Bell Canada Official Speaks Out On Throttling

westcoaster004 brings to our attention an interview with Mirko Bibic, head of regulatory affairs for Bell Canada, discussing the ISP's traffic-shaping practices. This follows news we discussed recently that a class action lawsuit was filed against Bell for their involvement in traffic shaping. Bibic reiterates that internet congestion is a real problem and claims that the throttling had nothing to do with Bell's new video service. CBC News quotes him saying: "If no measures were taken, then 700,000 customers would have been affected by congestions during peak periods. We want to obviously take steps to make sure that doesn't happen. So this network management is, as we've stated, one of the ways to address the issue of congestion during peak periods. At the end of the day, the wholesale ISPs are our customers and we generate revenue [from them], so we want to make sure we're serving them to the best of our ability as well."

Reason says

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone who pays for health insurance, and happens to be chronicaly ill, shouldn't be put on the slow lane just because it costs more to treat him. Same goes for P2P traffic, don't discriminate me bro.

Oh yeah?

[Anonymous Coward]

s. We want to obviously take steps to make sure that doesn't happen.

Oh yeah? Then add more bandwidth. Problem solved. Delivering as advertised is not a value added service!

Just an excuse

[rstewart]

This is just the same excuse that other telcos are giving for overselling their bandwidth vs their customers needs. These telcos need to learn how to provide enough bandwidth for peak times if that is what they're selling. If someone were to pick up a telephone at peak times and get an all circuits are busy message regularly during peak hours than there would be hell to pay.

We need to stop letting them get away with selling service to us that they cannot provide. As consumers we need to look towards other providers and build a market for service providers that don't pull these kinds of games. We also need to make it clear to these companies that their selling us services they cannot deliver is not acceptable to us. The only way they will ever get that message is through their subscriber numbers. As long as the big telcos and ISPs have the bulk of the customers they will never see the light until an exodus towards alternatives starts.

The only way that an exodus towards alternatives will occur is if we the people move in that direction and help the smaller companies build themselves up by moving to them.

This is all about overselling which has to be done to a certain extent but when the peak times cannot regularly be met then it is too oversold. Unfortunately consumers these days are sheep and will stay with these companies because they are cheaper/easier to get service from.

Shaping? Si. Throttling? No.

[Just Some Guy]

If they were serious about addressing congestion, they'd prioritize traffic flows and be done with it. I don't think anyone would have a problem with putting P2P at a lower priority to HTTP. Of course, that doesn't help their master plan of billing content providers for tiered service, so they don't do it.

Wanna reduce congestion?

[iminplaya]

Then tell all the big site owners to cut out all the tube clogging, virus riddled advertisements. Or charge them extra for it.

This is what happens...

[an.echte.trilingue]

This is what happens when ISPs sell customers more capacity than they can deliver. They should lose this because they promised a product they couldn't deliver and that's fraud.

Re:Just an excuse

[thegameiam]

Oversubscription is a very, very normal thing in service provider networks. Frame-Relay oversubscription is generally 15:1, ATM oversubscription was about 5:1, IP oversubscription is about 3:1. If you want truly non-oversubscribed bandwidth, prepare to pay a LOT more for it.

The problem isn't oversubscription, it's that the capacity management policies of some providers haven't caught up with the usage patterns of the customers. During peak periods, something's got to give.

Given that there are no providers selling truly non-oversubscribed bandwidth today, would you rather that the providers change their advertisements to say that, or raise their prices to sell dedicated bandwidth?

Throttling vs Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

If all the big service providers invested more profits into increasing infrastructure instead of giving shareholders, board members, and CEO's another 1.5M dollar raise this year, they wouldn't have to throttle back the bulk of their customers, the lowly single user. As happens elsewhere, big business gets the gravy while we get what's left on the bone, thrown, without a though of consequence, to their diamond and gold encrusted loafers.

Re:Wanna reduce congestion?

[klingens]

If their network can't take the Net as it is, then they have a few choices:
a) sell slower links to their customers
b) sign up fewer customers (fat chance....)
c) expand the network

Double dipping from customers and content providers is not the way

Re:Shaping? Si. Throttling? No.

[1u3hr]

. I don't think anyone would have a problem with putting P2P at a lower priority to HTTP.

If other protocols were impeded, soon, all P2P would look like HTTP.

Re:Just an excuse

[poetmatt]

Not being oversold = pay more? Please.

They know damn well the average usages of their customers, this is more a refusal to upgrade the infrastructure and blaming it on those who are serious users. Doing so would actually be competitive even and earn more business! what an idea!

If you are advertising XYZ service, it doesn't mean shoot anyone else in the foot in order to guarantee it.
If you can guarantee something by shortchanging the rest of your customers, thats not exactly a bargain.

How about use your government subsidies for what they were intended (which would actually generate more revenue) and not as profit margins?

In the end its the cable companies looking at short term revenue instead of long term

Re:Just an excuse

[Shaman]

So, you don't want to pay more for essentially dedicated Internet accesss... but you expect them to pay billions of dollars to upgrade their infrastructure. Got it.

typical bs

[UU7]

Ok, so they need to manage "congestion", so why is it a hard cap of 30 KB/s on downstream instead of say 100 KB/s?
And this DOES have something to do with their video site, you're launching a bandwidth intensive application which will be used during prime "congestion" hours. Disgraceful.

Re:Just an excuse

[poetmatt]

They've already been paid billions of dollars by the government. You saying they should get more?

Re:Just an excuse

[klapaucjusz]

Oversubscription is a very, very normal thing in service provider networks.

I think you're confusing oversubscription and unsufficient capacity. Oversubscription is a good thing, it's the very reason we have switched networks in the first place.

The point is that a properly designed and sufficiently provisioned network should not suffer from congestion even if it is oversubscribed. If they've got congestion in their network core, then either they're doing their routing and scheduling all wrong, or they're underprovisioning their network.

Which is fine, as long as they explicitly sell it as ``underprovisioned service''.

What about transparency and accountability?

[dpbsmith]

I believe them.

The problem is, how will we ever know whether or not a particular provider is throttling traffic in a fair and neutral way for the overall benefit of its customers... or whether it is cutting deals to favor business partners... or certain industry segments (the RIAA and MPAA come to mind)... or even political parties?

If common carriers are allowed to do this, how will we know when they stop serving the public and start serving themselves... and how will we able to stop them?

They've chosen to solve their problem in a cheapjack, lazy, sloppy way that virtually guarantees future abuse.

Re:Just an excuse

[Red Flayer]

They've already been paid billions of dollars by the government. You saying they should get more?

Source, please.

I keep seeing people write this, but I am unable to find good information to back it up. Are you repeating rumor, or can you substantiate?

Also, received tax breaks != "been paid".

Re:This is what happens...

[Wrath0fb0b]

Do you have any idea how much it costs to get uncontended internet? In the US, $300/mo gets you a T1 (1.5/1.5).

For the vast majority of consumers, if they were forced to use an ISP that didn't "sell more capacity than they can deliver", e.g. an uncontended line, they would prefer not to buy internet at all.

The (sad, perhaps) fact of internet service provision is that without pushing contention to 10~20, prices would be beyond the average consumer's desire to pay for internet.

Re:Shaping? Si. Throttling? No.

[Just Some Guy]

If other protocols were impeded, soon, all P2P would look like HTTP.

What do you mean by "impeded"? I'm not advocating blocking anything in the slightest. However, you can prioritize highly interactive traffic (IM, HTTP, SSH) over bulk data like FTP or P2P transfers. This lets all the packets through, but doesn't make browsing impossible just because a tenth of an ISP's customers are downloading screengrabs of the new Indiana Jones.

Re:Just an excuse

[joelwyland]

I believe having an empty highway would be faster than a congested one.

No freeway stays empty. Every time they add a new lane onto one of the freeways in Los Angeles, traffic moves smoothly for about a month and then people see there is more space on the freeway and fill it up again.

Re:Just an excuse

[tomhudson]

For decades, Bell Canada was a goivernment-regulated monopoly with a guaranteed profit margin. In other words, the people over-paid for decades for phone service, thanks to government regulation. It was necessary at the time, but it should have had a sunset clause whereby the network would eventually revert to and be controlled by the public.

Remember, in Soviet Canuckistan, Bell throttles YOU!

Re:This is what happens...

[complete loony]

The main problem with the current state of ISP's is that they *claim* to sell unlimited / no contention internet access and have no intention of ever delivering. Instead they throttle, block, apply qos, or otherwise impose a hidden limit on the bandwidth you are allowed to use.

If you want to limit the used bandwidth, go ahead. Just spell out exactly what those limits are in a contract with your customers.

Equality

[Kaseijin]

Also, received tax breaks != "been paid".

They have the same effect on the bottom line.

Re:This is what happens...

[Dun Malg]

Do you have any idea how much it costs to get uncontended internet?

There's a wide gulf between full dedicated bandwidth for every endpoint and unilaterally throttling the crap out of certain customers on a shared pipe. In the absence of the specifics of their TOS, I can't say what they promised, but calling it a 1.5Mbps connection when it never gets 1.5Mbps because they're choking certain services, that's skating the edges of reason.

Re:Just an excuse

[Dun Malg]

Given that there are no providers selling truly non-oversubscribed bandwidth today, would you rather that the providers change their advertisements to say that, or raise their prices to sell dedicated bandwidth?

False dichotomy. You're offering only the extremes as choices. The real question is "how should they deal with people using more and more bandwidth as time goes on". This is not just a P2P issue. The longer the internet exists, the larger the stuff people push around on it gets. This is practically a corollary of Moore's Law, here. Hard drives get bigger, cameras gain resolution, RAM increases, screen resolutions grow--- all of this translates to bigger and bigger files and data streams going over the same pipes.

Now, given that usage in general is never going to go back to the "email and text web pages" trickle of the late 90's and anyone with half a brain should realize this, what is an appropriate reaction by those who provide connectivity:

A) Build more capacity and adjust your rates accordingly to cover the cost
B) Choose a particular class of connection you "disapprove of" because it exposes the weakness of your network and throttle it.

Re:Either way you cut it: it stinks

[gmack]

It's because Bell started forcing third party ISPs to do it even though they have to pay for dedicated links between Bell's equipment and the ISP.

Re:This is what happens...

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, let's not take this too far. Contended lines are fine, but *oversold* lines are not. Bell Canada sold access to 700,000 more customers than its lines could handle without traffic shaping. Analogize it to water pipes: would you prefer having your shower at half pressure at peak showertimes so that the water provider could sell to more customers?

Re:This is what happens...

[Znork]

they would prefer not to buy internet at all.

Mmm, no. They'd prefer to buy internet with speed appropriate for their desired price range.

For the ISP it's much easier to compete by marketing bullshit speeds they have neither capability nor intention to actually deliver. Competing on price would be much more of a pain, not to mention that the big guys lose the advantage of wider throttling gains than the smaller ISPs can achieve.

without pushing contention to 10~20, prices would be beyond the average consumer

It's not a question of contention, it's a question of labels. It would be entirely possible to sell exactly the same service as today, with the exact same infrastructure as today but with an accurate label. If the connection is throttled, fine, sell the connection as whatever the throttling is at. Consumers don't want that? Then let them go to the more expensive competitor that actually upgrades its infrastructure.

Incumbents love getting us lost in minutiae

[doppiodave]

And that's why Bell's "response" is fronted by their head of regulatory affairs - whose role in life is to keep this entire discussion in so-called public hearings before a regulatory tribunal, the last place you'll ever find an actual member of the general public. Bell has survived for over a century in Canada by ensuring a) that nobody but economists, lawyers and policy wonks ever gets a word in edge-wise; and b) that even when ordered to play nice with new entrants (unbundling network for resale, etc), they will keep coming up with ingenious ways to drag their feet on progress. And they've succeeded brilliantly, partly because non-facilities-based competition doesn't work. But what the telcos, and cablecos, really don't want, in Canada or the US, is for the great unwashed public to discover... FTTH! And that all the copper plant they're squeezing the last dollar out of (for DSL and DOCSIS) is part of a holding pattern to keep typical residential bandwidth down in the 5 Mbps vicinity. In other words, a scarce resource. What's this horsemanure about "uncontended interntet" and freakin T1 lines? That's where the ILECs want the debate to stay. Meanwhile, anybody get a glimpse of the OECD Broadband Report released 2 weeks ago? The one that shows the US dropping - again - among the 30 member countries in BB rankings. And Canada coming up with one of the lowest FTTH scores on the planet. This debate's gotta move to a 3-to-5-year horizon - to a day when throttling is a non-issue, and the real issues resolve to whether residential pipes are still under the control of providers who lie through their teeth, never spend a dime on technical innovation and will fight to the death to own both the pipe and the content.

Re:This is what happens...

[fortyonejb]

Oh yes, you hit that nail on the head... /sarcasm. You seriously want to talk about responsibility? How about ecological responsibility. Lets take a mode of transportation that is already fuel intensive and make it worse. We're trying to use less energy, unless you have some anti gravity devices you've hidden away, I find flying cars to be much less responsible.
On topic, ISP bitching and moaning is getting old. They refuse to improve infrastructure and instead complain that we "use too much" while they pocket the cash. I hope everyone can follow this excellent business plan. I'm awaiting traffic shaping at my local emergency room.

Re:Bell absolutely should be allowed to throttle..

[yabos]

They should be able to do what they want on Sympatico, but that is supposed to be separate from Bell Canada. Bell Canada has to give access to 3rd party companies. That means the 3rd party company pays Bell for dedicated links over their ATM network. The 3rd party provides their own connection to the internet backbone. Bell is only providing ATM transit. That is the problem. Bell Nexxia is supposed to be separated from Sympatico. One is an internet service(Sympatico), the other is the core network.

They are screwing with data for other companies. Imagine that Peer 1 started throttling torrents over their network because they say it takes up too much bandwidth. People would be outraged.

How oversubscribed is Bells network? numbers...

[guidryp]

Bell sells a capped service. They say you can get 60G/month. So it should be easy to figure out the average load on the network with everyone under this Cap. If Bell can't actually provide the service they sell, then they should set the cap at a level they can support.

Think for a second how oversubscribed Bells network is. Here you can use Bells own claims. "5 percent of users generate 60 percent of its total traffic":
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080519-regulators-want-answers-from-bell-canada-on-p2p-throttling.html [arstechnica.com]

So how much are those nasty 5% capable of gobbling down?

If you max your cap that is 2G/day. Say all of it is in the peak 12 hour window (but actually heavy downloaders run 24/7).

So 1G/6hours. 167MB/hour = 45 kB/s. This is the most on average, that the theoretical bandwidth hogs can use. Bell advertises a service that is 10 times that speed. So if everyone was a peak user and only used it during the peak window, bells network is over-subscribed by 10 to 1 vs the evil bandwidth hogs.

BUT these are the evil 5% choking down 60% of the bandwidth according to Bell. How much does the other 40% (good users) average? So (60%) = 5% x 45 kB/s = 224kB/s, so (40%) = 150kB/s /95% = 1.58 kB/s

So a "good" user averages 1.58kB/s, less than modem speed. If sold a 5mb/s connection (Bell advertises up to 7mb/s), they are oversubscribed about 300 to 1 on what they expect from users.

So is a 300 to 1 over-subscription fair? Perhaps bell should be forced to tell it's customers their target average usage for their network. In Bells case that seems to be 1.5kB/s average if used a lot by everyone. Is this adequate for a service sold as up to 7mb/s fast and never shared??
http://www.bell.ca/shopping/PrsShpInt_Perf.page [www.bell.ca]
"Consistently fast service that's never shared"

High speed always on, never shared internet connections are not the telephone service, with 5 minute hold times and 2 hours a week usage. This is multi-hour/day usage. Attempting to solve bandwidth problems by traffic shaping traffic you don't like is a never ending cat and mouse game that doesn't address the real issue: Over subscription of the network or a completely incorrect usage model. This has to be addressed regardless of any traffic shaping. What is next shaping youtube? Voip? VOD? How can this be justified when you start offering VOIP and VOD services.