Bell Wants to Dump Third-Party ISP's Entirely

phorm writes "Not only is Bell interfering with third-party traffic, but — according to CBC — they want third-party ISP and phone carriers off their network entirely. Bell is lobbying to have lease-conditions on their networks removed, stating that enough competition exists that they should not longer be required to lease infrastructure to third-parties. Perhaps throttling is just the beginning?"

Comments

Re:They are a utility

[PFAK]

Why shouldn't they be forced by the government to lease their last mile? The infrastructure that Bell uses for delivery of their service was paid for by Canadian tax dollars, and supported by a government provided monopoly.

Re:They are a utility

[ancientt]

Essentially the tax payers are the ones who created and funded the company. It has served its purpose.

As with any government agency, once the services it provided are done by private industry, it is time to cut out the public funding. The government should sell back all the hardware to all the companies involved and use the funds generated to cut taxes.

Doubtless this seems unfair to Bell, but the government was unfair to everyone when it created an intentional monopoly. When they whine, and they will whine, they should be told to join the competition that they felt was healthy enough.

Re:As an American, I would like to know

[spun]

I know, government regulation of telecoms is so crazy considering that all we taxpayers have done is pay for much of the infrastructure, granted them monopolies, and gave up our property for their right of way. I mean, we should just cancel all our deals with them and let them do whatever they like.

I'd love to see a couple dozen telephone lines coming to my house so I can lease from the company I like, rather than having only one. And I'd also like a couple dozen sewer lines, water lines, and road networks I can choose from, too. As well as competing fire departments, police departments, and sanitation.

I mean, why should I pay for garbage removal when I have no sense of smell. My property, my rules. If I don't want to pay for fire protection, I shouldn't have to. If my house burns down, who else could that possibly hurt?

All these government regulations of private industry do nothing but hurt us. Competition will always ensure we have the best possible services available, and there is nothing government can do that corporations can't do better.

The scary thing is, there are people who actually believe that crap, and want to force those beliefs on us rather than just opting out of the system and making one of their own.

Re:They are a utility

[Gat0r30y]

Why shouldn't they be forced by the government to lease their last mile? well that totally ruins there plans to monopolize the last mile, jack prices through the roof and make a metric (its Canada) assload of cash, all at the taxpayers expense. duh.

Re:Hmmmmm.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Except this is Bell Canada we're talking about, which was split off from the whole bunch about 60 or 70 years ago. They have nothing to do with AT&T or any of the Bells you mention, except that they share a common name, and that's because they were all incorporated by Alexander Graham Bell.

Re:They are a utility

[KillerBob]

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you genuinely don't know what's wrong with your suggestion.

There's plenty of competition in high speed internet, but there is *NOT* plenty of competition in terms of technologies in use. Bell Nexxia owns 100% of the copper to the house. Likewise for cable TV lines... in Ottawa, where I live, for example, 100% of the cable TV lines (and that includes cable Internet) are owned by either Rogers (on the Ontario side), or Videotron (on the Quebec side). There is exactly one provider of wireless Internet services.

That means that if Bell's argument is accepted by the CRTC, the Ottawa market will go from having about 50 options for high speed Internet to having exactly 3, each with a monopoly on their respective technology.

To make matters worse, not one of those three providers offers a service that is suitable for technologies like VPN, or running your own server. All three of them filter access on those ports, and won't allow their users any incoming connections. It's also in their service agreements that they can terminate your service if they catch you running a server.

In other words... not only will the variety of consumer-level services be cut down to 3 monopolies, the quality of services available to consumers will fall into the shitter. It's already fairly well known that if you need to run a VPN, you don't go with Bell, Rogers, or Storm in this city... you go with one of the 3rd parties that's leasing time through one of those three, to get unfettered access. If you want decent access to the Internet, you have to buy a corporate connection from these people... Bell's cheapest runs about $80/month, Rogers is the same, and Storm is $195/month. Just for the privilege of actually having a connection to the 'net which you can use for more than surfing and e-mail.

What's more, tax dollars paid for the establishment of Bell Nexxia. We paid for that copper which they own. So no. They should absolutely be required to continue leasing service. Actually, the Government should acquire Bell Nexxia and turn it back into a crown corporation, and make BCE, the phone/Internet company, lease time from Nexxia as well.

Re:As an American, I would like to know

[trolltalk.com]

We have the Competition Act, which replaced the Combines Investigation Act back in 1986 ...

Also the CRTC.

Bell was able to build out their network thanks to their monopoly position for many decades. The network infrastructure, since it was paid for by the excess levies and guaranteed returns allowed under that monopoly, should be nationalized.

Problem Isn't Bell or the CRTC

[mrobinso]

The most disconcerting message in the story is the interview Nowak had with Paul Geist. In it is mention of the fact that Minister of Industry Jim Prentice is AWOL on the issue. I mean, who would dare ask the Minister in charge of investigating anti-competitive offences - and they are serious offences - to look into what has to be one of the worst companies to do business with in Canada. I won't even mention that one of the most recent former Ministers of Industry had just been previously employed as ::cough:: head of regulatory affairs at ::cough:: Bell Canada.

While you might think that the CRTC is an old antequated fossil that needs to be put out of its misery, the Minsitry of Industry is on life support. What's left of it is being run by gutless bureaucrats more interested in their career path in private business post-federal brothel than protecting Canadians from scheming corporate predators, marketing fraud, advertising scams, artificially high gas prices, the list goes on and on...

Bell Canada is the least of our worries.

Re:As an American, I would like to know

[Kjella]

The thing is that while some things are very effective to run as a monopoly, it's very difficult to make a monopoly run effectively. The drive for margins tend to be lacking throughout the organization, and everyone is bloating their own needs to get a more comfortable budget. Ultimately the politicians granting money try to cut costs but it's like working for a company where only the CEO wants to save money. Also you have issues with workers intentionally slowing down and creating a backlog, it's very easy to lose to passive resistance because usually the solution is to recieve more money, not that the department is laid off because the company is bleeding.

They try various methods like regulation, bids and other things but none of them really work that well. Take bids for example, they usually deliver the minimum of the service requirements, the way the operation is driven is kept as a competitive secret and it's usually hard to get real competition against the incumbent that's already got the staff, the routines and the equipment in place. Regulation is trying to keep the squeeze on the company to simulate the market pressure, but it's really difficult to know how hard to squeeze because the regulated company will undoubtably say you're trying to squeeze blood from a rock. Set service requirements and you'll certainly get a too high claim of how much it'll cost to deliver and so on.

In the end, I understand perfectly well why people look to many of those poorly handled monopolies and say "Man, if only we could get private companies competing for that". I've only dealt closely with one such monopoly and there were simply so many excesses, the great location, the great offices, the fancy equipment in EVERY meeting room, the free beverages and snacks, the great cafeteria and a million other small things... it's all those things that show they got money to spend, and don't really care what the bill adds up to. They just need something that legitimately can be expensed as business cost, and it's fine. They're still on public salary levels and they can't raise those much, but it's no doubt the money was loose and the work pressure low...