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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."
MONTREAL, May 29 /CNW Telbec/ - The Consumers' Union and a Montreal consumer, Myrna Raphael, ask the Supreme Court to authorise a class action lawsuit against Bell Canada on behalf of all Quebec consumers subscribed, before or after October 28, 2007, to one of its DSL Internet access services.
Bell Canada, which announces in the promotion of its Internet access services "a constant speed, an access that is always fast, without frustrating slowdowns, even at peak hours" has installed on its network since last fall, surreptitiously, a mechanism that deliberately slows down, at peak hours, the transfer speed of its subscribers' data.
To inspect the users' data and manage the Internet traffic, Bell uses a technology called Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) which breaches the right to privacy of the consumers using their Internet access services.
Myrna Raphael has signed in 2006 a 3-year contract, wanting to take advantage of the constant speed offered by Bell Canada. For this consumer, as well as thousands of others, the constant speed was a key factor in her choice. Since Bell has systematically applied its slowdown measures, Mrs. Raphael and her spouse could not, in the evening, perform on the Internet any of the activities for which she had subscribed.
The Consumers' Union therefore asks of the Court to declare illicit Bell Canada's policy regarding the unilateral and systematic slowdown of data transfer towards its hundreds of thousands of subscribers and to force Bell Canada to reimburse these consumers, to whom Bell does not offer what they paid for, 80% of the sum of their monthly subscription. The Consumers' Union also asks of the Court to force Bell Canada to pay 600 [Canadian] dollars in damages for any and all false representations made to their subscribers regarding the constant speed of the Internet access that it committed to provide them, to order Bell to cease all breaches to the right to privacy of its subscribers and to force the company to pay them 1500 [Canadian] dollars for breaching their right to privacy.
The Consumers' Union and Myrna Raphael, the designated person, are represented by the law firm Unterberg Labelle Lebeau.
Information: Anthony Hémond, analyst, politics and legislation for telecommunications, broadcasting, information technology and privacy, The Consumers' Union, (514) 521-6820 extension 253
Do not call this number if you don't speak French! The official language in Quebec is French, and this designated person may not speak English.
DISCLAIMER: This is not an official translation. I do understand French, however, as my mother tongue.
Also, first post.
Hahaha! This is great! I use Bell for my internet! And I'm pretty sure they've been messing with my connection! I'm rich! I'm rich! Woo hoo!
I have nothing compelling to say
This is the way things tend to work up here. In the beginning, our leaders and lawmakers generally will just quietly make rational decisions based on ethical public policy and good technical input. Things are fine for some time here while we enjoy the sensible solution that seems to elude our neighbours to the source. Things continue happily for us while the same fight drags on in the US until big money wins out there. Then the same big money just pays for getting the American government to put pressure on ours until we capitulate.
So yes, it will be nice for a while, until your diplomats come calling to outline our terribly unfair (to ISPs) policies which are out of line with the rest of the world (America) and are damaging international relations. At which point, just to illustrate the issue, a softwood lumber tariff will get slapped on us which, of course, is completely unrelated to the net neutrality issue. " - you're accusing us of a punitive tariff? You wound us." But, surprise, surprise, it gets lifted when we cave in.
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.
Legal correspondence from persons or groups in Quebec to companies which have offices in Quebec can be done only in French, or in both languages, at the person or group's discretion. I agree that Bell is a Canadian company, but they have offices in all provinces.
Legal correspondence from Quebec to another province, or within another province, would have to be done only in English, I think, unless it were New Brunswick.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
Actually, BC is the only province of Canada that is not forced to be dual toungue. There it is only luck, if an official can speek french. But in all other provinces, people in government possitions must speek both. Even more, all products sold must have an englich and a french side of the product.
How do I uncompress my MD5 archive?
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?Pretty simple lawsuit I guess. Fraudulent advertising, huh? I bet they're suing over the phrase "internet access" cuz that's what they're not giving!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
It's about time people started standing up to fraudulent ISPs.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
they should also be demanding the choice for consumers to terminate their contracts with Bell with no termination penalties.
I know a lot of ISPs have the clause in their contract that makes it costly for you to terminate the contract and switch to someone else.
Since Bell has effectively breached the contract, the customers should have the right to walk away from it as well with no repercussions.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
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)
(From http://en.wikipedia.orgwiki/Nunavut#Language) "Along with Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, English, and French are also official languages."
And if you step outside the larger communities, It's almost exclusively Inuktitut, A very pretty language. All of the signs are in Inuktitut, English and French.
You should go there some time. (So you can really know your own country.) I have, in the spring. It was beautiful, and -35C.
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