p2pnet news | Freedom:- Invictus isn’t the only person to have contacted Canada’s regulators over bandwidth throttling, or ISP DRM consumer control, as it might be called.

Jonathan did the same but unlike Invictus, he didn’t get an answer —- unless you call a form letter a answer.

Here’s his Reader’s Write, which came in yesterday’s CRTC ‘inundated’ with ‘throttling’ calls, emails. >>>

I spent a long time working on a letter of inquiry that I E-mailed off to the CRTC and I just got a form letter reply, they didn’t even read what I asked of them! I believe what I’m asking is the crux of the entire legal argument and that’s why the CRTC couldn’t afford to bother sending their entire legal defense to just one insignificant person, here’s my inquiry letter:

My Inquiry has to due with the exact license(s) that the CRTC has given Bell Canada. Also what exactly are Bell Canada’s mandated requirements, which it must meet in order to retain its license(s) regarding providing transmission cabling to carry TV, Internet or any other services? Also in the CRTC licence that gives Bell Canada the right to provide transmission cabling, is there any proviso in the part of this license that requires the licensee to build/create enough capacity in order to meet the needs of its customers? If so, does the CRTC have the power to levy a fine and/or enforce the licensee to build/expand its cabling capacity to meet customer demand?

My other inquiry regarding this matter is if the CRTC has the authority to force the split of not just Bell Canada but of the entire national licensing system regarding cabling? In that, a CRTC license for cabling as it stands presently does not differentiate between television, telephone and Internet traffic. It seems that the current problem facing the entire country is that when the CRTC grants a company the right to build and transmit a cabling network, this license does not differentiate between the various services that can be transmitted across this national cabling network. Thus a company such as Bell who initially built a cabling network just for the use of telephones, has now found itself overwhelmed and with not sufficient capacity to transmit many other services through this cabling network. Bell had initially met the future technological requirements of telephones, in that it overhauled its copper-wiring network and replaced it with a fiber optics network. However with the advent of Internet, Bell began using this very same fiber optics network, which was constructed solely for the purpose of transmitting telephone signals and now was transmitting Internet signals as well.

This was all fine when the Internet speed was slow and consumers’ modem speeds progressed from 14.4 to 28.8 to 56 (all in kilobits per second or Kbps). At this point Bell’s fiber optic network still had excess capacity to meet the need of Canada’s telephone and Internet users. However, in very short measure Internet use exploded and at the same time so did the speeds Internet providers were offering; initially starting at 256 Kbps then speeds climbed evermore faster 1 (megabits per second or Mbps), 2, 3, 4 and beyond 5 Mbps. The problem is that all these signals are being transmitted over the same fiber optics network that was just meant to solely carry telephone signals!

As a result, Bell’s fiber optics network is being overtaxed at certain times and this is just the beginning, we are only in the infancy of the Internet revolution! In five years from now, 5 Mbps will seem like a joke, Internet speeds will be so quick that today’s so-called advertised high-speed access will be akin to dial-up speed! Not only that but just as with the proliferation of cell phones technology, more and more entertainment downloaded features will be available for people’s computers. Once again, in only a few years from now, the city of Toronto is planning to build an extensive Wi-Fi (wireless) network. More and more people are purchasing laptop computers; you add that with a Wi-Fi network in Canada’s largest city, it will make today’s crisis look absolutely mild in comparison.

The crisis I’m talking about is Bell Canada’s culture of greed, which in turn has led to a mismanagement of its fiber optics network. The CRTC granted Bell a license to create a fiber optics network for the sole transmission of telephone signals. In Bell’s greed, it manufactured an industry of high-speed Internet carriers all using its fiber optics network. Bell and the rest of the industry it spawned mass advertised high-speed Internet for the average Canadians, charging exorbitant fees while just raking in the profits! But the one thing that Bell Canada is absolutely negligent for is not expanding the capacity of its fiber optics network! Now it is pointing the blame at the misuse of a handful of users that excessively download movies but the users aren’t to blame, it’s Bell Canada for legally neglecting its duty to provide sufficient capacity of its fiber optics network.

Under tort law, using the concept of the foreseeability of the reasonable man, had a reasonable man seen the explosiveness of the Internet, the amount of content available, the ever increasing speeds of access; would a reasonable man continue to market a service while not upgrading the capacity to allow more and more customers to use this service? It’s not the Internet users that are guilty of an offence; it’s Bell Canada who is knowingly negligent for marketing high-speed Internet access while not expanding its fiber optics network to meet its ever-increasing demand!

Bell Canada is guilty of negligence but it is turning around and blaming its consumers who are just using the system in the way it was designed. The Internet will forever be increasing in speed, in the amount of content to be shared and in its entertainment services it will provide. Bell Canada is guilty of rationing bandwidth of all Canadians during certain peak hours due to its inept lack of foresight to expand its fiber optics network. Bell’s rationale is to make the Internet fairer for everyone but that’s not the point! The issue isn’t justifying rationing of bandwidth, the issue is to assign blame and fix the problem before it gets worse! To quote an article (http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/business/article/266983); Cisco Systems forecasts global consumer traffic will quadruple from about two million terabytes in 2007 to nearly eight million by 2011. Peer-to-peer and video are expected to make up more than two thirds of the traffic.

I believe the first issue is to assign blame; Bell Canada is legally negligent for marketing a high-speed Internet industry while not expanding its fiber optics network. Second, I believe the future of Canada’s Internet services lay in the hands of the CRTC by finally separating licences for phone, TV and Internet services. The reason being, any company could support the carrying of all 3 transmission services on a single common piece of technology, however that doesn’t guarantee that this company’s technology could satisfy all its customers in the future. What if phone technology changed, or TV transmissions became more technologically burdensome? That would mean the same provider of all 3 services might have to ration the quality of one, two or even all three different services for a time until the network could be upgraded.

I believe that the CRTC needs to look into granting separate licenses for Internet, TV and phone services. This way even if a company holds all 3 licenses, it is then responsible for the management, upkeep and future expansion needs of each service separately rather than managing these services collectively as one unit! If we had this system in place, Bell Canada would not have been got caught with its pants down as demand and use of the Internet nation wide began to over exceed the capacity of Bell’s fiber optics network! That’s not the fault of the high-speed users, that’s the negligence of Bell Canada for marketing high-speed service and not expanding its fiber optics network to meet the foreseeable demand of Canada’s savvy Internet consumers!

Stay tuned, and read Ottawa Gal’s Q&A with Charlie Angus.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 7:47 am and is filed under 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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