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Canadian ISP Ordered to Prove Traffic-Shaping is Needed

Posted by timothy on from the offer-good-only-in-canada dept.

Sepiraph writes "In a letter sent to the Canadian Association of Internet Providers and Bell Canada on May 15, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) have ordered Bell Canada to provide tangible evidence that its broadband networks are congested to justify the company's Internet traffic-shaping policies. This is a response after Bell planned to tackle the issue of traffic shaping, also called throttling, on the company's broadband networks. It would be interesting to see Bell's response, as well as to see some real-world actual numbers and compare them to a previous study."

5 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hurray! by compro01 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Bell doesn't have a monopoly on internet access in Canada. Correct, but they own the infrastructure and have been throttling the competition, which is effectively circumventing CRTC regulations requiring them to lease lines to competitors.
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  2. Re:Hurray! by Secret+Rabbit · · Score: 3, Informative

    This isn't the US nor is it the EU, it's Canada. And the CRTC is here to protect consumers, etc. And guess what. They actually do there job some of the time. Welcome to a country where corruption isn't total in government orgs (at least yet).

  3. Re:Wrong evidence to ask by sedmonds · · Score: 4, Informative

    I recall seeing Bell advertisements that DSL from Bell was better than cable, because there are "no slowdowns". I also recall advertisements, but I can't remember if they were specifically Bell advertisements, that your bandwidth was dedicated. I didn't really believe it then, and now it seems that neither does Bell.

  4. Re:Hurray! by Phisbut · · Score: 5, Informative

    What? I hate ISP traffic shaping as much as anybody, but if you agreed to the contract, you agreed that you didn't care if they shaped your bandwidth. If you didn't like the product they were selling, why did you buy it? Nobody likes traffic shaping, and if people would stop being idiots and start refusing to agree to these contracts, one of the big ISPs would start offering non-shaped bandwidth.

    Ok, I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that you have no idea what you are talking about, and no idea what this whole matter is about. Here's what happened:

    People who didn't want Bell's throttling read Bell's contract and decided they didn't want it. Instead, they went and got their internet service from a competitor. Unfortunately, since Bell owns the wires, every competitor in the DSL business has to rent bandwidth wholesale from Bell. At first, Bell didn't throttle the wholesale bandwidth, and the competitors could then offer contracts that had no throttling to their customers. Then, without notice, Bell throttles the wholesalers. So even though people read the contracts and refused to agree with throttling, they still get fucked by Bell even though they get their service from a competitor. Reference here.

    This "I don't like this, but I'll just buy it now and sue later" bullshit is out of control Don't people take any responsibility for their actions any more?

    Repeat after me: People read their contracts, refused the throttling, went with a provider that didn't throttle, and got fucked anyway. Please... stop talking out of your ass now.

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  5. Re:Hurray! by MarkRose · · Score: 3, Informative

    But in Canada, companies cannot make contribution to political parties.

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