Regulator to hear Bell Canada network throttling case
Bell Canada, the giant Canadian telco, is before the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission over its throttling practices, whereby it secretly corrupted the download sessions of its customers. The company also interfered with the connections initiated by its wholesale customers -- ISPs that leased lines from the giant and re-sold them to end-users. Bell said that it had to cripple everyone's connections, or the people who bought network access from its wholesale customers would get a better service than its own retail customers, which would be "unfair" to retail customers. Steve sez,
According to the CBC, after twice delaying the ruling, the CRTC will make a landmark decision on the Bell Throttling case by 9 a.m. tomorrow. The decision will determine whether Bell Canada has violated the Telecommunications Act by slowing down the Internet access it sells to wholesale customers.Every time I'm asked whether I'd consider moving back to Canada sometime, the answer is the same: "Not until the country gets some real telcom regulation." I earn my living on the Internet. I can't afford to live somewhere where the telcos get to throw away your packets if they don't fit their business model.Steve Anderson from SaveOurNet.ca coalition will be available for comment.
Steve said today, “This decision has huge implications for Internet service competition online innovation, consumer choice and free speech. The biggest battle over the Internet is yet to come, but this ruling will signal whether the CRTC is willing to take action to put Canada on a path that supports online innovation, and online choice. Otherwise the CRTC is abdicating its responsibility to Canadian people and putting us on a path towards a more closed Internet defined by the interests of big telecom companies.”
CRTC to Make Landmark Decision on Internet Freedom (Thanks, Steve!)
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This could set some landmark prescedence for net issues... I've always been a little bit peeved that ISPs throttle things such as BitTorrent connections (by throttling the user's whole connection, not just the torrent packets). I know a lot of people use the excuse "well, torrents can be legal too" eg Linux, but we have to look at the bigger picture, and that is that the ISPs have to pay for bandwidth, and torrenting is a gray area. It would be good to see if from their perspective- they aren't just throttling because they are mean and want to stop people from pirating music and movies, they are just trying to maintain quality of service and their margins...
Bell is a common carrier. It's one of the reasons I use them as my ISP rather than using cable. Because common carriers DON'T interfere with the traffic on the wires... Or so I thought.
Sigh...
I've used Bell for years. By and large they have been good to me. Over the last year or so I have noticed the throttling with my torrents, but it only seems to be from late afternoon to late evening. By midnight it all picks up again.
I'm interested to know if the ruling would affect Bell's individual customers as well, or only its wholesale customers.
Can someone clarify this:
Is Bell throttling it's own customers usage, then using that poor service as a baseline to justify throttling its wholesale line access until the wholesale user service is about as bad as a direct customers is?
Bell doesn't throttle encrypted torrent connections.
'Sayin.
The ruling has been made.
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/NEWS/RELEASES/2008/r081120.htm
In a nutshell, the CRTC has ruled that Bell Canada can continue to throttle traffic that passes through their control because (Bell claims) they throttle theirs and resellers' traffic equally.
The CRTC will, however, investigate the appropriateness of this and other "traffic management" measures by Canadian ISPs. Public comments are encouraged.
they are just trying to maintain quality of service and their margins...
By degrading the quality of their service?
That's circular, and the only gain is to their margin.
Not that I really use torrents, but the few times I have for legitimate purposes, my Cogeco connection didn't throttle anything.
I'm surprised by the ruling - in that they claim the throttling was fair.
Usually, the other ISPs have pay for their bandwidth (and I believe bulk purchasers were throttled too?), so I'm surprised that any throttling there can be justified.
...especially under the faulty logic where Bell degraded their own clients, so it's only *fair* to degrade the competitors too. Everyone was treated equally. Hmm.
If Bell thought this was all legal and made sense, they'd have notified the throttled bulk customers (ISPs) of their improvements. :\ Though my ISP experience was that Bell denied all network problems until proof from us was provided in triplicate and with threats.
At least my reading of the ruling says Bell must provided 30 day notifications in the future.
McBobbo, the CRTC was asked by the Canadian Assn. of Internet Providers to determine if Bell Canada, as an IP, acted anti-competitively by throttling wholesale bandwidth that they provide to other IPs for resale.
The CRTC found that Bell did not, because they also throttle the bandwidth that they themselves retail.
As to the larger question of how throttling affects customers, the CRTC will address this next year.
Not that I really use torrents, but the few times I have for legitimate purposes, my Cogeco connection didn't throttle anything.
Ryan, Cogeco likely has different traffic-shaping procedures in place.
For example, I have learned that I can count on Rogers terminating downloads at the 20 MB mark on weekends, but not during week days.
As another example, the CAIP complaint included the information that Bell Canada throttling took place primarily between 4:30 p.m. and 2 a.m. (Cynics will note that this targets individual users instead of the biggest bandwidth hogs, businesses.)
I thought that CBC's comment on the subject this morning was (unintentionally) apposite:
Cory, so strange to hear you say,
"Not until the country gets some real telcom regulation. I earn my living on the Internet. I can't afford to live somewhere where the telcos get to throw away your packets if they don't fit their business model."
i understand your trepidation. but i find the Big Brother/ anti-immigrant mentality far more frightening than a failure to regulate the telcos. Is that really your reason for living abroad?
interesting quote, think it true?:
"It's a simple scam. Big corporations needing special favours from the CRTC hire CRTC employees to manage CRTC regulatory affairs for them. That's why all these interventions from major corporations are signed by former CRTC employees. The salaries that these ex-CRTC employees earn wildly exceed any possible amount they could ever make at the CRTC :!:
Present CRTC employees ass-kiss the corporations doing the hiring because getting hired for a big super paying job for a CRTCer is like you or I winning the lottery.
I wrote this intervention in May 2001, five years ago, sadly nothing has changed and we have more evidence of CRTC corruption."
@The Unusual Suspect
Yup, I got that - I just didn't phrase it so well. From the #6 link, I read the decision before posting and the follow article on the original link site.
“Based on the evidence before us, we found that the measures employed by Bell Canada to manage its network were not discriminatory. Bell Canada applied the same traffic-shaping practices to wholesale customers as it did to its own retail customers,” said Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.C., Chairman of the CRTC.
But I'm still surprised that wholesale bandwidth throttling is okay (aka not discriminatory) - which are includes competitor IPs not big enough to peer, just because Bell's throttles their own ISP customers - this is why CAIP cared, right? It's unfortunate reasoning by the CRTC and side-steps the issue.
It demonstrates the issues of a competitor owning the network. Maybe not all of it, but much of it.
And off topic a bit, I was a network admin at a small ISP for a couple years helping juggle services, peering, paid bandwidth usage, and so on. Bell doesn't like sharing DSL, and not surprisingly did nothing to help competitors it wasn't legally required to. Thank goodness there are more competitors in the back end bandwidth.
The good bit of the decision at least (IMO), so at least now they can't (I hope) pull stunts like this in secret (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2782/125/):
...Bell Canada will be required to notify its wholesale customers at least 30 days in advance of making changes that impact on the performance ...
@1
Yes, they pay for their bandwidth, just like their customers do and their customers pay more then they do, so if they have a bandwidth problem they should buy more bandwidth, not just throttle connections to keep pushing their margins.