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Bell Canada's Misinformation About Throttling

Posted by kdawson on from the competition-in-a-natural-monopoly dept.

rsax writes "Bell Canada's chief of regulatory affairs Mirko Bibic has been attempting to justify the throttling of the last-mile connection to independent ISPs. As is typical, Bell Canada is abusing people's confusion between issues around Network Neutrality and the last mile natural monopoly. If people continue to confuse these two related but separate issues, Bell Canada and other incumbent phone and cable companies will win this critical debate."

8 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Just nationalize it... by ArIck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Canadian government should just nationalize the last mile cables and have a government agency responsible for maintaining and upgrading the lines. Bell has enjoyed its monopoly position with free right of way, government subsidies and floor pricing set by CRTC so Bell can not complain they made a loss by setting up the line in the first place.... their investment has been multiplied tenfold.

    And for those skeptics who think they government would not be able to maintain it I would say this: If they could make our roads run in a decent way, the garbage collection in a decent way then the last mile cabling could be done in a decent way also. Ofcourse if required they could just contract the maintenance out to Bell Canada but then at least the government would be incharge.

    1. Re:Just nationalize it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This has already been done with electricity in Ontario. No one is going without electricity for weeks on end.

  2. Eventually by Auckerman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One day "the people" are going to learn the only thing a company is interested in is making money. They work for the consumer when it's more profitable to work for the consumer than it is to do something that isn't in the interested of the consumer. Network congestion is not solved by throttling, the only thing throttling does is make the internet slower. Which is supposedly the very thing it is supposed to solve.

    Of course, that's what they say. Here's the thing, if those guys could figure out a way to charge people for calling me on my phone, they would. Oh, but you say they are already paying for phone coverage, well our phone network is getting over used, we need set priorities, so we are going to direct your call in 5 minutes while more important people (who paid extra) can make calls to out customers right now. Sounds stupid doesn't it. IT'S THE SAME THING THEY ARE PROPOSING.

    One thing I don't get, why does something magically get confusing when the words "computer" or "internet" are used in the business discussion? Like somehow it's all of a sudden a debatable thing to talk about?

    Oh, that article writer is an idiot. Net Neutrality needs to me set in stone by law, end of story. Networks are made faster by putting in more pipes, not by turning off/down some of them.

    --

    Burn Hollywood Burn
    1. Re:Eventually by Auckerman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, it is the same thing. I pay for my network access, you pay for your network access. I don't pay to access YOUR network to YOUR network company. The agreements between the companies take care of that. The internet functions identically to the phone network. Making ME pay your phone company to call you faster is the same thing as making me pay your internet provider to send you a page faster. They are both same exact thing and both not in the interest of the consumer.

      --

      Burn Hollywood Burn
  3. Re:Shocked and appalled by lusiphur69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The only users who are really inconvenienced by traffic shaping are the system abusers. All others use a paltry amount of bandwidth which is not throttled."

    Huh? You've got to be joking. People streaming endless YouToob garbage take up a 'paltry' amount of bandwidth? Large scale data transfers to co-located servers? VOIP applications like Skype? Just about any streaming application takes a significant amount of bandwidth and I suspect that you are aware of this.

    The ONLY - your words - users who are inconvenienced are 'system abusers' (your own perjorative)? Here you have adopted the dishonest language of the money-hungry state-supported ISP's.

    First off, I fail to understand how a customer who is using their service as advertised (X amount of throughput) can 'abuse' the system. Do they send endless amounts of SYN packet requests? Beat their modems and forget to send them birthday cards? What is your definition of abuse?

    I certainly don't call it abuse if I pay 2$ to cross a toll road at a max rate of speed of 55 mph. Nor would I call it abuse if the toll road company offers to allow me 'unlimited' access to the road for 20$ a month, even were I to drive tour buses packed with people down the road, 24/7. If the toll road operator complained about the excessive traffic my bus was generating, they have two options: widen the road or amend the contract. They cannot simply shoot the tires as I pass by in my bus (and everyone else driving a bus), then tell everyone they have improved road service.

  4. Re:Shocked and appalled by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How frequently would one need to download a Linux distro? As often as I bloody-well please, thank you very much. Of course, the legal use of the protocol in question isn't limited to just Linux distros. There's a vast amount of perfectly legal files that I may wish to download, and as the owner of the bandwidth I use, it is my right to make use of my connection as I deem fit. I pay for a 6Mbps service, and assuming my modem and line are capable of such speeds, they have no right to limit my use of one particular protocol. Traffic is traffic, regardless of what protocol it's riding on. Hypothetically speaking, if I were to sit at my computer surfing the web all day every day for a month straight, saturating my connection the entire time, I likely wouldn't be penalized for such conduct. Why? Because it's all arriving via HTTP, and as far as I can tell, they're not throttling any sort of HTTP traffic. Bell's apparent policies on all of these matters DO NOT make sense, nor are they fair to those of us who utilize technology for things other than piracy.

    All of this being said, I've already cancelled my Bell Sympatico residential service earlier this week, to become effective on May 14th. I had previously been a Sympatico customer with the same account for over 6 years. I am sure I am not the only person who's taking such action. Paying good money for a connection capable of 600+ KBps, yet only allows me to achieve 30KBps for torrents, is like me burning my money. Maybe another company will value my cash more than Bell seems to. We shall see, I suppose...
  5. Re:Shocked and appalled by malinha · · Score: 4, Insightful

    you right, if they can't delivery what they sell, don't sell that much. It's like buying a car that the vendors says it goes to 300km/h but... only gets to 100km/h because you are "abusing" the car you payed for...

  6. Re:Shocked and appalled by chrish · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Torrents aren't just for Linux distros and media piracy. Jamendo distributes music via torrent and World of Warcraft updates are torrents, for example. Jamendo might be a small fish, but you probably know at least one person playing WoW.

    Managed torrents (like WoW updates) would be an excellent way to distribute operating system patches and updates.

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    - chrish