Bell Canada's Misinformation About Throttling

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."

Comments

Small ISPs not entirely blameless...

[masamax]

Bell does make one valid point that the smaller ISPs are not speaking about, namely that they are purchasing bandwidth from bell wholesale. There is nothing stopping those ISPs from installing their own routing centres, even within Bell's infrastructure whereby the only must lease the lines, not the other stuff. Instead, they want to avoid such infrastructure investment. That being said, most of the small ISP's probably lack the capital to undertake such an endeavor.

Re:Small ISPs not entirely blameless...

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a Teksavvy customer, I cannot express how awesome their service is since they use their own bandwidth. Being routed straight through the Toronto Internet Exchange, a mere 6 hops from Google's GTA data centre, is nothing short of exquisite. I simply adore pinging 30ms to eastern seaboard game servers and 10ms to GTA area game servers. Not to mention their incredibly awesome tech support staff who don't even work from flow charts but just know their stuff. (all my calls have ended in under 2 minutes with them fixing the issue or getting back to me the next day with progress)

I was hoping somebody would reply "TEKSAVVY" to the parent and am glad you did. They are easily the best ISP I've used, even if they don't reach the top speeds provided by Bell or Rogers. (no, I do not work for them or have a relative that works for them or anything, I am just a fiercely loyal customer)

Re:Shocked and appalled

[SpeedyDX]

Actually, that's not even remotely true. Rogers used to throttle BT bandwidth. There were legitimate things that I wanted to do with BT that I couldn't. I am a hobbyist photographer, and I sometimes share stock photos with my buddies. I wish I could've used BT to share those huge RAW files, but I couldn't. I also have to download Linux distros, and WoW updates. Those are legitimate actions that I couldn't engage in because of the throttling. Does engaging in those activities make me a "system abuser"?

As far as I can tell, Rogers doesn't throttle anymore since I've experienced up to 10Mbps for some of my BT transfers, and they've actually offered HIGHER throughput since they stopped throttling (from 8Mbps to 10Mbps). They now put, and enforce, an advertised bandwidth cap on all their plans. My particular plan, the highest available, has 95GB of transfer. They also notify you when you reach 75% of your capacity. If their current practices are any indication, I think that "this neutrality business" is actually a very simple thing to solve. I'm getting exactly what they tell me I'm paying for, a 10Mbps line with a 95GB cap. No draconian laws or heavy oversight. The cure is simple. It's to give your customers what you tell them you will. Instead of advertising "unlimited" or "unmetered" bandwidth, offer different bandwidth caps and different throughput levels at different price ranges.

I have to applaud Rogers for doing this. They've gone about it the right way, and I am now a very, very satisfied customer.

People's confusion?

[Geak]

I think the issue lies with the fact that Bell itself is confused. Just remember that upper management doesn't know squat about techie stuff like internets and tubes and stuff. The CEO used to work for CN rail - a company he nearly ran into the ground by causing numerous safety issues, firing inspectors for mentioning things that needed repair. He probably just told the techies to "Make it cheaper for us using any and all means possible. Fuck the customers."

It's simple economics

[Colin Smith]

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. No, that's precisely what happened. Those who could afford a home telephone, had one installed, paid through the nose per minute and were able to connect instantly to whomever they chose. Everyone else used a payphone. What're you, fifteen or something, we've only had ubuiquitous phone coverage for about 30 years.

Areas where flat rate is the norm will inevitably see infrastructure investment stagnation, bandwidth caps, throttling etc etc. With flat rate, there's really no incentive for ISPs to invest in more bandwidth. They don't get any more money for doing it. You want infinite bandwidth? Go pay for it.

Natural Monopoly?

[Chris Acheson]

It seems kind of odd to claim that last-mile internet access is a natural monopoly, considering that it's subject to "public right-of-way" regulations and fees imposed by local governments.

Bell tactics

[Nesa2]

I switched from Bell in November as soon as they started throttling my traffic.

In March my traffic with TekSavvy was throttled as well due to Bell.

There is no other Internet provider that I can use and get Unlimited Internet usage package at speeds for ADSL or Cable.

Bell as singlehandedly brought their competition to same level of crappy service that they offer. I as consumer have no alternates. There is nothing I can do other than to write to all politicians in my areas, as well as inquire with all Internet providers as to what they are doing to keep me as a customer satisfied and fight Bell.

So far, politicians seem ignorant of the issues and web services all throughout GTA are promising to fight Bell.

While in Europe and Asia people are getting fiber coming up their doorstep, North America is tightening it's belt on innovation, and technology .

We used to be innovators and leaders. What happened here?

Re:Shocked and appalled

[Danse]

If I purchase an "unlimited" plan at 10mb's, I expect unlimited usage of that 10 mb like because well shit thats what I'm paying for isn't it? That's the issue isn't it? The question is did you actually purchase an "unlimited" plan, or did you purchased an "unlimited*" plan? There is a difference.