NDP really gets traffic throttling issue: CAIP
p2pnet news | Freedom:- “Comcast mulling Internet usage cap to discourage ‘excessive’ use,” says the Associated Press in its latest story on the US traffic shaping scandal.
It makes it all look so, well, reasonable, doesn’t it?
In fact, Comcast was caught red-handed with its pants around its ankles, not to mix metaphors, trying to both throttle bandwidth and put a stop to any thoughts of Net neutrality.
Canadians have the same problem with Bell Canada and CAIP (Canadian Association of Internet Providers) is representing more than 50 independent internet service providers who are also Bell clients, and, in effect, the ISPs’ customers.
The association is demanding Canadian regulators order Ma Bell, the country’s largest ISP, to Cease and Desist its traffic shaping activities, with an answer expected sometimes toward the end of next week.
CAIP chairman and president Tom Copeland (right) recently had meetings with NDP digital culture spokesman Charlie Angus, Liberal industry critic Scott Brison, and Stephen Kelly, industry minister Jim Prentice’s senior policy adviser.
“The meetings weren’t negative,” Copeland told p2pnet today.
“Charlie Angus really gets it. He really sees things for what they are and of the three parties, the NDP clearly understands the problem.”
He also said he’d clarified the situation for Bryson and that he believes the Liberals, who until now have been collecting facts, are about to make their position public.
In its second submission to the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission), “Bell appears to be under the mistaken impression that GAS is simply a ‘white-label’ version of its retail Internet access service which ISPs merely ‘re-bill’ to their end-user customers,” said CAIP, going on >>>
In actual fact, Bell’s GAS service never touches the ‘Internet’. GAS service is a local access and transport service that is used by a wide variety of competitors (e.g., CLECs, long distance carriers, ISPs, data providers) to gain access to end-user customers that are connected to Bell’s host and remote switches via copper loop facilities. The purpose of GAS is to create a pipe or pathway that runs from the premises of each end-user customer through Bell’s central offices (’COs’) and then on to a physical interface point in Bell’s local network where competitors must interconnect in order to gain access to their customer’s traffic.
Because the purpose of GAS is to simply provide a local access and transport capability to competitors that are interconnected to Bell’s local network, it is a content agnostic service, which means that it can be used to provision an entire range of broadband telecommunications services to end-user customers, including VoIP, VPN, remote LAN access, high speed Internet access and streaming audio and video services.
‘Setting an official limit’
Across the border, Comcast continues to try and present itself as a caring provider with only its users’ interests at heart.
Its sheer arrogance has reached unbelievable extremes, p2pnet posted last month, going on:
“First, it gets caught trying to heavily shackle bandwidth customers have paid for in good faith, then it denies having done so, and when that doesn’t work, tries to pretend its traffic shaping is the ultimate benefit of consumers, then it announces a deal with BitTorrent under which by year’s end (a nice, long time in the future) throttling will cease —- except ‘during peak periods’.”
Then Comcast and Pando Networks announced they’d, “lead the industry to create a ‘P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities’ for users and ISPs,” Robb Topolski told p2pnet.
“With an FCC hearing on Comcast’s anti-peer-to-peer practices scheduled for later this week, this is hardly a surprise,” he said. “Once again, Comcast makes another sweetheart-sounding deal, but at the wrong time, and with the wrong sweetheart.”
Now Comcast, America’s second-largest ISP, “is considering setting an official limit on the amount of data that subscribers can download per month and charging a fee for those who go over,” says AP.
Comcast describes excessive, “users as those who send, for instance, 40 million e-mails or download 50,000 songs a month,” says the story, going on:
“One option is to cap the bandwidth usage at 250 gigabytes per month. If the 250 gigabytes is allotted for just downloads, that’s enough to handle about 50 high-definition movies, 250 standard-definition movies or more than 6,000 songs every month. If users exceed that cap, they could be charged $15 for every 10 gigabytes they go over.”
But, “Because the plan is still in its early stages, Comcast could still change the details or decline to impose any caps or charges.”
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.Stumble It!
Associated Press – Violinist says thanks with concert for cabbies, May 7, 2008
traffic shaping activities – Comcast mulling Net usage cap to discourage ‘excessive’ use, May 7, 2008
‘white-label’ version – Canadians vs Bell Canada: CAIP, II, April 25, 2008
p2pnet – Comcast P2P ‘Bill of Rights’ No! Really!, April 15, 2008
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May 8th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Heres to hoping Tom Copeland has opened their eyes enough to see past the lies in the Bell filing.
Thumbs up to Copeland and Angus!
May 9th, 2008 at 4:34 am
I am really hoping that if Comcast does this, that they have a easily accessible tool that tells you how much of that 250GB’s you have left that you can download.
Personally, I download anywhere from 1TB to 10GB’s a month (yes, it is that variable), mostly using Bittorrent so I really have NO idea how much bandwidth I am using per month.
Actually….. Yes, I do. I use about 5-100GB’s per month on downloading things via Bittorrent, and anywhere from 100-500gb’s downloading streaming music, streaming TV shows, etc. on the internet.
Comcast needs to realize that limiting a person’s GBpm is NOT the way to go. They just have to keep their unlimited service, while using some of their OUTRAGEOUS profits to improve their services.