Canada traffic throttling cited in OECD report
p2pnet news | Freedom:- An OECD official has singled out Canada’s ongoing ISP traffic shaping scandal for special mention in a report on the country’s eroding position as a “global broadband internet leader”.
“Officials at Bell and Rogers Communications Inc., Canada’s two largest ISPs, declined to comment.”
The above is the tail end to a CBC article saying currently, Denmark leads OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries with 35.1 subscribers per 100 inhabitants, followed by the Netherlands at 34.8 and Iceland at 32.2, it says.
But Canada had only 8.6 million broadband subscribers as of December 2007, “or about 26.6 per 100 inhabitants, “enough to rank 10th among the 30 developed countries that make up the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development”.
Canada, “also fared poorly in cost versus the speed provided, ranking 27th out of 30 at $28.14 U.S. for average broadband monthly price per advertised megabit per second,” says the story, significantly quoting communication analyst and economist OECD Taylor Reynolds, although he says Canada is leading G7 countries in broadband uptake.
However, the CBC has him stating issues of concern are the, “download limitations imposed on subscribers —- caps that have thus far not been introduced by ISPs in the United States”.
Download caps, “could hold a country’s businesses back by limiting their online development,” says the story, going on >>>
“This may become an economic disadvantage in countries with relatively low bit caps, particularly as more high-bandwidth applications appear,” the report said.
Typical limits on Canadian internet connections are 60 GB per month, with higher-end plans offering around 100 GB. In the U.S., ISPs currently give customers unlimited downloading, with Comcast, the nation’s largest provider, considering a cap of 250 GB — more than quadruple the typical Canadian limit.
Canada has also not benefited from regulations that allow smaller third-party ISPs to access the networks of large phone companies such as Bell Canada, a practice that has flourished in Europe, Reynolds said. A rule known as “local-loop unbundling” allows smaller ISPs to rent out portions of a large phone company’s network, then attach their own equipment to provide customers with internet access.
The traffic shaping / network neutrality controversy, “is precisely because competitive operators haven’t installed their own equipment in exchanges and rely on wholesale offers from Bell Canada,” Reynolds says.
Smaller ISPs say they’ve invested in their own equipment but Bell has, “sidestepped the unbundling rule by shifting its internet connections out of central buildings and into streetside cabinets, which are exempt from regulation,” the report says, according to CBC, which has CAIP (Canadian Association of Internet Providers) pointing out Bell has, “shifted the majority of its connections in urban areas to these cabinets, a charge Bell disputes”
Meanwhile, Canadians are rallying in Ottawa on May 27 for >>>
1 – Competition:
To stop Vertical Market leveraging
To stop/prevent a Duopoly Environment (where Cable/Telco incumbents control)
2 – Innovation:
To allow new content and applications to develop and/or flourish (ie: facebook/google)
3 – Consumer Rights:
Promote ISP transparency
Promote Consumer Privacy
Promote the need for Product delivery (get what you pay for)
Stay tuned.
(Thanks, Luvie)
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traffic shaping scandal – p2pnet traffic shaping digest, April 19, 2008
CBC – Canada’s global edge in broadband dwindling, May 20, 2008
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