive. Without clear ground rules in place, telecoms will be able to easily gouge users who have come to rely on high transfer rates of information. As well, telecoms could be in a position to artificially slow down streams while pushing frustrated consumers to accept higher priced service in order to ensure higher speed response.

it’s also disturbing that Bell has also announced that it will remove any maximum monthly rate cap for service. This sends a signal that consumers may end up paying through the nose for service they take for granted now. In the area of cell phone usage, there have been nightmare stories told by consumers who have been hit with phenomenal bills because their children were using laptop video games via a cellular connection - and then were hit with roving phone bills costing many thousands of dollars.

There must be some consumer-protection checks in place for any such steps taken by the telecoms.

Ottawa Gal: Below are the costs of four of the most popular smaller independent Bell wholesalers:

• Teksavvy 1: 29.95/month B/W 200-gigs
  
• Teksavvy 2 39.95/month B/W Unlimited
  
• Acanac 1: 18.95/month B/W Unlimited
  
• Acanac 2: 33.95/month B/W Unlimited
  
• Electronic box: 34.95/month B/W unlimited
  
• Velcom: 34.95/month B/W unlimited

(Note Acanac charges 18.95 for first time users, then 33.95/month after your 1st year trial)

These companies manage to stay in business and continue to do very well. They’re favorites because they have no bandwidth limits and they’re affordable. One price and that’s it. No hidden modem fees or extreme B/W fees. Bell gets the lion share of their income, in excess of 60% ($20 to $24) per month, per connection, of the monthly stated cost (above) from the wholesalers. So the wholesale ISP in effects has to make ends meet with around 10$ per user. Bell has now filed in court for the removal of the CRTC mandated tariffs (fighting to remove the set cost of providing services to the wholesaler).

Bottom line, Bell wants to be able to charge the wholesaler whatever it wants. If Bell gets its way, it’ll be able to decide which wholesaler gets what price, allowing it to play favorites, with all that implies. Apart from creating potentially serious conflicts between and among competitors, which would bounce back on users, it could well put lower income Canadians at an extreme disadvantage, possibly forcing them to pay double the amount that they pay now for internet. Do you think this is justifiable, or even fair for Bell to try and use the courts to increase costs across the board, which will affect everyone in Ontario & Quebec?

Charlie Angus: Bell’s move to remove tariff limits on the independent 3rd party ISPs must be challenged. If left unchecked, it would allow Bell to simply price its competitors out of business. As it stands now, the 3rd party ISPs rent bandwidth from Bell. If the consumers use up maximum bandwidth, the ISP finds itself in the situation of either having to rent more bandwidth or dealing with degraded service. This system works. Once again we return to the need for transparent ground rules so that Bell, as provider of the bandwidth, is not able to act in an anti-competitive fashion against its 3rd party ISP competitors.

Ottawa Gal: If Bell wins in court and the CRTC wholesale tariffs are eliminated, might that mean the end of an affordable high-speed Net in this country, given that it would be extremely unlikely smaller, innovative competitors would still be able to offer $19 or $30 high-speed internet connections? Would this not set the precedent for all other Canadian Telcos across Canada to do the same?

Charlie Angus: If Bell’s challenge against the 3rd party ISPs is successful it will send a clear message to the boardrooms that the giant telecoms can set the rules for the internet and that consumers will have little choice but to go along with them. The innovation agenda in Canada has been based on the simple fact that consumers and innovators are in the driver’s seat when it comes to determining content, not the companies who run the pipes. There is a clear interest within large, vertically-integrated telecom/entertainment empires to turn the internet into a 21st century version of cable TV. In order to do so, the telecoms will need to be able to decide which traffic is advanced and which traffic is slowed down.

It’s interesting that at the same time that Bell is telling the consumer that the days of unlimited downloading is over, it is also trying to sell consumers on unlimited downloading for a monthly fee. Questions are also being raised as to whether the cleared bandwidth space from throttling will be filled by video streaming from the major telecoms. The major telecoms are moving in the direction of pushing VOD services. Questions need to be asked about the possibility that they will intentionallay degrade service for their internet-video competitors raises serious anti-trust flags. At the end of the day, the fight of traffic throttling is a fight to determine whether the consumer or the telecoms will be in charge of determining content priorities.

Ottawa Gal: When Bell-Sympatico started throttling bandwidth last November, there was outrage within the user community and many people abandoned the company in disgust. Now Bell is about to force wholesalers to adopt traffic shaping, legal disgust of many (most) wholesalers. Do you agree this is anti-competitive? If you do, why hasn’t the Competition Bureau stepped in? Why hasn’t Industry Canada?

Charlie Angus: I’ve raised serious concerns about whether Bell’s net throttling practices have the potential to gouge the consumer and whether it crosses the line into anti-competitive practices. The NDP recognizes that a certain level of ‘network management’ may be necessary at times to ensure that the digital highway flows efficiently.

However, it’s incumbent upon the CRTC to lay down clear rules for both ISP providers and the consumer, so that everyone is working from the same playbook. In the absence of such a set of rules, the internet will become a world of a few corporate winners (the giant telecoms and the entertainment industries who pay for high speed service). The losers will be customers, 3rd party ISPs and Canada’s innovation agenda.

Ottawa Gal: Around the same time Bell started discriminating against the users of P2P applications, principally, the CBC released an episode of ’Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister’ which was specifically intended to be downloaded and shared. To their dismay, large numbers of Net users found out it could take up to 11-hours to download while people in Europe and even the States could download it at full speed in a matter of hours. Do you think Bell’s throttling had a detrimental impact on this specific trendsetting example of Canadian enterprise, and that it might echo down the line to have a more serious impact on Canadian content yet to be created?

Charlie Angus: The decision by CBC to release ‘Canada’s Next Prime Minister’ via BitTorrent is a prime example of how innovative technology is often perceived first as a threat but then quickly moves into the mainstream.

Readers can recall the hysterical denunciations of VHS technology by Jack Valenti and the Hollywood lobby in the 1980s. As well, Youtube was derided as a ‘pirate’s haven’ before becoming the vehicle of viewing choice for both consumers and industry. Imagine if Hollywood had been successful in shutting down VHS technology - they never would have reaped the phenomenal sales of the emerging VHS (and then DVD) market. The question today is whether the giant telecoms should be able to monkey with technologies that were initially denounced as pirate-ware but are now moving clearly into the mainstream. Innovation on the internet takes place because there has been a net neutral response to the flow of information. it’s vital that such a standard remains in place.

Ottawa Gal: How can new entrants into the internet market compete when a throttle is forced, and if Bell has it their way, no regulated cost that Bell can charge them? Do you think this is competitive, open and free market?

Charlie Angus: The NDP is very concerned that by allowing the telecoms to usurp the unilateral decision making rights on the flow of information on the internet, the innovation agenda of this country will be impacted. Therefore, Canada needs to ensure that innovation-driving competition in the digital market continues to evolve on networks that are governed by a clear set of rules that ensure fairness for all internet users and stakeholders.

Ottawa Gal: Why, in your view, is industry minister Jim Prentice ignoring the Canadian people? You seem to be our only person in Parliament who sees what this is doing (and going to do) to the Canadian people, and the only one voicing concern. Many people are saying the reason that the government’s silence is related directly to the fact these major players (the big Telco) play a huge role in political funding. Can, do you think, the Canadian people be assured this isn’t the reason our politicians are remaining silent?

Charlie Angus: Industry Minister Jim Prentice is simply on the wrong side of the issue on net neutrality The fact is that the CRTC already regulates the area where Bell is throttling - that’s their internal “ATM” network and the 3rd party ISPs that make use of this network. The telecoms, for their part, have moved to unilateral regulation in the form of capped usage, tiered-pricing and throttled traffic. The question is not whether regulation will occur but whether there will be scrutiny of such activities.

I believe that politicians who are on the wrong side of this issue will pay the price as consumers across Canada become increasingly vocal about the need to protect the ‘little guy’ from the arbitrary actions of the telecom giants.

[Ottawa Gal, who says she wants to continue being anonymous, works in a 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 )

Charlie Angus — that’s him above right, raising awareness through song —- is a Canadian writer, broadcaster and musician, who turned to politics in 2004 in the Ontario riding of Timmins-James Bay. Apart from his interest in the traffic shaping controversy, he’s also raising awareness of the plight of First Nations school children in northern Ontario.]

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 7:10 am and is filed under Interviews, Politics, 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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