Bell Wants to Dump Third-Party ISP's Entirely

phorm writes "Not only is Bell interfering with third-party traffic, but — according to CBC — they want third-party ISP and phone carriers off their network entirely. Bell is lobbying to have lease-conditions on their networks removed, stating that enough competition exists that they should not longer be required to lease infrastructure to third-parties. Perhaps throttling is just the beginning?"

Re:As an American, I would like to know

[jfp51]

Canada has the Competition Act and also a common law framework that provides the legal basis.

ISPs, not ISP's.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sincerely,

Grammar Nazi.

Re:Hmmmmm.....

[SatanicPuppy]

Ma Bell is alive and well, and living under the name "AT&T" these days, which is technically what she was known as before the whole "Ma Bell" thing...but the current company is technically SBC (Southwest Bell), which happened to be the nastiest and most voracious of the little bells. They switched their name to AT&T inc after they bought the "original" AT&T co which was the chunk of the original company that was allowed to keep the name after the divesture.

(I know the preceding paragraph is nearly incoherent. The business relationships are completely incestuous.)

Half of the original Bells are owned by AT&T these days, and with buyouts like Cingular, it's arguably nastier than before.

Agreed; mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, what the hell is up with these huge, ugly reply and parent buttons? I liked the simple links better. Also, it is harder to view comments that have been censored by the majority with the new Slashcode. That slide bar is very annoying.

Re:DSL reselling/unbundling doesn't work

[Froster]

Until this all hit the fan in recent weeks (after the CRTC affirmed their policy to force Bell to continue to lease its lines) I had no idea there was a problem. Just looking at the math on paper, it seems relatively clear that Bell is still making decent money maintaining the network, as $20 of my $29.99 internet service is going directly to Bell, and I am also paying $9.10 extra for a dry loop to my house as well. So, of my monthly internet cost, $29.10 is for Bell to provide the connection, and roughly $10 is for my ISP to provide a service over that connection. For that small portion of the cost, they provide a generous cap, do not throttle, have excellent customer service and provide a very reliable internet connection.

Bell gets the lion's share of the monthly fee, and my ISP gets the smaller chunk, and does not complain at all about the service they provide vs. its cost.

I would have to say though that my preference would be that Bell should be broken up into one company that maintains the network, and another company that sells the service. That way, Bell's Sympatico service would have to compete on equal footing with any other DSL provider.

Re:They are a utility

[MightyMartian]

I think, in those early days, it was a wise investment on the part of government. Within a few decades, phones reached just about every house in the US and Canada. The government (really the people) knew that no company could raise the capital required for such a massive infrastructure program, so they popped in the right-of-ways and the like and granted the companies an effective monopoly, but with some rather important understandings.

What's happened is that the telcos have forgotten that the taxpayer subsidized and continues to subsidize their networks.

Re:They are a utility

[Nos.]

There is no government imposed system access fee. Every provider in Canada that I've seen charges it, and nobody has to. It was originally intorduced to help expand the network but that day has passed, and now there are no requirements for it, but that didn't stop anybody (including Rogers) from charging it.

Re:As an American, I would like to know

[Missing_dc]

Unfortunately, there is no OPT OUT available for these "public services" or "utilities"
Its take it or move to BFE Midwest and live like a fricken hermit.

That being said the Telecoms and Cable Cos seem to forget they pretty much asked to be a utility to get the (semi)monopoly status, and now don't want to act like one.

And don't get me started on the whole net nutrality subject~!!!! (/sarcasm (for those who do not get the new ~=sarcasm meme))

Re:They are a utility

[sarhjinian]

You're correct. The problem with the System Access fee is that the providers and their resellers have implicitly (and occasionally explicitly) said that it's government mandated. The CRTC has expressed some interest in forcing them to clarify it, which, of course, they're fighting.

I've personally had a "discussion" with a Rogers Enterprise Wireless rep (and his sales engineer) on this point when negotiating our contract. He and several of his colleagues were under the impression that it was CRTC-mandated.

If competition is so great..

[Seek_1]

Would someone please tell me where I can an ISP in Ottawa (Canada's Capital of all places) that doesn't have a downstream cap, or throttling/traffic shaping and has (god formid) decent customer service.

I'm looking for a new ISP because just this week I got a notice from Rogers that they've decided to change the definition of 'unlimited' to 95Gigs + $1.50/Gig after that. While I understand that Rogers is utterly incompetent, once my services and billing were properly set up, they required very little maintenance once they were up and running (it took me almost two years for their 'system' to properly bill me automatically and send me a paper invoice). Because of this I haven't had a reason to switch. ***Attention Shareholders*** Now I do.

I've been looking at CIA.com (www.cia.com) recently as they come highly recommended, but I'm waiting until I can get some more concrete numbers before signing up.

And yes, I will be cancelling my Rogers account now (After nine years), and have no plans to switch over to Bell.

Re:They are a utility

[Nos.]

I think that's starting to change. Rogers says it relatively clearly on their site when you're looking at plans "A $6.95 monthly System Access Fee (non-government fee), ", and I believe others do as well.

That's one of the reasons I do prepaid service. Its about the only way to avoid these fees. We'll be getting a second phone soon and doing the same thing. I was thinking about a couples' package for ~$35/month, until you realize that its actually over $50/month once you total up all the extra fees.

Re:DSL reselling/unbundling doesn't work

[dadragon]

I work for SaskTel [sasktel.com], a smallish telco in Canada, but still an ILEC in Sasktchewan. Here's how our network works:

• Our landline switches have access points for third party long distance switches interconnecting with ours. This allows for long distance competition.
  
  
• Our landline switches also have access points for third party telephone company switches, for example Shaw [www.shaw.ca] has telephone service in my city. Rogers and SaskTel mobility also provice local service.
  
  
• Although we don't have any, third party unbundled loop CLECs are allowed to lease space in our COs to directly provice traditional copper based services like phone or DSL from their own equipment.
  
  
• Our IP core network allows for multiple backhauls onto the internet, so you can lease DSL ports from SaskTel and use your own internet connection for the backhaul. If you're a SaskTel DSL customer you get SaskTel's default backhaul.
  
  

I feel this provides for a fairly open access network. Competitors can hook into just about any area of our network. We have more than enough bandwidth to our DSLAMs to handle 10 meg connections to every port. The only "competitors" that I feel are completely useless are the rebilling kind, the ones who will charge you for our service, which we provide the whole way, just front line tech support is provided by the rebiller.

Re:Do the right thing: dump Bell Canada altogether

[Anonymous Coward]

You can already do that in a good chunk of Saskatchewan. SaskTel and YourLink both offer wireless internet service. And it's fast enough for VOiP.

Plenty of competition? Hardly

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in the Yukon, we have NorthWesTel... owned by Bell Canada. That's it for land lines. No options.

For internet, we used to have 4 ISP's, NWTel's pricing to those ISP's (same idea as the leased services that Bell is trying to kill) crushed two ISP's and NWTel bought the 3rd. So... NWTel is the only option. Oh, wait, there's Navigo as well. hmm it's crappy and ultimately owned by NWTel as well.

Cellular services. We have Latitude wireless (owned by NWTel) and Bell (which, once again, owns NWTel).

NWTel is really great at lobbying the CRTC to expand and extend their monopoly in the north, to the detriment of northerners.

Re:As an American, I would like to know

[skywolf3]

I do know that here in Atlanta AT&T has been making it very difficult for third-party ISPs to operate. With AT&T trying to hard to kick Comcast in the ass, they are now giving priority to AT&T's on demand video, I often get disconnected or get smacked with high latency at peak times. My neighbors who use AT&T's own dsl, don't have these issues. I'm just waiting for the day when AT&T says enough and just boots them. I really don't know what I would do. Comcast filters, AT&T plays mean kid on the block lol. Besides, my third-party ISP actually has employees who answer the phone, speak english, live in the same town as me and KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT!!

Re:As an American, I would like to know

[MrShaggy]

The deal here in Hoser-Ville, is that the ISP's lease the bandwidth from Bell. They also pay around 20$ per user to bell. So I dont see how bell is loosing out here at all. If the independant wants more, they pay for it. It really dosent make any sense.

Re:As an American, I would like to know

[Pig Hogger]

Thank you. I hate having to point this out to libertarian types over and over and over again. They seem to want all of the benefits of society without paying the costs.

Gee, just like the communists...

Re:As an American, I would like to know

[DRACO-]

BFE Bum F.ck Egypt. Middle of Nowhere... Just to the left of Nowhere. So far out from the city, the rural gives up.