# Bell Throttling Third Party ISP's



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Here is a saddening article in the Globe.

Do we the users of ehmac or those of us who use Teksavvy have away to protesting this as a group? I have an agreement with Teksavvy for them to supply my internet service. Bell, a third party, has prevented Teksavvy from meeting its obligations.

Please also see this link at DSLReports from Teksavvy's staff.

To quote Herge !%#$?!%[email protected]!


----------



## satchmo (May 26, 2005)

I don't like throttling any more than you do, but it seems like TekSavvy and all other ISP's were fully aware of the situation when they signed on.

_“This isn't a new policy,” he said. “Our agreements with wholesale ISP customers clearly include provisions regarding our rights to manage our networks appropriately to the benefit of all customers.”
_

Net Neutrality will have a tough go of it here in Canada. Especially with the duopoly that is Bell and Rogers.


----------



## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

satchmo said:


> I don't like throttling any more than you do, but it seems like TekSavvy and all other ISP's were fully aware of the situation when they signed on.
> 
> _“This isn't a new policy,” he said. “Our agreements with wholesale ISP customers clearly include provisions regarding our rights to manage our networks appropriately to the benefit of all customers.”
> _
> ...



The transit contracts say nothing specifying Bell's right to do this... but they don't preclude it either, according to a senior TekSavvy tech.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

But its interesting that Rocky of TekSavvy states "We'll be looking into this shortly." So they are unaware of Bell's ability to throttle their own service! I would not go into business as an ISP unless I was totally aware of the contents of my contract. 

I suspect that Bell is reinterpreting the contract. I suspect that there is a clause stating that Bell can manage the network as they see fit. This clause would have been placed in the contract for maintenance. Bell is now using the clause to throttle the network to lower the capital costs of enhancing the network to support demand. I, through TekSavvy, are paying to get a service and the money that I spend should go to support the network and enhance it when necessary. If Bell can't support TekSavvy a long discussion between the two companies should have occurred and TekSavvy should have been able to inform their customers in advance of any changes. Instead Bell has acted unilaterally. 

If Bell wishes to move the goal posts they should have given TekSavvy the information months ago and TekSavvy should have informed me months ago too! Bell has not done their duty.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Furthermore... South Korea has great internet service, speed 2 to 4 times that we see here. Now they have companies and services that rely on this speed. Are we, in Canada to be denied these higher order services? Can Bell simply throttle Canadian innovation... 

I believe this has far bigger impacts then one can see on the surface.


----------



## Da Teng (Sep 30, 2005)

Gee I was just about to switch tomorrow, guess I should wait this one out then. That sucks!


----------



## madgunde (Mar 10, 2006)

Da Teng said:


> Gee I was just about to switch tomorrow, guess I should wait this one out then. That sucks!


Don't wait. Show Bell you don't support their business practices by taking your business elsewhere. If more people did this, and told Bell the reason why they are leaving, maybe they'd think twice before pulling this crap.

Bell is doing this BECAUSE they know most consumers won't bother switching if there isn't a big enough reason to do so. If you still need an incentive to switch, how about saving a few dollars every month on your subscription fees?


----------



## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

I agree with the above post, but... once you aren't a Bell customer anymore, you can't do anything except complain to yourself.

Even Teksavvy CEO Rocky is urinating in the wind if Bell has a legal right to throttle his customers. And if the CEO is out of luck, so is everyone else.


----------



## madgunde (Mar 10, 2006)

HowEver said:


> I agree with the above post, but... once you aren't a Bell customer anymore, you can't do anything except complain to yourself.
> 
> Even Teksavvy CEO Rocky is urinating in the wind if Bell has a legal right to throttle his customers. And if the CEO is out of luck, so is everyone else.


As if complaining while you're a Bell customer is going to do anything. Whether Bell has a legal right to throttle would be up to the courts to decide. Just because Bell says they have the right, doesn't mean they do. I think it's a little early to be giving up hope that something can be done about it.


----------



## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

There is one thing I don't understand:



> Estimates vary, but analysts believe peer-to-peer and torrent traffic accounts for anywhere from 70 to 90 per cent of online bandwidth use, but emanates from as few as 5 to 10 per cent of all users


Does that means that if, let's say 10% of all users use 90% of the ISPs' bandwidth, and each of these users are on a contract that limit them to 5Mb download max, then 90% of the customers would share the 10% remaining bandwidth? The ISPs' (Bell or Rogers) are selling a bandwidth to users that they can't provide?
Just like if Air Canada would sell 200 seats in a 50 seats plane, hoping not everyone will show up that day (not that they are not doing it to a certain extend, eh ;-))

They are all just liars and thieves, charging ever more for a lower service, and then try to throttle to cover the lies for 90% of their customers?

Disgusting way of doing business IMHO.


----------



## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

harzack86 said:


> There is one thing I don't understand:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Pretty much no ISP can support users with sustained transfers at full line capacity. Generally, only 5-10% of users will actually use the line at capacity for extended periods of time. The other 90-95% of users would only use it in bursts; email, web browsing etc.


----------



## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

John Clay said:


> Pretty much no ISP can support users with sustained transfers at full line capacity. Generally, only 5-10% of users will actually use the line at capacity for extended periods of time. The other 90-95% of users would only use it in bursts; email, web browsing etc.


I agree with you, and my point is more that they should accept this fact, and work to sustain these 5-10% users instead of fighting them for the sake of better profit... Not everyone is a cash cow, but I guess it doesn't matter in a country where there is close to no competition


----------



## Guest (Mar 26, 2008)

harzack86 said:


> Does that means that if, let's say 10% of all users use 90% of the ISPs' bandwidth, and each of these users are on a contract that limit them to 5Mb download max, then 90% of the customers would share the 10% remaining bandwidth? The ISPs' (Bell or Rogers) are selling a bandwidth to users that they can't provide?


Yep I would have to say so. 

Rogers certainly does not have 5MB/s for every high-speed cable subscriber in the Toronto area, let alone across the country. They can likely get away with this because they advertise "speeds up to" 5MB (or whatever), they most certainly don't guarantee those speeds in any way.

It's like the "all-you-can-eat" approach. If you eat too much they find a way to toss you out on your ear hehe.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

All right - I'll play devil's advocate  

What's wrong with throtteling if it's done in a fair and responsible manner?

Forgetting about Bell specifically for a moment - I have noticed that the whole net has slowed down and my main internet connection is via a small ISP who connects to the net using facilities from Sprint. The only Bell part I use is the DSL line to the CO.

If all the P-2-P and torrent traffic is really causing an internet wide problem, there is a much bigger issue than Bell throttling the traffic on their facilities. 

I actually had to laugh at Rocky's comments about Bell having no authority to throttle *their* data. What is he talking about, it's the users and the website's data not Teksavvy's data - Teksavvy provides no more of a service than Bell does. a pipe to the internet and some storage.


----------



## Adrian. (Nov 28, 2007)

harzack86 said:


> They are all just liars and thieves, charging ever more for a lower service, and then try to throttle to cover the lies for 90% of their customers?
> 
> Disgusting way of doing business IMHO.


Just stay off the grid man. Piggy back open wireless, have no credit cards, no loans, no bills, no passports etc.  


then....Bell won't be able to screw you!


----------



## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

I will say that the claims of the "analysts" don't add up.

I'm supposed to believe that ALL the legitimate network traffic, including SPAM, PORN, YOUTUBE, INTERNET RADIO, ITUNES, POPUP ADS and XBOX CHATTERS and MMORPG PLAYERS are making do with only 10-30% of the internet's total bandwidth?

Sorry, I call shenanigans on this claim.


----------



## VNJ85 (Feb 24, 2006)

So you guys are saying back to square one, no non-throttled ISP's in Canada... again...

I was so so close to switching to TekkSavvy... 

p.s. on another note I heard a radio advertisement for a cell phone from Cogeco for unlimited longdistance plan that was cheap, something like 39$ a month... I haven't been able to find such a deal online, so I was wondering if anyone has heard of it?


----------



## JumboJones (Feb 21, 2001)

VNJ85 said:


> p.s. on another note I heard a radio advertisement for a cell phone from Cogeco for unlimited longdistance plan that was cheap, something like 39$ a month... I haven't been able to find such a deal online, so I was wondering if anyone has heard of it?


Are you sure that isn't their Home Phone?


----------



## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

VNJ85 said:


> p.s. on another note I heard a radio advertisement for a cell phone from Cogeco for unlimited longdistance plan that was cheap, something like 39$ a month... I haven't been able to find such a deal online, so I was wondering if anyone has heard of it?


What you want is one of the My5 plans on Rogers, then add VOIP forwarding for incoming... et voila.


----------



## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

Adrian. said:


> Just stay off the grid man. Piggy back open wireless, have no credit cards, no loans, no bills, no passports etc.
> 
> 
> then....Bell won't be able to screw you!


Oh well, I'm not fatalistic, and I like facing problems, not avoiding them  I have nothing to do whatsoever with Bell, but the other part of the duopoly is not better than them I think  
I'm just hoping that one day a smarter competitor will decide to kick these ISP's asses...


----------



## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

chas_m said:


> I will say that the claims of the "analysts" don't add up.
> 
> I'm supposed to believe that ALL the legitimate network traffic, including SPAM, PORN, YOUTUBE, INTERNET RADIO, ITUNES, POPUP ADS and XBOX CHATTERS and MMORPG PLAYERS are making do with only 10-30% of the internet's total bandwidth?
> 
> Sorry, I call shenanigans on this claim.


I'd tend to agree with you!! Email, and more specifically spam is also known to be using most of the internet bandwitdh. Why wouldn't Bell and Rogers spend some of the money they use to shape P2P traffic to fight more efficiently all the spam that really pollute their bandwidth and my inbox?


----------



## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

harzack86 said:


> I'd tend to agree with you!! Email, and more specifically spam is also known to be using most of the internet bandwitdh. Why wouldn't Bell and Rogers spend some of the money they use to shape P2P traffic to fight more efficiently all the spam that really pollute their bandwidth and my inbox?


Oh, I think we know the answer to that ... because if that bandwidth suddenly became available, bittorrenting et al would skyrocket. 

Mark my words ... this isn't about MAKING money as much as it is not SPENDING money. Adding capacity costs BIG, and the "legit" content providers want to use that capacity to shove ADS and VIDEO to us (which, to some extent, is a perfectly reasonable thing). They don't want that capacity going to pirates, quite blunty. Even spammers at least pay for their bandwidth! Pirates drive on the superhighway but pay next to ZERO for the all the lanes they take up, if you'll pardon my awkward analogy.

Bandwidth caps (reasonable ones) are the future. They won't really be a way around it, in the end. Get used to it. If you're downloading more than 60GB/month, you're an internet pig and you're either going to pay business rates or get capped. Period.

Here in Canada this will happen sooner rather than later. Indeed, it's already started.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

harzack86 said:


> Why wouldn't Bell and Rogers spend some of the money they use to shape P2P traffic to fight more efficiently all the spam that really pollute their bandwidth and my inbox?


And how would you propose they do that?
By the time Spam has reached your mail server it has already used Bell's bandwidth, the best they can do is prevent Bell customers from sending spam and keeping your inbox clean, but they can't detect incoming spam until it's received and at that time the bandwidth has already been used.

As to spam using most of the internet bandwidth, I sort of doubt it. Emails take very little bandwidth even if there are millions of them. If I look at my inbox, a typical email message is about 6K, a typical movie often over 1 Gig depending on compression. Even if you just assume 900 Megs per movie, that's equivalent to 150 000 basic email messages or just 10 movies would be equivalent to 1.5 million email messages.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

chas_m said:


> Bandwidth caps (reasonable ones) are the future. They won't really be a way around it, in the end. Get used to it. If you're downloading more than 60GB/month, you're an internet pig and you're either going to pay business rates or get capped. Period.
> 
> Here in Canada this will happen sooner rather than later. Indeed, it's already started.


I agree with you 100%. 
I started with a high-speed connection that had a 2 GB cap and that was more than enough for all the emails, browsing and downloading I did.
If I wanted a movie or some software I spent the few dollars and bought a DVD.

I have since upgraded, for a few dollars more, to a 30 GB cap because I have a number of Macs connected to the same internet pipe, but I find that way more than I need.


----------



## madgunde (Mar 10, 2006)

krs said:


> I agree with you 100%.
> I started with a high-speed connection that had a 2 GB cap and that was more than enough for all the emails, browsing and downloading I did.
> If I wanted a movie or some software I spent the few dollars and bought a DVD.
> 
> I have since upgraded, for a few dollars more, to a 30 GB cap because I have a number of Macs connected to the same internet pipe, but I find that way more than I need.


So I suppose you think people shouldn't be using YouTube to watch videos or iTunes to purchase/rent media?

Just because you don't use the Internet for media, doesn't mean nobody should. The reality of it is Bell and Rogers are using bandwidth caps to stifle competition. VoIP is competing with land lines? Throttle it. Bittorrent is competing with Satellite and cable TV? Throttle it. How long do you think it will be before they start throttling YouTube and iTunes?

It was bad enough when they started doing it to their own Sympatico customers, but to start unilaterally imposing such caps on their competitor's customers is anticompetitive and should not be allowed. If they need to spend more money to add bandwidth, they can pass those costs on to their wholesale customers who can then decide whether to increase their rates or not.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

madgunde said:


> So I suppose you think people shouldn't be using YouTube to watch videos or iTunes to purchase/rent media?
> 
> Just because you don't use the Internet for media, doesn't mean nobody should.


I use YouTube and iTunes on a regular basis and other media as well.
Seems to me we are talking about people who use more than 60 GB of bandwidth per month - that's equivalent to more than 60 full length movies every month.

Obviously people have different ideas what is reasonable - in my mind offering unlimited bandwidth was unreasonable. it was just a competitive marketing ploy.
The internet itself cannot deliver unlimited bandwidth, it was never designed for that. 
Have people who comment in this thread actually checked how much bandwidth they use per month? It would be interesting to get a cross-section.


----------



## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

krs said:


> I use YouTube and iTunes on a regular basis and other media as well.
> Seems to me we are talking about people who use more than 60 GB of bandwidth per month - that's equivalent to more than 60 full length movies every month.
> 
> Obviously people have different ideas what is reasonable - in my mind offering unlimited bandwidth was unreasonable. it was just a competitive marketing ploy.
> ...


Over the past 5 months:
- My average usage was 40Gb / month
- Min of 22Gb and max of 71Gb.
- My subscription allows me 100Gb with Rogers extreme

- Close to none of this is P2P or any illegal download, and we are only 2 adult users in our household.
- I don't download music or films through p2p.
- We also use internet to work from home.
- For instance, I recently downloaded the 2.1Gb iPhone SDK or a 5Gb VMware image...
- I send home made HD movies to my family from time to time.
- virtually every software now uses internet for updates (some being quite big such as the Apple ones) or general usage such as Google Earth,

I could think of tons of other perfectly legal usages of my bandwidth I could use to add up to 100Gb, none of it being throttled.

I find all this usage being reasonable. I pay a lot for a connection up to 10Mb, with 100Gb cap (download + upload), so I find it reasonable to use 10Mb download or 1Mb upload of bandwidth when I need it and up to 100Gb a month. 

If I had 20Mb and no cap, like they do in most countries with real competition, I'd use that too, all legally.

And we don't even have any decent movies to buy or rent on line yet...


----------



## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

harzack86 said:


> The ISPs' (Bell or Rogers) are selling a bandwidth to users that they can't provide?
> Just like if Air Canada would sell 200 seats in a 50 seats plane, hoping not everyone will show up that day (not that they are not doing it to a certain extend, eh ;-))


This is exactly what happens. Air Canada always overbooks. Hotels do it too. Typically a certain percentage of bookings change or are no-shows. Sometimes there are not - that's when Air Canada asks for volunteers to give up their seats in exchange for a flight voucher in addition to a re-booking.


----------



## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

madgunde said:


> So I suppose you think people shouldn't be using YouTube to watch videos or iTunes to purchase/rent media?


I think people should be able to do those things, but if they are heavy users, ISPs should just charge more and put the extra revenue into expanding capacity. Using YouTube or iTunes a lot is not heavy use. YouTube videos are a couple of MBs, not GB, and a movie on iTunes is maybe 1GB, but you aren't going to rent several movies every single day.


----------



## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

harzack86 said:


> Over the past 5 months:
> - My average usage was 40Gb / month
> - Min of 22Gb and max of 71Gb.
> - My subscription allows me 100Gb with Rogers extreme
> ...


First, I assume you meant GB, not Gb (Bytes, not bits).

Sorry, but something doesn't add up here. Do you send HD movies every single day? Do you download VMware or SDKs every single day? The things you mentioned do not add up to 40GB - not even close. If you use 40GB per month, then you are a pretty heavy Internet user, much more than the average. 

When you say work from home, do you connect to a computer at an office somewhere using screensharing, or do you mean everything is done out of the home? If screensharing, that could put your bandwidth up. But then you out of the range of the typical home user. ISPs have different rates and policies for business users.

It's unfair to throttle your bandwidth based on protocol, but charging per data down/uploaded seems fair to me.

On the globe article, one commenter proposed $1 per GB per month - that seems fair today. As media and technology progresses, that price should drop.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

So far the discussion has been interesting. For those of you who wish to protest send a message to your MP and the Competition Bureau. In my mind ISPs should:

Tell us the service's speed and price. 
Explain all exclusions to the above service. Ex No fixed IP, no business, torrents throttled to speed X.
Clearly explain all caps. (1 GB, 50 GB, 200 GB per month).
Clearly outline any costs and/or service behaviour if going over these caps.

It is fine for people to sign up to service that has low band width and low caps and no torrents (or even YouTube or Internet Radio). If that's what they need that's what they should get. For those users who have a high demand they should be able to find a provider that has suitable service at a suitable price. Under the present regime we as consumers can't do that. 

I'm paying for a service that was advertised as throttle free. And it was until Bell changed things. I'm not a heavy user - only hitting about 20 GIG in the average month. A lot of that is my kids on YouTube and me listing to internet radio and using Skype. I also download things like programming tools which can be rather large. So if I choose to get 5 MB service and want to download the latest version of XCode, or talk to a friend using Skype, I want it to come down at the speed I'm paying for. Bell is not permitting me to do that, and they have done it in a under handed manner.

Bell should now be required to advertise their service as up to 5 MB/sec with torrents, voice over IP, p2p sharing limited to X MB/sec. They should have given the other ISP's 4 months or more notice and let them inform their customers and then their customers should have the option to cancel or change services.

Throttling is fine and capping is fine as long as the customer is aware of it before they sign up.

As for the argument that throttling is acceptable because of all the illegal content sent over torrent; the argument has no validity. Regardless of the content the user is paying for a service and should get that service. We don't ban or limit money because criminals use it! (Sorry you can only carry $50.00 on your person because you may do something illegal with it.) Same with providing a access to the net.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

bgw said:


> I my mind ISPs should:
> 
> Tell us the service's speed and price.
> Explain all exclusions to the above service. Ex No fixed IP, no business, torrents throttled to speed X.
> ...


I guess I need to shut up then because my ISP has always provided all that information. Are people actually signing up for a service without knowing what they signed up for and how much it will cost?


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

krs said:


> Are people actually signing up for a service without knowing what they signed up for and how much it will cost?


I signed up for a service with a given speed (I'm satisfied, but haven't tested it recently), a given cap (I never get near it and would like to pay less money for smaller cap, but I'm satisfied), no throttling (Was satisfied until a little while ago). 

Even Bell's site doesn't currently mention throttling. To quote:

_Consistently fast service that's never shared_

They do not inform you of any shaping of traffic! TekSavvy's home page doesn't mention shaping either. But all that's changed now hasn't it...


----------



## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

Bell has managed to do something quite underhanded, in my opinion. First, they informed a friend of mine that once their contract is up, they are going to hike the monthly rate $7 per month, for their cheesy "Lite" service. But they did not state what is now contained within their Terms of Service, which I took time to read.

First, they are dropping the download cap from 10GB to 1GB per month, with a $1 charge per GB overage (incremented every 100MB). So that will allow maybe one Windoze update per month, plus reading a bit of e-mail.

Second, they are stating that as users, they will have to have a "special" Sympatico version of Internet Explorer, despite the fact that they are required to run Netscape, as per the agreement with their company in order to work from remote. I know Netscape is "obsolete", but the company they work for is not planning on making any changes to their policy, to their knowledge.

Third, not only are the currently throttling, they have very poor throughput for the money. I compare my own "dial up" which costs $3 per month and gives me 5kB/sec - to the so called "high speed lite" which will cost $27 per month and gives only 15kB/sec. That shows that their service costs at least 3 times too much. Also, speed aside, I have unlimited downloading, which means I can reach 18GB per month, which is 18 times what Bell is planning on providing.

So in the scheme of things, I think Bell is a loosing proposition. It is not just that they are overpriced, but they refused to extend the contract at the price that had been set 3 years ago. They sent notice of this via e-mail, instead of in the billing package (and the e-mail was grammatically incorrect). And next to the fact that they are pretty hostile to Macs in general, have continued to add "rent" for the use of their el-cheapo modem, and will not allow either the purchase of their modem, or the use of an after market equivalent.

And I think they are engaged in false advertising. On TV, they show people watching movies on their Internet. A movie is about 4.7 GB (the size of a DVD), more or less - then they are throttling the very downloads they are advertising. While stating that it is "high speed", their service is high speed in comparison to low speed, but I would not be so bold as to trumpet 15kB/sec as really high speed - seeing that I can achieve 200kB/sec at the local coffee shop hotspot (and they do not advertise it as "high speed", just as "wireless internet access"...

Too bad my friends do not have access to cable internet - but then again, I do not have access to cable or DSL style internet and have to make due with a combination of my dial up service and heading to the coffee pub to wifi my Apple updates and whatever.


----------



## Todd (Oct 14, 2002)

Personally, I'd have to say I'm in favour of "traffic shaping." If 80% of Internet bandwidth is being consumed by 10% of users running Bit Torrent and other P2P services (as the Globe and Mail article noted), with likely 80% of that being pirated stuff, why wouldn't most (the 90% not running P2P services) people not want their ISP to make adjustments to give them more bandwidth?

More bandwidth for me to manage my web photo galleries, play online games and surf Web 2.0 functionality websites and less to pirating pigs slobbering at the trough, complaining that 100 GB of data a month is not enough to keep their porn collection up to date? Sounds like a great idea to me.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Todd said:


> ..............and less to pirating pigs slobbering at the trough, complaining that 100 GB of data a month is not enough to keep their porn collection up to date


   Please don't do this again - I nearly choked laughing.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

If your neighbour is paying to get high speed service they should get high speed service regardless of content. And said user should pay the appropriate price for said service.

If you don't need that fast service you can find something else that is cheaper and more suitable for yourself.

If both of you want high speed service and the provider can not provide it they should:

1) Out of your paid fees upgrade the network to supply the service to meet their contractual obligations.
2) Inform you that there will be a change in service at some future date (3 months might be acceptable warning) with no change in cost to you. You then have a chance to agree to any changes or find an alternative service.
3) Inform you that there will be a increased charge for the service at the end of your contract to ensure that the service is adequate. If you want to change at that point you can. But your service remains the same until the contract is finished.
4) Not provide or advertise such service until they are able to do so. The next neighbour who signs up for high speed shouldn't break the network.

But ISP should not change the service (throttling or shaping etc.) without the expressed consent of the customer. Bell is doing just that.

An aside; under English law there is the concept of custom and precedent. TekSavvy (for instance) has been offering unshaped internet service for a decade. Bell has let them do this; thus TekSavvy should be able to continue to offer this service without Bells interference until a new contract is negotiated between the two parties. Bell hasn't done this.

Bell should have also been estimating demand and following the trends in the industry so that they could make either:

1) Appropriate service agreements with their customers and second party ISP's.
2) Enhance their network to support future demand with out compromising their current customers' service or their contractual agreements.

It looks like Bell has not been doing either.


----------



## madgunde (Mar 10, 2006)

krs said:


> I guess I need to shut up then because my ISP has always provided all that information. Are people actually signing up for a service without knowing what they signed up for and how much it will cost?


When I signed up with Bell originally, it was for 5Mb service with no bandwidth caps and no speed throttling. Then one day I found my speed suddenly being throttled for certain types of traffic. They did this without informing me.

I then switched to TekSavvy, who specifically state they don't utilize traffic shaping and it's against their policy to do so. A week later, I find out Bell is going to start throttling my speed again, even though I don't have any contract or agreement with them.

I have no problem with heavy users paying more then light users, but ISPs should not be dictating the speed of my internet connection based on which protocols I use, period, let alone the wholesaler to my ISP.

Bell is abusing it's monopoly on wholesale DSL bandwidth to stifle competition in the DSL, telephone and television distribution markets. VoIP taking too much business away from Bell Telephone service? No problem, throttle VoIP traffic so it's too unreliable for people to use. Too many people cancelling their Satellite TV service to get their TV/Movies off the web? No problem, throttle the video protocols so it's too slow. Too many people switching from Sympatico to independent DSL ISPs? No problem, throttle the wholesale pipe to even the playing field. How can any consumer not have a problem with this?


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

I think people are jumping to conclusions here.
For one thing, how is Bell a monopoly? My pipe to the net is via Sprint (according to my ISP).


----------



## guytoronto (Jun 25, 2005)

I just got my Rogers notice today that my plan will have a 60GB cap effective June 1. The problem is, for the last three months, I've regularly used 100GB - 150GB of transfer.

I'd rather put up with bandwidth shaping or throttling than transfer caps. Looks like I'll be moving to Teksavvy or Acanac within the next few months.


----------



## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

krs said:


> I think people are jumping to conclusions here.
> For one thing, how is Bell a monopoly? My pipe to the net is via Sprint (according to my ISP).


All DSL traffic in Ontario, Quebec and I believe the Eastern provinces (known as Aliant), is run through Bell Canada for the "last mile", from the CO/DSLAM to the customer. Most ISPs (Primus has installed their own DSLAMs in some locations) rely on Bell's BAS and ATM network to backhaul connections to their own network hubs (TekSavvy's is colocated at 151 Front St). They pay a fixed rate for a set capacity of service, not per GB transfered.

As per CRTC mandate, Bell is required to offer 'last mile' connections wholesale. That is what disrupts the monopoly - without that mandate, Bell would have a monopoly on DSL in ON, QC and the Eastern provinces.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

John Clay said:


> All DSL traffic in Ontario, Quebec and I believe the Eastern provinces (known as Aliant), is run through Bell Canada for the "last mile", from the CO/DSLAM to the customer.


That is true, but that's not what we're talking about here. The speed of DSL connection between your home and the CO is not being "throttled" by Bell.


----------



## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

krs said:


> That is true, but that's not what we're talking about here. The speed of DSL connection between your home and the CO is not being "throttled" by Bell.


That's true, the throttling is occurring between the CO and ISP hub. My post was in answer to your question regarding a monopoly.


----------



## madgunde (Mar 10, 2006)

krs said:


> That is true, but that's not what we're talking about here. The speed of DSL connection between your home and the CO is not being "throttled" by Bell.


I can't have DSL service without going through Bell in one form or another, so if I want DSL service, I have no choice but to put up with Bell's traffic shaping policy. That feels like a Monopoly to me. It may not be a monopoly in the strictest definition, but it still allows Bell an unfair competitive advantage if abused.


----------



## matti (Oct 12, 2006)

madgunde said:


> I can't have DSL service without going through Bell in one form or another, so if I want DSL service, I have no choice but to put up with Bell's traffic shaping policy. That feels like a Monopoly to me. It may not be a monopoly in the strictest definition, but it still allows Bell an unfair competitive advantage if abused.


I've wondered about this myself. My concern is that Bell's applying it to their customers as well so it's not providing them an unfair advantage so it's not abusing the monopoly which I don't believe is illegal in a monopolistic sense (is that a real word?). Although I'd love to have someone who knows more about this stuff than me shoot this theory down.


----------



## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

matti said:


> I've wondered about this myself. My concern is that Bell's applying it to their customers as well so it's not providing them an unfair advantage so it's not abusing the monopoly which I don't believe is illegal in a monopolistic sense (is that a real word?). Although I'd love to have someone who knows more about this stuff than me shoot this theory down.


That they're applying it to everyone is exactly what is anticompetitive. They are reducing the limited ways that 3rd party ISPs can compete with Sympatico for customers. While it doesn't give them an advantage, it's certainly anticompetitive.


----------



## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

Here is an example of what better competition could bring:
In France, the 3 major ADSL ISPs are providing for less than $50 (30 euros) per month (taxes included):
- a "box" that is an ADSL modem and usually also a "n" wireless router and used for the other services too
- a phone line over IP with unlimited local calls, 50 to 70 numbers with unlimited calls included, voice mail, caller ID, etc...
- Unlimited Internet with downloads speeds between 20 and 30Mb in urban areas (up to 100Mb where they have optical)
- TV with up to 200 channels, PVR features, video on demand, etc...

The differences between these ISPs are about the actual number of TV channels, or some details on the phones lines, and mostly the service.

Keeping customers is very important for them, so they fight a lot to provide attractive services instead of reducing the service while increasing the fees as we often see here in Canada.

I only know this example, but I guess it's similar in most country with decent competition.

My point is not to urge people to move to France or any other countries with such service, but rather to show that this type of service exist and can be done when proper conditions and willingness to keep customers happy exist.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

harzack86 said:


> Here is an example of what better competition could bring:


Just to see how poor we are, as Harzack86 pointed out here is a article from 2004 concerning internet service in South Korea.

And some thing more recent on South Korea.

By the French and South Korean standards we are about 7 years behind! This is getting embarrassing.


----------



## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

Bell's wonderful reply:


----------



## fuzzyface (Oct 17, 2006)

*...just signed on to ACANAC*

I was with Rogers...up until they sent me a notice saying that my usage would now be capped at 60gigs. I was thinking about ditching the cable service anyway, and this last move didn't do anything to sweeten the pot to stay with the rest of their services, so I decided to ditch the internet and home phone service as well. I went with ACANAC; pre-paid for a year, and I should be set up within the next few weeks. When I cancelled, I explained EXACTLY why I decided to switch: poor customer service, sloppy billing, and capping/constraining my downloads! I told them that that last move was the last straw. I voted with my $s and I think everyone else should do the same - its the only thing they care about! I'm betting that I'll get a few more calls from them for me to switch back.


----------



## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

fuzzyface said:


> I was with Rogers...up until they sent me a notice saying that my usage would now be capped at 60gigs. I was thinking about ditching the cable service anyway, and this last move didn't do anything to sweeten the pot to stay with the rest of their services, so I decided to ditch the internet and home phone service as well. I went with ACANAC; pre-paid for a year, and I should be set up within the next few weeks. When I cancelled, I explained EXACTLY why I decided to switch: poor customer service, sloppy billing, and capping/constraining my downloads! I told them that that last move was the last straw. I voted with my $s and I think everyone else should do the same - its the only thing they care about! I'm betting that I'll get a few more calls from them for me to switch back.



I hope that goes well. Acanac is not exactly known for stellar customer service.

You prepaid for one year? Really?


----------



## fuzzyface (Oct 17, 2006)

HowEver said:


> I hope that goes well. Acanac is not exactly known for stellar customer service.
> 
> You prepaid for one year? Really?


Yup! With taxes-in for the home phone and internet service, it was $407. It was the only way to get their discount rate of 18.88 for internet (unlimited downloads +5mbps service) and 9.99 home phone service (including voicemail, call display, and about 7 other options). They have a 30 day money back guarantee, so if i sniff a loser in the next little while, then I'll cancel and go with another provider. I won't go crying back to Rogers because they have burnt up too much goodwill; no currency left in that relationship. I just couldn't stand that they would decrease the quality of my service, and expect me to pay the same price? How does that fly? Ted's a crook, and I hope the CRTC gives he and Bell Canada a good spanking.beejacon


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

John Clay said:


> The throttling is being done on the Bell ATM network, and not on GigE lines. This means that anybody who is on a remote DSLAM fed by fiber, and not ATM, will be exempt from throttling if on a third party ISP.


Mr. Clay, even with 25 plus years of programming experience and some network knowledge I don't understand your statement. Please enlighten me.

And, what does might this mean to someone who uses TekSavvy in North York?


----------



## fuzzyface (Oct 17, 2006)

i say we throttle bell and ditch the beavers for some REAL internet!
I met a german friend for coffee today. We spoke about internet access rates in Canada, and we came to the conclusion that Canada's access is sad, sad, sad. Why does the CRTC let Bell and Rogers have their way with us? I moved to ACANAC; signed on for a year's worth of service. I've read their reviews on DSL reports, and I think I've made the right choice, but only time will tell...


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Thanks Mr. Clay.

Acronyms can lead to confusion (ATM ~ isn't that an Automated Teller Machine? ) and thanks for the links.

I hope you, and others, have been following this on the DSLReports forms.

Earlier this afternoon I thought of an environmental reason for stopping this shaping. I believe encrypted traffic is throttled too (Mr Clay may be able verify this). Meaning if your a tele-worker you will not be able to work well (especially if your a database programmer/tester!) after the throttle kicks in. Are all of these companies that have spent money on servers etc so their employees could work at home are being shafted? For two of the companies I've worked for I took my laptop home some evenings and continued to work. The work I did depended on large databases and decent access speed through an encripted Virtual Private Network (VPN). Now I believe I would be unable to work that way. I used to stay home occasionally, on really stormy days, so that I didn't have to risk the roads. The laptop and VPN allowed me to stay home; are Bell's new policies going to ruin this option for many? (Yes I know the shaping starts at 4:00 pm.)


----------



## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

According to the tech I spoke with, only P2P is *suppose* to be throttled, but apparently some of the boxes are 'misconfigured' and throttling other types of connections.


----------



## cliffx (May 23, 2007)

krs said:


> That is true, but that's not what we're talking about here. The speed of DSL connection between your home and the CO is not being "throttled" by Bell.


Sorry you are incorrect, bell nexia(sp?) (they are a seperate business unit from sympatico - the last mile provider) is throttling the connection _BEFORE_ it reaches the ISP. This is the issue.

Sympatico was throttled at the ISP level, not at the last mile.

This is simply an anti-competitive measure, people were leaving sympatico due to the caps/throttling, so what bell (as an entire corporate entity) has done is forced throttling on all of their competitors so they can not offer a better service, eliminating the incentive and benefit to switch companies. This has a spin-off effect of helping to retain sympatico customers.


----------



## guytoronto (Jun 25, 2005)

fuzzyface said:


> Why does the CRTC let Bell and Rogers have their way with us?


The CRTC does NOT regulate the Internet.

It's funny. When the CRTC steps in to regulate stuff (cell phones, cable / satellite TV), people moan and complain about how ineffective they are.

When the CRTC takes a hands off approach (internet), people moan and complain about how ineffective they are.

Guess it just goes to show that people just want to moan and complain about something.


----------



## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

guytoronto said:


> The CRTC does NOT regulate the Internet.
> 
> It's funny. When the CRTC steps in to regulate stuff (cell phones, cable / satellite TV), people moan and complain about how ineffective they are.
> 
> ...


While the CRTC doesn't regulate the Internet, they do regulate 'last-mile' DSL provisioning.

If memory serves, the tariff in question is 5410 (relating to GAS, Gateway Access Service) and a PDF is available here:
http://www.bce.ca/en/aboutbce/regul...?Tariff=GT &Part= 5 &Item= 5410


----------



## macCanada (Mar 30, 2008)

I'm at a loss as to what to do with this situation. I'm a TekSavvy customer in Ontario and switched from Rogers because of the possibility of getting a bandwidth bill and/or more tiered service. I download less than 30 GB per month. 

The ISPs offering hi-speed advertise always connected hi-speed so its a convienice factor. Bandwidth is generally very cheap now to purchase as compared to the 90's. When it was probably more expensive (days of Dial-up and ISDN) there was never to my knowledge a bandwidth cap and the ISPs could easily have monitored this at the time. It was all based on timed usage. 

Never mind high-bandwidth applications, many software and OSs patches can use up several hundred MB's per month. Many may not be aware of their bandwidth usage let alone understand the concept. Websites that are poorly laid out, play videos automatically or that only have large images waste bandwidth. 

While I don't much like the idea of an ISP based FTP server with popular downloads and patches as it can lead to anti-competitive measures, if we're to have our Net usage capped, this is the best alternative short of government regulation (which hasn't happened for well over a decade). 

The CRTC doesn't regulate the ISPs but I think something need to be done. Its been a decade since people have been asking for regulation of Internet services in Canada. I think the solution here is a political one. The Internet is vital to our economic infrastructure, communication and entertainment. What will we do when VoIP, video conferencing, on-line banking and investment become important? I'd like to access my bank account but my Internet access is cut-off or I can't afford to pay extra this month?


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

cliffx said:


> Sorry you are incorrect, bell nexia(sp?) (they are a seperate business unit from sympatico - the last mile provider) is throttling the connection _BEFORE_ it reaches the ISP. This is the issue.


I said:


> The speed of DSL connection between your home and the CO is not being "throttled" by Bell.


The DSL connection between your home and the CO is just a pair of copper wires in almost all cases unless you're one of the lucky ones where they fed fibre right to your house.
There is a modem on one end - in your house - and a line card that can handle DSL at the other end.
How do you think Bell can throttle the speed on a pair of copper wires? 
Of course the throttling happens before it reaches the ISP, but not on the copper pair between your home and the CO.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

For all of us who don't understand networking or how trottling works here is a link at DSLReports that may explain it better.

Throttling Thread


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

bgw said:


> For all of us who don't understand networking or how trottling works here is a link at DSLReports that may explain it better.
> 
> Throttling Thread


This first diagram is the only one that is correct.










After that, people just make assumptions where the throttling takes place.
It doesn't make any sense at all for Bell to throttle the link via TSI and their own connection to the Cogent and Peer 1 networks - that doesn't buy Bell anything technically.
I would expect the throttling to take place in the Bell portion of their ATM network to prevent it from becoming overloaded.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

If you have been following this thread you my realize that TekSavvy has been leading the charge against the throttling of service by Bell. 

More about this is in this article at PtoPnet.

From the article above you'll discover something funny; Bell sponsored an entrepreneurs of the year award. Last year it was won by Rocky and Marc Gaudrault, owners of TekSavvy!


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

bgw said:


> If you have been following this thread you my realize that TekSavvy has been leading the charge against the throttling of service by Bell.


I have been following this thread and also read the linked "throttling thread" a couple of times. 
One thing that baffles me is why there is no definitive statement in the throttling thread exactly where Bell is throttling traffic especially since Rocky of Teksavvy posted on that thread.
Doesn't anyone know for sure? 
It's also unclear to me how much of Teksavvy's customers traffic comes over the Teksavvy link to the two networks they connect to and how much comes over the Net in general via the Bell pipe.
If Bell really throttles the Teksavvy pipe and not their own ATM network then I can understand the issue.

And btw - throttling and setting a monthly cap are two different things - some people seem to think they are the same thing.


----------



## Lawrence (Mar 11, 2003)

Well...Bell Sympatico Hi-Speed was doing something yesterday.

I was uploading a 180 mb video to YouTube and it took over 3 hours.
It took so long that I gave up and cancelled the upload at the 3 hour mark.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

krs said:


> And btw - throttling and setting a monthly cap are two different things - some people seem to think they are the same thing.


Yes people are mixing the two up. I am not opposed to either caps or throttling if they are fully outlined and advertised in "LARGE PRINT" advertisements and your contract. In addition there should alternative plans and/or providers that allow unthrottled service if you are willing to pay for it. At this point, we as the general public, do not fully understand or know what we are being sold. Nor do we have a full range of options in supply; Bell and Rogers operate a duopoly.

I mainly object to the underhanded way that throttling was done. I bought a unthrottled service from a company that expressly provided a unthrottled service. Not only am I being short changed, but my ISP (which is run by one of the best entrepreneurs in Canada!) is being short changed too. 

As for caps, I can always remember there where caps on all services, even if they where maximum number of hours of use a month in the dial up age. 

The point then, in the dial up age, as it is now, you knew what you where signing up for. Now I don't know or understand what I'm paying for; p2p is slow at certain times, is encrypted traffic slow too, what about using the iTunes store, should I download the latest version of Xcode in the evening so that it doesn't interfere with work or should I get up at 2:00 am and start the download. Fear, uncertainty and doubt ~ I left both Bell and Microsoft to get away from these three demons of computing!


----------



## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

I'm going to take a couple of suggestions from "The IT Nerd" (http://itnerd.wordpress.com):

If You’re Canadian And You Care About The Internet, You need To Read This. « The IT Nerd
Net Neutrality In Canada - The Debate Starts Now « The IT Nerd

Perhaps he's on the right track?


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Yes, definitely on the right track.

May I suggest that you, 8127972, take this idea, and a link to the online petition and start a new thread. I started this thread, might you take the honours for finding this?

Petition signed.


----------



## 5andman (Oct 15, 2006)

There is also the issue of the Internet being for free speech and content. 

Does Bell throttling mean they are controlling our content and access to content?


----------



## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

5andman said:


> There is also the issue of the Internet being for free speech and content.
> 
> Does Bell throttling mean they are controlling our content and access to content?


Potentially yes. IT Nerd makes this argument in this article:

Bell Finally Responds To Throttled DSL Resellers « The IT Nerd

The salient point that he makes is this:

_"Another possibility is that Bell is trying to cut out “rich media” (aka video, audio, etc) from sources other than CTVGlobeMedia (which Bell owns 20% of). It’s kind of an odd coincidence that they throttle BitTorrent within days of The Next Great Prime Minister being made available on BitTorrent. Perhaps I’ve watched one too many episodes of X-Files, but it’s an odd coincidence."_


----------



## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

bgw said:


> Yes, definitely on the right track.
> 
> May I suggest that you, 8127972, take this idea, and a link to the online petition and start a new thread. I started this thread, might you take the honours for finding this?
> 
> Petition signed.


Okay. Thanks for the suggestion.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

bgw said:


> Yes people are mixing the two up. I am not opposed to either caps or throttling if they are fully outlined and advertised in "LARGE PRINT" advertisements and your contract. In addition there should alternative plans and/or providers that allow unthrottled service if you are willing to pay for it. At this point, we as the general public, do not fully understand or know what we are being sold. Nor do we have a full range of options in supply; Bell and Rogers operate a duopoly.
> 
> I mainly object to the underhanded way that throttling was done. I bought a unthrottled service from a company that expressly provided a unthrottled service. Not only am I being short changed, but my ISP (which is run by one of the best entrepreneurs in Canada!) is being short changed too.
> 
> ...


Agree with you 100%.
To have any hope of winning in the end, people have to put aside their emotions and use arguments based on facts. Some of the newspaper articles don't help either - they just copy from each other without really understanding what they are printing.
As to your last statement - traffic slow at certain times - problem is you don't know if ths is due to Bell throttling or due to bottlenecks in the net.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

8127972 said:


> Potentially yes. IT Nerd makes this argument in this article:
> 
> Bell Finally Responds To Throttled DSL Resellers « The IT Nerd
> 
> ...


To me that is pure speculation, not based on any facts.

Bell never said they would "cut out" any content - they are just limiting the bandwidth required by bit torrents and P2P during peak hours.
That doesn't prevent any downloads or content - just makes it slower.
It also doesn't affect any cap.
Does teksavvy actually "guarantee" a download speed? If they do, they shouldn't because it's determined pretty much vompletely by the quality of the subscriber's DSL connection and varies from subscriber to subscriber and also be time of day.


----------



## martman (May 5, 2005)

I called Bell and bitched them out. I told them I would soon be switching to one of their competitors even though they too will be capped/throttled to mark my protest at this anti-competitive practice. They apologized to me and said they would pass on my remarks to higher ups (after having me speak with a supervisor who also apologized to me).
I also told them they are obviously not concerned about the needs of their customers and compared service in S Korea and France to their meager offerings and asked them about video on demand and "home phone" and accused them of using this practice to stop the bleeding of customer to the competition in Satelight, phone and ISP industries. They never bothered to deny any of it.


----------



## madgunde (Mar 10, 2006)

Those of you who want to help do something about Bell and other ISPs discriminating throttling practices, bookmark Net Neutrality for related news, add your name to their petition, and add one of their banners to your forum signatures and blog posts.


----------



## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

krs said:


> To me that is pure speculation, not based on any facts.
> 
> Bell never said they would "cut out" any content - they are just limiting the bandwidth required by bit torrents and P2P during peak hours.
> That doesn't prevent any downloads or content - just makes it slower.
> ...


Corus Entertainment (they own Nelvana, YTV, W, Q107, AM640 among other things) would seem to disagree with that:

Net Neutrality


----------



## martman (May 5, 2005)

madgunde said:


> Those of you who want to help do something about Bell and other ISPs discriminating throttling practices, bookmark Net Neutrality for related news, add your name to their petition, and add one of their banners to your forum signatures and blog posts.


The Bell Canada executive office can be reached at:1-866-317-3382


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

8127972 said:


> Corus Entertainment (they own Nelvana, YTV, W, Q107, AM640 among other things) would seem to disagree with that:
> 
> Net Neutrality


I don't see anything on that site that claims that Bell will be "cutting off" any content whatsoever.

I do hoowever have a problem with the definition of "Net Neutrality" that is posted on the web site,



> "Mr. Speaker, once again, the Minister of Industry is siding with telecommunications giants against consumers and is refusing to apply the principle of net neutrality, which guarantees identical upload or download speeds for anonymous blogs and big business websites alike. Real competition for sure."
> 
> "Can the minister make a commitment, here in this House, not to make any decisions that would favour big businesses at the expense of consumers, thus ensuring that the Internet remains a democratic tool?"
> 
> - Paul Crête, MP


Successfully implementing VoIP in packet networks depends on the concept of giving preferential treatment to voice traffic over data traffic, thus the idea of treating all packet data alike is a pipe-dream.
I realize that is not the specific Bell issue, but people who keep quoting "Net Neutrality" really need to define what they mean otherwise an intelligent, rational discussion is not possible.
I tried the wiki on Net Neutrality - it's pretty clear that there is no consensus on what Net neutrality actually means.

One could easily argue that if bit torrent traffic slows down other internet traffic, then the bit torrent traffic is skewing "net neutrality", ie providing equal access to every internet user, and throttling the bit torrent traffic actually re-establishes the fair use of the net for everyone and thus works towards providing net neutrality.

If the network is not capable of handling all the traffic at peak times and something has to give, then throttling bit torrents and p2p traffic is the right thing to do.


----------



## madgunde (Mar 10, 2006)

krs said:


> One could easily argue that if bit torrent traffic slows down other internet traffic, then the bit torrent traffic is skewing "net neutrality", ie providing equal access to every internet user, and throttling the bit torrent traffic actually re-establishes the fair use of the net for everyone and thus works towards providing net neutrality.


If Bittorrent traffic is slowing down other traffic, it's not because of any specific trait of the protocol, it's simply because a lot of people are using it and there isn't enough bandwidth. One can just as easily argue that YouTube and iTunes, and XBox Live slow down Bittorrent just the same. So why is Bittorrent and other P2P being given second class status? Furthermore, it's not just Bittorrent that is being throttled. Many people are complaining that their VOIP has been degraded or even become unusable since throttling began. Do you think if an ISP offers their own VOIP service that they won't hesitate to throttle their competitor's traffic to favor their own?


----------



## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

krs said:


> One could easily argue that if bit torrent traffic slows down other internet traffic, then the bit torrent traffic is skewing "net neutrality", ie providing equal access to every internet user, and throttling the bit torrent traffic actually re-establishes the fair use of the net for everyone and thus works towards providing net neutrality.
> 
> If the network is not capable of handling all the traffic at peak times and something has to give, then throttling bit torrents and p2p traffic is the right thing to do.



There are two ways of looking at this problem. The first way is to throttle the hell out of high-bandwidth applications. This results in angry consumers and more money for the company. The second way is to upgrade the infrastructure so it can handle the additional load. This results in happy customers, and a less money for the company, but probably more users.

The percentage of the population that has broadband access is growing - there's no way to deny that. With more people, either using high-bandwidth applications or not, more bandwidth will be needed. Period. It makes far more sense in the ong run to upgrade infrastructure now, and increase capacity as much as possible than it does to restrict traffic and anger customers.


----------



## Guest (Apr 2, 2008)

I'll add in a second comment about the throttling not being limited to bit torrent. My remote ssh/scp/sftp connections are now throttled, along with my VPN traffic. It seems like they are basically throttling ALL encrypted communications and not just torrents. When the torrent community turned to encrypted traffic the throttling setups responded by throttling ALL encrypted traffic. While it sucks that they would have to throttle torrents, it REALLY sucks that they took such a heavy-handed approach towards the throttling and that it is causing a lot of grief for things beyond the p2p target they were going after. Also worth noting, that the jitter on my VoIP setup has fully doubled (and then some) in the last 6 months since they setup their "shaping".

To me it's like this ... it's like Bell "throttling" your phone conversations. If you say a word that they deem is not acceptable it suddenly turns into this long, drawn out noise that takes 3 minutes to arrive at the other end. While I agree with some of the statements regarding the need to do _some_ bandwidth shaping at peak periods if it is adversely affecting everyone's access they have gone a few steps too far in this area -- specifically in throttling/shaping bandwidth that they are reselling. If they don't have the bandwidth available for sale then I agree with John Clay, they need to upgrade their equipment. What they do with their own end subscribers to Sympatico is their business...


----------



## martman (May 5, 2005)

One of the things I find disturbing about all of this is that everyone seems to be taking Bell at its word that Bit Torrent is 90% pirated material. This is the same kind of blanket statement that folks like the RIAA bring up without any supporting evidence. Like the RIAA and their statistics, I think Bell is lying about the amount (by percentage) of their traffic is related to BT and I 'm sure they are lying about the level of piracy within the BT traffic. We are just starting to see many legit uses for BT and the amount of this traffic is not part of the equation. Furthermore, any music handled by BT is not, by definition, piracy in Canada as we pay levies to account for the music traffic.

The reality is this is about stopping the bleeding of Bell's customers to its competitors. As TV is now being offered through BT at CBC we are seeing Bell throttle its competitors BT traffic in a all to obvious attempt to bolster their Express VU brand which all of a sudden has to compete against BT. A similar problem for Bell exists with VOIP competing against Bell home phone service.

In the end it seems that Bell is not interested in upgrading its networks and will do anything to avoid it. The internet is supposed to be able to offer VOIP and video on demand but the current setup lacks the bandwidth to do so. In Canada we are falling behind while other countries continue to increase capacity. (look at South Korea as a shining example). We are seeing this all across the board. It is not just Bell. Notice that cellular data costs are just about the highest in the world in Canada. Plain and simple this is big corporations taking advantage of their Monopolies (and duopolies) to avoid costs and unfairly limit the ability of their competition to compete.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

About Bell and Roger's competition in the realm of TV: one of my children once remarked that 'TV is for old people". This youngster is a dedicated YouTube watcher. Are Bell and Rogers trying to prevent and/or pervert the natural evolution of media in this country?


----------



## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

bgw said:


> About Bell and Roger's competition in the realm of TV: one of my children once remarked that 'TV is for old people". This youngster is a dedicated YouTube watcher. Are Bell and Rogers trying to prevent and/or pervert the natural evolution of media in this country?


Well, they are trying to protect their business, but I would be more worried about a child who watches YouTube all day than television. People like to proclaim TV has a lot of crap on it, but it's nothing compared to the uneducated, untalented garbage on YouTube.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

hayesk said:


> ... but I would be more worried about a child who watches YouTube all day than television. People like to proclaim TV has a lot of crap on it, but it's nothing compared to the uneducated, untalented garbage on YouTube.


Too true. Fortunately my kids are only at the stage of watching Lego Star Wars and Pokemon at this point. I'm hoping that they will become media literate. But I think we might agree that standards are falling; the writers are spread too thin in the 500 channel/YouTube universe. It will be a uphill battle to ensure that they are watching, understanding and appreciating quality entertainment.

Do kids still study Shakespeare in high school these days?...

Any ways, back to the subject at hand...


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

madgunde said:


> If Bittorrent traffic is slowing down other traffic, it's not because of any specific trait of the protocol,


I never said that



> it's simply because a lot of people are using it and there isn't enough bandwidth.


Yes - absolutely



> One can just as easily argue that YouTube and iTunes, and XBox Live slow down Bittorrent just the same. So why is Bittorrent and other P2P being given second class status?


Simply because those two applications are using the vast majority of the existing bandwidth - that is at least what is claimed by consultants


> Furthermore, it's not just Bittorrent that is being throttled.


How do you know that?



> Many people are complaining that their VOIP has been degraded or even become unusable since throttling began.


Same question as before - how do you know that VoIP is being throttled?
For one, you cannot throttle VoIP - voice packets must be given preferential treatment over data packets otherwise VoIP won't work at all and ATM networks have provisions for that, and secondly, the public internet as it stands was never designed to handle VoIP - to get that to work reliably you need a closed net service with controlled latency and packet loss.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

John Clay said:


> There are two ways of looking at this problem. The first way is to throttle the hell out of high-bandwidth applications. This results in angry consumers and more money for the company. The second way is to upgrade the infrastructure so it can handle the additional load. This results in happy customers, and a less money for the company, but probably more users.
> 
> The percentage of the population that has broadband access is growing - there's no way to deny that. With more people, either using high-bandwidth applications or not, more bandwidth will be needed. Period. It makes far more sense in the ong run to upgrade infrastructure now, and increase capacity as much as possible than it does to restrict traffic and anger customers.


Agree with you on all counts.

However, upgrading the infrastructure takes time and money.
From a technical and business point of view, throttling is a viable solution that can be implemented immediately to try to alleviate the problem.
It's just causing a PR nightmare for Bell.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

martman -

I must have missed the reference where Bell claims 90% of BT traffic is for pirated stuff - why would they even care?
They are not policement. How would Bell even know?
They can determine the amount of BT traffic through their network, but not how much of that is pirated.

I also challenge your statement that the internet is supposed to be able to offer VOIP and video on demand.
The internet was never designed for eiter one of these services.
I was involved on the specification and design end many years ago trying to figure out how to implement high quality VoIP (something businesses could use) over the public internet.
It just can't be done because there is no control over the end-to-end connection. The only way packetized voice will work reliably and with high quality (suitable for business) is via a dedicated network. 
The public internet consists of many, many interconnected servers and theoretically each packet can take a different path from source to destination with different delays, packet losses etc. No problem for data, but not good for real time services such as video and voice. One can compensate for that to some degree by adding artificial delays to be then be able to reassemble the packets properly at the destination end, but it will always be a kluge.


----------



## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

krs said:


> Same question as before - how do you know that VoIP is being throttled?
> For one, you cannot throttle VoIP - voice packets must be given preferential treatment over data packets otherwise VoIP won't work at all and ATM networks have provisions for that, and secondly, the public internet as it stands was never designed to handle VoIP - to get that to work reliably you need a closed net service with controlled latency and packet loss.


Actually you can. Rogers has been doing that for months:

Throttling effecting Skype? - dslreports.com


There don't seem to be any reports of Bell throttling VOIP and my remote access sessions over SSL don't seem to affected either. But I fully expect that to change.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Has anyone read the article in today's Montreal Gazette, page B3?
Jean-Philippe, president of "ElectronicBox" has it wrong by asking: "we are wondering if Bell is throttling internet telephony?"
You can't throttle VoIP and hope to get anything usable at the receiving end.

Pat Hurley, an analyst at the research firm TeleChoice has it right with the comment:" Five to 10% of the internet users take up most of the bandwidth as they download high-definition movies and play games on line. It's breaking assumptions that Internet providers had on how they built their infrastructure based on the average user".

He goes on to say: "While these providers have a valid argument, they enforce it in dishonest ways."

Also very true.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

8127972 said:


> Actually you can. Rogers has been doing that for months:
> 
> Throttling effecting Skype? - dslreports.com


Good link - there you have people's real live experiences of what I have just said.

VoIP on the existing, non-throttled public internet...so, so
VoIP on the existing throttled public internet....a definite no go
VoIP over dedicated services (Rogers digital phone).....works well


----------



## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

bgw said:


> Too true. Fortunately my kids are only at the stage of watching Lego Star Wars and Pokemon at this point. I'm hoping that they will become media literate. But I think we might agree that standards are falling; the writers are spread too thin in the 500 channel/YouTube universe. It will be a uphill battle to ensure that they are watching, understanding and appreciating quality entertainment.
> 
> *Do kids still do Shakespeare in high school these days?...
> *
> Any ways, back to the subject at hand...


Kids "do" study a lot of Shakespeare in high school these days, including a handful of plays in Grade 9 and Shakespeare every year after also.


----------



## Cliffy (Apr 18, 2005)

8127972 said:


> There don't seem to be any reports of Bell throttling VOIP and my remote access sessions over SSL don't seem to affected either. But I fully expect that to change.


The problem is that this type of deep packet inspection can have side effects on VOIP, VPN and streaming. They seem to be leaving standard service ports alone for the moment because of this side effect.


----------



## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

It seems that they use the reason of "piracy" as a cop out. The only reason that they are throttling is to squeeze customers. If they figure out how to put the squeeze on Skype and VOIP users, the more people that will return to their overpriced regular telephone service. They could care less about P2P or torrents or whatever, it's all about squeezing dimes from their customers in the most ruthless an unethical manner possible.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

krs said:


> Has anyone read the article in today's Montreal Gazette, page B3?


krs, is there anyway you could publish a link to this article if it is available on line?


----------



## iJohnHenry (Mar 29, 2008)

bgw said:


> krs, is there anyway you could publish a link to this article if it is available on line?


Here ya' go, via Google. 

Bell Canada takes heat from clients for limiting online speed


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

bgw said:


> krs, is there anyway you could publish a link to this article if it is available on line?


Wow - can't believe this is actually on line for free. How does the Gazette expect to sell any papers that way.
The on-line article looks a bit shorter than the one in the paper but still. here it is:
Bell Canada takes heat from clients for limiting online speed

Ooops - sorry. Should have read the next post before I logged into the Gazette site.


----------



## Adrian. (Nov 28, 2007)

HowEver said:


> Kids "do" study a lot of Shakespeare in high school these days, including a handful of plays in Grade 9 and Shakespeare every year after also.



I forced my little sister to read The Wealth of Nations and The Social Construction of Reality I think it was over her head.

Electronics are however, I believe making kiddies these days a lot less 'well read' shall we say. They are just reading a different read then I did, I suppose.


----------



## cliffx (May 23, 2007)

krs said:


> I also challenge your statement that the internet is supposed to be able to offer VOIP and video on demand.
> The internet was never designed for eiter one of these services.
> I was involved on the specification and design end many years ago trying to figure out how to implement high quality VoIP (something businesses could use) over the public internet.


Sure it may have not been designed originally to carry voice and video - but it seems to do well, when there is no congestion in the path the the data is taking. When a link is saturated or performing poorly then their will be issues - which is to be expected.

Back in the day the before the www, there was fido, bbs' and newsgroups. The www did not exist, when it was first developed it was text only - no pictures or complex websites like today - does that mean we should expect websites with pictures to perform poorly because it was beyond the original specifications?

Obviously a dedicated VOIP network would be best, but it is not feasible, thus the use of the general internet pipes, it obviously works well.

Bell's argument doesn't hold water with me, out of every third party's monthly fee over $20 goes directly to bell for the last mile connection, this ought to be sufficient for them to maintain and upgrade that portion of your connection - considering the entire network was paid for and built by tax payers before bell was privatized.


----------



## cliffx (May 23, 2007)

Adrian. said:


> I forced my little sister to read The Wealth of Nations and The Social Construction of Reality I think it was over her head.
> 
> Electronics are however, I believe making kiddies these days a lot less 'well read' shall we say. They are just reading a different read then I did, I suppose.


I would agree with the different read, even to the point that media is consumed much differently by younger generations then our parents.

For example my parents think of watching TV as relaxation, and will sit down after work and watch the news and entertainment programs every night. 

I rarely watch the tube, newscasts are often full of fluff (special interest, recent car crashes, numerous partial weather reports and promos for news stories later in the broadcast), and not to mention the 16-22min of commercials in an hour isn't what I want to watch, thus TV is virtually eliminated. 

I can get the news I'm interested in, get a more in depth story and view multiple sources in a fraction of the amount of time it takes to watch a 30min newscast. 

Blogs/youtube/podcasts allow me to have a say over what media I consume. Most of it isn't even approached by the mainstream. I know many of my peers have the same type of relationship with the media, it's a generational thing - the young find it easy to adapt, some of the old also adapt, the rest stay with what is comfortable and ignore it's benefits and potential.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Cliffx: One wonders what next new band width using technology they might try to strangle... the iPhone?


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

cliffx said:


> Back in the day the before the www, there was fido, bbs' and newsgroups. The www did not exist, when it was first developed it was text only - no pictures or complex websites like today - does that mean we should expect websites with pictures to perform poorly because it was beyond the original specifications?


I thought I made it clear that it's specifically real time services like voice and video that is the problem. Nothing to do with what you posted like pictures or complex websites - none of that depends on real time transmission.

And it has nothing to do with the "original specifications" either. In fact, there are no "specifications" for the internet.

The "issue", if you can call it that, is the whole concept of packet data and packet switching that is used. It makes the net extremely resilient for what it was intended.
Voice on the public internet is a kluge and always will be, but because it's essentially free people tolerate whatever they get.


----------



## cliffx (May 23, 2007)

krs said:


> I thought I made it clear that it's specifically real time services like voice and video that is the problem. Nothing to do with what you posted like pictures or complex websites - none of that depends on real time transmission.
> 
> And it has nothing to do with the "original specifications" either. In fact, there are no "specifications" for the internet.
> 
> ...


Streaming of on demand feeds from youtube / apple movie trailers / tomgreen.com seem to work pretty well for me, I can't comment on what you have experienced. 

I don't use VOIP but it seems to be decent enough for a large number of users, if it were _that bad_ then no one would use it (which might be bell's plan, - to degrade VOIP services making it unreliable - considering that Bell is in the business of selling home and cell phone service).


----------



## madgunde (Mar 10, 2006)

cliffx said:


> I don't use VOIP but it seems to be decent enough for a large number of users, if it were _that bad_ then no one would use it (which might be bell's plan, - to degrade VOIP services making it unreliable - considering that Bell is in the business of selling home and cell phone service).


iChat video chats work great too. If we let Bell get away with throttling Bittorrent, then how can we complain when they decide to throttle iChat and other voice/video communication protocols?


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Steaming *one-way* videos are not a problem if your DSL connection and the net is fast enough. You usually see the download speed exceed the video play speed (or frame rate) by a good margin.
If it doesn't, then the video playback comes to a grinding halt. 

Even if it does, people just play it again from the beginning and by now the whole file has loaded and plays with no problem, but from the file stored on the PC.
With real-time services like voice or real-time video (say a video conference) you don't have that option. 
I occasionally receive voice calls from Europe or Africa via Skype and a normal telephone line. Sometims they are pretty good, other times awful. Last time we were cut off five times and the Skype customer had to redial each time - we finally gave up on the connection.
Wrks fine for private conversations where cost is the number qone criteria but I wouldn't use it for business - not when you can call many countries in Europe for one cent a minute and get a good solid and high quality connection.

I made the comment earlier that Bell can't throttle VoIP, maybe I should clarify that - it's not that they technically can't, it would just make a service that is 'shaky' at the best of times, essentially unusable.
I think ISPs can definitely argue that point and win, but BitTorrents and p2p data is not real-time data, so a technical argument to throttle that for the benefit of all subscribers has a lot of validity. How would you ever hope to prove that Bell is throttling BitTorrents to stifle competition?

The Competition Bureau is already on record stating that this is not an anti-competitive measure, so they are not looking at it further and CRTC as of April 2nd stated that they had not received any complaints on this matter.
The president of ElectronicBox then made a dumb statement that people are going to jump to other technologies like cable. He should keep his mouth shut.
Internet via cable has its own congestion problems since the link to the end subscriber is shared by a large number of people. At least with DSL you have your own private, dedicated link to the switching centre.
And upload speeds on cable are another issue unless the whole cable distribution system has been upgraded.


----------



## madgunde (Mar 10, 2006)

krs said:


> How would you ever hope to prove that Bell is throttling BitTorrents to stifle competition?


Very easy. Bittorrent is a valid means of distributing media, whether it is television programming, movies, music whatever. All of which competes directly with Bell's satellite TV distribution system, as well as the CTVGlobeMedia television stations that Bell still has a stake in. The slower Bittorrent runs, the less convenient for consumers. The less convenient it is, the less viable it becomes as a serious competitor to Bell's offerings.

Furthermore, by forcing the throttling on their wholesale ISP customers, they are reducing competition by eliminating a major means of it's competitors to differentiate themselves from Bell's DSL offerings. In effect, they are abusing their position to eliminate a key differentiator that their competitors were using to win business from Bell.

I'm pretty sure I've already posted these points in this thread, but I'm to lazy to go back and look.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Bell is simply going to say they have to throttle these particular services because they take up a disproportionate amount of bandwidth at peak hours - and it's only during peak hours that they throttle them.
And tey would have the technical data to back that up.

Your argument may reflect what many people in this thread feel, but it has no basis in fact.
As I already mentioned, the Competition Bureau has already looked at this Bell throttling situation and has decided it's "not an abuse of dominance" under the Competition Act.

So where does everyone go from here? 
CRTC has a 'hands-off' approach when it comes to internet regulations, complain to your MP?


----------



## madgunde (Mar 10, 2006)

krs said:


> So where does everyone go from here?
> CRTC has a 'hands-off' approach when it comes to internet regulations, complain to your MP?


Cancel as many Bell services as you can and make sure they know why you're doing it and encourage others to do the same. If their actions really start to hurt their profits, they'll hopefully wake up and realize what they have to do to reverse their loss of customers.


----------



## Ottawaman (Jan 16, 2005)

Jason Laszlo (Bell spokesman)'s real thoughts on this issue.

He got caught posting on facebook what he thinks about what bells doing after he defended them in press.

Not to mention what he thinks about the press.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20247550-Jason-Laszlo-Bell-spokesmans-real-thoughts-on-this-issue


----------



## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

One would think that he got a talking to from his Bell superiors after his Facebook page went public. 

On another topic, check this out. Perhaps there is some hope for us:

CAIP To CRTC: Deal With The Net Neutrality Issue, NOW! « The IT Nerd


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

*More on Bell*

It seems that Bell wants to completly get out of the business of supporting 3rd party ISP's. Here is the article on the CBC website.

Right now if you have a 3rd party ISP using DSL, approximately $20.00 of your monthy bill goes to Bell. Bell now wants to kill this arrangement and have the access "commercially negotiated". At present I have no idea what this means. Possibly higher prices? Possibly even less competition between ISPs?


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Found yet another interesting article in IT World Canada called "Bell Canada seeks to wipe out ISP Competitors".


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Ottawaman said:


> Jason Laszlo (Bell spokesman)'s real thoughts on this issue.
> 
> He got caught posting on facebook what he thinks about what bells doing after he defended them in press.
> 
> ...


I find it really hard to believe that anyone would be stupid enough to publish this about himself on face book.

I'm not familiar about the controls face book has in place, but how do they prevent anyone from posting pictures, profiles and descriptions of anyone else?


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

bgw said:


> Right now if you have a 3rd party ISP using DSL, approximately $20.00 of your monthy bill goes to Bell.


Where does this $20.- monthly fee to Bell for a dry loop come from?

The rates are here and start at $5.95 per month and never get to $20.- for any option, at least for Quebec and Ontario which are the two prime provinces where Bell operates.

Dry loop


----------



## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

krs said:


> Where does this $20.- monthly fee to Bell for a dry loop come from?
> 
> The rates are here and start at $5.95 per month and never get to $20.- for any option, at least for Quebec and Ontario which are the two prime provinces where Bell operates.
> 
> Dry loop


The $20.50 (if memory serves) is paid to Bell to provision DSL service from your house to the ISP. The dry loop fee is an additional fee that is charged if you do not have a conventional phone line (either through Bell or another provider).


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

John Clay said:


> The $20.50 (if memory serves) is paid to Bell to provision DSL service from your house to the ISP. The dry loop fee is an additional fee that is charged if you do not have a conventional phone line (either through Bell or another provider).


OK - understand.
Two different things.

So when an ISP offers DSL for $18.95 a month, they subsidize the service by a fair amount since connection to the net itself doesn't come for free and neither does the equipment and support that the ISP provides.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Since I'm still seeing interest in this thread I'm posting the link to the document that Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) filed with the CRTC.

It is fairly dry, dull and legal. Some of you may find it useful and interesting.

In CAIP's opinion Bell has broken their agreements with both the CRTC and the 3rd party ISPs. It will be very interesting to see Bell's reply.

This document also has some arguments that I haven't seen before: privacy has been compromised; the ISP's now having lower traffic are wasting money not using the bandwidth they have bought from their on ramps to the internet; Bell can snoop and monitor the 3rd party ISPs traffic gaining a competitive advantage; Bell changed their rates just before starting the throttling, etc.


----------



## nick24 (Jul 11, 2006)

This has made the Globe and Mail too - reportonbusiness.com: ISPs seek order to stop Bell braking Web traffic


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Really interesting.

But from what I have read so far, Bell has a better case than CAIP.

A few statements surprised me, for instance:" CAIP says that many of its member companies offer packages with no bandwidth restrictions, and that Bell is worried it could lose heavy-use customers to these competing providers."

I thought it became pretty clear in this thread and a related one about Rogers that ISPs "advertised" umlimited" bandwidth but in fact did have a limit. it just wasn't published. But if customers got close to it or exceeded it, the ISP would take corective action.


----------



## ..........? (Dec 25, 2005)

satchmo said:


> Net Neutrality will have a tough go of it here in Canada. Especially with the duopoly that is Bell and Rogers.


what about telus. Telus provides broadband too. They have stable speed and no throttling.


----------



## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

madgunde said:


> Cancel as many Bell services as you can and make sure they know why you're doing it and encourage others to do the same. If their actions really start to hurt their profits, they'll hopefully wake up and realize what they have to do to reverse their loss of customers.


I'm on your side in this fight, but puh-lease.

Bell is not going to notice a couple dozen geeks changing ISPs. They lose and gain more customers each hour than the TINY, TINY, TINY fraction of people who even NOTICE this issue much less are affected by it MUCH less would actually get off their duff and drop Bell because of it.

I am pro-net neutrality and I am anti-traffic shaping, but living in fantasy land isn't going to help. A boycott Will. Not. Work.

Your only hope is legislation demanding net neutrality and outlawing traffic shaping.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

chas_m said:


> I am pro-net neutrality and I am anti-traffic shaping, but living in fantasy land isn't going to help. A boycott Will. Not. Work.
> 
> Your only hope is legislation demanding net neutrality and outlawing traffic shaping.


I agree with you.

However - someone better define "Net Neutrality"

Because if it's just "treat all net traffic the same" then VoIP goes out the window.

Traffic that requires real time transmission like voice must be given priority over non-real time traffic like data and video streaming or it just doesn't work.

And to be able to outlaw traffic shaping will require additional investment in Bell infrastructure resources (assuming their contention about the need for throttling is correct) and that translates into additional investment dollars which equals to increased fees.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

krs said:


> And to be able to outlaw traffic shaping will require additional investment in Bell infrastructure resources (assuming their contention about the need for throttling is correct) and that translates into additional investment dollars which equals to increased fees.


May be Bell Canada should take less profit and invest more! They may find in the long run that profits rebound and business expands in unexpected ways due to innovation, possible synergy with their ExpressView service etc.


----------



## cliffx (May 23, 2007)

krs said:


> Where does this $20.- monthly fee to Bell for a dry loop come from?
> 
> The rates are here and start at $5.95 per month and never get to $20.- for any option, at least for Quebec and Ontario which are the two prime provinces where Bell operates.
> 
> Dry loop


Monthly access fee's for connection of the customers premises to the central office is paid directly to bell. These fees are between 19.50-22.50 depending on the speed of the connection, this is regulated by the CRTC. You can see proof of the decision from Bell's own website (Page 10 item 5410 - 4): http://www.bce.ca/en/aboutbce/regul...?Tariff=GT &Part= 5 &Item= 5410 

Band rate (if you do not have POTS telephone service) is on top of the price mentioned above and can vary from 9.04-48.04/mo, most phone lines are in type A or B, so around 10/mo.
Decision CRTC 2001-238

All of the above gets your data to your ISP, they then have to provision the connection to the net on their own.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Yet another link of interest. This time a individual's presentation to the CRTC. You'll find it here.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

cliffx said:


> Monthly access fee's for connection of the customers premises to the central office is paid directly to bell. These fees are between 19.50-22.50 depending on the speed of the connection, this is regulated by the CRTC. You can see proof of the decision from Bell's own website (Page 10 item 5410 - 4): http://www.bce.ca/en/aboutbce/regul...?Tariff=GT &Part= 5 &Item= 5410
> 
> Band rate (if you do not have POTS telephone service) is on top of the price mentioned above and can vary from 9.04-48.04/mo, most phone lines are in type A or B, so around 10/mo.
> Decision CRTC 2001-238
> ...


I assume the link I posted must be out of date - I just found that via google and didn't see a date on that page.

However, with the rates you posted, it's a bit of a mystery to me how any ISP can offer a $19.95/month rate and stay in business, even if the rate is only for one year.


----------



## vacuvox (Sep 5, 2003)

Interesting thread. I've read some of it but not all so excuse me if this has already been discussed. It makes sense to me for an ISP like Sympatico to base their rates to a certain extent on volume. Those who download more, pay more. That's how it works with utilities. I know the issue is throttling, but why doesn't Sympatico just bill for excess traffic over a certain amount? Those who need to download GB of data pay for their traffic volume and get what they need quickly - and those who are not big downloaders don't get penalized with excessive rates or speed throttling when they do need to exchange large amounts of data.


----------



## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

krs said:


> I assume the link I posted must be out of date - I just found that via google and didn't see a date on that page.
> 
> However, with the rates you posted, it's a bit of a mystery to me how any ISP can offer a $19.95/month rate and stay in business, even if the rate is only for one year.



I'm not sure that they can. My understanding (which I admit may be wrong, but it's something that I've heard tossed around over at DSLreports.com) that it costs the ISP $15 -$20 wholesale price for straight DSL. Never mind if you factor a dry loop connection into the mix.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

8127972 said:


> I'm not sure that they can.


Well, Acanac does. $18.95 for the first year on a one-year contract and that even includes the tax!

Acanac High Speed Internet. Low Cost DSL and VOIP Service


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

vacuvox said:


> Interesting thread. I've read some of it but not all so excuse me if this has already been discussed. It makes sense to me for an ISP like Sympatico to base their rates to a certain extent on volume. Those who download more, pay more. That's how it works with utilities. I know the issue is throttling, but why doesn't Sympatico just bill for excess traffic over a certain amount? Those who need to download GB of data pay for their traffic volume and get what they need quickly - and those who are not big downloaders don't get penalized with excessive rates or speed throttling when they do need to exchange large amounts of data.


Yes, exactly that. But the big complaint is Bell changing the contract on all of us who are using third party ISPs. I'm now getting a throttled service that I didn't sign up for. Bell promised un-throttled service to my ISP and the ISP the same to me. Now that's changed for the worse. I'm upset and I hardly ever use torrent services! I'm worried about what comes down the pipe next time. If you want to get a throttled service sign up for one; I didn't! Bell shouldn't be able to unilaterally change my web service without my expressed consent.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

bgw said:


> Bell promised un-throttled service to my ISP .........


Apparently not - according to Bell anyway.

I wish an ISP would go through their contract with Bell to determine if that is true - can't be that difficult. I assume ISPs have lawyers too.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Yes, Bell and the ISP's are interpreting things differently. From my reading of the submissions to the CRTC the ISP's are in the right. There is a clause in the contract that states that Bell is able to reduce or interrupt service for network maintenance. There are also other clauses governing service that I don't remember. Bell is interpreting this line as 'we can throttle services to support the network', the ISP's are interpreting this as Bell is allowed to reduce service or interrupt service only to do maintenance. The maintenance periods I assume are short (hours) and relatively rare (once or twice a month). I side with the ISP's on this one.


----------



## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

krs said:


> Well, Acanac does. $18.95 for the first year on a one-year contract and that even includes the tax!
> 
> Acanac High Speed Internet. Low Cost DSL and VOIP Service


Perhaps they rely on volume? The only reason I say that is that Teksavvy is $29.95 for 5MB/800kbps service which seems like a more realistic business model assuming it costs $15 - $20 to buy DSL access from Bell. That would allow you to (A) make money & (B) build out your network.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

bgw said:


> Yes, Bell and the ISP's are interpreting things differently. From my reading of the submissions to the CRTC the ISP's are in the right. There is a clause in the contract that states that Bell is able to reduce or interrupt service for network maintenance. There are also other clauses governing service that I don't remember. Bell is interpreting this line as 'we can throttle services to support the network', the ISP's are interpreting this as Bell is allowed to reduce service or interrupt service only to do maintenance. The maintenance periods I assume are short (hours) and relatively rare (once or twice a month). I side with the ISP's on this one.


Is there actually a separate contract between each ISP and Bell or are people calling the CRTC tariff the "contract"
I haven't seen any specific ISP/Bell contract but I did a quick read of the CRTC tariff. What struck me reading the tariff is that there is no minimum speed specified, the terminology everywhere about speed is "up to ......kb/s.

It'll be interesting to see how Bell responds. I assume that response will be in the public domain as well.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

8127972 said:


> Perhaps they rely on volume? The only reason I say that is that Teksavvy is $29.95 for 5MB/800kbps service which seems like a more realistic business model assuming it costs $15 - $20 to buy DSL access from Bell. That would allow you to (A) make money & (B) build out your network.


The GAS rates for DSL access are spelled out in the tariff, on top of that there are monthly rates for the DS-3 or OC-3 connection.
There is a bit of a volume break, but it's minimal.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

In that table I don't see anything about reducing service for any given protocol; so if I have up to 5Mbps service I get it regardless of what traffic is being sent.

What is wrong with my logic?


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

bgw said:


> In that table I don't see anything about reducing service for any given protocol; so if I have up to 5Mbps service I get it regardless of what traffic is being sent.
> 
> What is wrong with my logic?


Nothing wrong with your logic.

In the CIAP submission to CRTC, the point is being made, more than once, that other services are throttled as well, not just BitTorrent and P2P; the tariff the way it's written, provides certain monthly fees for service *up to 5 Mb/s downstream*, that includes anything from 1 bit/sec to 5 Mb/s, so CIAP's argument that the ISPs are not getting what they paid for goes out the window.

I would have expected that there would have been a lower limit specified; tere also doesn't seem to be any requrement of minimum uptime of the service.

I did read through the tariff rather quickly and may have missed a crucial paragraph - I sure hope so because right now this seems quite biased towards Bell.
Maybe that was the best the ISP's or whoever represented them at the time, could negotiate.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

krs, a very interesting analysis. You've spotted something I was completely unaware of. Bell has provided a upper limit for service but not a lower. Finally I'm beginning to understand your argument. And I don't like the implications one little bit! Hence you are saying that Bell can provide any service they like as long as the data arrives at its destination. 

You may be right, but I believe that the ISP's and Bell originally meant to the 'up to 5 Mbps' to be a technical limit for the connection between your phone jack and the Central Office (CO) and your speed could be lower due to physical issues like distance to the CO. No lower limit for traffic was specified because it was simply expected to go through the network at the highest speed Bells equipment could carry it.

So my new question is: Did the ISP's simply assume that it was Bell's responsibility to deliver any data on 'Bells' network at the highest speed possible? If not, Bell can deliver the data anytime they wish. Or, did Bell guarantee that the data be delivered at the maximum theoretical limit once it gets beyond the phone line? I hope it was the latter - hence throttling is not allowed. The alternative interpretation is that Bell is completely within the sprit of the contract and they can give you any speed they like.

I am interested in Bells response. Hopefully it will be made public.

I also am beginning to suspect that someone with a technical & legal bent was asked to look through the contract Bell has with the third party ISPs and asked how can we use the agreement to gain a competitive advantage. This new idea of applying throttling wasn't the intent of the original contact; but it has been observed by Bell to be possible so they has gone ahead and done it.


----------



## keebler27 (Jan 5, 2007)

*will companies offering video contact bell?*

Hey,

I didn't read all the posts on this subject, but a thought came up - what about Apple offering purchased files for dload or news cites which have videos to watch (albiet, perhaps small files)? How are they going to feel knowing their clients are going to be throttled for dloading? It certainly would diminish the Apple TV experience if it takes longer than 1 hour to dload a movie? Maybe they should step in and plead with Bell to stop their throttling?

My example of Apple may not be perfect as we can't dload movies here yet (ok..so we can with a US account, but you get my drift  But, is the point not valid?

I know if I was running a business and new my clients were being affecting my bottom line b/c of a decision by an ISP, i wouldn't be happy.

It sounds like Rogers is doing this or, is about to. If that's the case, I'll be calling Bell and leaving them pronto.

I don't dload alot - ok..so I dloaded the new Battlestar show, but I was gone and didn't record it. I never dload illegal movies and I've used Itunes a few times.
It doesn't seem right to throttle everyone.

Cheers,
Keebler


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

bgw said:


> I also am beginning to suspect that someone with a technical & legal bent was asked to look through the contract Bell has with the third party ISPs and asked how can we use the agreement to gain a competitive advantage. This new idea of applying throttling wasn't the intent of the original contact; but it has been observed by Bell to be possible so they has gone ahead and done it.


In one of my former lives I have negotiated technical service and supply contracts, including contracts with Bell, and let me assure you, they have top notch lawyers and technical experts on their staff.
I doubt they would do something that will get shot down by CRTC immediately and have already gone through all the possible scenarios of what could possibly happen.

As far as this particular scenario goes, I know no more than anyone else in this thread or even the ISPs who are directly affected. In the submission by CIAP there are a lot of "we think" and "we believe" statements - bottom line is that they don't really know exactly what Bell is doing, they are mostly guessing.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

keebler27 said:


> Hey,
> 
> I didn't read all the posts on this subject, but a thought came up - what about Apple offering purchased files for dload or news cites which have videos to watch (albiet, perhaps small files)? How are they going to feel knowing their clients are going to be throttled for dloading? It certainly would diminish the Apple TV experience if it takes longer than 1 hour to dload a movie? Maybe they should step in and plead with Bell to stop their throttling?


If Bell is only throttling BitTorrents and P2P traffic as they claim, down loading of movies or videos won't be affected. So theoretically no issue there.

BitTorrent and P2P traffic by its very nature is slow anyway because of the inherently slow upload speeds of ADSL and these protocols allow for that.
The benefit of BitTorrents is to distribute the load rather than have all the downloads come from the same group of servers and you pay for that by a drastic decrease in download speed which now depends on the number of seeders and their upload speed.

My current DSL speeds are as follows:










So a 1 Gig file would take roughly 30 minutes to download from a server.


----------



## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

Some breaking news. A second person has filed a complaint against Bell in regards to this throttling B.S.:

2008-04-03 - Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) - Application requesting certain orders directing Bell Canada to cease and desist from "throttling" its wholesale ADSL Access

Read the document from Vaxination Infomatique. Warning, both links on this page are PDF's. 

I found out about this from this link:

Bell Canada Gets Hit By Another CRTC Complaint « The IT Nerd

:clap: :clap: :clap:


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

8127972 said:


> Some breaking news. A second person has filed a complaint against Bell in regards to this throttling B.S.:
> 
> 2008-04-03 - Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) - Application requesting certain orders directing Bell Canada to cease and desist from "throttling" its wholesale ADSL Access
> 
> ...


Mr. IT nerd Needs to get on the band wagon here - he is miles behind the eight ball.
This "breaking news" and the pdf submission was already covered several pages back in this thread in post 126.

All I can say: EhMac members are on the ball!


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Seems that Bells activities (and others) are getting international notice. Here is a link to the Guardian paper from the U.K. mentioning Bells activities.

One thing that I really liked about this article is how throttling is described as done by Bell:



> In Canada, the national telco, Bell Canada, is doing one better: it is simply throwing away some or all of the BitTorrent packets generated by its customers. And not just those of retail home-broadband customers: Bell has been caught chucking out the BitTorrent packets generated by ISPs that get their feed from Bell. The ISP is like a freight shipper that has paid Bell to put a container on one of its steamers. Then Bell has gone into that container and tossed a bunch of the packages inside overboard, without saying a word to its customer. Bell's largest competitor, Rogers, also throws away many of the encrypted packets its customers send. On the Rogers freighter, any container with a padlocked door is presumed guilty and heaved into the sea.


The article is interesting and I recommend it to anyone interested in this issue.

I remember the history of radio. At first there was hundreds of little stations. Slowly they got pushed out and/or incorporated into what is now our big national conglomerates that pap feed us a limited amount of material that suits their profit making agenda. Is the internet under going the same transformation; has it already started? Is it too late to save things?


----------



## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

bgw said:


> At first there was hundreds of little stations. Slowly they got pushed out and/or incorporated into what is now our big national conglomerates that pap feed us a limited amount of material that suits their profit making agenda. Is the internet under going the same transformation; has it already started? Is it too late to save things?


Even though it was thought that TV would push Radio out of the way, they kind of grew up along side each other. Of course, Radio changed to fit a changed marketplace. I remember the days when FM was cool, lots of excellent stations playing lots of music that just wouldn't make it onto the huge AM market. But money stepped in, and the stations eliminated DJs. And Regulators saw fit to push broadcasters around; though they allowed for syndicates and chains to purchase local radio stations.

If you told me twenty years ago that instead of listening to the Radio while using a computer, I'd be listening to the computer, I'd have said you were nuts! But Radio sank away, becoming not much more than a poorly programmed iPod Shuffle that showed no flair or innovation. Of course, Talk Radio would continue, well, until PodCasts... If Radio is dying, it is simply because of the greed that killed off any real value in listening. Without something of value to listen to, iTunes is just way too easy a way of listening to what I like, without the advertising and Celine Dion torch songs...

Many people are trying to do what they did to Radio, and more recently, to television, to the Internet. Instead of real laws and regulations to deal with crimes, the regulators choose to blame "the Internet", and do much damage to it. They allow the Internet to transform from a "network of networks" into a series of monopolistic ISPs; and once enough people "tuned in" to "the electronic frontier", they decide to start censoring content and people's usage. I would expect this to deteriorate much further. 

Just look at the recent CRTC ruling that allows TV stations to broadcast up to 30 minutes of advertising per hour! That would mean that "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" will have to go from a half hour to three quarters of an hour. The advertising is crazy already! That is why people have turned to the Internet, so they can skip the commercials. And now that the marketers have found that out, well, they will keep throttling back until the Internet is entirely commercialized. 

And this may actually happen, because even The Evil Empire itself is fooling around with the idea of making their OS free, but you will have to watch commercials every time you try to do something. (Too bad they just didn't make their OS free because it is entirely rubbish, and not worth the disks it is burned onto...)

Then there is the whole issue of Bell being one of the world's biggest clearing houses for spam and viruses - half of the spam originates with their advertisements, and three quarters of the viruses consists of their horribly mangled web browser they want you to use, so that you can connect to the Evil Empire in a more direct manner.

The moment that the government allows a competing phone company to run lines (and I mean real lines, not dry DSL or VOIP or such nonsense) - I'll be their first customer.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

EvanPitts said:


> Then there is the whole issue of Bell being one of the world's biggest clearing houses for spam and viruses - half of the spam originates with their advertisements, and three quarters of the viruses consists of their horribly mangled web browser they want you to use, so that you can connect to the Evil Empire in a more direct manner.
> 
> The moment that the government allows a competing phone company to run lines (and I mean real lines, not dry DSL or VOIP or such nonsense) - I'll be their first customer.


How do you ever come up with all this wrong information?

Even if Bell was a big clearing house for spam and viruses (which it isn't), one can't possibly describe it as one of the "world's biggest". Bell itself is small compared to some of the global giants.

As to the government not allowing competing phone companies to run lines - that is wrong as well - the problem is not the government but financial viability.
here is a company not too far from Hamilton that is running fibre directly to the end customer:
Atria Networks boasts 1,000-kilometre system of fibre-optic cables | The Guelph Mercury

Today, nothing stops you from leaving Bell behind.
Get you phone service via Cellphone, for internet you can go via cable, satellite or wireless - maybe not all available in your area.
But it's not a regulatory issue - it's a financial issue.


----------



## EvanPitts (Mar 9, 2007)

krs said:


> How do you ever come up with all this wrong information?


It was in yesterday's paper. Canada is ranked number 9 in the world, and Bell is leading the pack in distributing such materials.



> As to the government not allowing competing phone companies to run lines - that is wrong as well - the problem is not the government but financial viability.


Actually, wrong again. In the "old days", places had different phone companies that were part of the Bell system. The government then chose to allow Bell Canada to buy up the local services, so long as they would be subject to regulation. Some of the old companies remain, like Woodstock Independent, and the phone company in Dufferin County. Under the then new rules, Bell was allowed to be a monopoly, and no one else was allowed to compete, except for the few companies that remained independent.

Now the paradigm has changed, but since Bell either owns the telephone poles, or has an exclusive lease of space on the poles from hydro utilities, and since regulations will not allow for multiple sets of telephone poles on a street - Bell is firmly entrenched as a monopoly. No one else can run phone lines.



> here is a company not too far from Hamilton that is running fibre directly to the end customer...


Old story revisited. The same thing had been tried in Hamilton, and entirely failed because of litigation waged by Bell.



> Today, nothing stops you from leaving Bell behind.
> Get you phone service via Cellphone, for internet you can go via cable, satellite or wireless - maybe not all available in your area.


A Cell phone is not a regular telephone, and there are no alternatives allowed so that someone can pick a different set of phone lines maintained by an alternative company. Not only is cable or wireless internet not available here, we can not even get DSL because the neighbourhood is too far away from the exchange and the lines are antiques that can't handle it. That aside, with the unregulated terms of service - Bell has a stranglehold on their monopoly. I could go into the whole deal with my experience with cell phones... I'll sum it up as - got one, and after two years, they discontinued my pay-as-you-go service, and I do not have enough ambition to travel to the US to buy cards to recharge the time. My own white elephant!



> But it's not a regulatory issue - it's a financial issue.


Actually - it is entirely regulatory, or should I say, lack of regulatory. The primary term of Bell's purchase of the numerous small companies was that they would be subject to regulation, in order to keep them from using their monopoly to their own advantage. For years, this was entirely fair. Then all of a sudden, the government saw fit to wash their hands of the situation, probably after the CRTC or various MPs were paid off by Bell. We got stiffed with "Unregulated Terms Of Service", meaning, not only are users being shafted by paying more for even less Sympatico; users are paying way more for way less regular telephone service.

Bell has a large staff of lawyers, well paid to engage in endless litigation. A few years ago, AT&T came to town and was going to start providing their services - but they ended up getting litigated by Bell over the use of the telephone poles, and hence, they gave up because Bell owns them, and the collusion with City Hall resulted in the decision that they would not allow more than one set of poles on a given street. The same litigation lead to Cogeco giving up on running new cables through the neighbourhood, so we get stiffed with old cables and degraded service, with cables that have to run through all of the backyards to the poles that run down the alley - because Bell will not allow them to hang their cables on Bell poles.

We were promised fiber optic cables many years ago, but I would put good money on it that placed like Vietnam and Rwanda will have fiber optics and actual affordable high speed internet long before we do.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Here's a new idea from Blockbuster (from Wired online) - a movie streaming service.

As soon as it gets popular here will it be throttled?


----------



## iJohnHenry (Mar 29, 2008)

If it conflicts







with Bell/Roger's entertainment products, you bet it will.


----------



## Guest (Apr 10, 2008)

So...

For someone very eager to dump Rogers before they start charging overages, what's my _best_ current option?


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

EvanPitts said:


> We were promised fiber optic cables many years ago, but I would put good money on it that placed like Vietnam and Rwanda will have fiber optics and actual affordable high speed internet long before we do.


The company I picked out at random earlier exists since September 2005 and they have a fibre network over a good part of Western Ontario including Hamilton, but only for business the way I see it.
They seem to be able to co-exist with Bell.


----------



## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

For those of you who are interested in helping support (or not) the CAIP application to the CRTC concerning Bell's throttling of 3rd party ISP's here is a link with instructions on how to submit your comments to the CRTC.

Link to thread on the DSLReports forum.

This leads to the CRTC comments page. The instructions at the DSLReports link will assist you in directing your comments to the right people.

This post has also been placed on the CRTC & Internet threat. Sorry about the cross post but I thought most of you would like to know about this.


----------

