Bell Canada Throttles Wholesalers Without Notice

knorthern knight writes "The Canadian family-run ISP Teksavvy (which is popular among Canadian P2P users precisely because it does not throttle P2P) has started noticing that Bell Canada is throttling traffic before it reaches wholesale partners. According to Teksavvy CEO Rocky Gaudrault, Bell has implemented 'load balancing' to 'manage bandwidth demand' during peak congestion times — but apparently didn't feel the need to inform partner ISPs or customers. The result is a bevy of annoyed customers and carriers across the great white north."

Comments

However in this case...

[Digestromath]

In the case of a highway. A retailing company is leasing 2 roads, that go from A to B, from a wholesaler. One would imagine it would then sustain the approriate traffic a 2 lane road would during all times of the day. In fact the retailer makes this a selling point.

However in this case, the road doesn't terminate at B, it goes on to C (and so forth). The wholesaler also controls the flow of traffic from B to C (even if the distance is arbitrary or non-existant). Thus the wholesaler in this case is forcing the retailers two roadways to merge in one single lane during peak times.

This isn't about the end users clogging up the highways. This is about the unscrupulous merge sign put up during 'peak' times. The idea is the retailer leased two roadways, and they damn well want to use them. If there are too many cars creating a traffic jam, its up to the retailer to decide who gets to use the carpool lane etc.

The answer is always the same

[javilon]

Encrypt all traffic. Kill deep packet inspection. What business do they have with the contents of your communications?

Re:Really?

[electrictroy]

All my other utilities have tired/metered service - electricity, water, even the phone (10 cents per call). Why should the internet utility be the sole exception? I suggest the following solution:

- $15 a month for economy service (~50 gigs limit)
- $30 a month for standard service (~200 gigs limit)
- $45 a month for premium service (~500 gigs limit)
- $100 a month for unlimited

That's a similar structure to how electricity, water, and phone utilities are priced for consumers (albeit with differing dollar amounts). And yes I think that's entirely fair. The more you download, the more you should pay, because you are hogging more bandwidth than I am.

And the internet utility can take the extra dollars and use them to buy new servers and lay additional cable to support their high-demand customers, rather than block access to P2P or Itunes.com.

Re:It's not necessarily that easy

[Endlisnis]

Your argument makes sense for some ISPs, but not for this specific situation:
1) Teksavvy supplies it's own bandwidth, and only leases the 'last-mile' connection from Bell Canada.
2) Teksavvy does oversell, but currently keeps up with it's traffic even at peak times.
3) Bell is throttling P2P on Teksavvy's last-mile, even though it has little impact on their ability to provide service to it's own customers.
4) The type of throttling they are doing is interfearing with QoS systems in routers that ensure VoIP works. It is causing reduced quality in VoIP services.
5) Selectively throttling specific protocols is a slippery slope. What's to say that they don't decide that VoIP is the next service that gets eliminated because it competes with their local phone service?

This is a blatant attempt by Bell to remove a competitive advantage from competing ISPs.