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Class Action Suit Against Bell For Throttling
doppiodave writes "Hard on the heels of the Net Neutrality bill introduced in Canada's Parliament, a class action suit was filed yesterday against Bell by Quebec's Consumers Union, asking that extensive compensation be paid to all Bell's DSL subscribers for fraudulent advertising and privacy violations. The press release is available in French. The timing of this suit coincides with several other developments that suggest Net Neutrality is finally coming to the attention of the general public and Canada's regulator, the CRTC, which recently required Bell to file responses (by May 29) to an exhaustive list of interrogatories about its traffic-shaping practices."
I recently moved to Mountain View CA from Waterloo ON. I had Bell DSL at home. I was quite happy with the service and I'm a big bit torrent user. Definitely better than Rogers Cable. I never thought there was a big difference between what they were advertising and what they were selling.
I'm using AT&T DSL now. WOW. Worst. Service. Ever! I actually figured this out today... there's something like an order of magnitude (or more, depending how you count it) between what they advertise and what they give you. AT&T only guarantees an upper bound. For me, they promise they won't give me more than 3 megabit down. Why not give me a lower bound? Without the lower bound, they can slow me right down to nothing and still be within their contractual responsibilities (I think... not a lawyer).
Start selling an interval. Give me the upper bound and the lower bound for service. Sell me some recourse.
Don't think they won't be kindly requesting that cash back, with interest, in your next months service bill. The bill will also, most likely, be accompanied by a change of service terms notice, and a rate increase letter.
I'd like to be pleasantly surprised (my father just retired from Bell/Verizon and without him working there, I wouldn't be in college - I must admit that), but I have a feeling I won't be. It seems that management will cut off their noses to show good numbers for the quarter, while actually losing money in the process of padding the numbers. They're not going to take a loss without passing it on to the customer, and they're probably going to take that opportunity to sweeten the deal for themselves just a little bit more. But, like I said, I really hope I'm wrong.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
its not 'french'. youll see that level of comma usage to form long sentences in all languages for legal text.
Read radical news here
Okay, so this deals with fraudulent advertising with their internet services, but what about cell phone service. Whenever I go skiing at Cypress Mountain, I get no reception at all. Normally, I wouldn't care because Bell has shitty service, but Bell sponsored the power park or w/e, and it says that they have service mountain wide. But I can't make a phone call at the lodge. What kind of BS is that?
What the hell are you talking about? Only New Brunswick is legally bilingual, all other provinces are English only except Québec which is French only.
See for example the Alberta provincial government website. See any French option?But since the official language in Quebec is french, there is no guarantee that you will find an english-speaker. When I was in Quebec earlier this year, I noticed that outside of Montreal, it was fairly difficult to find english speaking people working in any commercial or professional space. When I had to go to the hospital, the only one who spoke any english (or at least tried) was the nurse running the triage in Emergency. Fortunately, my stilted french was enough that I was able to understand what was being asked or told to me despite not being able to respond in kind.
Lose: misplace or fail || Loose: not bound together
Just say to them "Je ne parle pas francais, mais je comprende un peu. Eske tu comprende Anglais?"
I used to hitchhike through Quebec quite a bit when I was younger, and if you can understand the gist of what they say in French, they'll generally be able to do the same for your English. I've successfully had conversations lasting hours with the two of us speaking different languages at each other because even though we could decipher the foreign language, our native tongue was the only language we could find the words to express ourselves in.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The thing is, it's not politicians making the decisions at those stages, it's the civil servants. These are long-time government employees, which basically operate like any other large, bloated corporation... not MUCH gets done, but when it affects the executives or their friends, rational decisions are often made.
... So, the prime minister fired her, because it was really important to the US that we provide them with medical isotopes.
Then the politicians come in and mess it all up.
Like, last year, this civil servant was in charge of all the nuclear plants, and she's all like "Hey, you bozos in Chalk River, you haven't upgraded your nuclear safety crap in a hundred years despite our constant nagging! We're shutting you down!"
Now, what's better? A nuclear plant that's behind on safety regs, or worldwide availability of nuclear isotopes?
From the POV of the consumer, that one's a little tough. But from the nuclear regulatory commissions POV? The shutdown was the right thing to do.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Wondered is it You Tube servers or ISP (Comcast)?
Did speed tests there were fluctuations but plenty of bandwidth for the video. Everything else but You Tube had a crisp response. Switched cable to backup DSL (AT&T) which is much slower than the cable connection. Many people would not be able to do this type of test usually only having one provider at a house.
The You Tube problem went away. Which means it was not the PC, or You Tube servers, but having to do with packet transport.
So this shows that Comcast was ruining the You Tube experience for sure.
whether they are intentionally throttling or not is not is still a question.
Doing a trace route we can see issue for sure poor network engineering. Comcast 8 hops to Washington DC & Va, AT&T 4 hops to Chicago. It could also be that Comcast is routing it packets some intelligence agency packet sniffing hub which is causing the delay.
Any other thoughts?
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)