Canadian ISP Ordered to Prove Traffic-Shaping is Needed 177
Sepiraph writes "In a letter sent to the Canadian Association of Internet Providers and Bell Canada on May 15, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) have ordered Bell Canada to provide tangible evidence that its broadband networks are congested to justify the company's Internet traffic-shaping policies. This is a response after Bell planned to tackle the issue of traffic shaping, also called throttling, on the company's broadband networks. It would be interesting to see Bell's response, as well as to see some real-world actual numbers and compare them to a previous study."
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hurray! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wrong evidence to ask (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that you have no idea what you are talking about, and no idea what this whole matter is about. Here's what happened:
People who didn't want Bell's throttling read Bell's contract and decided they didn't want it. Instead, they went and got their internet service from a competitor. Unfortunately, since Bell owns the wires, every competitor in the DSL business has to rent bandwidth wholesale from Bell. At first, Bell didn't throttle the wholesale bandwidth, and the competitors could then offer contracts that had no throttling to their customers. Then, without notice, Bell throttles the wholesalers. So even though people read the contracts and refused to agree with throttling, they still get fucked by Bell even though they get their service from a competitor. Reference here [slashdot.org].
Repeat after me: People read their contracts, refused the throttling, went with a provider that didn't throttle, and got fucked anyway. Please... stop talking out of your ass now.
Re:traffic shaping (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Tories and Liberals (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Hurray! (Score:3, Informative)
Bell is paid by the 3rd party ISPs to carry this traffic and the amount they get for this is usually around 80% of what the 3rd party ISPs charge for monthly internet access. They say they are doing this because the network is saturated and all these 3rd party ISP customers are causing congestion. From their own numbers this isn't true and their networks is only at around 50% capacity. It's not clear if Bell is legally allowed to throttle or interfere with traffic going to 3rd party ISPs and especially that they did it without telling any of the other ISPs. What has happened with many other ISPs is that they have already bought dedicated bandwidth expecting the amount of traffic before the throttling. Bell implements the throttling and now they have a huge unused portion of bandwidth that they can't use. Also they are paying bell for many Gbps connections that they can't use due to this and Bell won't give them their money back. Instant profit for Bell.
Re:Hurray! (Score:3, Informative)
Bell rents the lines out by tunneling the pppoe connection right to the reseller isp so the isp can traffic shape if they want to. Bell has right to force business decisions on third party isps since they pay for all of the resources they use.
Re:Hurray! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hurray! (Score:3, Informative)
In an ideal world, there would be free competition, but that's not the situation we find ourselves in. Why? Because Bell has a huge advantage as a result of the network that it built, over the last century or so, while operating a government-granted long-distance monopoly, and with much direct government assistance.
Where do you get this ridiculous notion that no one is paying for this bandwidth?