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Net Neutrality Debate Intensifies In Canada
MrShaggy tips us to news that the debate over Net Neutrality in Canada is coming to the forefront following the recent discovery that Bell Canada was throttling P2P traffic on the access it had sold to wholesalers. Michael Geist's blog notes a video recording of comments from a member of the Canadian government, as well as coverage from Canadian media. From Ars Technica:
"The Canadian government has in the past pushed the CRTC to deregulate the telecom industry, an approach still backed by Minister of Industry Jim Prentice. Prentice also wants to stay out of the current net neutrality debate, which would seem to be a de facto vote against the idea. He was asked in the House of Commons this week whether his government would do anything about the current Bell/Rogers traffic-shaping controversy. According to the Globe & Mail, Prentice said only that "we will continue to leave the matter between consumers on the one hand and Internet service providers on the other."
"The Canadian government has in the past..."
Does that only strike me as having come straight out of a South Park episode?
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Is anyone else really confused about these ISP's aren't being sued to oblivion for breach of contract?? I'm no expect(ok, I work with wan lines pretty often, but still), but if I have a serious line(say, a t3?) and I find out the SOB ISP is throttling ANY of my data(or even reading it), I will bring an unholy hell of a lawsuit upon them. The likes of which makes most lawyer's cry themselves to sleep. What the hell is going on??
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
This is a case where a problem is being solved by law vice technical means.
Much like the SPAM problem, you'll never be able to legislate the Internet.
Consumers should vote with their money. If ISP#1 is throttling, then stop subscribing. No other ISPs in the area? Get satellite access.
In the mean time, engineers should start working on things like TOR, Freenet, and encryption to ensure that the content on the wires stays free.
In any event, if you allow government to make inroads into what can and can't be legislated online, pretty soon, they'll legislate everything.
This is one Pandora's Box that should not be opened.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Especially in a market dominated by a very small number of giants. When there's no competition, there's no way for consumers to vote with their wallets other than to do without internet access entirely.
I'm fortunate to live in an area where there are *two* competing monolithic ISP's, but if they happened to both engage in these practices I'd be hooped.
The solution is easy... Canada should go on strike! To get more! More money! Like like, Internet money! Yeah that's it!
This is one of (many) places where conservative economic/free market politics just don't work.
While the right wing economists tout the free market as the solution to everything, arguing that an unregulated market is the only way to approach pretty much everything, there are cases where the market is dominated by 1/2/3 players that cannot be avoided. We, as consumers, are not able to vote with our dollars - we have no choice. We did have a choice - Bell was allowing ISPs to resell DSL and manage the data themselves, but when they realized that meant that people (who know/care about such things) were flocking to the unrestricted ISPs, they squashed that avenue to unrestricted net access.
The other competitor, Rogers, hasn't opened their network up to competition (that i know of), so they can do whatever they feel like.
That leaves us with the occasional small wireless isp with leases lines, satellite (slow), or of course, leasing our own line. Yes - we have options, but no, none of them are good for the consumer. Without government regulation, and with the small size of our market (ie: very little competition), the few major ISPs will control our destinies, and it's only a matter of time until they start with tiered data speed.
Web - sure, fast as you'd like, it's highly compressible, proxyable, no big deal.
Email - sure, but you can only have small attachments, but we'd prefer you use our free webmail service.
Music? Only if you buy from our store (or from stores that we have deals with), otherwise, we're going to filter you. Otherwise, we'll limit you.
Video? Only if you buy from our store (or from stores we have deals with). Otherwise, no bandwidth for you.
Overall data? Sure, your unlimited plan will apply, if you shop in our stores. Otherwise, here's a cap. enjoy!
I think the real problem is that Bell/Rogers/etc have been severely overselling their networks without paying the money to upgrade them. Our monthly fees have been slowly creeping up instead of dropping (you'd think I could get high speed internet for cheaper now than I did 10 years ago, but you'd be wrong, for the same level of service). Our connection quality has been dropping. The service level at the ISPs is consistently poor. However, Rogers and Bell are turning out huge profits every quarter. Why? Because they've managed to find a way to provide the minimum of service for the maximum of profit, and their shareholders love it. And ultimately, in todays world, the shareholder is the more important measure of a business than their customers. So long as the share prices stay up, the businesses will continue to do whatever they want. Once the prices start to slip, and they will, or once a better level of competition is introduced/forced, then we might see customer focus becoming a priority.
There are some that say any regulation in business is bad for the economy, that we should let businesses set their policies, and the customers will go where they feel is best. But when there are no reasonable choices, when there is no competition, then the customer loses and big business wins. The government must step in and regulate, until such time as market conditions exist to enable the free market to take a go at managing themselves again.
Positive reinforcement hasn't worked so far, it's time for negative reinforcement. Bad doggy, no treat for you.
$0.02 CDN.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
Laying last mile cable is very expensive - I'd guess there's no law saying someone couldn't lay cable and compete it's just they'd have to charge 10* as much to get their investment back.
In the UK we have much the same situation, with BT owning nearly all of the last mile cable (and the cable companies have said they can't afford to build any more cable, so most parts of the country can't get that and may never do). BT is under heavy regulation so that must offer access to that at competitive rates equally to everyone, and the system works well - there's a *huge* amount of competition... ISPs can either put their own DSLAMs in the exchanges (again under regulation they're granted the right to do that) or rent BT lines right up to their building if they like, and many combinations in between. As a result everyone has access to literally hundreds of ISPs offering differing levels of service - it all goes through BT copper in the end but that doesn't really matter.
You don't shape the last mile btw. that refers to the cable between the exchange and the house. It's typically just copper wire that happens to have dual use for either DSL or dedicated circuits. You need to open up competition at the exchanges since that's the first point that shaping can actually happen.
Ahhh, spoken like somebody who truly doesn't know what they're talking about.
First of all, Bell owns pretty much all the lines, the "last mile" required for any ADSL connection. That leaves pretty much Roger's as their only major competition, as they are a cable-internet provider (they are not a consumer).
There are many other ISP's that offer ADSL services, but they all use Bell lines, and the big issue currently is that Bell is throttling the traffic of their customers. Many of these companies, such as my own provider - Teksavvy - offer reasonable and good service, and have been quite vocal about how Bell is interfering with their services.
So really, the only choice other than Bell is... well.. Rogers. Unfortunately Roger's has a lack of affordable premium options (static IP's, etc), also throttles, port-blocks, and is in general known for service no better than Bell.
That means that:
viable options for the average consumer = 0
The saddest part is that Bell is still getting a cut from all the companies that are leasing lines to provide ADSL service, while doing almost nothing themselves. I would know, because as I've mentioned before, I'm on an ADSL connection that is craptastically slow due to the fact that Bell has overextended the connection to their CO, rather than adding a local repeater/node.
The only other option I could think of would be the local hydro company's (in Toronto at least) wireless offerings, but unfortunately those only work in certain areas, and mine isn't one of them (I've heard that the service is fairly decent though).
While I wouldn't be so hasty to jump on the conservative hate-wagon, I have to agree that Mr. Jim Prentice is a gigantic waste of governmental space. The man has proven time and time again that he serves only the interests of big business, and in his tenure in office hasn't done a single thing for us consumers. If this was my country I'd have the man tried for treason - he's failing to represent not only his constituents, but ALL constituents in Canada.
If he is promised 6M on the download, and that's what he uses, then I will have to disagree with you. It doesn't matter if he uses the pipe getting hentai (care to share?) or is using it to chuck linux ISOs about. He is not using it beyond the specifications outlined. He is using 6M and no more.
You're missing the real problem. I'm gonna pull numbers out of my ass, because I have sinus problems and pulling them out my nose right now would prove impractical. If net company X has a total of 100M of bandwidth they can sell, and they only sell it in 5M chunks and only to 20 people, then everyone can download at their max speed, no one notices, everyone is happy. Sadly, that's not what company X is doing. They have 100M of bandwidth, this is sure. They sell it in 5M chunks. But instead of only selling it to 20 people, they sell to 40. If all 40 people use the 5M of pipe they were promised, company X shits bricks, at best each customer is only getting half of their promised bandwidth, and people are cranky.
The point is, in that scenario, it doesn't matter what each customer of company X is DOING on the bandwidth they are promised. It shouldn't matter. They were promised 5M a piece, and because company X OVERSOLD the bandwidth to make more money, assuming their customers would not use the full potential of what they were sold, everyone gets screwed. Everyone except company X who is now making more money, probably gives shitty customer support, and won't use the money they got to upgrade infstructure and equipment.
FYI, I use Cox Cable in Oklahoma. They're a pretty decent company, but their up time ratings SUCK ASS.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Might be a good time to start up a ISP that doesn't throttle.
Actually, in my business life, I'm part of "big/medium business". My business interests generally align with my personal interests. So far I've seen little evidence that Mr. Prentice has taken my comments seriously, either from a business or a personal perspective, so I wouldn't say it is because he is all for big business.
While I was formerly an active PC member, I have no interest in this Conservative Party. They aren't making friends even in places they should be.
Yes, the situation is the same here, except that they are doing traffic shaping on the last mile. Last mile however goes a little further than you state because while the wholesale ISP has infrastructure at a Bell Canada exchange, traffic has to go through copper wires, then through Bell servers to the exchange where the wholesale equipment is located (even if it happens to be at the same exchange, as data off lines is aggregated at a Bell server somewhere).
We can purchase DSL from other ISPs, but they rely on Bell Canada for this last mile, and Bell Canada has taken it upon themselves to traffic shape EVERYTHING. I'd argue that this is primarily to ensure that their own "Sympatico ISP" doesn't suffer a massive loss of customers when people abandon them for third party ISPs, due to traffic shaping restrictions.
Funny you refer to the Liberals as "spend-spend-spend". They were the ones who brought in balanced budgets for many years (although much credit should go to the PCs for setting the groundwork and taxation (and biting the bullet) on this initially) and the Conservatives have done some of the dumbest things with our money I've seen, for political optics.
Reducing the GST instead of reducing income taxes (everywhere else in the world it is recognized this is a poor move for the economy)is perhaps the dumbest move of all. If anything they should have increased GST and decreased income taxes even further.
What can I say; the Conservative Party make no sense whatsoever. They are just pandering to the lowest common denominator, and I'll vote Liberal or Green (as they are fiscally conservative, or have been) long before I'll support the Conservatives.
The industry minister's response is like saying in the controversy concerning battles at the arena, the Industry Minister said "we will continue to leave the matter between the Christians on the one hand and the lions on the other".