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I live in Quebec, Canada very near Montreal and our cable provider here is Videotron. Standard cable modem speed is 5.1Mbits Downstream and about 768 upstream (not very sure about the upstream). That's what they advertise, but I'm actually running about 600 KBytes/secs when I download. Just a bit slower, but hey, it's VERY stable and always fast, all the time...

What is very cool with them, is they're currently beta testing VOIP, so my local phone line is provided by them also using the very same cable modem and it works perfectly. Some minors glitches at first but now, it is perfect. I'm not even connected to Bell Canada anymore.

Btw, anyone who is deserved by them can be part of the beta testing, you just have to reside on the south shore of Montreal and call them, here's the number: (514) 380-7763. I got set you up for free and have 4 months of free local service and Quebec (province) long distance calls free, they also have a web page with some details (I only have the french page on hand though, sorry...

RedVortex

P.S. I don't work there :-) Really... Too bad though...

i paid for cable for the sole purpose of getting the sports channels so i could watch some basketball. unfortunately not all the games can be found on the net. there are some you'll find on suprnova.org, and even some older classic games (bull vs lakers '91 for example). not only are the two sports channels i get are on seperate packages, but the majority of the games are shown on the channel with the more expensive one. for whatever reason, even during the nhl lockout, they've decided to air minor league hockey, and more (guess what) curling instead of basketball.

i'm living in montreal, which basically has videotron as a monopoly - all i get are TSN and sportsnet-east , and all i get this week are 2 NBA games. Why do I want the bundled crapload of quebecois channels in my cable package? Yes, they even have a remake of paris hilton/ nicole richie's "the simple life" in french with their own montreal "actresses" WITH the exact theme song!

Both of my ISPs do this. It's not a problem. I either use their SMTPs for outgoing mail, or tunnel to my own SMTP via openvpn/ssh, or use SMTP-AUTH on a different port.

All traffic on both of these ISPs, on port 25 gets blocked before it hits the real world.

S

All the ISPs are going to start filtering outbound port 25. If you want to run your own mail server you'll have to route it through their mail server, or use non-standard port number to route thru a 3rd party mail server.

My current ISPs (work and home) already do this. I still, however use my own mail services, by: SMTPS (authenticated, and port is not blocked), VPN or SSH tunnel. I realize, however, that 2 of those three are WAY above the heads of most end users.

Unfortunately, these don't SOLVE the problem, because as someone else said, if these viruses/worms/whatever-we're-calling-them-this-wee k can read address book info, the probably can also read SMTP settings, and I want to send mail (-:

Fortunately, I haven't used any form of Outlook (other than testing) since 1999.

S

That's *so* good! Its just sad that Videotron are such a jerk company, which are probably still willing to collaborate with the CRIA.

Videotron is the cable / ISP division of Quebecor, which sales music records through Archambault and also produce records for its "artistic" reality show, Star Academie. That's why they are so eager to give names to the cria.

I do not know how they do the detection part, but one of my colleagues came for advice on how to clean/up secure his own PC, because it was shut down from the network.

Their method is really simple:

• John Doe machine is infected
• It is shut down from the network
• John Doe calls to investigate what's wrong
• Get an explanation, is reconnected to allow him to download some anti-virus/pers. FW, etc...
• Everybody is happy

I like this attitude, because even if it does not prevent on-purpose spam, it at least prevent unknowable people to spread nastywares. The only problem beeing that the help desk should point to the IPS URL where they explain how to secure your machine. I hope they will get it right...

In fact, it might be the opposite. Major broadband ISPs (Bell - DSL, and a few cable companies Cogeco, Rogers, Videotron) are not governement subsidised, but have to live with high taxes and stronger regulations.

Although we have the same problems as those mentionned in the article: little competition for the last-mile. As a result, my DSL cost me 5$/month more that it used to. (And I can't even switch - no cable broadband on my street)

My experience: broadband is great, and worth the money - I can't live without it; but the service is getting worse, and the price increases. There is something wrong there that needs to be investigated.

I pay 29.95$CAN (18.77$US) per month for Videotron's Cable modem services, 3000 Kpbs max downstream and 300 Kpbs max upstream.

It's supposed to have a monthly limit of 6 GB downstream and 2 GB upstream per month, but it was never enforced, yet.
GFK's

$5/GB would be a sweet deal.

My provider (hurray for monopolies!) gives me 5GB downstream and 1GB upstream per month for the flat rate.

Any traffic exceeding those limitations is billed.
AT 7 CENTS PER MEGABYTE!

Yes, I did type that correctly.
$71.68 per GB.

I'm glad they didn't even bother trying to charge me during Sircam/CodeRed. My traffic light (incoming) was going crazy, and I wasn't about to pay them for traffic I didn't ask for.

On that note, if I get pingflooded some night, without noticing -- say I get 100kB/sec for 3 hours; and it's over my limit, that costs me ~$100.