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CRTC Rules Bell Can Squeeze Downloads
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:21 PM
from the throttle-away dept.
from the throttle-away dept.
pparsons writes "Bell Canada Inc. will not have to suspend its practice of 'shaping' traffic on the Internet after a group of companies that resell access to Bell's network complained their customers were also being negatively affected. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission today released a decision that denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers' request that Bell be ordered to cease its application of the practice to its wholesale customers."
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Why is shaping in "quotes?" (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
It depends on how it's done.
There are good ways, and there are bad ways. This would be a "bad way".
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
it indicates that the process they call "shaping" is not actually "shaping" the traffic.
Re:Why is shaping in "quotes?" (Score:4, Informative)
Anon coward is right. Traffic shaping is perfectly legitimate way to make sure that your links are used fairly and efficiently without actually dropping packets. You hold a few packets back in long lasting streams to allow other low latency streams better service and then let them go later. What they are doing is best described as traffic limiting, even if they use traffic shaping to help with this and they are just avoiding calling it what it really is.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why is shaping in "quotes?" (Score:5, Funny)
The real question is "Why is the word "quotes" in quotes in your subject?".
P.S.: hmmm, do you \" the quotes inside other quotes in real english? Or just the programming one.
Parent
Abolish the CRTC (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I've had enough I say we move to get rid of them once and for all.
I'm with ya brother!
...
So how do you propose we start the overthrow?
- John
Marketing the problem (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Abolish the CRTC (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I don't think they've made a single decision in favor of consumers in the last decade. TELUS has also been granted many favors by the CRTC, all of which reinforce their monopoly position out west.
Specifically, their requirement that all downstream DSL connections be associated with a local phone number (provided only by TELUS) is nothing more than a money grab that prevents me from having a single network connection into my house. I don't want to give TELUS money, but the CRTC's inaction in many such cases forces me to fund the big monopoly in addition to the local ISP that actually provides what I want at a reasonable price.
Parent
Re:Abolish the CRTC (Score:4, Informative)
In Alberta at least, this has ended, you can order "dry pairs" now.
Parent
Re:Abolish the CRTC (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
From what I heard from my friend who worked for Telus, they are either lying or are deliberately misinformed. He quit a couple months ago in disgust.
The CRTC's mission (Score:3, Informative)
"In response to the government's policy direction, we have launched a new market-oriented approach to telecom regulation. We are giving priority to market forces, and we will intervene only when market failure makes it necessary."
- Konrad von Finckenstein, head of the CRTC, June 17, 2008 speech in Toronto
Translation: companies - do whatever the hell you want. And customers - fuck you.
Sign me up on the "Abolish CRTC" campaign.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You ain't seen nothing yet. I'm in contact with the administrator of some small co-op telecom, and he told me wildly unsettling stuff.
Within the next 18 months, the CRTC will hold audiences regarding the regulation of the Internet, it's rationale being that since the Internet is being used to bypass the airwaves regulation the CRTC was originally setup for, it will have to lay down rules to establish what content gets sent over the wire, and how producers are compensated for it.
Of course, this reeks of the
Sounds to me (Score:2, Interesting)
Like a bunch of middlemen whining because they want Bell to stop doing what it's been doing just because it hurts their already shoddy business model. Unless, of course, these are last-mile providers who extend the Bell network into areas it doesn't already service.
While I don't think that they should be traffic-shaping anyway, the fact is that they are, and asking them to stop doing it just for these companies is unreasonable. What they should be asking for is Bell to cease this practice altogether.
Re: (Score:2)
Soo...
You truly believe that the _correct_ solution is to terminate competition in the market place, and give all the business to Bell?
Bell, the company that was heavily subsided by government funds in order to run the last mile of copper *everywhere* in the 70s?
Really? You think that's the right solution? Take a resource which was at least partially paid for out of tax dollars and hand it over to a single private company?
Are you on CRACK?
Re: (Score:2)
Of course not, but this isn't competition. Bell -owns- this infrastructure, and they shape all traffic going through their lines.
I -do not- agree with this practice, but I also don't see how these small-time resellers should be exempt just because they feel like it.
Somehow, I fail to see how any of that smacks of wanting to reduce competition. Really, I think all of the copper should be owned by government and treated as a community commodity, like power is (at least where I live).
Re:Sounds to me (Score:5, Interesting)
> Of course not, but this isn't competition. Bell -owns- this infrastructure, and they
> shape all traffic going through their lines.
But, they don't. That infrastructure was built with significant tax dollars. In exchange for the build-out money, the government retained certain rights. Which is why there was a CRTC hearing at all.
> Somehow, I fail to see how any of that smacks of wanting to reduce competition.
Well, you've stated that you believe that the company owning the last mile (and not the company leasing access to it) should be the one deciding how it's used.
So, what's your proposed solution? That each ISP run their own last mile? Then, should the taxpayers also help each ISP run the last mile to their house? Or should Bell have to give back the money they got from us? If they have to give it back, at what interest rate should we have loaned it to them? And how do we handle 50 competing companies all running wire-willy nilly? What if some of those companies go bankrupt? Who handles the line maintenance? It's redundant, so Bell won't do it. Will the taxpayers pay for removal?
Parent
Re:Sounds to me (Score:5, Insightful)
1. These guys are independent ISPs. They lease last-mile lines from Bell (Bell owns all the phone infrastructure.) to provide DSL and other services.
2. Bell started shaping their own customers months ago, and they started hemorrhaging customers to the smaller ISPs (A free market working properly) who didn't shape traffic.
3. Bell decided to start shaping the traffic from those smaller ISPs.
Parent
Re:Sounds to me (Score:4, Insightful)
OK.
I don't want to deal with Bell. Roger's terms-of-service are unacceptable. I'm a TekSavvy customer.
Find me the regulations that will even _let_ TekSavvy run a copper pair to my house for any amount of money. They can't, Bell owns the right-of-way for phone lines, and Roger's for cable lines.
They should do what they did to electricity and gas. If Bell wants to own the _wires_, they have to split off the company that provides _services_ over them. Or vice-versa; just have a company whose job is to maintain the wires to connect customers and providers.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
What they should be asking for is Bell to cease this practice altogether.
And there is a separate hearing scheduled for next July to discuss precisely that.
Glad I'm not using Bell DSL (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm in a strangely unique environment; Bell Canada doesn't have a DSLAM at my local CO, yet a CLEC (actually an ILEC from a few miles away that bought an ISP a few years ago) decided that it was worthwhile installing one. Bell won't put one in because they think that WiMax is the "right" solution for Rural broadband. Feh.
I have far, far better internet than I ever did in the city, which I was buying resold Bell DSL from the same ISP. And this is with the exact same hardware at my end.
Misleading article (Score:5, Informative)
after a group of companies that resell access to Bell's network complained their customers were also being negatively affected
That's a misleading statement. Bell resells access to its DSLAM- the "last mile" of copper to users. Generally Bell does not provide a backbone internet connection to independent ISPs. Bell is, in essence, altering the traffic of users and ISPs because Bell is the middle-man, and they want to reduce the differentiation between their internet service (Sympatico) and competitors. As I understand it, Bell has not produced any evidence as to what it costs to have traffic crossing their DSLAM.
An example of how this works (at least how I understand it) is via the company Teksavvy. Teksavvy buys bandwidth from ISP backbones, and resells it to consumers. In order to get a DSL line to the consumer, Teksavvy has to go through Bell because Bell has a de facto monopoly on the installation and maintenance of copper lines. Bell connects the copper line at the user's residence to a Bell DSLAM, which in turn is a network switch that connects to Teksavvy's network (and then on to the backbone). Bell manipulates the traffic crossing their DSLAM from consumers to Teksavvy.
Re: (Score:2)
That's more or less how I understand it, as well.
A couple more detail points
- Which ISP traffic is routed to depends on domain after @ in pppoe auth name
- Traffic is routed through some magic private WAN. Probably ATM but I don't know for sure.
- This private WAN is Bell's
- I'll bet that's where the congestion they're trying to shape away is
- OTOH, they're Bell, they could light up some dark fiber if they wanted to
- But they don't want to, because of your excel
Re: (Score:2)
That's a misleading statement. Bell resells access to its DSLAM- the "last mile" of copper to users. Generally Bell does not provide a backbone internet connection to independent ISPs. Bell is, in essence, altering the traffic of users and ISPs because Bell is the middle-man, and they want to reduce the differentiation between their internet service (Sympatico) and competitors. As I understand it, Bell has not produced any evidence as to what it costs to have traffic crossing their DSLAM.
How would it cost them anything to have traffic crossing their DSLAM if they aren't responsible for the backhaul after that? Wouldn't that be akin to me charging money for people using my switched ethernet to reach an outside internet provider that they've paid money for?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It doesn't, strictly, cost them. However, they do need to buy more and more hardware to manage the bandwidth, and aren't able to oversell their network as much. This costs them money, both potentially earned money, and money to upgrade their hardware.
That doesn't make right their shaping, but I do see, having worked at an ISP, that it does cost money to provide service, in one way or another. When you're talking multi-gig speeds, you're not talking cheap hardware anymore. Go price out a 6500 with 10 gig
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In most cases, the session is transitting Bell's network to an interconnect point, wherein it's handed off to the third party and terminates an on LNS.
Generally, the third party doesn't have fiber going to each CO and interconnecting directly to the DSLAM.
Two Options (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Expand the network capacity by laying new line, enabling higher throughput of the entire system. This method will incur great cost, but will not create new customers, nor lose customers, nor will it increase profits over current offerings.
2) Throttle network usage to fit current utilization into current infrastructure in a more manageable fashion. This method will incur significantly lower costs than option 1 (lawsuits included), but will not create new customers, nor lose customers (as we are the only provider available to them), nor will it increase profits over current offerings.
What say ye, shareholders?
Solution (Score:2)
Is class-action lawsuit. Its been done before, and it will be done again. Lets put these teleco's in their place.
This is only part of the story (Score:5, Informative)
The ruling here was simply that Bell Canada isn't doing anything different for their resellers' customers than what they're doing for their own customers. Basically, the question before the CRTC was, is Bell hindering their resellers' customers in an unfair way? And the answer was, no, they treat their own customers the same way.
As to whether "traffic shaping" should be occurring at all, whether with respect to their own customers or their reseller's customers, that is still to be discussed in a separate hearing that starts next July.
To summarize: this really has nothing to do with "traffic shaping". That hearing is yet to come.
Screwing the customer (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically what happens is:
Bell's solution: Our customers are leaving to 3rd-parties because they're tired of getting screwed by our messed-up policies and cruddy service. But wait, we control a small part of the lines that 90% of the competition uses. So, in order to not lose customers, as opposed to fixing the issues, we'll just give everyone the same problem and to make their customers' connections suck too.
Sorry, but the "we're screwing everyone equally" answer doesn't add up.
It's plainly anti-competitive, all you have to ask is:
If Bell didn't have the ability to interfere with 3rd-party connections, would this issue exist, and would the other ISP's gain customers. If the issue wouldn't exist, or the other ISP's would gain customers, then Bell is abusing their control of the lines and monopoly therein.
Parent
Misleading topic (Score:5, Informative)
There is Workaround (MLPPP) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tag this story (Score:5, Interesting)
I would think it would be. If you're selling something to someone, and you change what you're selling them, then you've just broken your contract.
It doesn't surprise me at all that Bell would do such a thing, though. I've got a Bell cellphone w/3 year contract. They've added charges left, right and center since I've got it. So I'm tied in, but they're not. I'm going to bitch like hell about this month's bill, though, as the extra charges alone are almost twice what my original contract was for.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They don't seem to have a problem doing that, either. They (and Telus) changed the rules for text messages back in August when they started charging 15 cents for every message received unless you went on a plan.
Telus also informed us back in August that their new billing policy was to charge for the following month's Internet service in advance, effective immediately. So our bill for that m
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you are in Ontario (I haven't research other jurisdictions) you are free of any contract you may have had with Telus.
Changing the prices definitely constitutes a material change.
http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/statutes/english/elaws_statutes_02c30_e.htm [gov.on.ca]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Except, in this case, these aren't all resellers. Many of the companies complaining lease last-mile (backhaul) bandwidth, and have their own pipe to the 'net.
These companies are not reselling Bell services, they are supposed to be getting 5Mbit/sec per customer of BACKHAUL (from the phone jack to their routers) bandwidth. Again, they supply their own pipe to the 'net.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In the US (Score:5, Insightful)
It's recognized by even the most free market-fanatic economists that the government has a responsibility to break up monopolies.
Parent
Re:In the US (Score:4, Informative)
No, it's recognized that they need to break up monopolies abusing their powers to prevent competition from being established or surviving. Monopolies that exist because no other competitors are willing or able, absent market manipulation by the company with the monopoly, to enter the market are okay.
These are rare, however, they exist.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Also, the traffic getting shaped is almost always pirating of some form (and yes, it has happened to me and it was while downloading fansubs, which are technically illegal)
Even if that's accurate, what business is it of Bell's what kind of data is contained within my packets? Do they also listen to my phone calls so they can degrade the quality of those that talk about activities that may be illegal?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate to be the guy that nitpicks over something trivial, but phone systems are designed to give constant bandwidth to a phone call, so the quality can neither improve nor degrade... That's why you occasionally get "The network is busy, please try again later" messages when you try to make a call... the phone system can't establish a circuit for you.
But to comment on "Do they also listen to my phone calls", I'd have to say "yes and no". Phone companies monitor their networks, and may monitor calls carrie
Re:In the US (Score:4, Informative)
Phone companies monitor their networks, and may monitor calls carried on their network - it is their network
They may incidentally monitor phone calls as a part of normal operations (the lineman plugs into your pair while troubleshooting a problem somewhere) but they don't have the right to just monitor your line for the hell of it.
and you give up your right to privacy (at least privacy from the phone company)
Says who?
I hate to side with telecoms on anything, but in this case I think I need to - as long as people sign up to use a service on company X's network, company X can do whatever they want with the packets that find their way on to the network
I disagree. We've given the telecom industry billions of dollars in tax breaks and preferential treatment (codified monopolies, rights of way, etc) to assist them in building their networks. We have the right to have some say in how they manage those networks. If they want a true free market system then let's bring it on -- I'd love to be able to negotiate with the telephone company for royalties on that pole they put on my property.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
since legally there is no expectation or indication of privacy from the network owner, and that legally they can do pretty much whatever they want to the packets on their network (assuming no breach of contract or misrepresentation of services has occurred).
Since you appear to know the law, it would be helpful if you gave a reference to any evidence you have to this statement. In Canada our privacy laws have always been rather strict (as compared to the US for example). I personally doubt that phone companies can listen to phone calls or Internet sessions at their whim. However if you provide some evidence to this it may change my perceptions (and I'm talking about actual laws or legal precedents and not just possibly illegal EULAs or inadvertent listening do
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Employers may monitor employees' phone calls [privacyrights.org] and location [privacyrights.org] (using cell towers or GPS).
I'm talking about telcos here and not employee/employer relationships.
Cell phone companies are required by the FCC to have the ability to track your location to within 100 meters for the purposes of 911 calls.
Not really relevant to what I was asking.
Telephone company employees may listen to your conversations when it is necessary to provide you with service, to inspect the telephone system, to monitor the quality of telephone service or to protect against service theft or harassment.
That's what I already presumed and stated in my earlier comment; as I've stated I was more interested in knowing whether the telco had unlimited access and liability to listen in whenever they wanted (as was your original statement of facts).
Note that the above paragraph gives telephone companies free license to listen to phone conversations
That's your interpretation. As I've stated I was looking for specific laws or precedent and not legally dubious loop-holes.
Unfortunately all of your examples a
aaaah its not wild west (Score:2)
internet affects A LOT of things. leave aside entertainment, a lot of services that are serving vital functions of the society ranging from companies serving in security areas to health industry, even many local and national government organizations run a lot of services for performing the daily tasks they are responsible with.
no, internet, no part of it can be anyone's backyard, anyone's 'own property'. its VERY vital and VERY public, VERY S